Modern Sense of "Stalk," v.

[Wilson Gray]

"The Bean Stalks Again"

Billy Byers & His Orch., feat. Coleman Hawkins, ten. sax.

released Bluebird, Jul 1956


O've long assumed that this was a pun. Instead of there being simply
beanstalks, the beans themselves had become animate and were literally
stalking.

Youneverknow,

Of course, everybody knows that

The Lone Ranger rides again!

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain


On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 9:20 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Modern Sense of "Stalk," v.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I wonder whether tracking the use of "stalker" might help pin down the rise of the modern use. Â Euell Gibbons could recommend stalking the wild asparagus in 1970 or so, but that didn't make him a stalker.
>
> LH
>
> On Dec 19, 2011, at 8:53 PM, Garson O'Toole wrote:
>
>> Stalk is being extended in a natural way, I think. Here are examples
>> in 1913 and 1922 that seem to be moving close to the modern meaning.
>>
>> Cite: 1913, The Crimson Cross, Charles Edmonds Walk, Millard Lynch
>> Page 255-256, A.C. McClurg & Co. (Google Books full view)
>>
>> http://books.google.com/books?id=44AeAAAAMAAJ&q=implacable#v=snippet&
>>
>> [Begin excerpt]
>> Of late I have been seeing his shadowed visage everywhere. He is
>> stalking me close, the grim silent old chap sure servant of as cruel
>> and implacable a foe as ever hounded a man to his grave; a foe who has
>> marked me for his own, even as all of his enemies before me were
>> marked - God alone knows how many. One thing I do know, however, -
>> none ever escaped him. Each one fell before his devilish power, and it
>> has been hammered home to me that my time is near at hand.
>> [End excerpt]
>>
>> Cite: 1921, Letters to Isabel by Lord Shaw of Dumerfermline, Page 119,
>> Cassell and Company, London. (Google Books full view)
>>
>> http://books.google.com/books?id=MZcxAQAAIAAJ&q=stalking#v=snippet&
>>
>> [Begin excerpt]
>> It turned out that Morley had been keeping his eye upon, and in fact
>> stalking me. Greater prominence had, you see, been given to my
>> becoming Solicitor General, because the Unionists, although I had
>> entered the House only about eighteen months, before and stood on the
>> same ticket, blundered badly in contesting the seat. A fluent English
>> barrister was found to oppose me, and he was handsomely beaten after a
>> rattling contest. The majority was nearly doubled and the Burghs came
>> to be looked upon as a Radical stronghold.
>> [End excerpt]
>>
>> The "eighteen months" mentioned may not fit the OED notion of
>> "extended period of time".
>>
>> I've only read small sections of these works do I do not know the
>> larger context.
>>
>> Garson
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 8:18 PM, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:
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>>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
>>> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Modern Sense of "Stalk," v.
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 12:26:56AM +0000, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The OED's earliest citation for "stalk," in the sense "To harass or
>>>> persecute (a person, esp. a public figure) with unwanted, obsessive,
>>>> and usually threatening attention over an extended period of time," is
>>>> dated 1981. A correspondent of Harvard Magazine, in the current issue,
>>>> quotes John le Carre's 1968 novel A Small Town in Germany: "He would
>>>> never do such a thing. It was not in his nature. ... He assured me
>>>> categorically that he was not ... stalking me."
>>>>
>>>> Jesse, does the OED have any earlier evidence for this sense? Can
>>>> anyone else produce pre-1968 citations?
>>>
>>> We don't have anything earlier than what's in the published entry. I'd
>>> welcome any evidence....
>>>
>>> Jesse Sheidlower
>>> OED
>>>
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