ho = 'eager or gullible enthusiast, usu. female (for); "sucker" (for).'

[Jonathan Lighter]

And that Santa.  So judgmental.

JL

On Sat, Apr 23, 2011 at 5:13 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: ho = 'eager or gullible enthusiast,               usu.
> female
>              (for); "sucker" (for).'
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 5:04 PM -0400 4/23/11, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >Melville used "Land ho."
> >
> >JL
>
> And then there was John Wayne, a notorious westward ho.
>
> LH
>
> >
> >On Sat, Apr 23, 2011 at 3:59 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu
> >wrote:
> >
> >>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >>  -----------------------
> >>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >>  Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> >>  Subject:      Re: ho = 'eager or gullible enthusiast,
> usu.
> >>  female
> >>               (for); "sucker" (for).'
> >>
> >>
>
> >>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >>  At 11:23 AM -0400 4/23/11, Ben Zimmer wrote:
> >>  >On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 11:20 AM, Jonathan Lighter
> >>  ><wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>  >>
> >>  >>  2011  http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/153089481 : First I
> should
> >>  >>  mention that I am a "ho" for "Letters" compendia. That being said,
> TE
> >>  >>  [Lawrence] was a really fascinating dude.
> >>  >
> >>  >Isn't this just a variation of the "X whore" snowclonelet, glossed by
> >>  >Arnold Zwicky as 'one who craves X (or something to do with X)
> >>  >extravagantly'?
> >>  >
> >>  >http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/x-whore/
> >>  >
> >>  >--bgz
> >>
> >>  With some possibility of confusion, since a "man whore" is apparently
> >>  the masculine form of "whore", although "whore" has itself arguably
> >>  achieved sex-neutrality; the hits for "he's a whore" outnumber those
> >>  for "she's a whore", and that's with all the references to the 17th
> >>  century play _'Tis pity she's a whore_.  But still, while there are a
> >>  lot of ghits for "man whores" there don't seem to be many for "woman
> >>  whores" or "female whores".  Intriguingly there's this from
> >>  urbandictionary:
> >>
> >>  _woman whore_:
> >>  A woman who sleeps around a lot, but she does it in the manner that a
> >>  man whore would, i.e. she is the one in control, and the men she is
> >>  sleeping with are the ones being used.
> >>
> >>  In any case, the "man" and "woman" in these constructions are agents
> >>  in the compounds and not goals (as with "crack whore", "cock whore",
> >>  "media whore", or the others in Arnold's blog post.  There's also
> >>  "man ho", which is amply attested--and not just for a village in
> >>  Bhamo Township in Bhamo District in the Kachin State of north-eastern
> >>  Burma, but for Justin Timberlake, Tiger Woods, and similar strivers
> >>  for this status.
> >>
> >>  LH
> >>
> >>  ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>  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."
> >
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>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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