DogGONE!!

[Wilson Gray]

This usage of "dog" is years old. My guess is that, if this is new to
you, you don't have any relationships with black people deep enough to
motivate you to demonstrate any degree of hipness nor do you pay any
attention to TV shows that feature black characters. So, if I were
you, I wouldn't give it a second thought. It's not worth the effort.

-Wilson

On 9/2/07, Doug Harris <cats22 at frontiernet.net> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Doug Harris <cats22 at FRONTIERNET.NET>
> Subject:      DogGONE!!
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From today's LA Times, by a female black reporter from
> Britain, who spent 14 months in New Orleans post-Katrina.
> (Note the 'dog' reference in the second paragraph):
>
>   "Our people be everywhere," Dwayne Holmes, a heavyset African American
> 16-year-old, said with a grin one day as he and his pals sat on a stoop on a
> street in crime-plagued Central City.
>   Holmes wanted to know whether black youth in England also called each
> other "dog" as a term of endearment.
>   For the most part, we have our own lingo, I told him.
> ---------
> Is this a new usage? Being neither black nor what the quoted reporter refers
> to as a New Orleanian, I have no idea if this "term of endearment" is one
> that's been in use there a while, or if it's to be found elsewhere, too.
> 'Any insights, anyone?
> (the other) doug
>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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