[Ads-l] Antedating of "Come Out of the Closet" (Homosexuality)

MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY RDECOM AMRDEC (US) william.d.mullins18.civ at MAIL.MIL
Tue Jan 23 20:16:47 UTC 2018


> >> There’s also this but I don’t know the broader context of the excerpt:
> >>
> >> 1963   S. Plath in London Mag. Jan. 16   Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
> >>
> >> It’s not bracketed, so I assume it’s metaphorical in one sense or another.
> >>
> >
> > The Plath cite is from a poem:
> > Chttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57419/the-applicant
> >
> > and I am not able to tell what the author meant by this use.
> >
> >
> Thanks, Bill.  If it were my entry, I’d have at least bracketed if not entirely omitted this occurrence, which I don’t see as having to anything
> obvious do with the sense glossed above, 'to admit (something) openly, to cease to conceal, esp. one's homosexuality’.
> 
> LH
> 

That is my take as well, but like I said, it is pretty opaque to me, and I wanted to allow for the possibility I was missing something that was obvious to a Plath scholar (or even an run of the mill English major).


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


More information about the Ads-l mailing list