Poss. Ety. of "twink" [Was Re: Theriomorphism in a Los Angeles Gay Community]

Sat Feb 13 13:16:48 UTC 2010

Jonathan Lighter wrote
> A derivation directly from the Hostess _Twinkie_ is of course possible, but
> as a syn. of _twink_, _twinkie/y_ is not attested till considerably later.

The Language Log column of Arnold Zwicky notes that 1980 is the date
of earliest OED (Additions 1993) cite for twinkie in the relevant
sense. The column also notes that the OED has a cite for twink in 1963
in an American Speech article that groups twink with several other
slang terms. But twinkie does not appear in that group.

Here is an antedating to 1968 for twinkie that reduces the time gap.
The 1968 and 1970 cites below reflect the second half of the OED
definition.

Citation: 1968, The Gay World by Martin Hoffman, Page 68, Basic Books,
New York. (Google Books snippet view only. WorldCat date agrees. Match
ok in Questia.)

Paul had told me that sometime during the afternoon Kenny, a boy whom
he had been seeing lately, would possibly come over. Kenny, age 17,
was what Paul calls a twinkie. This, he explained, is a sexually
desirable young man who ...

http://books.google.com/books?id=lskXAAAAIAAJ&q=twinkie#search_anchor

Citation: 1970, Countdown by Frank G. Slaughter, Page 208, Doubleday,
Garden City, New York. (Google Books snippet view only. WorldCat date
agrees.)

"They let the twinkie go because he was under age and they were afraid
to put him in the juvenile detention shelter."
  Oddly enough, the news cheered Asa. Twinkies were juvenile
homosexuals and the courts were pretty sticky about anyone caught
debauching - the word the courts used - them, although usually they
were already old hands at the game.

http://books.google.com/books?id=SH1dNKst4UIC&q=%22twinkie+go%22#search_anchor

On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 12:23 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Poss. Ety. of "twink" [Was Re: Theriomorphism in a Los Angeles
>              Gay Community]
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In his 12,000-entry lexicon, Rodgers does not include any of the animal
> terms allegedly in common use in today's L.A.  Interesting.
>
> In my college days, _twink_ was used occasionally by heterosexual students
> as a precise synonym for _fag_, i.e. as a broadly opprobrious rather than a
> neutral, narrowly descriptive term.
>
> The drunken rhyme may be relevant to the etymology of _twink_ because its
> opening lines contain the phrase "little twink," a frequent opprobrious
> collocation. The folklorist Alan Dundes referred to the whole rhyme in a
> different context as "the standard folk parody of 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little
> Star,'" which seems to corroborate the appearance of the parody in the
> several industrial journals cited by Google Books from the roughly fifteen
> years before the present meaning of _twink_ is attested in print.   A
> drunken parody is likely to be recited by semi-inebriated persons in bars -
> including bars where, in the period ca1945-1960, "twinks," however defined,
> were not always welcome. Muttered on its own, "What the hell you are I
> think" could easily be misunderstood as an insinuation of homosexuality (or
> many other things).
>
> A derivation directly from the Hostess _Twinkie_ is of course possible, but
> as a syn. of _twink_, _twinkie/y_ is not attested till considerably later.
> Twinkies (rather like creampuffs in texture, _creampuff_ being a familiar
> synonym for a weakling or sissy) had existed since 1933, but the Twinkie
> website suggests that they didn't rise to popularity till the 1950s.
>
> The only other plausible etymon that comes to mind is _Twinkletoes_, used as
> a (usu. derisive) name for a (usu. clumsy) dancer. _Twink_ might conceivably
> abbreviate this, but in that case one would expect it to be applied
> especially to dancers, and of any sexual orientation. This conjectural usage
> has never been current, so far as I know.
>
> I believe that the conjunction of "What the hell you are I think" with the
> Hostess Twinkie in the 1950s was sufficient and perhaps even necessary to
> produce _twink_ in its homosexual senses.
>
> JL
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: Theriomorphism in a Los Angeles Gay Community
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Feb 12, 2010, at 8:49 AM, ronbutters at AOL.COM wrote:
>>
>> > 3. Bruce Rogers
>>
>> that's Rodgers
>>
>> > records TWINK in 1972 in his lexicon of queer slang. He calls it
>> > "rare," but the listed meaning is quite close to the meaning that
>> > has been VERY common in gay lingo since the 1980s.
>>
>> as i noted in my Language Log posting, OED has it from 1963 -- and
>> that;s in an AmSp article on word uses, so it's surely earlier.
>>
>> but, yes, it seems to have really caught on in the 1980s (maybe a
>> little bit earlier).
>>
>> arnold
>>
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