Origins of "soft core," "Yippies," "Twinkie defense"

[Garson O'Toole]

Krassner is a prankster, a satirist, and a media manipulator. That is
the point of these three terms. The creation stories behind these
terms are also part of the artistry of construction.

Here is another entertaining account about the creation of "yippie"
from Coco Pekelis in 2001:

http://www.gadflyonline.com/best_of_2001/MONDAY-ISSUES/abbie-hoffman.html

All this prankishness came together on New Year’s Day 1968 when,
according to most accounts, Abbie, Jerry Rubin and Paul Krassner,
along with Abbie’s wife Anita and Jerry’s girlfriend, Nancy Kunshen,
met in Hoffman’s apartment and invented Yippie! My wife, Coco Pekelis,
was there (when the assembled radicals are named, she is usually
described, if at all, as "an unidentified girl"). Here’s her account:
…

I do remember everybody just sort of coming up with the word Yippie in
a sort of group jam session. Just fooling around with words, saying
hippie, then hip-hip hooray, then dippie and kippie and zippie, till
we finally landed screaming and laughing on Yippie! Just silliness
really, Abbie coming up with the idea of running a pig for President
(nothing to do with cops being called pigs, as I recall, just the most
absurd image he could think of).


On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Origins of "soft core," "Yippies," "Twinkie defense"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 08:31:30AM -0800, Grant Barrett wrote:
>>
>> After a cursory trawl through the databases, I can't prove
>> or disprove any of his claims. Does he have published
>> evidence to support them?
>>
>> For what they're worth, here are my rules for dealing with people who claim coinages.
>
> [...]
>
> In general I agree with Grant's comments here; most of the
> people who claim to have coined things are wrong in any of
> various ways (out-and-out wrong; perhaps independently coined
> something that was already around; "coined" something not
> really worthy of being called a "coinage"; etc.).
>
> But--and without making any comment about the particular items
> being discussed here--I do think there's a difference between
> the random claims of some guy in the street, and a specific
> claim made by someone with a reasonable chance to have been a
> part of, or influenced, some sphere of activity.
>
> So if someone who is a leading member of the counterculture,
> who edited a prominent journal, makes a specific claim about
> terms relating to that area--well, he could very well still be
> wrong, but I probably wouldn't immediately burst out laughing,
> the way I generally would when exposed to similar claims from
> random correspondents.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
> OED
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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