Possible antedating of uptalk

[Jonathan Lighter]

Holy Prescriptivism, Batguy! That should have been "no fewer than."

But see OED, s.v. "less."

JL

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 11:54 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> 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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>>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>



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

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