Finally!
Dennis Preston
preston at MSU.EDU
Tue Sep 25 14:29:06 UTC 2007
But then you are using a preposition, not a particle.
I can also "look over him" if he is short, but I have not examined him at all.
dInIs
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>Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster: Sarah Lang <slang at UCHICAGO.EDU>
>Subject: Re: Finally!
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>
>Agreed. If I "fuck over [personal pronoun]," I'm talking about where
>I am physically located whilst fucking.
>
>Interestingly, why *does* the pronoun frak it to gorram hell?
>S.
>
>On Sep 25, 2007, at 8:09 AM, Dennis Preston wrote:
>
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>> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Dennis Preston <preston at MSU.EDU>
>> Subject: Re: Finally!
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---------
>>
>> I am a 'fuck over' speaker since the mid to late 1940's (which does
>> not at all challenge its perhaps earlier greater frequency in the
>> AfrAmer community). But if I had been in Wlson's barracks, I would
>> not have freaked.
>>
>> I do not accept "fuck over him" any more than I would accept "looked
>> over him" (for eyeball, investigate, assess). "Fuck over N" or "fuck
>> N over" are both OK by me; It's the pronoun that fucks up it.
>>
>> dInIs
>>
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>>> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>>> Subject: Re: Finally!
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> ----------
>>>
>>> What Jon said.
>>>
>>> As for my claim that there's a relationship to race, "fuck over" has
>>> been a BE street (and, in some households, a home) colloquialism that
>>> I've been familiar with since the beginning of time. But this, in my
>>> experience, is not the case among white speakers. As an example the
>>> racial bit, in 1960, I once used the term in the barracks at the Army
>>> Language School. I asked, "Have you guys heard about the way that the
>>> First shirt fucked over Lupow?" And my barracks-mates, all of whom
>>> were white (during the time that I was at the Language School, among
>>> approximately 400 students in the Russian Division, there were only
>>> two black GI"s: your humble correspondent and a WAC with a big butt),
>>> freaked. Not a single one had ever heard the phrase, "fuck over,"
>>> before. I was stunned, since I know it like I know my own name.
>>> Naturally, they thought that it was really cool and wanted to learn
>>> it. (I had to teach some people that you say "FUCK over" and not
>>> "fuck
>>> OVER"). I first heard the expression, "fuck someone over" ca.1970
>>> and,
>>> from that time to the present, I've never heard it used by blacks
>>> under any circumstances, despite any literary evidence to the
>>> contrary, possibly because I've never been a fan of Louis Armstrong,
>>> etc., not to mention that no such record would ever have been played
>>> on the radio and it's doubtful that it would have been sold in any
>>> black record shop, back in the day, any more than a black store or
>>> shop would have sold pornography. Till at least the 'Seventies, the
>>> most erotic material freely available in black-operated stores was
>>> Playboy, Jet magazine, and the Jet girlie calendar. I went to grade
>>> school with Lamont McLemore, Jet's longtime girlie photographer -
>>> since ca.1950 - and also a member of the Fifth Dimension, the
>>> formerly
>>> well-known Saint Louis singing group. He was a Renaissance man, I
>>> reckon. It must have been a hard life, since Lamont, though he was
>>> younger than I am, died several years ago.
>>>
>>> -Wilson
>>>
>>> As for the syntax, saying "He fucked over me," etc., sounds
>>> completely
>>> natural to me. OTOH, "He fucked me over"
>>>
>>>
> >> On 9/24/07, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
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>>>> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>> Poster: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>>>> Subject: Re: Finally!
>>>>
>>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> -----------
>>>>
>>>> Though skin pigmentation is irrelevant per se, HDAS suggests (and
>>>> I believe) that "to fuck over X"
>>>>
>>>> a. was indeed the original form in the sense in question,
>>>>
>>>> b. has been vastly more prevalent among speakers of AAVE - so
>>>> much so as to sugget the idiom's origin there,
>>>>
>>>> c. was not much used in white speech before the mid '70s,
>>>>
>>>> d. still sounds rhythmically or positionally "wrong" to me as a
>>>> speaker of WAVE.
>>>>
>>>> Earliest HDAS ex. is from 1961, but the context suggests it was
>>>> around for a while.
>>>>
>>>> The form "fuck X over" undoubtedly owes something to "work X
>>>> over." I believe this is becoming the general form.
>>>>
>>>> JL
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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>>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>>> Poster: Wilson Gray
>>>> Subject: Finally!
>>>>
>>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> -----------
>>>>
>>>> The correct usage has appeared in print! From Slashdot:
>>>>
>>>> "... [G]ranting corporations the right to _fuck over_ other
>>>> corporations who come up with rather ordinary improvements ..."
>>>>
>>>> Lest the point be missed, for those of us old enough (and/or
>>>> black enough?),
>>>>
>>>> "... [G]ranting corporations the right to _fuck_ other corporations
>>>> _over_ who come up with rather ordinary improvements ..." is
>>>> ungrammatical.
>>>>
>>>> That is, [fuck NP over] is absolutely *not* a viable or a
>>>> grammatical
>>>>
>>>> alternative to [fuck over NP]. Unless, of course, you speak a
>>>> different dialect.
>>>>
>>>> There are 215,000 raw Google hits that include uses such as "get
>>>> the
>>>> fuck over it." So, sorting out the various usages would take ten
>>>> men
>>>> and a boy. But the Urban Dictionary, at least, has it right. Well,
>>>> sort of. The second definition defines _fuck over_ as a Briticism
>>>> meaning "fuck over," with examples ambiguous as to dialect. And
>>>> either
>>>> UD doesn't have "fuck NP over" (unlikely?) or I don't know how
>>>> to find
>>>> it (likely?).
>>>>
>>>> -Wilson
>>>>
>>>> -Wilson
>>>> --
>>>> 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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>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
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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
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dennis R. Preston
>> University Distinguished Professor
>> Department of English
>> Morrill Hall 15-C
>> Michigan State University
>> East Lansing, MI 48864 USA
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
Morrill Hall 15-C
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48864 USA
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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