very minor note on "lady"

[Jonathan Lighter]

That's no lady! That's...!

But seriously, OEDS needs that quote badly.

JL

On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 4:17 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: very minor note on "lady"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>        ***  Yesterday morning a well dressed female with her servant behind
> her, stepping up to a huckster in Washington Market enquired whether she had
> "any peaches proper for sweetmeats?"  "No, aunty, but I guess you may get
> some of that there lady with a pipe in her mouth, what sits opposite, and
> sells them savoy cabbages and blue nose potatoes."
> New-York Evening Post, October ???, 1825, p. 2, col. ?  (mid or late
> October)
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.  Working on a new edition, though.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> Date: Thursday, April 14, 2011 4:46 pm
> Subject: very minor note on "lady"
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> > This information is probably available elsewhere, but it seems worth
> > mentioning. It will seem trivial to some.
> >
> > OED finds it very difficult - understandably - to discriminate between
> > printed exx. of the bland _lady_ 'woman' and the earlier, more dignified
> > usage.
> >
> > When I was a lad in NYC in the 1950s "lady" and "woman" were generally
> > interchangeable (except, of course,
> > in those special situations when one might say something like, "a perfect
> > lady" or "very ladylike," etc.). A girl could grow up to be either a
> "lady"
> > or a "woman": in that context the words were nearly as synonymous as
> "gorse"
> > and "furze." Outside of direct address, my impression is that actual
> adults
> > were far more likely to say "woman" than "lady," but young
> > whippersnappers said both (outside of direct address) with more or less
> > equal frequency.
> >
> > However, when I arrived in Knoxville in 1974, I was amazed at how
> *rarely*
> > undergraduates used the word "woman," either in speech or in writing.
> > It was
> > very noticeable. Every adult female was by default a "lady," in
> distinctive
> > and complementary counterbalance to a "man" (except when specifically
> > complementary to a "gentleman"). (Cf., e.g., "lunch lady"; "men and
> ladies"
> > was not an infrequent collocation; I'm tempted to suggest that the frozen
> > phrase "men and women" was almost the *only* time the word "woman" was
> > ever
> > used, but that's probably an exaggeration). I also soon noticed that even
> > people well over 30 and 40 (back then) tended to replace "woman" with
> > "lady."
> >
> > I suppose I may be overlooking some subtleties in both locales, but the
> > point is generally valid.
> >
> > And the point of this note is that there are obvious, occasionally even
> > jarring, semantic features whose slow development and spread simply
> > resist adequate documentation.  That is certainly exemplified in OED's
> > treatment of "lady."
> >
> > JL
> >
> > "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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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