very minor note on "lady"

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED's 1846 ex., from the underground _Swell's Night Guide_ uses "lady" in
ref. to a prostitute, but the quotation is too brief to indicate whether the
usage is intended to be facetious or merely casual. (I suspect the former.)

Perhaps one diagnostic tool would be the currency of the repartee, "Who was
that lady I saw you with last night?" "That was no lady. That was my wife!"

The initiating question seems to suggest that "lady" is a pretty casual term
of reference, though one might insist on the possibility that it really
means an adult female of refinement. The response seems to imply either that
the female was not to be considered a refined "lady" - or it could suggest
some kind of disconnect between the idea of a normal adult female and the
aberrant creature called a "wife."

Nevertheless, the joke strongly suggests at least one instance of "lady" as
a trivial term for "any woman."

Some early exx.:

1895 _Report of the First Annual Meeting of the Pennsylvania Bar
Association_ (Philadelphia: Penn. Bar Assoc.) 218 [GB: note verified]:
However, you recollect the story of the German who was in court with a lady,
and the judge said to him, "Who is that lady with you?" And the Dutchman
said, "My God, that is no lady, that is my wife!"

1914 _Middletown [N.Y.] Daily Times-Press_ (Oct. 15) 3:  All the "Who was
that lady I seen you with?" "That was no lady, that was my wife" variants,
we thought, had been sprung. But this happened yesterday:

Business Office Attendant - Somebody called you up. I don't know if it was a
lady or your wife.

Editorial Department Employee - It may have been both.

B.O.A. - Nope. There was only the one message.

[Both senses of "lady" seem to be evident here, the casual one ( = "some
unfamiliar woman") in the original statement, the conservative one in the
editorial employee's reply.]

1916 _Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Session of the Iowa Bar
Association_ (Iowa City: Ia. State Bar Assoc.) 158 [GB: not verified]: Fred
Jordan and Lou Egan met one day and Fred says, "Who was that lady you went
walking with?" "Pshaw, that was no lady; that was my wife." I am just an
ordinary plug of a country newspaper man, and what do you think of me
standing before these Supreme Judges and talking to them.

1924 Felix Isman _Weber and Fields_ (N.Y.: Boni & Liveright) [GB: not
verified]: It was about this time, too, that they first sprang upon a
palpitating world a gag now hoary and rheumatic but still in the ring: "Who
is that lady I saw you with last night?" "She ain't no lady; she's my wife."

[Weber and Fields were the best-known dialect comedians of the 1890s. The
reference to "the Dutchman" in 1895 sugg. that the writer was thinking of a
W & F routine. YBQ attributes the phrase to Joseph Weber in "1887," but no
source is given.]

JL


On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 3:05 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: very minor note on "lady"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A brief follow-up from current news.
>
> Late last night, NYT ran the story "The Lady Liberty is a Las Vegas
> Teenager". There are several more follow-ups, including AP's, that
> include "Lady Liberty". But the prize goes to Nick Carbone of Time
> mag:
>
> > Who's That Lady? New Stamp Features Wrong Statue of Liberty
>
> VS-)
>
> On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 5:38 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ...
> > "The lady at the store" (any adult female) sounds absolutely unremarkable
> to
> > me except that, personally, I'd still say "woman."
> > ...
>
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