[?] Re: "flying fuck"

[Jonathan Lighter]

There's so much on flying stuff at various things in HDAS I (s.v. "flying") that modesty forbids extensive quotation here.

  The earliest clearly related variant is from 1926 and refers to 1918: "Me, I'd tell 'em to take a flyin' fling at the moon."  "Fling" is a sufficiently off-center choice to make one suppose it euphemizes the other f-word. (Nason, a WWI veteran, elsewhere in his tales of the AEF even employs the euphemistic "rat-copulation."]

  By 1932 the (pre-Code) film _Scarface_ included "They said you could take a flyin' -----" "That's enough of that!"

  Air Corps pilot Bert Stiles wrote in 1944, "You can take a flying one at a rolling one."

  Etc, etc.

  Oh, and Jesse.  Please tell your minions that the 1938 O'Hara cite correctly reads, "I say go take a flying fuck at a galloping r--ster."

  See, the dashes in "rooster" poke fun at...Aw, never mind.

  JL

Barnhart <barnhart at HIGHLANDS.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Barnhart
Subject: Re: [?] Re: "flying fuck"
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Dear Jesse (and any other linguists),

I can't imagine any truly competent scholar not consulting OED about
matters of the lexicon. Of course, independent research is valuable.
But, avoiding OED is foolish, if not hazardous.

DKB

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