Trait on, hate on, etc.

[Wilson Gray]

I forgot to add "hit on" in the sense of "slap around, smack around, beat (up)":

Woodrow Wilson "Buddy" Johnson & his orchestra; sister Ella Johnson, vocalist

_Hittin' on Me_

Opening verse:

I don't want no man || always hittin' on me
Last man that beat me || been dead since '43

Mercury Records, 1953

HDAS has "mac(k)" as French-kiss, but, in St. Louis and probably many
other locs, "mack on" was more usual in that meaning. And, of course,
standard forms like "keep on' and "go on."

-Wilson

-Wilson

On 5/25/06, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Trait on, hate on, etc.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Merciful speed, Jesse! That originated as a black thang, needless to
> say. I think Charlie has pinned the origin. It's just an expansion of
> the "kiss on" and "love on" that have been traditional Southern usages
> at least as far north as Louisville, Saint Louis, Cincinnatuh (all of
> the black people that I know from Cincinnati resolve the final vowel
> as shwa, which spelling I prefer to "schwa"), Indianapolis, and
> Chicago.
>
> Teasingly asked about the hickeys on her neck, a St. Louis cousin
> replied, "That's where _that nigger_ (= "my boy friend") been kissing
> on me." (The unstressed         "that" makes it clear that it's her
> boy friend that she's referring to. If she had given his name, I still
> would have had to ask who he was with respect to her. She being ten
> years my junior, I didn't know the names of any of her friends.)
>
> BTW, in BE, a "hickey" is _not_ the mark left by a kiss. Rather, it's
> the knot or lump that rises as a consequence of having been struck on
> the head.
>
> Damn, man! Where you get that hickey? Look like somebody done went
> upside your head with a league-ball (= "baseball" in St. Louis) bat!
>
> I don't know any special BE term for the mark left by a kiss. I once
> _read_ the term,  "tiger bite," in a book by a black author. But
> "(kiss-)mark" is all that I've ever heard or used.
>
> -Wilson
>
> -Wilson
>
> On 5/25/06, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: Trait on, hate on, etc.
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 07:41:35AM -0700, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > > 35 years ago the common verb "dig" (to like) was frequently augmented with "on" in white, semi-hippie student speech in N.Y.C. :
> > >
> > > "I could tell she was diggin' on it!"
> > >
> > >   It seemed like a novelty at the time.
> >
> > "I ain't Jewish, man, I just don't dig on swine."
> >
> > -- Pulp Fiction
> >
> > JTS
> > OED
> >
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> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
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