Grind House

[Joel S. Berson]

When I wrote
>I'm WE, but I certainly heard "grinding" referring to dancing in my
>youth.
I was unacceptably imprecise.  I meant the kind of dancing done by
strippers.  Of adolescenti, I don't remember hearing in my youth; I
associate "the grind" as something done on a dance floor with later eras.

Joel

At 3/30/2007 04:52 PM, you wrote:
>That's what Kofi said. :-) Good one, Joel! My experience re "grinding"
>also being a kind of dance once popular among the adolescenti is the
>same as yours. What's the current dance called, wherein the chick
>bends forward at the waist and grinds her arse against the guy's
>crotch? Would that there had been such a dance in the '50's! Now that
>I fantasize, uh, think, about it, the dance could still be called
>"grinding."
>
>-Wilson
>
>On 3/30/07, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>>Subject:      Re: Grind House
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>At 3/30/2007 04:16 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>> >The late, lamented John Lee Hooker's "Grinder Man," is clearly about
>> >sex - cf. also the traditional BE brag, "They call me 'Coffee' 'cause
>> >I grin' so fine!"
>>
>>Actually, they call me "Coffee" because I was born on a particular
>>day of the week.
>>
>> >And Muddy Waters once asked in song, "What's the
>> >matter with the mill? The mill won't grind," i.e. "I'm suffering an
>> >attack of 'dead bone'," to borrow the felicitous term of the National
>> >Lampoon. So, I conclude that BE "grind house" and WE "grind house"
>> >have different origins having nothing to do with each other.
>>
>>I'm WE, but I certainly heard "grinding" referring to dancing in my
>>youth.  (A sense not in OED2?  My HDAS is at the library.)  I can't
>>swear to hearing "grind house", but I would certainly have understood
>>"burlesque house" as one possible sense if I had.
>>
>>Joel
>>
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>
>
>--
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>come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>-----
>                                                      -Sam'l Clemens
>
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>-----
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>
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