very minor note on "lady"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Since the 1825 female was "well-dressed" and had a "servant," the tradesman
was attempting to be polite by addressing her as "auntie" (as he probably
was doing in referring to the other woman as a "lady").

Thus, "auntie," as directed by whites toward older black women, seems to
have originated as a neutral, even affable, usage. (I almost said "polite,"
but let's not get carried away.)

It seems to have gone in the same downward direction as "lady" - just
farther and faster. (Presumably the same was true of the parallel "uncle.")

Moral: Never be polite. It will only confuse people in the future.

JL


On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 7:50 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: very minor note on "lady"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 6:41 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > aunty
>
> This form of address later came to be regarded as insulting, when
> addressed by a white person to a (usually-elder) black
> woman/female/lady/chick. Back in the day, EBONY made a big to-do about
> the following riposte, purportedly made by the sainted African-Scot,
> Mary McLead Bethune.
>
> White bus-driver:
> "All aboard, aunty!"
> MMcLB:
> "And which one of my nephews are you?"
>
> That was a stunning public display of uppitiness for its day, to the
> extent that a lot of black people regarded the story as apocryphal,
> given that MMcLB had lived to tell it.
>
> --
> -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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>  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