G-string

[George Thompson]

A new (perhaps?) false word history.

A book by James McManus, "Positively Fifth Street. . . .", Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2003, a memoir about a poker tournament in Los Vegas, with strippers and a murder thrown in, has the following explanation of the word "G-string":
"G stands for Grafenberg spot, by the way, after the diligent German gynecologist, Ernest [sic], who first surveyed the petite yet geopolitically sensitive territory G-strings must shield."  (p. 132)    Ernest is correctly Ernst.  "geopolitically sensitive"  is a bit of whimsy.
The OED has 1878 for the loincloth worn by American Indians, and 1936 for the patch worn by strippers.  Still, perhaps a better guess than many another false word history we''ve discussed here.

GAT

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