_Raunch[ing]_ "drink[ing]"

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Tue Mar 29 23:04:48 UTC 2011


For some reason "raunchy" became part of the core vocabulary of the Army Air
Corps (at least at Randolph Field, Texas) in the 1930s. The usual sense was
"messy; dirty; filthy; slipshod." From "dirty; filthy," evidently, came the
now usu. sense of "smutty; pornographic." [Cf. the development of "smutty"
itself.]

The prior history of _raunchy_ is unknown. WWII seems to have popularized it
everywhere.

Thoughts?

JL

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 6:46 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: _Raunch[ing]_ "drink[ing]"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 6:16 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 1942 Nelson Algren _Never Come Morning_ (rpt. N.Y.: Signet, 1969) 43: Us
> > hoods don't do nothin' but shoot dice an' raunch broads.
> >
> > 1968 _Playboy_ (Aug.) 78: Some of those sexually explicit "adult movies"
> > where people go raunching around in theie whole skins.
> >
>
> Right. Those et sim. are the meanings that I'm familiar with. Well,
> I'm also familiar with "raunchy" and pretty much synonymous with
> "funky" in the BE sense of "having foul, unpleasant odor."
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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