Heard on The Judges: _kickback_, n: new meaning

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Kick back" (relax) didn't enter white vocabulary until about 1970. Wilson's
emphatic recollection of ca1950 once again illuminates the past.

JL

On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 9:09 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Heard on The Judges: _kickback_, n: new meaning
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Joel writes, possibly without pausing for thought:
>
> "And I've associated 'kick back', verb or imperative, with 'relax' for
> quite a while"
>
> since this surely must have been true for every speaker of English for
> the past sixty years.
>
> I'm sorry about that, Joel. To paraphrase Redd Foxx, I should have
> checked with God and four other white men, before I posted.
>
> -Wilson
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 2:29 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> > Subject:      Re: Heard on The Judges: _kickback_, n: new meaning
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > 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
> >>
> >>------------------------------------------------------------
> >>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> -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
>



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