Potomac fever (1940)

[Wilson Gray]

On 1/20/06, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Potomac fever (1940)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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> http://www.slate.com/id/2134512/
> Potomac Fever has seized the Bush White House. That sickness, as
> defined by the Texans Bush brought with him to the White House in
> 2000, afflicts the self-important who stay in Washington too long.
> Sufferers forget that they work for The People and fall in love with
> the perks of their job. Clay Johnson, the head of White House
> personnel in the first term, set up a special Web site to inform White
> House aides about the symptoms associated with the disease.
> <http://www.whitehouse.gov/results/leadership/potomacfever.html>
> -----
>
> RHUD: <http://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/Potomac+fever>
>
> To be included in the next batch of OED3 entries, perhaps? The Oxford
> Dictionary of American Political Slang has it from 1944.
>
> 1940 _Cullman (Ala.) Democrat_ 18 Apr. 11/1 Looks half like the Old
> Boys there in the Senate are coming down with the Potomac fever.
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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>

The use of "*the* Potomac fever" instead of simply "Potomac fever" is
a nice Southernism. I still remember the time when a child of the
family across the street from us in Texas died of "the diptheria." And
this further reminds me of the Louisiana-born professor of phonetics
at UC Davis who confessed that she had always said "diPthong" until
after she had "corrected" the speech of a student who kept saying
"diFthong."

I've just heard a black teenager say, "He never likeded me." That
sounds like a case of contamination by white speech. I'd have expected
"*ain't* never." Cf., e.g. Richard Pryor:

"God ain't never dug no whole lot of people. Jesus and Moses the only
ones he ever rapped to."

-Wilson

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