"the brunt of so many jokes"

[Baker, John]

        It's something I've heard and used for years, without giving a
lot of thought to it.  Google has 23,100 hits for "brunt of jokes" (92
for "brunt of so many jokes"), so it seems to be fairly common.  It
looks like it may be an eggcorn, though - I'll defer to our eggcorn
specialists on that point.


John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Cohen, Gerald Leonard
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2007 9:33 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "the brunt of so many jokes"

     This looks to me like a sort of syntactic blend, aided by the
similarity of  "butt" and "brunt". From: "be the butt of..." + "bear the
brunt of..."  I don't think euphemism plays a role here, since "be the
butt of a joke" seems perfectly acceptable socially.

Gerald Cohen

________________________________

From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Charles Doyle
Sent: Thu 2/22/2007 7:49 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "the brunt of so many jokes"

John's use of "brunt" for the traditional "butt" is fairly common, I
believe.  But it isn't in OED (or at least I couldn't find it there).
Was it originally a euphemism--conscious or not?

--Charlie
____________________________________________________

---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 17:49:20 -0500
>From: "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
>Subject: Re: Help Needed Please
>
>        I question the premises of your project.  First, it's far from
clear to me, as a lawyer, that I have an elevated status in society. The
case could as well be made that lawyers as a group are particularly
disdained.  I certainly don't know of any other profession that is the
brunt of so many jokes . . . .

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