jackwagon

[Wilson Gray]

On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 8:14 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Fuckwad"
> almost demands a sexual interpretation of "wad."  Almost.

As fate would have it, my experience of the obscene _wad_ series
almost exactly parallels Jon's, nevertheless, despite, or even because
of, the obvious connection of guns and shooting with the male half of
the two-backed beast, the reason for the use of _-wad_ in such forms
was completely opaque to me. Even being completely familiar with
"shoot [one's] load" as an alternative form of "shoot [one's] wad" and
being fully ware of the meaning of _load_ in that context, I just
never got it WRT _wad_. Indeed, I *still* don't quite get it (wad of
chewing-tobacco, wad of paper, but wad of semen?!). Yet, I'm shocked!
ditto! when I hear "tap / hit that ass" - on some sitcom. (For some
deep, psycholinguistic reason, _hit that ass_ feels euphemistic,
despite the fact that

"Hit [on her], git [that ass], and quit [the scene]"

was popular in the locker rooms of my youth.

Different strokes <har! har!>, I reckon.

-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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