Heard on The Judges: "bum-rush"

[Wilson Gray]

As somebody - a cartoon character? - used to say: "It's possa-bull."
Seriously speaking, I have no doubt that what you say is true, given
that you write from your personal experience, as I was writing from
mine: this was the first time that I'd ever heard the term used in
real life in any meaning whatsoever. In books and movies of my
experience from fifty years ago, barkeepers "gave the bum's rush to"
or "bum-rushed" unruly patrons by shoving or otherwise physically
forcing them out of the bar and onto the sidewalk.

You can see why hearing "bum-rush" used of _dogs_ in the public way
attacking other _dogs_ in the public way would have engaged my
attention.

-Wilson

On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 4:04 PM, Marc Velasco <marcjvelasco at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Marc Velasco <marcjvelasco at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Heard on The Judges: "bum-rush"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> IME, bum-rush is being used as I've always heard it, as some sort of quick,
> not-usually-too-fair assault.  sometimes by ambush, or blindside.  at least
> that's the connotations usually surrounding it IME.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 3:45 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Heard on The Judges: "bum-rush"
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Spoken by presumably European-American, standard-speaking, voice-over guy:
>>
>> "The plaintiff complains that the defendants' nine dogs _bum-rushed_
>> his two dogs."
>>
>>
>> I.e., one group of dogs _attacked_ another group.
>>
>> However, IMO, to _bum-rush_ is to _frog-walk or otherwise throw an
>> undesirable patron out of a joint_ and not to attack him, whether as
>> an individual or in a group. Of course, since "bum-rush" and
>> "frog-walk" are both only literary terms for me, I could very well be
>> completely mistaken, here.
>>
>> FWIW, I've never even heard of such a thing as requiring, or even
>> merely asking, a patron to leave a bar, in real life. In Jim-Crow
>> days, naturally, I sometimes experienced being refused entrance to a
>> watering-place, from the be-ginning. A Japanese-American friend told
>> me of being refused entrance to bars in Oklahoma, when he was a
>> cannon-cocker at Fort Sill, on the grounds that he was a Native
>> American. Since he was always subsequently admitted, after
>> demonstrating that he was neither an Indian nor black, he - and I -
>> thought that some white Oklahomans really did think that he was an
>> Indian. (For me, that story nailed the ceiling to the roof, WRT the
>> theory that the progenitors of Native Americans emigrated from Asia.)
>>
>> -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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>>
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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.
-----
-Mark Twain

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