condo cowboy

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Aug 22 23:38:34 UTC 2006


At 6:32 PM -0400 8/22/06, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Has "date," an old slang term for "pay a prostitute for sexual
>intercourse," i.e., she asks a potentential client, "Do you want to
>date with me?", by way of "John and Mary are dating," i.e. involved in
>a relationship that includes sexual intercourse, finally made the leap
>into the maimstream language as a euphemism for "engage in sexual
>intercourse with"?
>
>-Wilson

Some couples (the members of which don't pay each other for the
sexual experience) have been so using it for years (e.g. "Would you
be interested in a date tonight?")  I don't know how many such
invitations, or such couples, would be needed for the expression to
enter the official ranks of full-fledged euphemisms...

LH,
who just saw "Little Miss Sunshine", in which Alan Arkin's character
Grandpa, just thrown out of the retirement community in New Mexico
for snorting heroin, fits the "condo cowboy"
description (according to his own account), but does not use the term
therefor.  (Nor does he use "date" or any other euphemism.)



>
>On 8/20/06, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
>>Subject:      condo cowboy
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>"Condo cowboy" appeared in a recent CBS Evening News piece on senior
>>citizens with AIDS.
>>
>2005 _Arkansas Democrat Gazette_ 19 June 48 (Factiva) "Lifelong
>>Health" Almost every week, articles appear that discuss the epidemic of
>>sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs) in retirement communities, where
>>a single man can _date_ a different woman every night of the week. They
>>are often referred to as "Condo Cowboys," who boast of different sexual
>>partners on a weekly basis.
>>
>>
>>--Ben Zimmer
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>--
>There's only one thing that money can't buy and that's poverty.
>
>--Jack Benny
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
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