MILF (was Re: change from the bottom up)

[Baker, John]

        Nice work, Ben.  I doubt that there will be much improvement on
this in tracing the origin of "milf."  Did your contact mention whether
the name was supposed to be an abbreviation for "mother . . ." or "mom .
. ."?


John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Benjamin Zimmer
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 12:37 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: MILF (was Re: change from the bottom up)

On 4/26/07, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> On Apr 26, 2007, at 9:15 AM, John Baker wrote:
>
> > Any connection with the band Milf, which seems to have flourished in

> > the 1993 - 1995 period?
>
> i'd guess the band name was chosen on the basis of the expression, but

> i don't know anything about the band.

I managed to track down a former member of the band and he emailed back
with some background. He gave me permission to quote his email, though
he chooses to remain anonymous.

-----[begin email]-----

My recollection is that we adopted the name for the band in January
1991. We heard the acronym/word from a friend who was a lifeguard in the
Buffalo area, specifially Fort Niagara State Park (one of my
ex-bandmates, also a lifeguard, yesterday confirmed that it was "a
lifeguard term"). I would not say it was common at that time -- in fact,
it being the first time we'd ever heard it is probably what led us to
choose it as a band name. We probably intended it as a temporary name.
However, as we started to play shows and release music, the name ended
up sticking. The first "national" press mention of the band name would
have been in 1993/1994, when reviews our our music began to show up in
music magazines, such as Alternative Press, Option, and so on.
The band was also probably mentioned in the Buffalo News (Buffalo's
daily newspaper) and other regional publications as early as 1992. The
band ended in the fall of 1995.

Our promotional materials and logo used the word as all lowercase, no
periods.

-----[end email]-----

I found a concert ad for the band in The Ithacan (student paper of
Ithaca College) from Sep. 17, 1992, and the name does indeed appear in
all lowercase.

http://dpr.oclc.org/Repository/ITH/1992/09/17/004-ITH-1992-09-17-001-SIN
GLE.PDF#OLV0_Entity_0023_0002


--Ben Zimmer

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