"Turd Ferguson" slang book

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:43 AM -0700 9/7/04, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>On Sep 7, 2004, at 6:48 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
>>I've never encountered ANY of these terms from students at my
>>university.  Now how could that be?
>
>i haven't encountered any of them, either.  but then i'm not really a
>slang maven.  i'm impressed that they're news to slangologist jonathan
>lighter.
>
>larry horn recognizes "sexile" (and the long-familiar "dead soldier",
>but not the larger expression "tomb of the dead soldiers").  but
>nothing else.
>
>it's worth thinking about how this could come about.  (i'm admitting
>that lighter, horn, and i are not exactly plugged into undergraduate
>student life.  but we're by no means insulated from it.)  two
>suggestions, neither very original...
>
>first, these compendia of college slang are as inclusive as possible,
>with no estimation of how many students use the items, how often, or in
>what circumstances.  many of the items are likely to be short-lived
>inventions used by just a few people.  (my college roommate was an
>extravagant person in lots of ways, one of them being his endless
>linguistic inventiveness; he produced a constant stream of colorful
>expressions, few of which lived on for more than a couple days.)
>
>second, the compendia are collected by asking students about the slang
>they use.  this method of collection invites the students to offer
>their most colorful vocabulary and to disregard the items that are
>entirely ordinary from their point of view.  in fact, the students are
>likely to be predisposed to offer remarkable items, since they are
>aware of having a special vocabulary that binds them together and sets
>them off from people outside their social group.

While I don't have much direct contact with slang use by
undergraduates (except from my two (non-Yale) undergraduate
offspring), I do have the 40-odd (some odder than others) students in
my Words classes collect examples in their New Word Journals, and as
I reported here at the end of last fall term, they do come up with
quite a number, both old (to us) and new, e.g. [glosses/contexts
supplied only where I think necessary; many of these have been
discussed extensively here or at WOTY election precincts]

recockulous
hasbian
faux-hawk
tomacco
brick ('cold', of weather)
to be/get moded ('...mocked, made an ass of')
nonner ('one who doesn't [whatever]')
'motential ("He's straight, but he's got ____")
dipthong ('low-cut undergarment')
heteroflexible
flexitarian
skeet ('ejaculate')
homo hop ('gay-based hip-hop')
cooter-booter ('a woman who interferes with another woman's
flirtation efforts')
get some neck (converse of "give head")
puck fuck ('hockey groupie')
DILF
sexit ("The couple discreetly ___ed the party")

(Some of these may count as innovative but non-slang forms.  Based on
previous discussions on the list, I'm not confident I know what the
parameters for slanghood are.)

But none of the items in the Turd Ferguson collection ("The Turd
Ferguson Collection--ask for it at a Walmart's near you!") have ever
appeared in such a collection, with the noted exception of "sexile".

Larry