"being have"

[George Thompson]

Lynne Murphy objects that in the passage
    "She came in on the Charleston wave, / What I told you, she just
won't have"
"there's no 'be' there--so I don't think this is a case of 'to be have'
at all.  "

But "will" (won't) is the future tense of "be".  So that in this
instance the idea of "being have" is so assimilated that the verb has
been adapted.

I'll concede that this analysis/joke on of "behave" is sufficiently
obvious that it may have been invented ndependently many times.  I
think I don't concede that "she just won't have" should be read as "she
just won't 'have" ("behave" truncated of its first syllable).  We may
all say "I'll do it 'cause I want to" and such, but I don't think that
eliding the initial syllable is universal among words in the "be"
family.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African
Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.