For Better or for Worse

[Jonathan Lighter]

Yesssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Grunge speak" was indeed a hoax, but several of Jasper's terms are still occurring - in small numbers - on the Net.

"Dish" = "desirable guy" predates Jasper. Young women were already referring to such guys as "foxes" in the '70s.

JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: For Better or for Worse
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At 9:53 PM -0500 1/26/05, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>Jonathan Lighter:
>>
>>These odd terms seem to be made up.
>
>John Baker:
>>
>>The Comics Curmudgeon blog, http://joshreads.com/, discusses this strip.
>>According to one of the comments, the slang terms are indeed made up.
>
>Someone on the comments list got this official response from the "FBorFW
>Team":
>
>>Hi there,
>>
>>Thanks for writing!
> >
>>Yes - Lynn did make up the ‘jive talk’
>>that the kids in the strip are using.
>>
>>Have a great day,
>>
>>Allison
>>Allison Zadorozny
>>FBorFW Team
> >www.fborfw.com
>
>This reminds me of the old "grunge speak" hoax that the New York Times
>fell for: . Perhaps Lynn
>Johnston was trying to see if she could get some coinages into
>circulation.

Well, it worked pretty well for "fetch", in real life if not in the
"Mean Girls" version of Evanston...

Larry


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