Infinite vocabulary

[Peter A. McGraw]

There's some social force at work here that I can't quite figure out.  It's
some kind of social pressure to interpret an unknown word as having sexual
(or otherwise mildly taboo) connotations if the context suggests it, or
perhaps would merely permit it.  It may be partly a fear of appearing
prudish, or ignorant of the latest slang, or sexually naive, but that can't
be the whole story either.

This thread reminds me of another variation on the theme.  A practical joke
among boys when I was in grade school was to tell another boy, "Hey, your
hobby's open!"  The invariable response on the part of the mark (if he
hadn't heard it before) was to hastily check his fly.  Whereupon the
prankster would say something like, "Ha ha!  What makes you think that's
what I meant by your 'hobby'?"  I suppose the list of words that could have
been substituted in the phrase, "Your _________ is open!" and elicited the
same reaction might be infinite, at least in principle, since there's
nothing about the word "hobby" itself that could account for the
effectiveness of the joke.

Peter Mc.

--On Thu, Oct 26, 2000 11:59 AM -0400 Joe Pickett <Joe_Pickett at HMCO.COM>
wrote:

> Around here there has been a longstanding and related postulate that any
> number of syllables can be combined to describe sexual body parts.
> It often gets invoked when we are considering how many slang words to put
> in a dictionary. "Where do we stop?"
>
> Joe
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> AAllan at AOL.COM@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on 10/26/2000 10:27:11 AM
>
> Please respond to American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>
> Sent by:  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>
>
> To:   ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> cc:
> Subject:  Re: Infinite vocabulary
>
>
> Laugh all you will, but I think my student has discovered what I will call
> (in his name) Venturini's Theorem: When the number of synonyms for a
> concept
> exceeds a certain number, it becomes infinite. - Allan Metcalf



****************************************************************************
                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu