"unsuck" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

The Vietnam Graffiti Corpus also has the closely related "sux", "blows",
"bites" and "eats".


OED doesn't have "sux".
Canvas # 1574c0126
"Weiland sux"

OED has fellatio sense of "blow" from 1933, and the figurative ("To be
contemptible, tiresome, or disagreeable; = suck v. 15f.") sense from
1960.

Canvas #1574c0014
"The Navy blows"

Canvas # 1574c0072
"Spanky blows"


Canvas # 1574c0173
"New York Blows"

Canvas # 1574c0229
"Kerby Blows"


OED has "bite" in this sense from 9/1975.

Canvas #1574c0204
"Pettiway came by last night to get a little, but no one would give him
any becaue [sic] [he] bites"


General/indefinite use of "eats"; other cites include "eats shit", "eats
pussy", "eats dick", "eats cock".

OED has "to practise fellatio or cunnilingus on (a person)" from 1927;
to "eat shit" from 1930.  The sense below feels slightly different,
somehow -- that which is being eaten is unstated (just as what is being
sucked is often unstated).    It could be scatological or sexual, but is
clearly bad.

Canvas #1574c0013
"Crip eats it raw"


Canvas #1574c0043
"Crip eats it"



> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
Behalf Of
> Ben Zimmer
> Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 9:42 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: "unsuck"
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
----------------------
> -
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "unsuck"
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
> -
>
> On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 10:02 PM, Ronald Butters wrote:
> [quoting my Language Log comment]
> >> In a 2001 article in the journal Dictionaries (PDF available here),
Ron
> >> Butters argued that intransitive suck owes its origin to non-vulgar
> >> transitive uses like "suck wind/rope/eggs." He sees the fellatio
reading
> >> as a later development. But as I noted above, the evidence we now
have
> >> from Vietnam-era graffiti shows that the sexual construal was
prominent
> >> even in the mid- to late '60s =97 the fact that young draftees were
> >> scribbling both "The Army sucks" and "The Army sucks dick" (and
> >> variations thereof) undercuts the idea that the vulgarity was a
> >> post-facto reinterpretation.
> >
> > Well, Ben, granted that people in Viet Nam wrote both "The Army
sucks"
> > and "The army sucks dick." But LONG before that, people were already
> > saying, "The N sucks wind/rope/eggs." Isn't the usual rule of thumb
that
> > the earliest form is the original one? So why do you give priority
to
> > your dick?
>
> I don't discount the various non-vulgar transitives as contributing
> factors to the "X sucks" formation. I also don't discount the
> non-vulgar intransitive "stink" as a significant forerunner. I do,
> however, take issue with the idea that the sexual reading of "X sucks"
> was a construal overlaid after the fact by parents and others anxious
> about possible vulgarity. Thanks to the Vietnam Graffiti Project, we
> now have sufficient evidence that even in the mid- to late '60s,
> intransitive "suck" and transitive "suck dick (etc.)" were equally
> available as pejoratives, applied to both human and non-human
> subjects.
>
> For the paper I presented at last year's ICHLL conference in Oxford
> ("Graffiti Scrawls and Hip-Hop Calls: Coming to Grips with
> Non-Traditional Sources for Historical Lexicography"), I surveyed all
> 159 examples of "suck" in the VGP corpus. "Suck" takes a vulgar object
> in 44 cases (usually some variation on "dick/cock," but also "ass" and
> "shit" -- needless to say, no "wind/rope/eggs" in the mix). Vulgar
> objects most often occur with human subjects, but there are a number
> of non-human exx: subjects as diverse as "the Army," "ship travel,"
> and "Cleveland, Ohio" could all be said to "suck dick." For this early
> group of users, then, no clear dividing line could be drawn between
> vulgar transitivity and non-vulgar intransitivity, since the two forms
> alternated freely with a variety of subjects.
>
> At least that's how I see it.
>
> --bgz
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org