Dept of Lower Culture: Fornificating

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:40 PM -0800 3/21/02, A. Maberry wrote:
>On Thu, 21 Mar 2002, Steve Hicks wrote:
>
>>         And how can we talk about word-formation with
>>  "fornication" and not give a nod to "Californicate,"
>>  the degradation caused by refugees from the Golden
>>  State.  Is the term still in use ?
>>
>It is in Washington and Oregon. I've heard it in both states within the
>last couple of years.
>
I'd assume that's where it started too.  At least the first clippings
I collected referred to movements in Oregon to halt Californication,
and the Pacific Northwest seems like the obvious locus classicus.
For some reason neither the verb nor the derived noun are in RHHDAS,
but the evidence I just collected on Nexis seems to suggest the
earliest references were bumper stickers imploring locals in various
Western states "DON'T CALIFORNICATE COLORADO/IDAHO/OREGON", with the
Colorado ones possibly being the earliest.  (By Jan. 1977 articles
were already noting that "the bloom was off the environmentalist
rose" and that unbridled development was now rampant in the area
where "bumper stickers once proclaimed "Don't Californicate
Colorado".)  I suspect a good proportion of the cars sporting such
bumper stickers in Colorado and the Northwest were driven by those
very refugees from the Golden (Brown) State, who knew whereof they
stickered.

Larry

P.S.  The first "Californication" hit on Nexis isn't until 1985; most
of the early ones (until the explosion accompanying the eponymous Red
Hot Chili Peppers album title) seem to have been set in the Pacific
Northwest.