More on "punk"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Luckily for us the historicity of MSL doesn't matter.  Its date is all that counts.

"Spunk" is not only still current in Britain; it now has some U.S. currency as well.  In a certain genre of, um, literature, anyway.

Howzabout we drop the commas and coin the term "um literature," with the stress on "um" ?

JL

Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
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Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: More on "punk"
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On Jun 14, 2005, at 3:57 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Laurence Horn
> Subject: Re: More on "punk"
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>
> At 12:17 PM -0700 6/14/05, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>> "Punk" is another one of those homosexual words that originally
>> referred to women.
>>
>> JL
>
> specifically = 'harlot' (so Farmer & Henley), e.g in Measure for
> Measure (v.i):
>
> She may be a punk, for many of them are neither maid, widow, nor wife.
>
> Similarly Johnson, Chapman, Congreve, etc.
>
> Larry

"Punk" is used as a word for "prostitute" in the book, "My Secret
Life," by "Walter." In an earlier discussion of "punk," I have a vague
memory of someone suggesting or stating that "My Secret Life" is, in
some sense, not real. FWIW, Harvard owns one partial and one complete
copy of the original, actual, published-in-The-Netherlands version of
this work. Of course, the comment may have been that MSL is fiction and
not autobiography. That is certainly a possibility and I have no
opinion on that.

BTW, in Britspeak, does "spunk" still mean "semen"?

-Wilson Gray

>
>> James Smith wrote:
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>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: James Smith
>> Subject: More on "punk"
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---------
>>
>> “Cell Survivor, A former inmate breaks down the myths
>> and realities of prison life”
>> by John Bowers.
>>
>> Salt Lake City Weekly, April 28, 2005
>>
>> There are two words every convict immediately learns
>> to remove from his vocabulary: “Punk” and “Bitch.”
>> However cute or funny they sound rolling off the lips
>> of a favorite comic or movie star, calling someone
>> your homosexual slave is an instant declaration of war
>> and invitation to a fight, your beating or your own
>> murder. These two terms are not used in the same way
>> as they are in the free world. It can be elementary
>> school name-calling on a deadly level.
>>
>>
>> (NOTE from J Smith: it wasn't clear in the SL Weekly
>> if this was an original piece for SL Weekly or picked
>> up from another source.)
>>
>>
>>
>> James D. SMITH |If history teaches anything
>> South SLC, UT |it is that we will be sued
>> jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com |whether we act quickly and decisively
>> |or slowly and cautiously.
>>
>>
>>
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