Who's diddling and how?

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:25 AM -0400 7/18/08, Wilson Gray wrote:
>The same is true of Homeric Greek.
>
>Say, have I ever mentioned that I played Akhilleus in the KUCD-TV
>production of The Iliad?
>
>This may surprise some, if not many, here, but the professor was
>really sweating the possibility that he might be "taking integration
>too damned far" by having a colored fellow play the greatest hero in
>Western literature. He was worried about putting me into some kind of
>social jeopardy. And this was in 1971 in Northern California, not in
>1921 in Southern Mississippi!
>
>(BTW, Ron, that professor was H. Phelps Gates, Jr.)

Not to be confused with either Phelps Gate, the main entrance to Yale
University, or H. Louis Gates, Jr., a distinguished former member of
our faculty (and current director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute
for African American Studies at Harvard) who would have been unlikely
to subscribe to the above misgiving.

LH

>
>On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 5:22 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
>>  Subject:      Re: Who's diddling and how?
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  I'd forgotten till just now: Studying Classical Greek as an undergrad
>>  in the sixties, I was amused by the similarity of the verb "didomi"
>>  'give' to "diddle me".
>>
>>  --
>>  Mark Mandel
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
>--
>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

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