"Crip course"?! (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, sources that I stumbled across while trolling for "crip shot"
suggest that "snap" is the oldest term. A newspaper cite reads
something like:

?"Among college students, 'snap [course?]' is being replaced by
'crip[ple?] [course?],' perhaps under the influence of [the name of
some sport, probably baseball]."?

"Gut" in the relevant sense is part of my passive vocabulary. I'm
familiar with it from some unremembered time and place.

-Wilson


On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 11:43 AM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
<Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
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> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      Re: "Crip course"?! (UNCLASSIFIED)
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> 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"?!
>>
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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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--
-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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