The Dozens

[Jonathon Green]

This apeared in a piece in this morning's Guardian Unlimited (online),
discussing the nature of the insult hurled at France's Zinedine Zidane
in the football World Cup Final - which led to his head-butting an
Italian opponent and getting sent off - and specifically
'mother-related' insults around the world:

"... why are the verbal contests in African-American culture that
feature disparaging competitors' mothers called "the dozens"? In Still
Laughing to Keep from Crying: Black Humor, Mona Lisa Saloy, professor of
English at Dillard University, explains: "The dozens has its origins in
the slave trade of New Orleans where deformed slaves - generally slaves
punished with dismemberment for disobedience - were grouped in lots of a
'cheap dozen' for sale to slave owners. For a black to be sold as part
of the 'dozens' was the lowest blow possible."

A new one on me and it seems to smack of specious popular etymology. But
I may be wrong. Can anyone either support the theory or indeed demolish
it. And if 'the (dirty) dozens' has been dealt with by the List long
since, my apologies, I have yet to check.

JG

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