'mo = homo

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:11 AM -0500 3/5/04, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>
>  >
>
>It SOUNDS like something I've heard before, but maybe I'm getting it confused
>with 'za = pizza, which has certainly been around for a while. Not that there
>is much of a semantic connection between 'mo and 'za.

I had thought 'za and 'rents were relatively recent undergraduate
slang, but when we were discussing these as exceptions to
generalizations on clipping last fall, one of my undergraduate
students suspected, and then confirmed, that it was part of his
father's active usage since the latter's undergraduate days.  If I
didn't know better, I'd think I was getting older.  (I didn't check
him on (ho)mo, which however really does put a new spin on
sportscasters' references to "the big mo.")

larry horn