Phat

[Wilson Gray]

On 2/17/06, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Phat
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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 ?

My father's brother's child, visiting St. Louis from the Bronx and
speaking a very odd dialect of BE. No doubt, other black people living
in the Bronx between 1945 and 1955 also used this spelling, since,
even at the time, I was never under the impression that the
word/spelling/usage originated with said cousin. Did you miss my
earlier post basically in answer to that question? In brief, my cousin
said that the word was not spelled f-a-t, but p-h-a-t-t and stood for
"pussy, hips, ass, titties, thigh." As for the spelling, "phat," from
the time that I first saw it in print, ca.1980 or whenever, till now,
it has struck me as a modification of the spelling and an extension of
the meaning of the "correct" form, for no better reason than that I
have long since "known" that the "correct" spelling was "phatt" and
that the "correct" meaning referenced only the female form.

Hope this helps.

FWIW, this cousin visited St. Louis again in 1955 and there was no
further discussion or mention of "phatt."

-Wilson

> > >
> > > 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
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