article on the name "America"

[Jonathan Lighter]

For def. 2 of "playboy," The latest OED offers  "A person, usually a wealthy
man, who leads a life of pleasure, *esp.* one who behaves irresponsibly or
is sexually promiscuous."

I pass over the question of whether a female can be a playboy. I believe the
two nuances should be split up into "irresponsible pleasure-seeker" and
"sexually promiscuous fellow."

(Actually, I don't think it's the literal sexual promiscuity that defines
the playboy, it's the number of women he dates.  There was a time, young
'uns, when the concepts were not absolutely and necessarily identical.)

Anyway, the reason for my niggling is that in 1960-61 I had a sixtyish
American history teacher, named Mr. Bowman, who frequently reproved us for
being "a bunch of playboys." If somebody launched a spitball, for example,
Bowman would cut him down as a "playboy."

This struck me as pathetic even at the time.  Because by 1960 everybody and
his brother knew that a "playboy" was defined exclusively by hot dates and
frenetic socializing with the opposite sex. The launcher of spitballs
and reader of comic books was not even in the same universe as the playboy.
(For proof, all you had to do was visit the newsstand.) To be called a
"playboy" was thus quite a compliment, albeit a contextually ridiculous
one.  Bowman never caught on to this.

In fact, by the time in college when I heard of Synge's _The Playboy of the
Western World_ I could hardly believe it was written in 1909.  Did they even
have "playboys" then?

So I think the def. should be refined and split up.

JL



On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 1:40 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: article on the name "America"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 10:08 AM, David A. Daniel <dad at pokerwiz.com>
> wrote:
>
> > the screw-anything-that-moves sex lives of the natives.
>
>
> Uh, like, I don't want to come across as a sexist pig or as a racist,
> but, well, the fact of the matter is that, when I was stationed in
> Europe in the Army, I couldn't avoid thinking,:
>
> "Damn! This must be the way that the white studs felt, when they
> 'discovered' America and the South Sea Islands!"
>
> As *seriously* lame and nerdy as I was back in The World, I was a
> stone player (not "playa"; back then, a "player" was only a playboy,
> in the old-fashioned sense of that word - I exaggerate WRT myself, of
> course - with no connection to pimping or any other form of
> physically- and psychologically-brutal abuse and exploitation of
> women, or the word might even merely a "professional" gambler, like
> the legendary, folk-heroic Stavin Chain) in Germany and Holland.
> Actually, the word was so empty of content that "player' could replace
> "man" as a trivially-hipper term of address. IAC, in Europe, I was, in
> the BE phrase, "turnin' *back* pussy."
>
> I was going to go anecdotal with a full explanation as to why my
> self-quote night be considered "sexist." But, WTF? Does anybody really
> care?
>
> -Wilson
>
> -Wilson
>
>
>
> --
> -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
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org