bang-utot

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Wed Aug 19 21:56:32 UTC 2009


Not in OED though famed in literature.  Tagalog _bangungot_ ('lethal
nightmare') appears to be the effective etymon, _Naked Lunch_ the linguistic
vector:


1951 J. Z. Santa Cruz in _Journal of the Philippine Medical Association_
XXVII (July) 476: The Pathology of Bangungot.

1955 (Nov. 1) in William S. Burroughs _The Letters of William S. Burroughs_
, ed. O Harris  I (N.Y.: Penguin, 1994) 300: In Interzone, dreams can kill -
Like Bangutot.

1957 J. B. Nolasco in _AMA Archives of Internal Medicine_ XCIX 905: An
Inquiry into "Bangungot."

1959 William S. Burroughs _Naked Lunch_  (Rpt. N.Y.: Grove Press, 1992) 35:
Citizens with incipient Bang-utot clutch their penises and call on the
tourists for help.  Ibid. 66: In Manila about twelve cases of death by
Bang-utot are recorded each year.

1988 Daniel Rhodes _Adversary_ (N.Y.: Tor) 231: They think it was an attack
of this rare condition called bang-utot, where a man decides his prick is
going to retract into his body and kill him. Found mainly among males of
Malaysian extraction, though this individual was a round-eye.

1990 Jessica Hagedorn _Dogeaters__, qtd. in  _American Literature_  LXXVII
(2005) 830: The first white man stricken with _bangungot_ [sic]...a
mysterious illness that claims men.

2009 Wikipedia   [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genital_retraction_syndrome] : A
condition called 'Bang-utot', which carries symptoms of both bangungot and
koro, is a repeated theme in William S. Burroughs' book _Naked Lunch_

JL

--
"There You Go Again...Using Reason on the Planet of the Duck-Billed
Platypus"

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