"gink"?

[Jonathan Lighter]

If I know my F & H, there's an _excellent_ chance that "gink," 'female
pudendum,'  is either an error or a repetition of somebody else's error.

But if we want to get conjectural, what the hell is the origin of U.S.
"ginch" ('sexually attractive or available young woman/women')? Big in the
'50s, IIRC.

OED dates it to '34, which just beats HDAS. But it's probably older than
that:

1926-27 _The Gargoyle_ (U. of Wis. Law School) XX [GB snippet: language and
typeface consistent with date]: That girl is _some_ ginch!

1936 Vincent McHugh _Caleb Catlum's America_ (N.Y.: Stackpole) 66: Fancy le
Boeuf, the prettiest little ginch you could hope to see, all frills and
furbelows.

JL

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 3:13 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: "gink"?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Aug 31, 2011, at 3:01 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 1:16 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
> >> ... it's the female pudendum _of which_ the squire and miller are eased
> by the besom maker.
> >
> > "by which"? "with which"?
> >
> Touché.  ;-)
>
> LH
>
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