s---k pot, 1805 (?)

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:46 PM +0000 9/7/10, ronbutters at aol.com wrote:
>There is no reason to think that "Don't be a sucker" is any less
>suggestive of fellatio than "That sucks"--if anything, it is moreso.

Nor do I think so.  My point was that there are contexts in which
"suck" and "stink" are not in competition for the same semantic slot.
"That sucks" vs. "That stinks" maybe so, "Don't be a stinker" (which
I wasn't pretending to find anomalous; that was the point of the
"respectively" in my response below) not likely.

>
>As for "Don't be a stinker," I don't agree that it is in the least anomalous.

Nor do I; I did, however, find "That stinks wind" anomalous.

LH

>------Original Message------
>From: Laurence Horn
>Sender: ADS-L
>To: ADS-L
>ReplyTo: ADS-L
>Subject: Re: [ADS-L] s---k pot, 1805 (?)
>Sent: Sep 7, 2010 1:19 PM
>
>At 1:04 PM -0400 9/7/10, Ronald Butters wrote:
>>See Johnson's DICTIONARY: "STINKPOT: an artificial composition
>>offensive to the smell"
>>
>>The sense that STINK was thought of as somewhat vulgar is amply
>>attested. One typical example, from the Boy Scouts journal (BOYS'
>>LIFE, October 1920, p13):
>>
>>[father writing to his son, speaking of tho odor of tobacco that the
>>son seems to have acquired]: "Your Ma says stink is vulgar, maybe it
>>is; but it's good plain English and it describes that poison gas you
>>seemed to be carrying around with you, better than any such
>>lady-like word as smell."
>>
>>The expression, "That stinks!" was surely held in even greater
>>disrepute--until "That sucks!" came along in the 1960s and reminded
>>blue-noses of fellatio (though they seem not to have had the same
>>sense of "That sucks wind" and "Don't be a sucker"--probably because
>>they used those expressions themselves in their youth), at which
>>time STINK seems to have ameliorated.
>
>...although "That stinks wind" and "Don't be a stinker" are
>respectively impossible and unrelated to the sucky versions.   (It
>may be true that there's a stinker born every minute, but that's
>surely a different proposition than the one concerning suckers.)
>
>LH
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>
>Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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