'Rock' meaning 'wear' or 'sport'

[Benjamin Barrett]

I'd never heard of them, but my first reaction was a play on "Rock the
Boat" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_the_Boat_(Hues_Corporation_song)
).

At http://www.rockthevote.com/assets/publications/electronic-press-kit/hs-biography.pdf
, it says "Rock the Vote uses music, popular culture and new
technologies to engage and incite young people to register and vote in
every election." though I couldn't find anything definitive on the
origin of their name.

Lots of puns on "rock the boat" including a problem with Spanish
listeners mistaking "Rock the Vote" for "Rock the Boat" (http://www.blog.rockthevote.com/2008/06/vote-for-new-rock-vote-spanish-tagline.html
). FWIW BB

On Sep 9, 2008, at 11:38 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:

>
> Then there's the whole "Rock the Vote" campaign...
>
> At 12:48 PM -0400 9/9/08, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 11:50 AM, Neal Whitman
>> <nwhitman at ameritech.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> And returning to the original subject, thanks Jesse and Ben for
>>> the earlier
>>> attestations. I'm now reminding myself not to post these questions
>>> late at
>>> night, when I forget to look at easily available references like
>>> the OED
>>> before sending.
>>
>> Still, the evolution of the "wear with panache or pride" sense is
>> intriguing. There's clearly a connection with OED sense 5c, "cause to
>> move with musical rhythm" (with latent sexual connotations, all the
>> way back to Trixie Smith's 1922 "My Man Rocks Me with One Steady
>> Roll"). Objects for this sense can either be people or spaces with
>> people in them (rock the joint/house/party/casbah). But early hiphop
>> usage extended the verb to other objects, most notably "the
>> mic(rophone)" (back to "Rapper's Delight" in 1979: "I'm gonna rock
>> the
>> mic 'til you can't resist"). "Rock the mic" = "rap admirably" is not
>> yet reflected in the OED entry for "rock", but I see it as a vital
>> link to the "wear proudly" sense, since it opened up the possibility
>> for other rap accoutrements to be taken as objects of the verb --
>> like, for instance, the Adidas sneakers of Run-DMC and their fans c.
>> 1986.
>>
>> "My Adidas" came out in 1986, and here's a scene from a Run-DMC
>> concert the following year:
>>
>> "Then, Run-DMC yelled out, 'Okay, everybody in the house, rock your
>> Adidas.' On cue, three thousand pairs of Adidas shot in to the air.
>> (Christopher Vaughn, "Simmons' Rush for Profits," Black Enterprise,
>> December 1992, 67, quoted by Naomi Klein, _No Logo_, 2000)
>>
>> So there it seems to be more about displaying than wearing proudly.
>>

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