put-down

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 5/28/2002 3:46:56 PM, savan at EROLS.COM writes:

<<       Does anyone know the origins of put-down as a noun? I see from the
OED that as a verb put down's meaning of "to 'take down'; to snub..."
goes way back. But I couldn't find it as a noun. I'm under the
impression (and I could be totally wrong) that the noun put-down really
got going during '50s and '60s stand-up comedy and that maybe Lenny
Bruce had something to do with it. Or perhaps it came out of sitcoms of
that era. Any ideas, anyone? >>

I remember teaching Shakespeare's "12th Night" in the late 1960s at Duke and
finding PUT DOWN used as a verb in that play (someone reports having seen
Malvolio "put down by a fool" and it seems clear from the context that
Shakespeare intended the term to mean to his hearers exactly what it would
mean to 20th and 21st Century Americans). I thought, "My goodness, this new
slang that my students are using is as old as Shakespeare, only they use it
as a noun instead of as a verb." I have no idea if there is a historical
connection, though--it could be that the 20th century sense was reinvented
independently. Or maybe even revived by Shakespeareans!