wild about Rappaccini's Daughter

[Jonathan Lighter]

No biggie.

1830 Nathaniel Ames _A Mariner's Sketches_  (Providence: Cory, Marshall and
Hammond) 7 [ref. to 1815]: The ceremony of shaving on crossing the line was
omitted, to the manifest disappointment of the "old salts" and great relief
and gratification of those of us who were uninitiated.  Ibid. 247: Whistling
at sea is never tolerated except in a calm. "A whistling sailor, a crowing
hen and a swearing woman ought all three to go to hell together;" so say the
*old salts. *

The word has also been applied in the USMC to veteran marines (usu. NCOs),
presumably for nearly as long.

JL

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 6:09 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: wild about Rappaccini's Daughter
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> How *did* I miss this?  I read every Hawthorne short story about 5
> years ago with the OED in mind.
>
> He used "salt" = "experienced sailor" in 1835, 5 years before the
> current (that is, 1989) record holder, Richard Henry Dana.
>
> And they say Nathaniel didn't employ slang.
>
> Joel
>
> At 5/10/2010 03:51 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >OED has the constr. "wild about" (def. 11c, a bit mildly defined) from
> 1868
> >only: the early preference seems to have been for "wild after."
> >
> >Hawthorne, however, used the current idiom in "Rappaccini's Daughter" in
> >1844:
> >
> >"You have heard of this daughter, whom all the young men in Padua are wild
> >about."
> >
> >JL
> >
> >--
> >"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
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>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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