eye dialect was RE: nekkid

Wed Mar 16 12:07:17 UTC 2011

Maybe I'm confused here. If Larry is saying that the spelling "cum" first
appeared as a noun, that's very probably correct.

What I was saying was that the verb "come" clearly antedates the noun.
Apparently by centuries.

JL

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 8:40 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 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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