prissy, 1842 (?)

[Wilson Gray]

On Oct 21, 2004, at 11:25 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: prissy, 1842 (?)
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> I got hold of Abrahams' book around the time I started collecting
> slang, for obvious reasons.  It was considered so daring a publication
> when it came out that the copy I saw included a warning forbidding
> anyone who wasn't a doctor, sociologist, or law enforcement officer
> from looking at it.

No kidding?! That's amazing!
>
> I figured "college student" was close enough.
>
> The "toasts" Abrahams recorded were the direct ancestors of rap. On
> the European side, the "flash songs" attributed to English crooks of
> the 17th and 18th centuries are to some extent comparable, at least in
> the context of their times.
>
> Whether the African-American "toast" tradition goes as far back as the
> 19th century remains unknown, so far as I can tell.  Which is, of
> course, not very far.
>
> JL

Unfortunately, this kind of stuff is probably dead. When I was a
teenager in the '50's, whenever Billy, a talker of such renown that he
was given the nickname "Jerry Lewis," (a *hell* of a compliment, in
those days) would try to recite "Deep down in the jungle," he would be
shouted down. In the '60's, there was nothing that I could do to
persuade our premiere practitioner of the hambone, also named Billy, to
demonstrate so much as a single thigh slap, after we got out of the
Army. Back in the '40's, Hambone Billy and his brother used to provide
what amounted to workshops in hamboning. Freddy, master of the bones
and the spoons, stopped all that after he got out of the Navy and got
into college. The only things that continue to be cultivated are
colorful language and the art of the insult.

BTW, you may recall that Abrahams mentions that his informants could
sing. That is an understatement. Those men constituted two
nationally-known - among blacks, that is - singing groups. As the
"Gladiolas," they recorded the original version of "Little Darling." As
"Otis Williams and the Charms," they recorded the original version of
"Stay," if there's anyone else old enough to remember.

-Wilson Gray

> Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Wilson Gray
> Subject: Re: prissy, 1842 (?)
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> On Oct 21, 2004, at 10:06 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
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>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
>> Subject: Re: prissy, 1842 (?)
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>>
>> Wilson, you may remember the 1958 hit, "Tom Dooley." Well, the
>> Kingston Trio jazzed it up a little bit from the way it was sung by
>> Frank Proffitt, the old-time banjo-frailer from Sodom (no kidding), N.
>> C., who taught it to collector Frank Warner who, etc., etc., etc., by
>> the Kingston Trio. Proffitt always sang, "You STOBBED her with your
>> knife." He was white, born about 1910.
>>
>> I may be fooling myself, but come to think of it the comic-strip
>> Tarzan in the '50s may have referred to his knife as a "dirk." Not
>> sure now. But if he did, it would have seemed like "literary" language
>> to me, in NYC and all. It never entered my active vocabulary.
>>
>> Will have to start using it.
>>
>> Question: Does "dagger" sound "too Shakespearean" to people who grew
>> up saying "dirk"? (Macbeth. ... Is that a dagger I see before me?)
>>
>> JL
>>
>
> Not to me, in any case. BTW, do you know of Roger D. Abrahams? It's
> pronounced as though spelled "Abrams," so I've heard. I have a book of
> his called Deep Down in the Jungle (1963) that, among other things has
> a very small list of black usages from Philadelphia, some of which are
> new to me or have a different meaning from the one that I'm familiar
> with. I've been tempted to post some of his stuff. But that would be
> fairly pointless, if everyone here already knows his work.
>
> -Wilson
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Wilson Gray wrote:
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>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Wilson Gray
>> Subject: Re: prissy, 1842 (?)
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>> -
>> --------
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>> On Oct 21, 2004, at 8:47 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>
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>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
>>> Subject: Re: prissy, 1842 (?)
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>>>
>>> This may have nothing to do with George's question, but is worth
>>> reporting before I forget it.
>>>
>>> A few years ago I was alerted to a book that dealt with antebellum
>>> sexual attitudes in the South. It frequently cited unpublished court
>>> records. In one case, in Virginia around 1810, a rape victim
>>> testified that her assailant had broken into her bed chamber and
>>> approached her "with his dick in his hand."
>>>
>>> This would be an antedating by about 75 years of a now universally
>>> known term. It would also make it by origin an Americanism.
>>>
>>> Skeptical, I wrote to the Court House for a photocopy of the
>>> document,
>>> which soon arrived.
>>>
>>> As he was undoubtedly expected to do, the court stenographer had
>>> written his final draft in bold, graceful, and very legible script.
>>> There was absolutely no doubt: what the assailant had held in his
>>> hand
>>> was his "dirk."
>>>
>>> Chalk this false alarm up to someone's hasty transcription or
>>> proof-reading. But I was amused greatly when a colleague (not a
>>> linguist) suggested that the unmistakable "dirk" might well have been
>>> a slip of the pen for the putative "dick," since "'dirk' is too
>>> Shakespearean" [!].
>>
>> I second that observation, i.e. the [!]. Remember the knife that
>> Tarzan
>> wielded? Among us Southern blacks, that was a dirk. "I stobbed him/her
>> with my dirk" is a common blues line. BTW, FWIW, according to BET,
>> "stob" for "stab" is still used in living speech among black
>> Alabamians.
>>
>> -Wilson Gray
>>
>>>
>>> As for "prissy," I have no suggestions.
>>>
>>> JL
>>>
>>> George Thompson wrote:
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>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>> Poster: George Thompson
>>> Subject: prissy, 1842 (?)
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>>>
>>> The OED says that "prissy" dates from the mid 1890s, and is probably
>>> compounded from "prim" and "sissy".
>>>
>>> Here is an occurence of the word from 1842. The meaning isn't at all
>>> clear, but it is obiously used in an affirmative sense, quite the
>>> opposite of the post 1890s meaning. The person described is Martin
>>> Van
>>> Buren, who was campaigning for the presidency.
>>>
>>> "Time has been merciful to him. He looks more fresh and prissy than
>>> ever we saw him, excepting that his locks are a little more like
>>> those
>>> of his 'illustrious predecessor,' being whitened by the snows of a
>>> few
>>> more winters." From the New Orleans Daily Picayune, of April 12 or
>>> 15,
>>> 1842, perhaps citing the Natchez Free Press; as cited in Ralph M.
>>> Aderman & Wayne R. Kime, Advocate for America: The Life of James
>>> Kirke
>>> Paulding, Selingrove: Susquehanna U. Pr., 2003, p. 272 and footnote
>>> 18, p. 383.
>>>
>>> Van Buren was 60 in 1842, and it would seem a bit extreme to describe
>>> a 60-year old as "pristine", -- myself being an exception, of course
>>> -- but could this be a shortening of that word?
>>>
>>> GAT
>>>
>>> George A. Thompson
>>> Author of A Documentary History of "The African
>>> Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.
>>>
>>>
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>>
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