bitchin (was: Re: spaz(z))

[Jonathan Lighter]

Well, Jesse, I seem to have the discount edition, too.

Which indicates that the Farrell quote didn't make the cut, which indicates that it really illustrated sense 1.

Which is the likely source of sense 2 anyway.

But when you're right, you're right.


JL



Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Jesse Sheidlower
Subject: bitchin (was: Re: spaz(z))
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Fri, Jun 24, 2005 at 08:42:57AM -0700, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> BTW, though HDAS has a very early cite for "bitchin'"
> ("splendid") from James T. Farrell, I never heard it in the
> '50s. Did anybody? It's still around after 70 years.

It does? I must have the discount version.

The earliest in my HDAS is 1957 in _Gidget_, with a number of
other early-1960s cites. At the DSNA meeting in Boston, the
term came up in a discussion, and a woman attested it in
exactly the Gidget use: mid-late 1950s, California, no hint
whatsoever of offensiveness or vulgarity (as would have been
expected to be the case with any _bitch_-derived word), and
always, always an -en or -in ending (i.e. not "-ing").

Jesse Sheidlower
OED


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