(strictly) vonce

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, 22 Jul 2005 12:32:32 -0500, Mullins, Bill
<Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL> wrote:

[I wrote:]
>> I believe the writer is referring to "vantz", Yiddish for
>> 'bedbug' (German is "wanze"). I know that jazz musicians have
>> borrowed some Yiddish terms (e.g., "schmaltz"), but it
>> doesn't seem plausible that "doing the vonce"
>> means "doing the bedbug". The "bedbug" derivation doesn't
>> really work for the other senses of "vonce" either. (But who
>> knows? Maybe Lester Young heard a Yiddish speaker calling a
>> mischievous kid a "vantz" and he just liked the sound of it!)
>
>German for "tail" is Schwanz, I believe. Perhaps relevant?

Hmmm, could be. There's a sexual double entendre there in German/Yiddish
too, though not the same one as English "tail":

-----
http://german.about.com/library/blvoc_avoid1.htm
If you refer to an animal's tail in German (der Schwanz), that's OK, but
you should also know that the same term is a crude way of referring to the
male sex organ.
-----

Some more discussion of "Schwanz" here:

http://www.florilegium.org/files/UNCAT/p-swears-msg.html

Considering again how Lester Young used "(e)vonce" (according to Johnny
Otis), it looks like it may have originally been a vocative:

>-----
>http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0819562874/
>_Upside Your Head!_ (1993) by Johnny Otis, p. 75
>LESTER: "So, the Little Esthereenie kittie was a good lick o'reenie for
>you, huh?"
>J.O. "Yeah, the little chick was a blessing for us. She's raisin' sand
>all over the country."
>LESTER: "Y'all eatin' regular now ... dig." [chuckle]
>J.O. "Yeah, and payin' the rent too, sometimes."
>LESTER: "They'll be tryin' to copy her song, evonce -- that's the stuff
>you gotta' watch, dig."
>"EVONCE" was another Lester Young secret punctuation word that nobody
>knew the actual meaning of.
>-----

I suppose it's possible that Young picked up either "shvantz" or "vantz"
(used for an irritating person) from Yiddish speakers who might have used
the terms as (endearingly) derisive vocatives.


--Ben Zimmer