Heard on the Today show: "whuppin'"

[Wilson Gray]

It's a good thing that my wife has Dragon Naturally Speaking. That
last "_whoop_-ass" was one too many and I've gouged my eyes out.

-Wilson

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 11:39 AM, James Harbeck <jharbeck at sympatico.ca> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
> Subject:      Re: Heard on the Today show: "whuppin'"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> FWIW, although "whuppin'" undoubtedly comes from "whipping," it
> doesn't really have the same valence for me, and it _is_ a word that
> I've been accustomed to for some time. Rather, it and "whoop" (as in
> "open up a can of whoop-ass") make me think not of whipping (except
> on reflection) but of striking with the hand, a belt, the feet, or
> just in general -- more in the way of blunt objects.
>
> I would agree that it's a deliberate cultural reference --
> African-American or at least Southern American, in the same way that
> "a certain je ne sais quoi" is deliberately French and "top of the
> morning to you" is deliberately Irish (though, I'm told, not
> necessarily common in Ireland). I'm just not sure that the users have
> it in mind as a conscious variant on "whipping" -- "whip his ass"
> isn't, in my little universe (FWIW), a white equivalent of "whup his
> ass," and "give him a whipping" couldn't be used everywhere "give him
> a whuppin'" could; my sense is that the reference to literal whipping
> has faded almost entirely into the background. So whenever I've used
> "whup" or "whuppin'", I haven't had whipping in mind.
>
> But that's just individual data from a Canadian, so of course the
> consciousness of its relation to "whipping" (which for me is only
> there on reflection) may be more present for the users on the Today
> show.
>
> James Harbeck.
>
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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.
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-Mark Twain

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