s---k pot, 1805 (?)

[Joel S. Berson]

At 9/7/2010 02:58 PM, George Thompson wrote:
>Joel points out quotations from the OED:
>The OED has "transf. 1748 SMOLLETT Rod. Rand. xi, I'll teach you to
>empty your stink-pots on me. 1913 J. G. FRAZER Golden Bough VI.
>Scapegoat iii. 133 The girls discharge their stink-pots in the faces
>of their adversaries."
>Both of these sound as if they might refer to the act of emptying a
>chamber-pot from a window (as a hint to the salesman that you don't want any).
>So, if "stink-pot was in use as a euphemism/dysphemism for
>"chamber-pot", then that would account for the the newspaper writing
>"s--k-pot", regardless of whether "stink" in itself was considered
>indelicate in the 18th C, or whether the military stink-pot in use
>then contained shit or not.

George (as usual?) has gone a little further than I did.  (I did
state my speculation about excrement from these OED quotations, but
hadn't made the connection to "chamber-pot".)  If I read George
correctly -- or perhaps going a little further -- the notion is that
the editor had this association with "stink-pot" and carried it over
into the naval conflict context of his article.  As George says,
whether or not the naval stink-pot of the 18th century contained s--t.

Joel

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