"fish" (was Re: "moist")

[Ron Butters]

As far as I know, humans of different races and nationalities do not smell different one from another. However, the genitals of women are said to smell like fish under certain conditions, and men are thought to be exempt from this peculiarity. There seems to be ample lexicographical evidence to support the hypothesis that men have complained about this through the ages, and they may have done so to a greater extent in eras wherein personal hygene was less perfect (and wherein what would be thought of today as mysogeny and crude reference to bodily functions was more acceptable). Although the hypothesis that "fish" = "woman" based on olfactory reemblances has a male/female explanation, that does not make it "neofreudian"; what is pattly neofredian is to assume that any hypthesis that distinguishes men from women must be based on sex and Freudian concepts. I can't think of a slang term gor codgers that is base on the putative urine smell of old people, but if there were one (t!
 here perhaps isnt only because  piss doesn't smell like anything but piss), I woudn't think of it as neoFreudian.

I agree with John that the hypothesis is just a hypothesis, but I haven't seen a better one. John hasn't proposed one. And John knows full well that there is rarely a single person who begins slang terms. Particularly when there is some likely iconic motivation, things may get reinvented over and over.

Sent from my Droid Charge on Verizon 4GLTE

------Original Message------
From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Date: Tuesday, November 8, 2011 12:16:50 PM GMT-0500
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] "fish" (was Re: "moist")

"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"?)
>>
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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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