SUX

[Wilson Gray]

On Sep 25, 2004, at 3:47 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:      SUX
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>
> Ron, if your paper on this word answers the question, please forgive
> me. Send me a copy if you can
>
> The first time I heard the now familiar verb "suck" meaning "to be
> highly objectionable, inferior, unsatisfactory, etc." was in the
> spring of 1964. It became common rather quickly. (The earlier
> equivalent was "stink," at that time still thought moderately
> offensive by some parents.)
>
> I've never found an earlier cite OR even a seemingly reliable placing
> of this usage any earlier; in a Bildungsroman, for example, or a
> long-delayed WW II novel. Even "seemingly unreliable" examples are
> rare.
>
> No one I've asked has any recollection of  hearing it much before I
> did, though the earliest "attestations" are uniformly from the NYC
> area.
>
> Did anyone on the list learn it earlier than 1964?  If not, what
> happened in 1963-64 that might have brought to national attention?

When I went into the military in August of 1959, the phrase, "The Army
sucks" was a common expression used by the white GI's and heard
everywhere. It didn't, at the time, strike me as a new usage of "suck,"
but this is the earliest usage of which I have a datable memory. This
particular usage of "suck" was/still is? a white thing that blacks
didn't/don't? pay any attention to. So, since this usage didn't strike
me as new, I must already have heard white people say it. But I don't
have even a vague memory of it. At Fort Devens, MA, in October of 1960,
while standing in a chow line, I saw the following graffito on an
exterior wall of the mess hall: "There is no gravity. The _universe_
sucks!"

-Wilson Gray

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