_Hardleg_, UD 2006:

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:04 AM -0400 6/22/11, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Wilson's sense is in HDAS, from 1946 [!].

More specifically, 'any man or boy, esp. if tough'. Along with a
second one for 'an ugly or debauched woman; a hardened prostitute'.
Two Black English lexicons are cited that converge on the disjunction
'any man or an ugly woman'.

Curious.


>The UD's isn't.

Well, if the assumption is that a male person is invariably talking
about sex...

LH

>
>
>JL
>
>On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 9:53 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:      _Hardleg_, UD 2006:
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  "A person, usually male, that is always talking about sex."
>>
>>
>>  Saint Louis ca. 1946-
>>
>>  A person, always male. I.e., _hardleg_ was the equivalent of _guy,
>>  cat, bloke, stud, dude_ or any other word for a random male, except
>>  that it was restricted in scope of reference to "The person spoken
>>  of," as the grammatical third person was defined, when I was in the
>>  fourth grade.
>>
>>  --
>>  -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
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
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