red-headed stepchild

[Jonathan Lighter]

To "frail" is a Southeastern term for "beat." It has come to be applied particularly to the very old-time (and likely original) style of playing the five-string banjo by beating on the strings with the nails of the right hand rather than plucking them with the fingers. This latter sense is overlooked by OED - maybe I mentioned this once before.

I don't have DARE handy, but OED takes "frail" back to 1851.

JL

Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: red-headed stepchild
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What does "frail" mean in this context?

There's also "beat like a rented mule." It appears to say that one
would act more viciously toward a rented mule than toward one's own
mule. But wouldn't damaging someone else's property cause more trouble
than damaging one's own property?

-Wilson Gray

On Mar 4, 2005, at 10:30 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: Re: red-headed stepchild
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> Don't know about earlier, but I have heard "I'll frail him like a
> red-headed stepchild" in Tennessee within the past ten years or less.
>
> JL
>
> Sam Clements wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Sam Clements
> Subject: red-headed stepchild
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> --------
>
> I can find a 1910 cite in Newspaperarchive that uses this metaphor
> about =
> the South. =20
>
> Is there anything earlier? I can understand that a stepchild might be =
> treated poorly, but why the red-headed? Were red heads thought less of
> =
> in history?
>
> samclem
> Doing research on a Straightdope subject
>
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