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

[Jonathan Lighter]

This is irrelevant but hilarious.

Some decades ago the New Yorker ran a cartoon set at an eighteenth-century
hanging.

The doomed man was stepping onto the platform with his hands tied behind
him. Instead of  head he had a big round smiley face.

Tricorne-wearing guy in crowd to second T-WGIC with look of
eyebrow-slanted, intense approval:

"Aye, laddie! There's spunk!"

JL

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 11:31 AM, 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: Jazz,               was:RE: [ADS-L] Q: "Earliest written
>              reference to baseball"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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