"this sucks" (and more)

[Baker, John]

        Eighteenth century readers presumably had no problem with the
long s, but modern OCR software does.  It can make older text searches
difficult.  There is an old proverb that states, IIRC, "Who never loved
a woman, sucked a sow."  Misreading the long s makes the concept even
more striking.

        Since bees do it high up in the air, I would think that members
of the Mile High Club would consider Jon's version of the quote as a
possible motto.


John Baker



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Jonathan Lighter
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 11:28 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "this sucks" (and more)

You mean people would still be shocked by, "Where the bee fucks, there
fuck
I?"

Sounds so rural.  And it makes plainer sense than the original. But
possibly
really painful and self-defeating if you stop to think.

Also, not only must they have had been much less giggly minds in the
18th
C., they could tell the difference by the long ess's lack of the little
stroke in the middle of the eff.

In the Inglish future, when there are no capital letters, they'll wonder
how
we could tell the diff between capital G and capital C. Or between Q and
O.


JL
On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 9:46 AM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "this sucks" (and more)
>
>
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>
> A fairly well-known academic legend tells of a professor who belatedly
> (and, it now seems, archaically) asks a secretary to type and
duplicate a
> poem for use as a handout to accompany his lecture, and he gives her
an old
> facsimile text (in some versions of the legend, of Donne's "The Good
> Morrow"; in others, of Shakespeare's song "Where the bee sucks, there
suck
> I").  The secretary, unfamiliar with the "long s," mistakes the word
"suck"
> for "fuck" (or should I say substitutes "suck" with "fuck"?), so that
the
> blindly-distributed handout shockingly reads "fuck."
>
> --Charlie
>
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
David
> A. Daniel [dad at POKERWIZ.COM]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 9:16 AM
>
> Hmmm. I wonder how they told the difference... ;)
> DAD
>
>
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----
> ---
>
> Actually, if you use 18th century typography, fuck and suck are *less*
than
> one letter apart.
>
> JL
>

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