"boy friend/ boyfriend" [WAS a new kind of "guy"]

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:02 PM -0400 6/17/07, Mark Mandel wrote:
>Whoops, my error. I mistook the aside as part of the quotation, not your
>comment on it. Color my face red.
>
>m a m

Ironically (if I can get away with using that adverb here), Patroclus
*is* generally recognized as having been Achilles's boyfriend, in the
value-added sense; it's hard to read either the Iliad or
Shakespeare's T&C any other way.  Not that the Lambs would have so
recognized him, at least in print.

LH

>
>On 6/17/07, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>Mark, this is a kid's book. Written in _1911_.
>>
>>   JL
>>
>>Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender: American Dialect Society
>>Poster: Mark Mandel
>>Subject: Re: "boy friend/ boyfriend" [WAS a new kind of "guy"]
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>On 6/15/07, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>  1911 Winston Stokes, Charles Lamb & Mary Lamb_All Shakespeare's Tales_ (
>>>  N.Y.: Stokes) 302: Troilus and Cressida... Achilles lay idly in his
>>tent,
>>>  listening to his boy friend Patroclus. [Not what you think, you filthy
>>>  rotter!]
>>
>>
>>That aside makes a good case for a common sexual-attraction use of "boy
>>friend" in 1911.
>>
>>m a m
>>
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>
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