"sucks" revisited

[Jonathan Lighter]

HDAS, the pop-culturist's pal, shows that both _hum-job_ and _hummer_ have been around for some decades.

  We don't know how many people have gotten a surreptitious chuckle from contemplating the name of the vehicle.  I hate to admit to the distinguished punsters on this list, however, that it took a number of years for the connection to occur even to me. Perhaps the original namers of the vehicle were swifter than I am.

  But I think David is right.  The two fellatory h-words are not nearly as salient in modern discourse (or am I being Victorian again?) than is _hummer_ in the sense of "hummingbird" or "thing that hums."  Add to the mixture the senses "humdinger" and "fastball" (please, no wisecracks), and there may be a big enough matrix of non-sexual "hummers" to keep most people from making the connection.

  Anyway, I heard that civilian Hummers will no longer be manufactured.  Maybe the linguistic burden was just too great.

  JL



David Bowie <db.list at PMPKN.NET> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: David Bowie
Subject: Re: "sucks" revisited
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From: Wilson Gray

> My questions are these:

> 1) Why does no one, apparently, find "Hummer," connoting, as it does,
> a particular method of fellatio, the "Hawaiian hum-job" of the
> mid-Twentieth Century United States, offensive?

I don't know if it's a current term, at least in all regions. My first
introduction to the term was someone telling a story about his parents
getting shocked laughter when his father, talking about the
radio-controlled model car he'd just gotten, said "Your mother gave me a
Hummer for Christmas!"

This was right about the same time as i first heard (read: remember
hearing) Bob Rivers's "Little Hummer Girl", a Christmas parody song
centered around the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Until i heard the story,
the song title made no real sense to me--though i got that "hum" was
being used to mean "perform oral sex on someone", that was figured out
from context, not knowing the word.

Of course, now that i've learned this term, i find the billboards for
Orlando's Hummer dealership (one of the highest-selling in the nation,
presumably because of all the mountains here in Florida) advertising H3s
as Hummers "Now in a smaller size!" more than amusing.



--
David Bowie http://pmpkn.net/lx
Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.

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