Wilson waves the white flag

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sun Dec 5 04:21:58 UTC 2010


'Course, you know, I lef' Cincinnati
Wit' somethin' on my min'
_Chancres_ on the head o' my dick
An' _blueballs_ in my groin [grAn]


Someone suggested a song about syphilis, in which "blueballs" <
_buboes_. Merely the usual white mischief, said I. However, through
the magic of modern electronics, what once was hidden is now made
manifest. After an agonizing reappraisal, I apologize to whoever
asserted that the lines cited above describe the symptoms of a certain
social disease then as now endemic among the colored polloi, and I
accept the analysis that "chanchres" plus "*buboes" do, indeed, equal
"syphilis." Hence, this song does *not* suggest that "blue balls" in
the WE sense once also existed in BE with the same sense.

--
-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

Once we recognize that we do not err out of laziness, stupidity,
or evil intent, we can uncumber ourselves of the impossible burden of
trying to be permanently right. We can take seriously the proposition
that we could be in error, without necessarily deeming ourselves
idiotic or unworthy.
–Kathryn Schulz

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



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