"tarriwag", 1784

[Joel S. Berson]

Oh well.  Not even in the on-line OED yet.  I'll have to buy the two
extant volumes of HDAS.

Joel

At 1/22/2008 06:54 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>   Dunno about Taylor, but Samuel "Hudibras" Butler (1612-80)
> definitely used it:
>
>   *1680 in Samuel Butler Posthumous Works in Prose and Verse
> (London: R. Smith, G. Strahan, J. Brown, 1715) 23: Old Harry's
> C--piece in the Tower...Whose Tarriwags it held long since.
>
>   Bailey, 1724, defines it (pl.) as "Membra Virilia."  I think that
> is the more usual meaning.  A few additional 18th C. exx. are
> available. The U.S. form, "tarryw[h]acker," always refers to the penis AFAIK.
>
>   JL
>
>
>"Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:   ----------------------
>Information from the mail header -----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
>Subject: "tarriwag", 1784
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>I have "tarriwags" in 1784, clearly = testicles. Context available
>upon request.
>
>Apparently well known (Farmer, Partridge), and in the singular =
>penis. But it's not in OED2, and I find few datings (and merely a
>half-dozen hits) via Google. "Unprintable Ozark Folksongs and
>Folklore" (Vance Randolph, 1992), claims "used by John Taylor 'The
>Water-Poet' about 1615, and in Grose's Classical Dictionary of the
>Vulgar Tongue (1785)."
>
>What dates do the authorities have for quotations?
>
>Joel
>
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