UD: 1) _dick string_; 2)_snapping pussy_
Wilson Gray
hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Mon Nov 26 03:50:28 UTC 2012
When I was a kid, back in the '40's, I used to hear the big boys say
things like, "Man, that pussy was so good that it made me pop my
dick-string!" I had no idea what this "dick-string" - I see no reason
to stop using the hyphen - was. So, after I had become a "big boy,"
myself, in t950s, and it had become important for me to understand
"conversation," I asked my ace-boon what a "dick-string" was, after
hearing him use the phrase. His answer was some random bullshit that
let me understand that neither he nor anyone else was doing anything
more than following local custom. If "pop one's dick-string" had ever
had a meaning, it was lost in the distant past and "dick-string"
itself was just noise.
A dekkid or so later, ca. 1962, I heard Richard Pryor do a bit about
his having had essentially my experience WRT the term, "snapping
pussy," as in "No lie, man! She had one of them *snappin'* pussies!"
Conclusion: there is no such thing as a "dick-string." There is no
such thing as a "snapping pussy."
After looking into UD on a whim, I've since checked out the usual
subjects, including HDAS, and I have the same amount of faith in the
correctness of the definitions given there that I have in the UD
definitions. Naturally, I understand that words mean what people agree
that they mean, whenever that agreement may come to pass. If works
published after 1965 agree that _dick-string_ means something like
"the ability to obtain or to maintain an erection," then that's what
it means.
I wonder why it is that Piri Thomas, in his magnum opus, made a point
of using eye-phonetics for the speech of his black-American
characters, but not for the speech of his other characters. My WAG is
that he chose to distance himself and other 'Ricans from "the real
soul-brother," as Pryor phrased it.
Gigolos Get Lonely Too - Page 213
books.google.com/books?isbn=1601620497
Dwayne S. Joseph, Roy Glenn, Jihad - 2007 - Preview - More editions
In his stand-up routines back in the '70s, the king of comedy, Richard
Pryor, used to always talk about the elusive snapping pussy — pussy
that will make you disown your own momma.
In the '60's, Pryor said that his personal experience was that there
was no such thing as "snapping pussy." I have this literally "on
record": an Lp. I heard him in person last ca. '73. I own *all* of his
recorded performances. "Snapping pussy" comes up only that one time.
Needless to say, I haven't seen and/or heard *every* performance of
his and he could very well have defined "snapping pussy" as is claimed
above. But, if he'd had a definition, he would never have made a point
of stating that was no definition.
Nevertheless, I see all such attempts to give these two folk-terms a
literary definition as entirely forced.
--
-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
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list