[Ads-l] Long-haul trucker's lexicon + a surprise

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Fri Jun 2 11:26:53 UTC 2017


Absence from GB suggests that the quote - at least in this form - is
apocryphal (i.e., fake news).

Garson?

JL

On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 10:48 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>
wrote:

> So is any drawer a vagina, or must it be a lingerie drawer?  (JL)
>
> Or maybe it’s the drawers themselves…  (LH)
>
> When I was in college, a professor pointed out to us (discretely, the
> Eisenhower administration being a recent memory) an unconscious (or maybe
> not?) obscenity in a novel by George Eliot.  Eliot asserted of a female
> character that "she had only the blackest and curliest hair in her drawers"
> -- meaning that she wore a black, curly wig which she kept in her dresser.
> I don't now remember which novel this appears in, but at the time, showing
> a precocious talent for being a reference librarian, using the print
> sources in the college library, I was able to find it.
>
> GAT
>
> On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 9:47 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > > On Jun 1, 2017, at 9:45 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > So is any drawer a vagina, or must it be a lingerie drawer?
> > >
> > > JL
> >
> > Or maybe it’s the drawers themselves…
> >
> >
> > >
> > > On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 9:22 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > >> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/books/review-long-haul-
> > >> trucker-memoir-finn-murphy.html
> > >>
> > >> This is Jennifer Senior's review of a book by Finn Murphy, a long haul
> > >> trucker who reads both Chinese and Jane Austen.  The review touches on
> > >> various specialized lexical items of the trade Finn wields, several of
> > >> which are old hat even to inveterate non-truckers like me
> > (“deadheading”,
> > >> “suicide jockey”), some not so much (“bedbugger”, “chowder”).  You’ll
> > have
> > >> to read the review to find out what they are.  But my favorite bit, in
> > the
> > >> light of our recent thread:
> > >>
> > >> =============
> > >> Nor will I think about the fact that movers sometimes inspect the
> > contents
> > >> of your boudoir. Murphy’s recommendation: “Salt the lingerie drawer
> with
> > >> plastic snakes or a loaded mousetrap.” (Who says the vagina dentata
> is a
> > >> myth?)
> > >> =============
> > >>
> > >> I can only assume that Ms. Senior has been dipping into our list.
> > >>
> > >> LH
> > >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> > >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> > >>
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> > truth."
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> George A. Thompson
> The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998.
>
> But when aroused at the Trump of Doom / Ye shall start, bold kings, from
> your lowly tomb. . .
> L. H. Sigourney, "Burial of Mazeen", Poems.  Boston, 1827, p. 112
>
> The Trump of Doom -- affectionately (of course) also known as The Dunghill
> Toadstool.  (Here's a picture of one.)
> http://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/james-
> gillray/an-excrescence---a-fungus-alias-a-toadstool-upon-a-dunghill/3851
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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