gripe

[Jonathan Lighter]

_Pissed off_ is presumably the original, but it and the synonomous _pissed_
appear at almost the same time in the historical record.

Same goes for the verb, though the two-parter looks like the original to me.

And don't forget to _piss and moan_, 'whine.'  Another idiom first recorded
in connection with WWII.

My SWAG is that it originally alluded to infection by a certain STD.

JL

On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 9:11 AM, James Smith <jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       James Smith <jsmithjamessmith at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: gripe
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "Gripes me" (more common) or "gripes _someone_" (less common) are ordinary
> usage to me and those I associate with.  They sound absolutely natural to
> me.
>
> James D. SMITH               |If history teaches anything
> South SLC, UT                |it is that we will be sued
> jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com   |whether we act quickly and
>                                    decisively
>                             |or slowly and cautiously.
>
>
> --- On Mon, 10/18/10, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
>
> > From: Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> > Subject: Re: gripe
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Date: Monday, October 18, 2010, 11:36 AM
> > On Oct 18, 2010, at 10:06 AM, Jon
> > Lighter wrote:
> > >
> > > As HDAS reveals, to "gripe someone" has been pretty
> > frequent at the slang
> > > level in the 20th Century. (First ex., 1927). The
> > usual nuance, however, is
> > > "to anger or annoy," generally with an inanimate
> > subject.
> >
> > (i'd gloss it roughly as 'piss someone off', but without
> > the taboo tinge.)
> >
> > the usage is natural for me, so natural that i have no idea
> > how long i've been saying it.  but i *have* had the
> > experience of it causing other people to break out in
> > asterisks, so that i've been aware for some time that it's
> > not exactly widespread.
> > >
> > > My experience tends to confirm that it is has not been
> > common in the
> > > Northeast.  It may be a little old-fashioned
> > these days.
> >
> > no idea what its geographical/social distribution is like.
> >
> > my own linguistic experience was all in (various parts of)
> > the Northeast until i was 25. of course that was a long time
> > ago.
> >
> > arnold
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
>  > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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