USA Today on "sucks "

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Sep 30 00:27:50 UTC 2005


>At 6:22 PM -0400 9/29/05, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>>On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 17:25:50 EDT, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>>
>>>What has always been interesting to me is that SUCK occurs in so many other
>>>expressions, including pejorative ones, in which no one ever thinks of
>>>fellatio--so why do they often think of the connection in the environment,
>>>"Yankees Suck"?
>>
>>As with other heated sports rivalries, the discourse of the Yankees/Red
>>Sox rivalry often alludes to imagery of sexual domination/humiliation. Cf.
>>last year's taunt, "Who's your daddy?"
>>
or the allusion may be merely to a prediction of the subject's
succumbing on the field of endeavor:

"The Yankees go down to defeat" ==> [via truncation]
"The Yankees go down" ==> [via innocent reinterpretation]
"The Yankees suck"

And no, this is not a serious proposal.

L



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