OED news

[Bruce Dykes]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 13:58
Subject: Re: OED news


> >"Quim" is obsolete; I'd bet not one American in a thousand knows it.
> >(Obviously the logophilous readership of ADS-L is not a
> >representative sample.)
>
> Probably more than 1/1000. But concentrated among dinosaurs (of age 40+)
> and book-readers, I guess, and who cares about these marginal groups in
> this post-literate age? Perhaps more importantly, I guess in most places
> this term is/was some way down the list of the dozens (hundreds?) of
> commonly used synonyms: if they all were avoided, one could hardly speak
at
> all.
>
> Still, "quim" may be current among the young folks somewhere FAIK, and
> surely it's a candidate for a blooming or comeback via some popular movie
> or whatever, as with "shag" recently.

It may please followers of this thread that quim is well represented on
usenet in all the expected places. There's even a quim.com website.
Then again, it may not.

> What about the non-US "wank"? Has this penetrated the US popular
> consciousness yet? I don't see any "WANK-AM" or "-FM" at a glance, except
> as a joke.

Bugger doesn't really rank in American's vocabularies either.

bkd