"fish" (was Re: "moist")

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Pat" because confidently advanced on the basis of inutuition alone,
"neo-Freudian" because stemming from a time when simple, sex-related
explanations were held to account for just about everything, up to and
including the nuclear arms race and the desire to land a man on the
moon.

Is there a shred of evidence, aside from the occasional post facto
assertion by people who don't know the coiner(s),  that "fish" alludes
to a generically bad smell? And if everybody is equally smelly, why
should "fish" come to designate a woman specifically?

JL

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 9:54 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: "fish" (was Re: "moist")
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I may be misremembering, but I recall someone alluding to a Japanese pejorative referring to Westerners as essentially 'those that smell of meat (-breath)'.
>
> LH
>
> On Nov 8, 2011, at 9:48 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>
>> Whom are you calling bacon-breath?
>>
>>    VS-)
>>
>> On 11/8/2011 9:27 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>> Or, from the venerable HDAS, "fish-eater" for 'Roman Catholic'. (Were
>>> Jews ever known as "pork-noneaters"?)
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org