Some (Irish?) lingo

[Wilson Gray]

Well, "contemptuous" is not quite what I had in mind. I was thinking
of "a relish for kitchen-stuff" as possibly a punning relative -
"relish" is a noun with the dual meanings,  "a condiment for *spicing
thing up*" and "enjoyment" - a verb of the pswaydo-euphemistic use of
_(that good) stuff_ in the meaning, "woman as the source of male
sexual pleasure." And that was *before* I saw "the flame of love burnt
fiercely" and "out of the fire into the 'frying-pan'."

FWIW, I agree with the interpretation,

[W]e decidedly prefer his lordship having a "taste of her quality" to
ourselves [having a taste of it]"

wherein _taste_ is related to the _taste_ in such phrases as a "taste
of honey" and a "taste of strange."

(Every time that I hear white women on TV dramas and sitcoms using the
black guy-talk of my lost youth - "I hear that Jane's been _getting a
taste of strange_." "<gasp!> You mean that she's cheating on John?!" -
I'm annoyed. Back in the day, girls and women weren't even supposed to
know of the existence of this phrase, let alone use it in casual
conversation.)

Oh, well. What can you do? I'm just old and crochety, I guess.

-Wilson

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Some (Irish?) lingo
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 11/12/2009 09:29 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>Is _kitchen stuff_ a double-entendre?
>
> You bet.  OED, :kitchen-stuff", sense 2, "The refuse or waste
> products of the kitchen; spec. dripping, kitchen-fee"; sense 2.b,
> "fig. Of persons or things. contemptuous."  (2.b. has three
> quotations:  1737, 1654, 1754.)
>
> Additional evidence -- the the entire piece is:
>
> A Limerick paper asserts that a learned (Irish) judge has "just led
> to the hymeneal altar his aged cook."  For our parts we have few
> pretensions to learning, neither can we plead guilty to a relish for
> "kitchen stuff."  Doubtless the flame of love burnt fiercely to
> induce the learned judge to take this step, in doing which he seems
> to have reversed the usual rule---he has got out of the fire into the
> "frying-pan."  Cooky, however, can hardly prove a tid-bit, and we
> decidedly prefer his lordship having a "taste of her quality" to ourselves.
>
> [The last surely means "to ourselves having a taste."]
>
> Joel
>
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--
-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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