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

Sat Oct 8 16:12:36 UTC 2011

[Comments interspersed.]

At 10/7/2011 05:28 PM, George Thompson wrote:
>I wrote to JB:
>
>"I've found the passage in Humphry Clinker Ms Legg aka Jennings must have
>had in mind:
>
>. . . mistress said, if I didn't go [to the spa at Bath], I should take a
>dose of bum-taffy; and so remembring how it worked Mrs. Gwyllim a pennorth,
>I chose rather to go again with her. . . ."
>
>The letter from Winifred Jenkins to Mrs. Mary Jones, April 26; or p. 42 in
>T. R. Preston's edition, U Georgia Pr., 1990
>
>I am still reading the book, evenings, (and enjoying it), so it's possible I
>will come upon another passage that fits even better.
>
>
>But as for this quotation:
>
>My reading of the Clinker passage is:
>
>. . . mistress said if I didn't go to the spa and drink the water again, she
>would make me take a laxative; and remembering how the laxative had worked
>on Mrs. Gwyllim. . . .
>
>In short, it has nothing to do with having to spend a coin to use the loo at
>the baths, and has nothing to do with the modern expression.

Did the "pennorth" ("penny worth") transform later into "spend a
penny"?  (Even though there may be no semantic connection.)

>I don't see "bum-taffy" in the OED, nor in JL's HDAS, nor in Jonathon
>Green's new dictionary of slang, and I don't see anything in JG's dictionary
>under "taffy" that would explain how this would mean a laxative or a
>medicine.

Looking in GBooks for "bum-taffy", it seems that Language Quarterly,
Vol. 2, Issue 1 (allegedly 1963), thought Smollet coined it.  And
it's in Farmer's Slang and its Analogues (allegedly 1902), vol. 5, p.
169.  But there are zero results for "bum-taffy" -Smollett -Gwyllim.

>The letter is written in the persona of a servant woman, whose
>letters are marked by amusing misspellings and malapropisms.  But I don't
>see a way to respell "taffy" to make better sense here.
>
>The OED has a long file of citations under "pennyworth", illustrating the
>sense of "money's worth" (sense #3, if I recall -- looked it up a couple of
>days ago).  Seems to me that this passage has an implication I didn't see in
>any of the citations, and that is, "more than she wanted", "more than her
>money's worth".
>
>
>
>Meanwhile, JB has gotten fuller context of the passage from the bishop to
>his niece that Ms Legg aka Jennings had quoted briefly in her letter to the
>TLS:
>
>
>
>"Elphin, July 31, 1747
>
>My Dear Girl
>
>...
>
>I am glad your Salts[1] agreed so well with you. I wish Mrs Jourdan's had
>done the same. But perhaps tho' they us'd her a little roughly, they may
>have thereby prepar'd the way the better for the Water[2]. I
>
>shall long to know how it agrees with you both. I hope it will make you
>spend your penny bravely."
>
>Source:  "The Synge Letters...", ed. Marie-Louise Legg (Dublin: The Lilliput
>Press, 1996).  [Page 66, letter 26]
>
>
>It certainly seems to me that this poor lassie and Mrs Jourdan have both
>taken a dose of laxative salts in anticipation of drinking water that will
>have a laxative effect on them.  Not my idea of how to pass an afternoon.  It
>does seem that they will purge themselves of solid waste rather than liquid.
>
>
>
>
>Now, the pay-to-piss extortion racket has been around since the emperor
>Vespasian, but surely with a long dark ages between the fall of the Roman
>empire and the invention of the coin-operated stall door.  I'm with JB in
>not understanding how spending a penny bravely has anything to do with the
>vigorous emptying that the niece has ahead of her.  Occasionally I patronize
>a men's room with an attendant who hands me a towel as I turn from the sink
>and expects a tip for his service.  Something like this might have been
>going on at Bath, but I don't think of giving a tip as "spending".
>
>
>
>I'm left puzzled.
>
>I leave the Freudian flapdoodle to those with a fancy for it.

Me too (both preceding sentences).

Joel

>GAT
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 2:31 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> > At 10/7/2011 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<http://www.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/feces>
> >>
> >
> > Does this tell me about pennies?  If so, my search engine missed it.
> >
> > Seriously, are there any hypotheses -- now, since the 1700s antedate
> > penny toilets, I assume -- as to the etymology of the expression?
> >
> >
> > Joel
> >
> > ------------------------------**------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
>--
>George A. Thompson
>Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
>Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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