SUX

[Wilson Gray]

On Sep 28, 2004, at 12:49 AM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> 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?
>
> I'm a young dude, so I can remember this sort of thing only back to ca.
> 1960 (maybe a little hazy, too).
>
> I'm inclined to agree with JL, in general. As for "proof", well, this
> word-history stuff isn't like chemistry and absolute proof is hard to
> come by.
>
> One question which may be germane is how the history of "sucks"
> relates to
> the histories of superficially comparable expressions "blows" and "eats
> [it] [raw]".
>
> Certainly "He eats it [raw]"

"Nine out of ten doctors say, 'Eat Meraw!'" punning on commercials for
patent medicines of the day, was a popular catch-phrase at my all-male
prep school, ca.1950-1954. And what about "bite (a big one)"? As in the
movie title, "Reality bites." Back in the day - early '50's - if a
person was the subject, you had to say, "John bites a big one," in
which "one" was understood to reference "penis." Otherwise, you could
say merely, "That/losing the game/being broke/whatever, bites." And
there was the saying, "If you take that [insult] without a fight, then
you'll take this [the speaker's penis, as indicated by the "hustling
nuts" gesture] without a bite."

-Wilson Gray

>  (= "He is despicable" or so) was conventional
> as early as I can remember (1960 or maybe a little earlier).
> Presumably "It
> eats [it] [raw]", which is nonsense on its face if the "it" which eats
> refers to an inanimate thing, is simply a generalization, = "It is
> despicable" or so. If this predates "he/it sucks" in the same sense
> then it
> may be presumed that "sucks" appeared as a synonym for "eats" in the
> same
> (oral sex) sense, IMHO. If there was an earlier distinct "sucks" (e.g.,
> "sucks wind"), presumably it was assimilated. There is also the
> question of
> whether "eats it" assimilated a parallel expression "eats shit" or so.
> "Blows" seems pretty unambiguous, and I recall this as more common than
> "sucks" in this context from the early 1960's (my experience of course
> not
> necessarily representative).
>
> Just my casual notions.
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>