Fwd: retro "psych"

[Ed Keer]

I'm pretty sure I used it in the late 70's, early
80's. I was definitely familiar with it before hearing
Eddie Murphy.


--- Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Apr 2005 21:01:12 -0700, Arnold M. Zwicky
> <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
>
> >first, an exchange between me and larry horn:
> >
> >Begin forwarded message:
> >
> >> From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> >> Date: April 8, 2005 7:51:15 AM PDT
> >> To: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
> >> Subject: Re: retro "psych"
> >>
> >> At 6:10 AM -0700 4/8/05, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
> >>> my Stanford student Tommy Grano reports a use of
> retro "psych", used
> >>> like retro "not" (by conveying 'I just psyched
> you out').  this was
> >>> when he was in grade school in Santa Barbara,
> ca. 1992, and the kids
> >>> didn't continue the usage through later years.
> >>>
> >>> have you heard of this, or was it (as is
> entirely possible) just a
> >>> short-lived local fad in a very small language
> community?  if it had
> >>> more general use, it might be worth mentioning
> on ADS-L.
> >>>
> >> It's real.  I remember it, but mostly from TV
> shows, as I recall, not
> >> real life.  Maybe it really was specifically
> Californian, including
> >> Hollywood productions.
> [...]
> >has this made it into anybody else's files?
>
> Oh sure, it was quite common in the '80s and early
> '90s, even among East
> Coast kids.  Connie Eble's _Slang and Sociability_
> has it:
>
> -----
> p. 66:
> College students' fondness for juxtaposing
> appearance and reality is show
> in their use of a sentence pattern in which a
> statement presented as fact
> is immediately retracted by the use of a word like
> _fake_ or _psych_, as
> in "Your econ prof phoned -- she wants to see you.
> Fake!" A similar
> structure to indicate negation -- adding _not_ after
> a statement said in a
> serious tone -- became immensely popular during
> 1990-91 because of its use
> on the "Wayne's World" skit on the television
> program _Saturday Night
> Live_...
> -----
> p. 93:
> In its placement after a seemingly serious
> declarative sentence and in its
> effect on meaning, _not_ is similar to _psych!_ made
> popular by Eddie
> Murphy in the mid-1980s.
> -----
>
> I don't remember associating it with Eddie Murphy,
> but apparently he used
> it in _Delirious_, a 1983 video of his stand-up
> routine...
>
> -----
>
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085474/board/nest/14637777
> "You want some ice cream"
> "You want to eat some of my ice cream. But...."
> "You wanna lick?"
> "PSYCHE!"
> -----
>
> Surely it's much older than that.  I'd wager it goes
> back to the '60s.
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com