your mother's a gunther?

Gordon, Matthew J. GordonMJ at MISSOURI.EDU
Thu Jul 13 15:27:44 UTC 2006


Couldn't this just be the German(ic) name Gunther? Calling someone's mother a German man's name might be insulting. 

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Mircea Sauciuc
Sent: Wed 7/12/2006 11:38 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:      your mother's a gunther?
 
Hi,

Listening to a rap battle between some east-coast rappers, I noticed one guy
insult the others mother by calling her a "gun-thu" (the last 'u' would be a
schwa sound).  I assume it would be spelled "gunther," but that produces no
results in the OED or any other dictionary.  I've asked some
African-Americans hoping they'd have a better idea, and they said they've
heard of it before, but are unsure of its meaning.

Any ideas?

-mcs

Mircea C. Sauciuc
Department of Linguistics
University of Kansas

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