green weenie

[Jonathan Lighter]

Thanks, Wilson. You saved me the trouble of saying, "See HDAS II."  Earliest
ex.: 1944. Unfortunately it didn't occur to me to make explicit the synonymy
with "the shaft."

I saw the Simpson clip too, and my feeling is that he was using the "green
weenie"
as a synonym for the "the finger," which, when not literal, is more of an
attitude than the "green weenie," which is usu. some kind of overt action.

A bit earlier in the discussion he'd said, essentially, that attempts to
save the nation by cutting back discretionary spending were like "a
sparrow-belch in a thunderstorm."

Am familiar with "sparrow-fart" [sic] only in the Brit-Aussie (or is "Ozzie"
the only PC spelling now?) phr., "at sparrow-fart," i.e., at dawn.

GB reveals a couple of current authors ameliorating that to "sparrow's
peep," but to h---
with 'em.

JL
On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 8:04 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: green weenie
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> When I was in the Army in the late '50'-'60's, the "green weenie" was
> the military, imagined as a penis clad in Army-green whose purpose it
> was to "fuck," so to speak, the ordinary enlisted personnel doing
> their best merely to follow orders. That is to say, it was the
> military version of the civilian _shaft_, "get the green weenie" being
> the exact equivalent of "get the shaft."
>
> There was no accompanying gesture.
>
> --
> -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 Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 1:59 PM, Clai Rice <cxr1086 at louisiana.edu> wrote:
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> > Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster: Â  Â  Â  Clai Rice <cxr1086 at LOUISIANA.EDU>
> > Subject: Â  Â  Â green weenie
>  >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Heard on CNN this morning, Alan Simpson talking to Candy Crowley about
> the budget deficit on her show "State of the Union," near the 50th minute of
> the hour:
> >
> > "and anybody giving you anything different than that, you wanta walk out
> the door, stick your finger down your throat and give 'em a - the green
> weenie." [gesture: right thumb straight up moving upward, fist closed, like
> a 'thumb's up' sign, starting with 'and give' and carrying through the pause
> before "the green weenie"].
> >
> > From our archives, 'Green Weenie' seems to be a Philly thing, though I
> don't find any particular finger/thumb gesture associated, nor the notion of
> barfing or gagging. Any ideas on what Simpson thinks a green weenie is?
> >
> > Clai Rice
> >
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> >
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