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

Sat Feb 13 14:05:51 UTC 2010

Dundes gives this version of the poem, which adds a couple of lines possibly
cut off by GB:

Starkle starkle little twink
Who the hell you are I think.
I'm not under the alcofluence of incohol
I'm not as drunk as some thinkle peep I am
And besides I only had tea Martoonies
Anyway I've all day Sober to sunday up in.
I fool so feelish I don't know who is me yet
But the drunker I stand here the longer I get.

[punctuation sic].

It isn't really a parody of the nursery rhyme. It just starts off like one.

JL

On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 8:16 AM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Subject:      Re: Poss. Ety. of "twink" [Was Re: Theriomorphism in a Los
>              Angeles Gay Community]
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > 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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