Possible antedating of uptalk

[Jonathan Lighter]

HDAS II provides no less than four exx. of "motorscooter" in the sense
indicated, the primary from "Alley Oop" (1960).

I had a friend in grad school (mid '70s) who used it.

 IIRC, there were T-shirts in the late '70s featuring an R. Crumb drawing
of an R.-Crumb-type woman, accompanied by the line from the song.

JL

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Jim Parish <jparish at siue.edu> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jim Parish <jparish at SIUE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Possible antedating of uptalk
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> David A. Daniel wrote:
> > Hmmm. From Alley Oop lyrics: "Cuz he's a mean motah scootah and a bad
> > go-gettah." Motah scootah must be a euphemism, yes? But the first five
> pages
> > of Google hits only refer to the song (except one tweet as
> > #codenameforbadpeople which didn't lead anywhere) so it apparently is not
> > something that people in general ran/run around calling each other
> > euphemistically. Anyone?
> My brother (b. 1946, Army brat, 20-year Navy man) uses "motor-scooter"
> (definitely rhotic) euphemistically, but as far as I recall he only uses
> it as an expletive, not as an insult.
>
> Jim Parish
>
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