"son of a sea-cow"

[Laurence Horn]

Was this in honor of tonight's national news story about a manatee family coming into shore today (or maybe yesterday) somewhere in Florida, and a mother manatee (a.k.a. sea cow) nursing her calf there on the beach, providing a photo op for various cell-phone videocamera wielders?  I grant that the sea cows shown in the segment weren't particularly elegant looking, but I'm sure they were as adorable as any sea cook.

LH

On May 7, 2012, at 8:29 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> Aficionados of pulp seafarin' yarns were once familiar with the euphemistic
> epithet "son of a sea-cook."
>
> Here's a variant. (No OED. Maybe Green has it):
>
> 1822 _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_ (Sept.) 382: Son of a sea cow, you
> are drifting leeward.
>
> 1831 Leitch Ritchie _The Romance of History: France_ (N.Y.: Harper) II 165:
> Oh, the son of a sea-cow! what has he been saying?
>
> 1835 _Army & Navy Chronicle_ (Washington, D.C.) (Oct. 22) 333: We hear of
> the son of a sea cow often at sea but have never met with the parent animal.
>
> 1865 _Dollar Monthly Magazine_ (July) 82: Get for'ard, you bloody son of a
> sea-cow.
>
> 1880 _Poultry World_ (Nov.) 326: Come out of there, you son of a sea-cow,
> or I'll chaw the heart out of you!
>
> 1932 Wilson Mizner & Joseph Jackson _One-Way Passage_ (film):  I'll be a
> son of a sea-cow!
>
> 1949 Clarence Benham _Diver's Luck_ (Sydney: Angus Robertson) 43: How would
> you like to cook pertaters an' then watch another hungry-gutted son of a
> sea-cow a scoffin' of 'em?
>
> Undoubtedly the 20th C. exx. were based more on literature than on life.
>
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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