Etymology of "mosh"? -- 2nd try

[Lynne Murphy]

>Two different stories:
>
>Thorne: "Dictionary of Contemporary Slang" (1990): under 'moshing':
>"... invention influenced by such words as jostle, mash, mass,
>squash, crush and thrust."
>
>Chapman: "American Slang" (2nd ed., 1998): under 'mosh': "[fr
>British dialect, "mash, smash," found by 1848]"
>
>-- Doug Wilson


The first one seems a lot more likely (esp. mash/squash), since the
dialectal 'mash' word is not found in New Oxf D of E or Collins
Concise, and since the dancing term was coined by youngsters I'm
going to bet they might not've known an older dialectal word.  (I'll
have to check my Chambers at home, which tends to include more BrE
dialectal variations.)

However, note that BrE has a/o variations in some monosyllabic word
spellings (although in these cases, it doesn't change pronunciation),
hence swap/swop, swat/swot.

AHD gives 'slam-dance' as a synonym for mosh.  The two terms have
different connotations for me, but I just learned (from Oxf) that
"slam-dance" is "chiefly N Amer", so I wonder if having the
particular connotations I have (slam-dance = punk, mosh = grunge) is
just an American state of mind.

Lynne


--
Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH UK
phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax    +44-(0)1273-671320