Phat

[Jonathan Lighter]

Most interesting, and clearly a respelling of "fat."

  This leads to me wonder whether there were a good many African American printers and typesetters, esp. in the N.Y. area, in the 1930s and '40s.

  If so, they might have provided a link between a group in which "phat" was routinely familiar in a positive sense ("easy to read and set," with connotations of roundness and fullness of shape).

  It i not inconceivable that those circumstances could have led to the use of "phat" to describe shapely women, with the folk acronym appearing as a rationalization.

  The small number of black typesetters relative to the entire black population of N.Y.C. and environs would help explain the rarity of the slang term in print before the 1990s. It could easily have taken twenty or thirty years for the meaning and acronym to become widespread enough to attract the notice of the media.

  All conjecture, of course.  A thought experiment.

  JL

James Smith <jsmithjamessmith at YAHOO.COM> wrote:


  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: James Smith
Subject: Re: Phat
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Doing a little internet search, it appears "phat" now
mostly refers to fonts that resemble graffiti or
otherwise might fit with the current concept of
"phat". But my 1977 Webster's Collegiate gives it as
a term for "copy or type matter: susceptible to easy
or rapid setting".

--- James Smith wrote:

> "Phat" is the name for a font type. For example,
> see:
> http://www.fontpool.com/search/phat/page1.html
>
> > Wilson, who was spelling it "phatt" in 1950 ?
> >
> > And for everybody else, I've got a couple of
> > "phats" from a century ago used by printers. What
> > was that about ? ("A phat evening" is one
> > collocation.)
>
> James D. SMITH |If history teaches
> anything
> South SLC, UT |it is that we will
> be sued
> jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com |whether we act
> quickly and decisively
> |or slowly and
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James D. SMITH |If history teaches anything
South SLC, UT |it is that we will be sued
jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com |whether we act quickly and decisively
|or slowly and cautiously.

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