antedating tit (and other things) (UNCLASSIFIED)

Tue Nov 6 22:38:52 UTC 2012

Bill, I see a note of mine that says a single ex. of "tits" appears ca1840
among the reprinted _Bawdy Songsters of the Romantic Era_ (4 vols., 2012).

They went back to the library in July, but I may still be able to find the
precise quot.  Shall I look? (Naturally I was too lazy and disgruntled to
write it down, never thinking I'd need to allude to it.)

FWIW, my impression is that said off-color publications were noticeably
more interested in "bums" than in "bubs" (also "bubbies").

Jon

On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 5:28 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: antedating tit (and other things) (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Thanks, Bill.
>
> The pre-1904 "tits," believe it or not, are horses.
>
> Interestingly enough, the usual word in off-color 18th and 19th C.
> publications is "bubs," modern "boobs." The vast majority of these,
> however, are British.
>
> The earliest ex. I found:
>
> 1862 in J. A. Frank & G. A. Reaves _Seeing the Elephant_ (N.Y.: Greenwood,
> 1989) 42: _Sow belly_ ...is fat bacon with tits on it as long as your
> finger.
>
> Your 1904 likewise appears to refer to a sow.
>
> Jon
>
> On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 4:56 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <
> Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
>
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> > Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> > Subject:      antedating tit (and other things) (UNCLASSIFIED)
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> > Caveats: NONE
> >
> > All of these cites are from HathiTrust
> >
> >
> > OED has "tit" (=mammary gland) only back to 1928 (although it has "teat"
> > almost a millennium before that).
> >
> >
> > I. [Isaac] Pocock _Yes or No?  A Musical Farce, in Two Acts_ London:  J.
> > Barker, 1809
> > p. 37
> > "With spirits gay I mount the box, the tits up to their traces,
> > My elbows squar'd, my wrist turn'd down, dash off to Epsom races."
> >
> >
> > _American Railroad Journal, and Advocate of Internal Improvements_ vol 2
> > #3, Jun 8, 1833 p. 362 col 2
> > "By the way, there were then in France a number of what was termed
> > voitures de chasse, hunting carriages, very fancifully constructed,
> > resembling our caravans, and having sometimes a stag's head and fore
> > quarters in front; over which a coachman, all gold or silver lace, and
> > his hair highly dressed, used to take his seat, driving either
> > four-in-hand, the horses all too far from their work, the leaders with
> > very long traces, seldom tight, (for these dressy coachmen did not know
> > now to keep the tits up to their traces,) or with four horses, the
> > leaders having a postillion with cocked hat and jack boots."
> >
> > Marion Hughes _[Three years in Arkansaw]_ Chicago:  M. A. Donohue & Co.,
> > 1904.
> > p. 72 "Instead of the stovepipe being in her way it served as a corset,
> > and held her tits up out of the way, and she was out of sight in the
> > woods before you could say suey!"
> >
> >
> > "tango uniform" [= TU in military alphabet, acronym for "tits up"]  [not
> > it OED]
> >
> > _Approach_ Jul 1977 p 27 col 1
> > "The Gremlin that made 303's TACAN go "Tango-Uniform" must have held
> > enroute because, a few minutes later, the azimuth and DME in 305 also
> > failed!"
> >
> > _Combat Crew_ vol 30 no 5, May 1980 p 16 col 1
> > "If the pilot can reliably make the entry, the navs can fix a radar set
> > that just went tango uniform (totally unusable)."
> >
> > _Approach_ vol 35 no 9 Mar 1990, p. 15 col 2
> > "However, his basic flight intstruments went "tango uniform" and the
> > airmanship he demonstrated in getting back earned him the Air Medal."
> >
> > _Flying Safety_ vol 51 no 1, Jan 1995 p 3 col 1
> > "Maybe my subconscious mind interpreted/misinterpreted the HUD attitude
> > faster than my conscious mind, and when the attitude didn't match up
> > with what the subconscious thought it ought to be, my somatosensory
> > system went Tango Uniform."
> >
> >
> >
> > "tough titty" [OED has "tough tiddy" from 1934, under entry for "tough"]
> >
> > _Harvard College Class of 1906 Fifteenth Anniversary Report (No. 4)_
> > Cambridge, MA: University Press, 1921.  p. 83
> > "Having suffered more from the War than most Americans, as I'd been in
> > it and had friends lost in it and knew how rotten the Huns were, it was
> > pretty tough titty to have to go about wearing civilian clothes and walk
> > the streets looking the picture of health."
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > "Fixing to" -- not in OED
> > Kermit Daugherty _Out of the Red Brush_  Cleveland and NY: World
> > Publishing Co., 1954
> > p. 11 "We took it perty much as a joke an it never crossed our minds how
> > that contraption was fixin to turn our little world upside down."
> >
> > Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> > Caveats: NONE
> >
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