Playa (was Really Really Pimpin' in Da South)

[Martinez-Gibson, Elizabeth A.]

Just last week, my husband said he saw a sorority student from the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC with a t-shirt that said on the back : "I am not a playa" He was actually thinking it was a play on words. Since we are usually thinking in terms of Spanish, we thought of the word "playa"=beach, which some Spanish speakers at times confuse in pronunciation with "bitch". Therefore saying "I am not a bitch". So now with this conversation, perhaps we were completely mistaken. I find this interesting and perhaps I will contact the sorority to see what it is they are communicating with their t-shirts.

Liz Martinez-Gibson

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Grant Barrett
Sent: Fri 8/6/2004 10:32 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Cc:
Subject: Re: Playa (was Really Really Pimpin' in Da South)



        A fine explanation of "playahatin" appeared yesterday, 5 Aug. 2004, in
        the freebie Metro newspaper,  p. 6, NYC version:

        IN THE SEPTEMBER issue of Vibe magazine, Jamie Foxx tells how he gave
        Tom Cruise a crash course in slang. “We were talkin’ about all sorts of
        issues. Like I taught him what ‘playahatin’ was. He was goin’ through
        some stuff, and I used the term, and he didn’t know what it meant.” Fox
        explained the term. “I grabbed him by the neck and said, ‘How close am
        I to you right now? He said, ‘You’re pretty f***ing close?. I said,
        ‘Now, imagine I’m your blood brother, or one o’ your good friends. And
        all the blessing are being passed out in the universe. And you get the
        good looks, charisma, career, the ladies, everything. And it misses me,
        by half an inch. I will always subliminally hate you, because I feel if
        I had only been standin’ just a coupla inches over, it woulda got me.
        That’s what playa-hatin’ is.”

        Grant Barrett

        On Aug 6, 2004, at 07:50, David Bowie wrote:

        > From:    Wilson Gray <hwgray at EARTHLINK.NET>
        > : John Baker wrote:
        >
        > <snip>
        >
        > ::  Finally, "players"