Jazz, was:RE: [ADS-L] Q: "Earliest written reference to baseball"

[Charles C Doyle]

And then there are the 'fart' terms that refer to 'energy' or 'high-spiritedness'--like "feisty" and "full of beans."  What Thomas Pyles in 1949 called "innocuous linguistic indecorum."

--Charlie

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Laurence Horn [laurence.horn at YALE.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 11:31 AM

At 10:16 AM -0400 3/16/11, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>My tentative belief for decades has been that it is a form of _jasm_,
>which is attested for decades before 1912.
>
>It meant both both "energy" and "seminal fluid." Presumably "energy" came
>first.

as it were

>(Cf. the similar development of  - mainly British - _spunk_.)
>
>JL

I've long suspected, although without checking with a native speaker,
that innocent "spunk", as in "He's got a lot of spunk", is
taboo-avoided in British English, while it barely raises an eyebrow
on this side of the pond.

LH, who just encountered another innocent "I'll knock you up" offer
in Dorothy L. Sayers

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