"fish" (was Re: "moist")

[Jonathan Lighter]

>  Green has the sexual thread beginning with the sense 'the vagina' (from 1546), presumably from the odor; on to the metonymical 'a woman' (from 1595 -- Shakespeare); the US gay usage 'a heterosexual woman, sometimes derog.' (from 1923).

It's a long way with so little documentation from 1546, via a
Shakespearean poetic metaphor in 1595, to the sense of a heterosexual
woman in 1923.

Just saying.

If, moreover, modern gay usage alludes to an odor, it would be the
only ex. I can think of in all of American slang in which a type of
person is designated by an assumed accompanying stink.

HDAS has its first printed "fresh fish" from 1871, though first-person
memoirs of the Civil War leave no reasonable doubt that it was in use
during that conflict, particularly since HDAS also offers 1864 exx. in
a prison context. (These are especially interesting because they
allude to the Andersonvile, Georgia, military prison.)

The first fairly clear colloquial, stand-alone ex. of the general
sense "a foolish or inexperienced person" appears only in 1876.

Farmer & Henley significantly list "fish-market" as "a brothel" in
Britain in 1890-91.  They also list "fish" for vagina, but appear to
restrict it to phrases like "a bit of fish" (cf. "meat market" and
"piece of meat," neither of which have anything to do with odors.)

HDAS's 1923 from an AAVE song quoted by J. Frank Dobie on Texas prob.
should be in brackets as a "poetic" figure. But the 1939, also from a
black author, specifically refers to prostitutes.

The first gay ex., as "a heterosexual woman," is not till 1949.

Could someone post the relevant early cites from Green? OED does not
include the senses in question.

JL

On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 10:35 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      "fish" (was Re: "moist")
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Nov 6, 2011, at 11:01 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 9:01 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>> Pejoratively, women are "fish"
>>
>> As are newcomers to prison, whether male or female. as more likely to
>> become victims victims of intrasexual prison rape than
>> more-experienced inmates.
>
> as others have pointed out, there are two separate threads of uses here.
>
> one thread is _fish_ 'person' (as OED2 has it), seen in "queer fish" (1751), "odd fish" (compare _duck_ in similar expressions), "poor fish" (from OED2), "big fish", "little fish", "cool fish", "cold fish" and more (from Green's Dictionary).  OED2 has "fresh fish" for 'newcomer' from 1871 (in a prison context).
>
> Green has _fish_ 'an individual, usu. male and often disliked' from 1860, qualified by descriptive adjectives like _cool_, _strange_, etc. from 1857.  _fish_ (presumably for "fresh fish") 'novice' is in Green first as  '(US) any form of novice or fool, esp. a gullible innocent' (with British cites from 1592 depending on the figure of drawing fish to bait); then '(US campus) a freshman' from 1898; and '(Can./US prison) a new inmate' from 1912.  Green also has "new fish" 'a new inmate' from 1912, and earlier "fresh fish" 'a new inmate in a prison' from 1859.
>
> Green has the sexual thread beginning with the sense 'the vagina' (from 1546), presumably from the odor; on to the metonymical 'a woman' (from 1595 -- Shakespeare); the US gay usage 'a heterosexual woman, sometimes derog.' (from 1923); the unsurprising development from 'woman' to 'prostitute, promiscuous woman' (from 1939); and from 'woman' to 'effeminate male homosexual' (also unsurprising), in US gay usage from 1932.  (the sexual senses don't seem to be in OED2.)
>
> Green has one cite for "fresh fish" 'a new young prostitute' (a.1940), which combines the two threads.
>
> arnold
>
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