Strokin' (Was: Re: WOTY)

[LanDi Liu]

So is Clarence Carter the first reference we have to using it for
"normal" sex?  If someone told me he was stroking a girl, I would take
it to mean he was petting her.

Wilson -- I would guess "stroke books" are so called because they are
books to stroke off to.

Randy

On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 4:21 AM, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
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>  Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
>
> Subject:      Re: Strokin' (Was: Re: WOTY)
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >
>  > IIRC, someone here dated the saying to Mohammed Ali in 1965. He could
>  > be asked what he meant by "strokes," I reckon.
>
>  Barry Popik found it used by Ali (then Cassius Clay) in a 1966 UPI report:
>
>  -----
>  http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0406D&L=ADS-L&P=R938
>  Great Bend Daily Tribune   Friday, November 11, 1966 Great Bend, Kansas
>  Pg. 6, col. 8:
>    HOUSTON (UPI)-- (...)
>    But back to a la Bob Hope.  Clay, the comedian, said:
>    --"I don't have any punch.  I just hit a man so many times he wished I had
>  a punch."
>    --On knockout punches in the Liston, Floyd Patterson and Karl Mildenberger
>  fights:  "I bot (got?--ed.) different strokes for different folks."
>  -----
>
>  Interestingly, the AP account gives a rather different context:
>
>  -----
>  _Oakland Tribune_, Nov. 11, 1966, p. 55, col. 7
>  Clay didn't look good in final sparring sessions.
>  He pursued his lip battle with [Cleveland] Williams' manager, Hugh
>  Benbow, and the Houston oilman-rancher was included in the champion's
>  latest verse:
>  "You'll never know what I'm going to do,
>  "It could be over in two.
>  "Until Hugh Benbow came alive,
>  "I was thinking about five."
>  The champion had another one:
>  "I believe in hitting,
>  "And running away,
>  "And living to fight
>  "Another day."
>  Clay was almost knocked down by sparmate Jimmy Ellis Thursday. He
>  scolded a heckler "for breaking my concentration."
>  As an afterthought, he added another couplet:
>  "You know, different strokes for different folks."
>  -----
>
>
>  --Ben Zimmer
>
>
>
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--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China

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