eye dialect was RE: nekkid

[Jonathan Lighter]

Unless my sources have misled me seriously, English "cum" didn't
become iconic till the 1980s.

"Kum" is far newer - and better because it allows for the continued teaching
of Latin in our schools without constant distraction. And discipline.

JL

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 12:26 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: eye dialect was RE: nekkid
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 2:38 PM +0000 3/15/11, Charles C Doyle wrote:
> >Similarly with the proud University of Georgia "Dawgs" ('bulldogs').
> >
> >Not just "kum" but "cum" for 'male ejaculate' must have originated
> >as eye-dialect--and "cum" has become almost the accepted
> >"scientific" term!
>
> There is also the homonymy avoidance motivation at work.  Do we know
> if "cum" began as a noun or a verb? Neither is in Farmer & Henley,
> and I don't have JL's cumpendium on me at the moment and the OED just
> has the Latin preposition.  The orthographic distinction does appear
> to be here to stay--I'm surprised no one has registered .cum as a
> domain suffix for porn sites.
>
> >There's a folk belief (at least) that in the South "misspellings"
> >with "K" used to signal commercial concerns that were sympathetic to
> >the Ku Klux Klan (n.b. the spelling "Klan").  E.g. "Krispy Kreme."
> >I doubt if that's true any longer.
> >
>
> And then, from the other side of the ideological continuum, there is
> (or at least was) "Amerika".  Not to mention "AmeriKKKa".
>
> LH
>
> >________________________________________
> >From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
> >James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com> [JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM]
> >Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2011 10:02 AM
> >
> >
> >The sports section of the Philadelphia Inquirer is fond of referring
> >to the Philadelphia Eagles football team as the "Iggles".  This is
> >not done to sneer at the literacy of local football fans but rather
> >to give a feeling of "yes, we're local" to the readers.
> >
> >If you ever see in print male ejaculate referred to as "kum", you
> >can be sure you are reading a low-brow girlie magazine.
> >
> >Perhaps not really eye dialect, but advertisers sometimes
> >deliberately use phonetic spellings as eye-catchers, e.g. "Ken-l
> >Ration".  "LUV" was used by at least two different firms, one for a
> >brand of disposable diapers and one for an infant's car seat.
> >
> >Occasionally such a deliberate misspelling will catch on.
> >Specifically "lite" was originally used (to the best of my
> >recollection) as a come-on for somebody's sugar-free soft drink but
> >has caught on to mean any diet drink, or more generally a diet food,
> >and even by extension something with less than the normal
> >caloric/intellectual/whatever load, e.g. sneering at someone's
> >publication as "American Speech lite".
> >
> >    - James A. Landau
> >
> >PS:  I received a "Nigerian" e-mail (actually it was from Russia)
> >soliciting me for a "mutual preposition".
> >
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