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

Sat Feb 13 14:33:17 UTC 2010

HDAS files reveal "twinky" as an adjective at NYU in 1971, but it came from
the noun.

_Twink_ was/ is also used to mean a weakling, a sissy, or a whimsically
eccentric person.  All the evidence for these is post-1962.

I don't really understand why people keep saying "1963."  The AS article was
published in '63, but authors Alan Dundes -  who published the "Starkle
Starkle" poem in 1987 - and Alan Schonhorn say explicitly that the material
was collected from 123 upperclassmen at Kansas University in 1962.
Am chagrined to discover a (misfiled) citation of "twinkie":

1958 Joan Davis _College Vocabulary_ (ms.) 6: _Twinkie_ - A homosexual.

That. reduces the likelihood of _twink_ having derived directly from the
poem, though the poem may still have played a role in the word's
dissemination.  Either way the effective notion behind homosexual _twink_
is probably that of "creampuff," via Hostess Twinkie. Personally I've never
heard a Twinkie referred to as a "Twink," but it must have happened on
occasion.

HDAS shows "Twinkletoes" back to 1893.

 JL

On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
>> 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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>> >
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>
>
>
> --
>  "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
>

--
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