"knock up" --usage

Baker, John JMB at STRADLEY.COM
Tue Sep 20 17:50:58 UTC 2005


        In the Mystic Pizza example, the speaker is a bride at her
wedding reception, and the "she" referred to is a friend who just
inquired when the bride expects to start having children.  The speaker
is amused and is not really complaining.

        In response to a different post, I suppose that "knock up"
derives from knock = have sex with, a very old and, AFAIK, now archaic
slang term (but cf. "would hit it" = would have sex with that person).
Arguing against this derivation, "knock up" was originally euphemistic
(though it is no longer), requiring a more complicated chain if it
derived from a slang term for sex.

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Barbara Need
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 10:36 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "knock up" --usage

>On Sep 19, 2005, at 7:46 PM, Baker, John wrote:
>
>>         I would say that it was mildly offensive and inappropriate,
>>but not a hanging offense.  Although the phrase usually refers to an
>>unwanted pregnancy out of wedlock, it has been ameliorated in recent
>>years and now is used not infrequently to refer to pregnancy in
>>wedlock.
>>The first listing on Google for "knocked up" is for a Salon article
>>entitled "'So, why aren't you knocked up yet?' Since I got married,
>>everyone and their mailman has asked me this question."  IIRC, the
>>movie Mystic Pizza (1988) included the line "I've only been married
>>two hours and she wants me to get knocked up."
>
>Notice though that in both cases it's a woman complaining about others
>wanting them to be pregnant, which they (apparently) don't want
>themselves, so there's still some sort of negativity in the message.

Except that, unless it is a typo, the speaker in the Mystic Pizza
example is male. Can men be knocked up?

Barbara

Barbara Need
UChicago



More information about the Ads-l mailing list