obscene words from "Deadwood"

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 11:50:23AM -0800, Geoffrey Nunberg wrote:
> I had a call from David Bianculli, the TV reviewer from "Fresh Air,"
> who's doing a piece on the new HBO show "Deadwood," a western set in
> the 1860's which prides itself on the authenticity of both the
> setting and the obscenity-laced language (it's HBO, after all).

They pride themselves on the authenticity of the language?
Funny, I hadn't heard of any 19th-century obscenity
specialists getting contacted by them with offers of
money in exchange for accuracy ;-(.

> Among the phrases that the program uses are "cocksucker,"
> "piss off" (in the sense "irritate") and "shitface." David
> wanted to know if those words would in fact have been
> current in the language of the period.  I note that both the
> OED and HDAS give a Farmer and Henley entry in 1891 for the
> earliest use of "cocksucker," and that the OED's first cite
> of "piss off" is from 1968 and for "shitface" is from
> 1937. In the light of those cites (but bearing in mind how
> long such terms can live in speech without being recorded),
> does the use of the words in "Deadwood" seem authentic?

_Cocksucker_ was in use in the 1860s as a term of contempt
(the earliest literal example I know of is from the 1880s,
and comes from Fred Shapiro), _pace_ HDAS and OED. I don't
know how common it could have been--it took a lot of effort
to find this quote, but as you note this is not the sort
of thing that would have been written down much. (OTOH,
though, there's no source that anyone could have checked
that would have revealed this information, so much for
their authenticity.)

_piss off_ we have earlier evidence for but nothing _near_
the 1860s, and it would surprise me greatly if it was in
use then. Same for _shitface_, though perhaps it would
surprise me less.

This reminds me of _Titanic._ There was all this talk
about how they went to the original carpet manufacturer
to have the carpets re-woven in the same pattern, and
stuff like that, but I was _stunned_ with how awful the
language was. (Also, of course, the things that people
_said_ were inauthentic about the language were not
anachronisms, but that's often the case.)

There's a New York parking-ticket judge who's interested
in linguistic anachronisms in the movies, but I've forgotten
his name.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED/HDAS