'sup?

[Jonathan Lighter]

I first noticed  /tsup/~/sup/ in NYC about 1970.  When I came to Tennessee in 1974, it was used there as well, almost entirely by young African Americans, as in NY.

I didn't create a file on it because it seemed so obviously a colloquial pronunciation of the equally colloquial "What's up?"

It's current popularity and adoption by teenagers generally, comes, I suspect, through rap lyrics.  Am still not sure it should be called "slang," but if so it certainly didn't start out that way.

JL



Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: 'sup?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For a student's query, and in the absence of an HDAS Volume 3, I'm
trying to track down some background on "'sup?" as an encliticized
truncation of "What's up?" Anything on the history of both when and
by whom would be welcome.

Larry

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