SPLASH or SLASH?

[Jonathan Lighter]

What is the evidence that "brass tacks" is "rhyming slang" for "facts"?

  JL

RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: RonButters at AOL.COM
Subject: SPLASH or SLASH?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In a message dated 11/20/07 7:14:29 PM, jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA writes:


> >It seems more likely that "Jack Dash" comes from "splash" than "slash" (?)
>
> Not to me, not directly, anyway. "Slash" was my automatic inference
> for rhyming slang. "Slash" is a well-established term for "urinate"
> -- immediately familiar to me. I've never heard "splash" for
> "urinate" that I can recall. I imagine it may well be a basis for
> "slash," but I'm not aware of its being in use per se.
>
> I would have expected "Jack Flash" for a rhyme there, though -- I
> wonder why "Jack Dash" was preferred.
>
> James Harbeck.
>
>

According to J. Green's Cassell's Dictionary, both SPLASH and SLASH are Brit.
slang terms for urination. Neither is familiar to me in US slang, but SPLASH
seemed to me more intuitively likely because urine splashes but does not slash
(except in a fanciful way).

Slang is not necessarily the basis for Rhyming Slang, e.g., BRASS TACKS =
FACTS; BRISTOLS from BRISTOL CITY, rhymes with TITTY--of course, TITTY is a
common, somewhat vulgar (still?) term for BREAST, but I would not consider it
slang. To complicate things more, the BR of BREAST would seem to have effected
BRISTOL rather than some other "city"?


**************************************
Check
out AOL's list of 2007's hottest products.

(http://money.aol.com/special/hot-products-2007?NCID=aoltop00030000000001)

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



---------------------------------
Get easy, one-click access to your favorites.  Make Yahoo! your homepage.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org