"spend a penny" -- the TLS is at it again.

[Laurence Horn]

On Oct 7, 2011, at 12:42 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> Precisely.
>
> If it's real and  - and even I have to admit it seems so - and refers to,
> er, Number Two (as it seems to) I can only hark back to my Freudian ref. of
> last week.
>
> Everything you want to know (and, of course, more) is here:
>
> http://www.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/feces
>
> JL

Ah, reminds me of the good old days when I was studying with Norman O. Brown, who turned everything into shit (in a scholarly and world-historical way).  The highlight of his _Life Against Death_, a classic treatise on psychoanalysis-cum-history, is the chapter "Studies in Anality", which vigorously plumbs the depths of "filthy lucre", touching on Luther's insights on the privy, the dark (brown) side of the Protestant ethic, and everything else.  In his courses, e.g. Ovid's "Metamorphoses", we students were responsible for the Latin and he was responsible for the interpretation, which invariably ranged into, well, you can guess what.  But in a very archetypal way, leaning on Stith-Thompson's Folk Motif Index.  Those were the days, my friends!

LH

>
> On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 2:26 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> Subject:      Re: "spend a penny" -- the TLS is at it again.
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> At 10/6/2011 01:52 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>> And to you too, Joel.
>>>
>>> As special bonus, the phrase seems to have nothing to do with pay toilets.
>>>
>>> ...unless...
>>
>> So, do we have any idea where the penny comes from?
>>
>> Also, I do wonder whether the context of laxatives suggests
>> "defecate" as the 1742 meaning rather than "urinate".
>>
>>> But who could be that skeptical of a two-hundred-year antedating?
>>
>> Only Jon, who's skeptical of a 15- to 40- year antedating of
>> "African-American".  :-)
>>
>> Joel
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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