"unsuck"

[Michael Newman]

As a teenager, I never doubted what would be sucked and that would have been back in the late 60s, early 70s. I thus wasn't surprised at all by expressions like, "Nixon sucks but Agnew swallows" and the like.

Doesn't this constitute a pattern? After all, what I understand to be the ultimate Old English etymology of "bad" and the current usage of "gay," as in "so gay" and "fake and gay" seem to have followed a similar path.




Michael Newman
Associate Professor of Linguistics
Queens College/CUNY
michael.newman at qc.cuny.edu



On Apr 21, 2011, at 10:12 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "unsuck"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 4/21/2011 09:34 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>> How many believed the phrase was nonsexual when they first heard it?
>
> Me.
>
>> Very few, I would guess, unless they were sexually unsophisticated
>> at the time.
>
> Me.  :-)
>
> But seriously, I still take "it sucks" as nonsexual, albeit vulgar --
> "it (worse than) stinks".  Although I do not disclaim having
> recognized the sexual association and possible origin.  And is
> "1971    T. Mayer Weary Falcon 156   This fucking operation eats shit
> . It sucks." (the earliest I see in the OED for "it sucks") sexual,
> or "merely" scatological?
>
> Joel
>
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