[Ads-l] rude: noisy? frolicksome?

George Thompson george.thompson at NYU.EDU
Mon Sep 25 16:01:43 UTC 2017


I had noticed the entry for "rude boy" in the OED.  As for "rude" meaning
obscene, I don't suppose that that was what Miss Connecticut was admitting
to in what the editor called a diary but seems in fact to have been a
letter or series of letters to a girl friend.

I spoke of the writer as being a landsman -- she used the word
"Connecticutarian" which I hope Larry will proudly accept as well.

GAT, born in Meriden.

On Mon, Sep 25, 2017 at 8:48 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> In my experience, "rude" = 'bawdy; obscene' is known to older British
> speakers as well.
>
> I must have encountered it in the '60s, with no suggestion that it was a
> novelty. I associate it with the sometimes hilariously "rude" rugby song
> repertoire.
>
> "Outway rude" may have been the collocation I met with.
>
> JL
>
> On Sun, Sep 24, 2017 at 9:47 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Sep 24, 2017 at 6:22 PM, Jim Parish <jparish at siue.edu> wrote:
> >
> > > Wilson Gray wrote:
> > >
> > >> The senses of “rude” as applied to human behavior are, I think, all
> > >>>
> > >> negative.
> > >>
> > >> Except in BE slang , of course, wherein, like “hard,” It’s a synonym
> of
> > >> “bad.” “Rude”and “hard”In the sense of “bad” go so far back that I
> don’t
> > >> know f’ sho’ where I first heard them. The time-frame is between 1945
> > and
> > >> 1950, though.
> > >>
> > >
> > > What does it mean in the title of Desmond Dekker's "Rude Boy Train"? (I
> > > love the sound of his voice, but I very rarely understand what he's
> > saying.)
> >
> >
> > OED3 (Mar. 2011 update), under "rude":
> >
> > _rude boy_  n.  (a) (orig. and chiefly Jamaican) any of a class of
> > unemployed black youths inhabiting the poorer areas of Jamaica and
> > typically seen as indolent and apt to commit petty crimes; a comparable
> > youth in another society;  (b) (with reference to such youths as a
> frequent
> > subject of ska lyrics) a member of the subculture associated with ska,
> esp.
> > in Britain.
> >
> > 1967   _Caribbean Q._ Sept. 39   Rude bwoy is that person, native, who is
> > totally disenchanted with the ruling system; who generally is descended
> > from the ‘African’ elements in the lower class... Rude bwoys are largely
> > centred in those urban areas that suffer from chronic depression.
> > [etc.]
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > 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
>



-- 
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 -- also known as The Dunghill Toadstool.  (Here's a
picture of his great-grandfather.)
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



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