Who knew?! ;-)

[Jonathan Lighter]

The precise semantic analysis, then and now, may be to some extent up for
grabs (no pun intended).

But it may be significant that the current "my/your/his/her/?its ass" is
virtually unattested before the first slackening of publishing taboos
ca1930.

Of course, we do have one Civil War-era "fucked up" and a couple of late
19th C. "motherfuckings" compared to which the relevant use of "ass" would
seem almost boringly inevitable, even for that era.  In certain circles.

JL

 On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 6:47 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Who knew?! ;-)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 4:27 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I was thinking of "(one's) ass" as a general intensifier, e.g., "Tell him
> to
> > get his ass out of there." Â The 1821 ex. in HDAS reads: "Major
> Gram...swore
> > he would not budge an inch to save his _****_."
> >
>
> Personally, I'm going to go with _life_. If that's not an obscene,
> four-letter, Anglo-saxon word, then I have no idea what is!
>
> But, more seriously, WRT to a string like, e.g.
>
> "Can you truly suppose that I have nothing better to do than to pick
> up after/behind your arse?"
>
> There is, in general, *not* a one-to-one and onto semantic mapping from
> that to,
>
> "Can you truly suppose that I have nothing better to do than to pick
> up after/behind you?"
>
> Who knew?
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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>



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