"unsuck"

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:59 AM -0500 4/21/11, Michael Newman wrote:
>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.
>

Is there something more definitive on the former
than the OED's "origin uncertain" + the
diffidently advanced suggestion that _bæddel_
'hermaphrodite, effeminate man' may be involved?
I'm not doubting the general pattern (exemplified
inter alia by the import of "fuck you" or the
deprecatory use of "cocksucker"), I'm just asking
about "bad" per se.

LH

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