"payback"

[Wilson Gray]

On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 2:28 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â "payback"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Everybody who's been to enough movies or watched enough TV for the past
> twenty-odd years is likely to know that "payback" means 'revenge; an act of
> vengeance.'
>
>
>
> Fox News and CNN use the word frequently.
>
> Anyway. OED's definition  2a is "_Austral._ The Australian Aboriginal code
> or custom of revenge; an act of revenge carried out according to this code."
>
> Â Earliest cite is 1935.
>
> 1926 Merlin Moore Taylor _In the Heart of Black Papua_ Â (N.Y.: Robert M.
> McBride) 67: One "pay-back" inevitably leads to another, with the roles
> reversed. Ibid.171: Â "It will not be over until the handcuffs are on the
> man who led the pay-back," retorted Humphries grimly.
>
> OED doesn't indicate that this word appears often in novels of the Vietnam
> War. Indeed, OED's "1985" ex. was written during that period (unless the
> anthologist behind that compilation of various soldiers' letters of the
> period was faking it to fool Oxford). Not until 1973 is there an ex. in the
> simple sense of revenge (by or against anyone).
>
> At any rate, it seems likely that the recent U.S. use came via Australian
> English. Since "pay-back" seems to have been well established in Papua
> before WWII, it also seems likely that the word entered American army usage
> unoticed in 1942 or 1943 during the New Guinea Campaign, which involved
> both Americans and Australians.
>
> If we rule out (always a bad idea) independent invention, it would seem
> that it took "pay-back" in its general sense more than twenty-five years
> from its likely intoduction to catch on detectably in American English, and
> maybe another fifteen or so years to become well established.
>
> (Introduction via Australia after WWII is certainly possible, but I think
> that would be at best merely an occasional reinforcement. Beginning in
> 1942, thousands of slangy Americans were actually in Papua/New Guinea and
> had to learn something about dealing with the locals.)
>
> JL
>
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org


That's the source of the traditional BE saying,

"Payback's a bitch!"

no doubt.There were black soldiers in the relevant areas during the
relevant time-period, used as porters and for target-practice - great
fun! - by the white soldiers.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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