'Rock' meaning 'wear' or 'sport'

[Charles Doyle]

Neal, I'm more interested in your expression "once is weird, twice is queer," which you surrounded with quotation marks. Does that expression function proverbially in a folkgroup to which you belong?  It receives zero Google hits. (Is "queer" necessarily weirder than "weird"?)

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2008 23:11:25 -0400
>From: Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET>
>Subject: 'Rock' meaning 'wear' or 'sport'
>
>An advertisement on TV tonight set off my "once is weird, twice is queer" sensors, when it used the word 'rock' to mean "wear", which I'd briefly noted a few weeks ago somewhere.
>
>I haven't found anything on this topic on the ADS archives or in alt.usage.english. I have checked Davies's Corpus of Contemporary American, with the string "[rock].[vv*] [at1]", and so far have an earliest attestation from 2003:
>2003  MAG  Essence     texture. For additional lift, try Prive Root Amplifier Herbal Blend #37. Rock a short crop. There is nothing sexier or more enticing than a woman who
>
>It's the only hit from 2003; there's also only one from 2004, again talking about a hairstyle: 2004  SPOK  PBS_Tavis     you doing?  I'm doing great.  You're rocking a Mohawk again.  Yeah, yeah, it's serious.
>
>One hit from 2005, then three each for 2006 and 2007, now with looks or clothes as the rocked item, as well as facial hair (a goatee).
>
>Anyone have earlier attestations, or ideas how this meaning developed? I find an interesting in-between use of 'rock' in this 2007 example from the movie _Juno_:
>2007 FIC Mov:Juno   liked Gibson better than Fender. MARK What do you play? JUNO I rock a Harmony. MARK (holding back a chuckle) Oh. JUNO What?
>
>Here, 'rock' could have both its sense of "violently move something" and its sense of something you wear, assuming she's using a guitar strap. I imagine
>the "wear" sense extending from here to more ordinary things that you wear, but this is speculation.
>
>Neal
>
>Neal Whitman
>Email: nwhitman at ameritech.net
>Blog: http://literalminded.wordpress.com

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