Teen Lingo site

[Jonathan Lighter]

There was also, "You ain't just a woofin'!" I.e., "not just whistlin' Dixie!"

JL

Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: Teen Lingo site
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Back in the day - mid '60's - when this was a relatively (I never
really dug this expression) active part of my vocabulary, it meant
roughly "to make an empty threat designed to frighten away the unhip."
It's easy to see how this could come to mean to bullshit someone.

BTW, by this time, in L.A., at least, "square" had ceased to be a word
applied to the unhip in general. Rather, it was applied to those unhip
to whatever the speaker was hip to. Those in the (sporting) life
referred to all others in the demimonde as "squares." Dealers referred
to users as squares. Dopers referred to winos as squares. Winos
referred to dopers as squares.

The hip may recall Richard Pryor's bit in which a wino downs a doper by
saying him, "That narcotic done rendered your ass null and void." (It
helps if you're old enough to remember: "Do not fold, spindle, or
mutilate! Any such action will render this instrument null and void."
Or words to that effect.)

-Wilson Gray


On Jan 31, 2005, at 7:35 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Douglas G. Wilson"
> Subject: Re: Teen Lingo site
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
>> So the big question is where to put the cross reference. I guess it
>> should be at "woof" and all cites at "wolf" - even though most of the
>> published ones will be spelled "woof."
>
> Why would the published ones be spelled "woof"? I never saw it spelled
> that
> way in a book AFAIK.
>
> Google shows "wolf ticket" outnumbering "woof ticket" on the Web.
>
> N'archive shows > 100 examples with "wolf", zero with "woof".
>
> What I want to know is whether the expression has a fixed definite
> meaning,
> or group of meanings. I can't find it in my dictionaries at a glance,
> and I
> don't trust "Urbandictionary" et al. I've taken it to mean
> "falsehood"/"bullshit" but in some cases I couldn't tell.
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>


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