"gun play"?

[Wilson Gray]

@Jon:

After much thought and discussion with my internal grammar, I accept
your final paragraph as a necessary modification of my original claim.

@Dave:

Sir, yes sir, sir! (And yet, officers wonder why we EM, when off-duty,
try to avoid them at all costs! Well, actually, I do but jest. We
tried to avoid *NCO's* at all costs. There was nothing more annoying
than having some random 18-year-old fuzz-faced corporal change a group
of 22-year-old Sp5's on their way to a local GI-bar to ogle "die
Girls" in the "Strip-Tease-Schau" into a work detail unloading an
ammunition truck, just because he could.)

@Larry:

So, "horseplay" has been used as a euphemism for "arseplay" since at
least the 16th c. Amazing.

-Wilson

On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 10:20 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "gun play"?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Most amazing to me is that anyone would associate "gun-play" with child's
> "play,"  except perversely.  "Gun-play" has always been part of the core
> vocabulary of pulp/
> Hollywood/ TV westerns, though admittedly these are not nearlyu as well
> known as they used to be.
>
> When I first learned "gun-play" as a child, I never associated it with any
> other kind of play. It was just a word. But perhaps that was just me.
>
> The word is patterned, of course, after the much older "swordplay."  1913
> Merriam-Webster neatly defines this sense of play as "Action; use."  Cf.
> "bring into play."
>
> Unlike Wilson, but like the writer of the headline, I think "gun-play" can
> involve the firing of a single shot by one person, as long as it's fired at
> something other than a stationary, competition target.  I can almost hear
> some villain in a western warning, "And remember: no gun-play!"
>
> JL
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 10:33 PM, Dave Hause <dwhause at jobe.net> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Dave Hause <dwhause at JOBE.NET>
>> Subject:      Re: "gun play"?
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Alas!  What a change in drill instructors there must have been by 1965!
>>  You
>> never heard, "This is my rifle, this is my gun..."?
>> Dave Hause, dwhause at jobe.net
>> Waynesville, MO
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>>
>> During my own blessedly-peaceful military career, I never came across
>> the the word "play" associated in any way with the word, "gun."
>>
>> -Wilson
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
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.
–Mark Twain

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