eye dialect was RE: nekkid

Wed Mar 16 00:40:42 UTC 2011

At 1:01 PM -0400 3/15/11, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>I must be getting, um, old because I've never seen or heard "comed/ cummed."
>
>The verb certainly antedates the noun. See HDAS.

I did, now that I can, but I'm not convinced on the point at issue.
There's no evidence at the "come" entry ("cum" just directs us to
"come") that the verb realized as "cum" antedates the noun realized
as "cum".  Indeed, all the cites for the verb [k^m] are spelled
"come", while several of the noun cites are indeed "cum", including
evocative WW2 military slang cites you include for 'mayonnaise, salad
dressing'.  (Probably promoted by the powerful oil-and-vinegar lobby.)

LH, noticing a new-to-me use of "come" as a derived transitive
(causative) verb (HDAS s.v. "come", v., 1(c): 'to induce orgasm in',
with the 1973 cite "Wail, I comed that little old gal, then I crawled
off." I'd have thought "brought (off)" would have gone down better in
that context.)

>The, um, underlying idea
>appears to be to "arrive to one's purpose," OED 4a and related defs. (Cf.
>also, ahistorically, def. 16.)
>
>JL
>On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 12:44 PM, <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       ronbutters at AOL.COM
>>  Subject:      Re: eye dialect was RE: nekkid
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  Magna cum laude will continue to get puerile snickers for a long time to
>>  come.
>>
>>  Sent from my iPad
>>
>>  On Mar 15, 2011, at 12:17 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>>  wrote:
>>
>>  > 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:
>>  >
>>  >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  >> -----------------------
>>  >> 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".
>>  >>>
>>  >>> _____________________________________________________________
>>  >>> Netscape.  Just the Net You Need.
>>  >>>
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>>  >
>>  >
>>  >
>>  > --
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>>  truth."
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>
>
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