'mo = homo

[Nathaniel Thomas]

In the animated series of "Clerks" (based on the Kevin Smith film) the
end of each episode contains a Public Service Announcement.  I should
note that this was a strange and quickly canceled series because it
attempted to achieve some flavor of the excellent film but was
broadcast on Disney-owned prime-time ABC.  That is difficult when the
source material contained enough swear words to be originally rated
NC-17.

Anyway, in one PSA two children (a brother and sister) are playing
inside on a rainy day.  Unfortunately, I cannot find a script on-line
and do not have the DVD at hand, thus I am forced to attempt to
remember haphazardly what the exact context was.  I think the sister
suggests that they take off their clothes, but the brother says that
playing with matches would be more fun.  They're prevented by the
sudden appearance of one of the characters from the show, who I believe
encourages them to do something even worse.  Anyway, the brother, I
think,  says to the sister, again, this is if I remember correctly,
"You 'mo!".  In the commentary on the DVD the creators of the show
mention that ABC didn't like that insult, because they thought it was a
shortening of "moron".  They convinced ABC it meant something more
innocuous and thought it was pretty funny, because ABC would have been
extremely annoyed if they had known it was actually short for "homo".
Of course, this is all from memory, and there may be a slightly
different back-story but "mo" definitely does make an appearance in
that PSA.

If someone is interested they can check it out, considering only six
episodes were made.

Nathaniel (nathanielt at airpost.net)

On Mar 5, 2004, at 1:09 AM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>
> 'mo = homo was new to me.  it's an example (relatively rare, but not
> unattested) of a word clipped down to its unstressed final syllable.
> anyone have other attestations for 'mo?
>
> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)