"son of a sea-cow"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I hadn't heard that. I just thought the phrase would lighten the mood
around here while advancing our scholarly purpose.

This is a perfect example of what Carl Jung termed "synchronicity," a
"coincidence" of such tremendous improbability and psychological
significance that *it cannot be a coincidence at all.*  It rises instead
from the depths of the cosmoprimordial collective unconscious and foretells
a psychic crisis - for good or ill - bearing down on you, me, or the
sea-cow family alluded to.

Or, perhaps, bearing down on all of us.

(I suspect it's headed my way, however, because - again synchronicitously -
I happened to be watching a recent movie about Carl Jung *only last
night.*)

JL

On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 9:49 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "son of a sea-cow"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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

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