bellybutton

[Charles C Doyle]

Somehow, Larry's comment on the possible gender specificity of the noun "blond(e)" reminded me of an old joke about Ken, the boyfriend of Barbee; it culminates in the punchline "Because he was a blond too."

Then, in reference to a detail featured in the joke, I contemplated the fact that students in recent years (ones in my folkore classes commonly report the joke) seem not ever to use the anatomical term "navel" (much less "umbilicus"); their only term for that feature is "bellybutton"--which I had always taken to be a jocular nursery term, not altogether seemly in adult discourse.

HDAS cites the term in the "fourth" edition of Bartlett's _Dictionary of Americanisms_, 1877.  OED, in turn, cites HDAS and the date 1877, adding two British examples, 1934 and 1946.

A character named "Mrs. Bellybutton" appeared in 1847 in H. N. Moore's _Fitzgerald and Hopkins; or, Scenes and Adventures in Theatrical Life_ (Philadelphia:  G. Sherman).  Could there be some other (non-anatomical) allusion in her name?

For what it's pedantically worth:  I believe the so-called fourth edition of Bartlett's _Dictionary of Americanisms_ (1877) is, technically speaking, the third edition.  The 1860 edition, designated on the title page as the third, is actually just a reprint of the 1859 (second) edition (another reprint appeared in 1869).

--Charlie

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Laurence Horn [laurence.horn at YALE.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 1:20 PM

While that "coed" *as a noun* has this restricted meaning, "coed" as
an adjective ("coed dorms", "coed college", "coed toilet", "coed
showers", "coed (naked) volleyball", etc., just designates
mixed-sex/unisex.  This is part of the general conspiracy involving
nouns vs. non-nouns as described by Bolinger, Wierzbicka and others
and discussed on the list in earlier threads.  A parallel, although
less dramatic, contrast is "blond(e)" as a unisex adjective vs.
"blonde" as a <+fem> noun (a man is less likely to be described as "a
blond").

LH

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