"slang" (1746); favorable insults

[Wilson Gray]

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 5:39 PM, Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "slang" (1746); favorable insults
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Wilson, I was referring to the entire phrase. Sorry if my writing skills ar=
> e
> going away with everything else.
>
> As for that black sailor, I think the existence of "like a son of a bitch"
> in 1756 implies "like a motherfucker" almost as soon as possible. Â You may
> be fascinated to know that the few very early known exx. of "motherfucking"
> (ca1890) are from Texas (trial reports). In spite of heroic research into
> Civil War court-martial records, Dr. Thomas P. Lowry was evidently unable t=
> o
> find a single MF. Â Catch: these are Northern records only. The Secesh
> records went up in flame during the fall of Richmond.
>
> There's a very readable British WW1 memoir by Eric Hiscock [real name]
> called _The Bells of Hell_ (1976). In it, he reports his astonishment in
> 1918 when he heard (white) doughboys referring to the Germans as
> "motherfucking cocksuckers." Â He was only 18 at the time, but after a year
> in the British Army had never heard these terms. Â This allegedly
> "anachronistic" claim led some reviewers to question Hiscock's veracity.
>
> Yet any literal-sense restrictions were already fading from the "MF" family
> by 1915:
>
> 1915 _Southwestern Reporter_ CLXXVII (St. Paul: West Publishing Co.) 98: Yo=
> u
> are nothing but a set of God-damned mother-fucking sons of bitches, the
> whole business of you, womenfolks and all.
>
> Note also "the whole business" for "the whole bunch." New to me.
> JL
>

The fault here may very well have been mine. My wife has now retired
and, needless to say, she was distracting me with empty commentary on
things of interest only to her, as I was trying to read your post.
It's said that women talk too much. IME, the problem is not that women
talk too much, but rather that they talk when men have no interest in
listening to them.

"Look."
"That looks very nice, sugar."
[Wife leaves. Comes back.]
"Look."
"As I say, you look fine."
"No. Which one do you prefer?"
"Uh, which one *what* do I prefer?"
"Which dress."
"Which ...? What, what?"
"I've just modeled two dresses for you. Which one do you prefer?"
"You've shown me two dresses?!"
"Yes. Two different dresses."
"They were *different*?! In what sense?!"
Etc.

"The whole business" for "the whole bunch" is a new one on me, too.

The use of "son of a bitch" in BE is still rare enough that, when the
late Bernie Mack tried to use the phrase in one of his routines, he
stumbled badly, saying "summama ['s^m at m@] bitch." In my Saint Louis
youth, on those rare occasions when one of the bruz wanted to use the
phrase, he usually said something like "SUMma ['s^m m@] bitch" or "sum
mo bitch." In the latter case, I could never decide whether the "mo"
was "more" ("some *more* bitch"; ejaculations don't have to make real
sense, of course) or the consequence of the BE
WTF-let's-be-as-non-standard-as-possible rule rounding schwa to [o],
under stress. "Cadillac" ['k&d@ ,l&k] / ['k&t(> slang: "Kitty") ,l&k],
but, in the song, Rack 'Em Back:

Come, little bay beh
Ride in my
Cad Oh lac [.k&:d 'o: ,l&k]

Of course, "bitch" alone was as common then as it is, now.

-Wilson


> On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 4:39 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "slang" (1746); favorable insults
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> ------
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Jonathan
>> Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> quoted:
>>
>> "... splices like a son of a b----h ..."
>>
>> surprisingly commenting only upon the phrase, "son of a bitch,"
>> overlooking this early example of
>>
>> "... _VERB like a_ son of a bitch ..."
>>
>> Anecdote. Ca.1963, my mother told me that a white woman-friend of hers
>> had told her that, whereas white men use "son of a bitch," black men
>> use "motherfucker" and asked me whether this assertion was indeed
>> factual. (Mom does not associate with members of the lower orders of
>> *any* race.) I assured her that, yes, indeed, was most certainly the
>> case.
>>
>> Now, all we need is an early print example of, e.g. a black sailor
>> saying, "... splices like a motherfucker ...,"
>> --
>> -Wilson
>> =96=96=96
>> 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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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
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> 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

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org