Heard on The Judges: _kickback_, n: new meaning

[Joel S. Berson]

Wilson, the noun is in urbandictionary, described
as "small gathering between group of friends,
more than a get together, less than a party (used
in nor-cal central valley)".  And I've associated
"kick back", verb or imperative, with "relax" for quite a while.

Neither is defined in the OED, although it has
two quotations for the verb with this sense, 1988 and 2006.  The 1988 is
"Muscular Devel. Nov. 33/1 After his shows, Mits
always throws a mixer where workers, guest
posers, contestants and Mits himself can kick back and relax."

Joel

At 1/15/2010 11:50 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Twenty-ish, black male speaker:
>
>I was going to a _kickback_ ...
>
>Judge:
>
>A what?
>
>Speaker. A _kickback_. Anyway ...
>
>Judge:
>
>What's a "_kickback_"?
>
>Speaker:
>
>It's, uh, like a family get-together. In the backyard. You have some
>bobby-q (an actual spelling used on?/in? a neon sign in Sth-Cent.
>L.A., more likely joking than real; helped me to catch the pun in the
>cookbook title, Barbecuing With Bobby), some brew, a little taste (=
>"hard liquor") ...
>
>
>BTW, this guy's speech, though otherwise typically working-class BE,
>was fully r-ful. He actually said "barbecue" and not the "bobbih-cue"
>of the last century.
>
>--
>-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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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org