"Crip course"?! (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

Crip course -- not in OED


_Galveston [TX] Daily News_ 11/16/1917 p 3 col 1

"He denied that students take it as an incidental to fill in to get the
necessary amount of credits toward a degree, as it requires work, and is
no crip course." [Newspaperarchive]


James Aswell, "My New York" [syndicated column from Central Press]
_Berkeley [CA] Daily Gazette_ 10 Sep 1934, p 4 col 5
"But at Columbia she entered a "crip" course in photography for credits
-- and took it up as a hobby." [Google news archive]


I've also seen it called "snap course" and "gut course".


> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of Wilson Gray
> Sent: Monday, April 26, 2010 7:20 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: "Crip course"?!
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "Crip course"?!
>
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> --------
>
> I've never heard that phrase before. But, as Chomsky would say,
>
> "Does anything follow from this? I think not."
>
> However, it does remind me of a
> now-obsolete-to-the-best-of-my-knowledge basketball term:
>
> _crip shot_
>
> When I was learning to play bastitbawl, ca. 1946, the phrase, "crip
> shot," was in common use. Here's the earliest cite that I could by
> just googling.
>
>
> Lexington [KY] Herald
>
> [Special to the Herald]
> KNOXVILLE, Tenn., Feb. 9.
>
> CATS SWAMP TENNESSEE, 43 TO 16
>
> Combs, Milward lead Scorers; Vols Dazed By Kentucky Passing
> Kentucky at Tennessee (February 9, 1928)
> ...
> Jeffries took the ball and dribbled to the foul line to make a
> beautiful _crip shot_. Kentucky 2, Tennessee 1.
> ...
>
>
> We also used the full form, "cripple shot," but simply googling yields
> only a 1959 quote from a book published in 1979:
>
>
> McCallum, John Dennis. 1979. College basketball, U.S.A., since 1892.
>
> ... [S]aid [Pete] Newell in 1959, ... "We're not much concerned with
> driving all the way to the basket for the lay-up or _cripple shot_."
>
>
> Likewise, we used the simple "cripple." Naturally, this word occurs
> primarily, WRT to basketball, in the environment of wheelchair sports,
> when googled. BTW,  the number of crippled people shot and and
> ofttimes killed as a consequence is surprising. Perhaps I shouldn't
> have started out with "basketball shot cripple."
>
> -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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