SUX

[Jonathan Lighter]

Except for the little rhyme, all of Wilson's exx. were going strong in my boys' prep school in NYC in the '60s, and recent cites for most are still findable.

Somebody needs to check out that U. of Wisconsin story - it could be the Holy Grail of SUX studies.

JL

Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: SUX
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On Sep 28, 2004, at 12:49 AM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Douglas G. Wilson"
> 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
>

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