SUX

[Wilson Gray]

On Sep 27, 2004, at 9:59 AM, 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: SUX
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> I started this thread to dredge up evidence concerning the early
> career of a now salient Americanism.  Are Wilson, Ron, and I really
> the only ones aged enough to have something to contribute?
>
> That WOULD be scary.
>
> JL

In the Army - late '50's to early '60's - we said of a bad scene, such
as having to go to the shelter-free rifle range when it was pouring
down rain, that it "sucked the green wienie." "Green" referred to the
color, Army green. The rest should be self-explanatory. This was
usually used only of military "chickenshit." If something bad went down
(no pun intended) that was not a direct consequence of being in the
Army, such as getting the queen of spades in a game of (dirty) hearts,
we used "take the meat" or "take gas" (sometimes hypercorrected to
"take ass," as "love muzzle" (penis) tended to be "corrected" to "love
muscle" and "scoff" (eat heartily) to "scarf.)" E.g., "John really took
the meat/took gas/took ass on that hand."

FWIW, I say "hearts" and "eights," but I've heard *lots* of other
people call these card games "dirty hearts" and "crazy eights." As far
as I've been able to tell, the names that a person uses for the games
don't correlate with anything obvious.

-Wilson Gray

>
> RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: RonButters at AOL.COM
> Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:=20=A0=20=A0=20=A0=20Re:=20SUX?=
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> In a message dated 9/26/04 8:55:35 PM, wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM writes:
>
>
>> Even in the early to mid-90s when "suck"'s explosive force had been
>> greatly
>> weakened, some conservative parental groups objected to its
>> occurrence on TV
>> as just too vulgar for their homes. Members of these groups, I feel
>> certain,
>> were not thinking that it referred to "suckers," "sucker punches,"
>> "sucking
>> hind tit," or anything so bland as that.
>>
>
> Precisely. But this sort of retro-association is not evidence of
> ORIGIN, any
> more than any other folk etymology would be. Parents in general tend
> to assume
> the worst about the practices of the young, if only to protect their
> offspring from any possible infelicity.
>
> Similarly, putative etymologies based on it-stands-to-reason logic and
> hazy
> remembrances of what one's reactions may have been to "as-I-recall"
> writings on
> public toilet walls are interesting as expressions of opinion, but
> they don't
> really constitute scientific evidence, do they? The burden of proof,
> it seems
> to me, must lie with those who would dismiss any connection with the
> pejorative uses of SUCK that were already in the language in favor of
> assertions of an
> exclusive connection with fellatio. I certainly admit that such
> evidence
> might be hard to come by, given the taboo nature of the proposed
> origin and the
> difficulty of finding evidence for early uses of ANY slang term. But
> the fact
> that such evidence is not readily available is certainly not a valid
> reason to
> conclude that it certainly must exist.
>
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