COCK as vernacular pop adjectival

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Mar 21, 2004, at 9:51 AM, Lynne Murphy wrote:

> --On Sunday, March 21, 2004 12:36 pm -0500 RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:> I
> found this at
>
>> <http://www.talkingcock.com/html/sections.php?op=3Dviewartic= le&
>> artid=3D33>, which comes from Singapore; "cock" here appears to be
>> adjectival, not attribtive:
>>
>> "Yah, I heard about Ah Seng. I'm not surprised. It was an absolutely
>> cock=20 idea!"
>
>
> I'm betting that this has more to do with feces as with penes (my
> preferred
> plural of penis).

(an idea that lynne then defends.)

while we're on this soiled subject, i note that there are a fair number
of occurrences of adjective "shit", as in "how shit a".  many are
clearly british --

   ... anything. But for wank shafts like yourself to just stand there
and
  tell ppl how shit a band is after one gig takes the fucking piss. ...
  www.drownedinsound.com/articles/3811.html

but some are american --

... skatings there for you to skate not to sit on your hole and write
how shit a
  product is ME. Me sucks. You. Anyone who buys one of those kits is a
dick. ...
  www.skateboardingsucks.com/139.php

(i note with amusement that my google query for "how shit a" citations
was immediately catalogued on the website.  also that the slogan of
Skateboarding Sucks is "Crailtaps?  Fuck That, Roast Beef Early
Grabs!", an expression of which the only part i can interpret is "fuck
that".)

and a few even have the "of" with exceptional degree modifiers --

... Physics...what a fucking nightmare, I hate my teacher so much, the
fucker
  can't even teach, I cannot even stress how shit of a teacher he is. ...
  www.livejournal.com/users/chali/970.html

there are parallel examples with "how crap (of) a", for example:

... dress up as Shaggy. Wow! That would of got me to go see that film
regardless
  of how crap of a review it was. But it never happened ...
  64.160.250.67/djtoucan/ateam.htm

these are entirely natural developments (roughly parallel to the
history of "fun"): a mass noun used predicatively ("The product is
shit/crap") is open for reinterpretation as an evaluative adjective and
can then appear adnominally as an adjective.

(note that the mass nouns can appear adnominally as *nouns*, even for
me -- but then they're in a compound-noun construction.  i can say "a
shit idea", but that conveys "an idea that is shit" with the
predicative *noun* "shit".  similarly with "a fun time", which i can
say, though i can't say "how fun (of) a time".)

a nice prediction here is that, since the noun "piss" isn't
conventionally used predicatively for evaluation ("That idea is piss"
takes some major interpretive work), we wouldn't expect it to have an
adjective counterpart:  no "how piss (of) a".  i haven't found any such
examples, on webpage searches or newsgroup searches.

to return to "cock", i don't find any relevant examples of "how cock
(of) a".  so i'm somewhat suspicious of some of the examples, which
might be noun-noun compounds.  certainly i'd interpret "big-cock
attitude" that way, as 'attitude of someone who (thinks he) has a big
cock".  probably "cock attitude" also: 'attitude of someone with a
cock, macho attitude'.  of course, such compound uses can serve as a
transition to reinterpretation of the adnominal word as an adjective,
so some varieties might be on their way to "cock" as a true adjective.
("giant" seems to have gone this way for me; i have "a more giant
rally" and "how giant a rally".  i believe that "monster" has gone this
way for some speakers, though not (yet) for me.)

to return to the original point, about "w(h)ack" and its relatives
"suck", "stink", etc.  it's hard to assimilate these developments to
the noun>adjective development of "fun", "giant", "shit", and others.
ron butters has a very interesting idea about a separate path for
"w(h)ack" and its buddies, however.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)