'circulation-goosing' - new term?

[Gregory {Greg} Downing]

At 09:58 AM 10/31/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>Another angle on the canoodling is that I don't
>recall reading or hearing this word very often in the past.   But reading
>it  in sev diff tabloid newspapers, used in the same context and applied to
>different couples was striking.   They all came out around the same time
>(say 6 weeks ago).  There must be some kind of (recent?) history to it
>being a popular word all of a sudden amongst the columnists or writers.
>

For several years now "canoodling" has been used with some frequency in the
gossip column ("Page Six") of the New York Post -- back through 97 or 98, if
not much earlier. The sense is "making out," especially in a location where
others can see the goings-on -- i.e., noticeably intense P.D.A. Of course,
the word has a long history prior to Page Six, but anyone who's interested
could use Lexis/Nexis to trace the spread of the word as employed in gossipy
journalistic contexts late in the last century. Perhaps the older pedigree
of "canoodling" and its status as cutesy or quaint euphemism make it
preferable in journalistic contexts to blunter-sounding locutions such as
"making out."


Greg Downing, at greg.downing at nyu.edu or gd2 at nyu.edu