"scurve", noun, = 'contemptible person', 1730; not in OED

[Laurence Horn]

On Sep 9, 2012, at 9:23 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> 1925 _Adventure Magazine_ (Dec. 20) 16: Ain't they the scurves!
>
> 1928 Leonard H. Nason _Sergeant Eadie_ 226 [ref. to 1918]: Ah, that scurve.
> He deserved a beating.
>
> 1935 Nelson Algren _Somebody in Boots_ [rpt. N.Y.: Berkley, 1965]  95: That
> blonde scurve ain't young no more, Red.  Ibid. 168: That's the way with
> these cheap scurves every time.
> 1976 Clark Whelton _CB Baby_ [N.Y.: Avon] 9: If...New York City was dying,
> it was because of people like those two scurvs [sic] in the Buick.
>
> 2006 UrbanDictionary.com: _Scurve_ Word primarily used in Nebraska, short
> from the disease "scurvey", a dirty disease, used to describe one who
> rarely bathes, trailer trash, low income, goth-like, whining brats. Used to
> describe a teenager or young person who smokes, drinks, and is involved in
> other vices.
>
> The 1935 nuance is "slut."
>
> Why the gap between 1730 and 1925 I don't know. If I'd noticed an interim
> ex. I'd have jotted it down.
>
> JL
>

Maybe Harvard President Charles William Eliot was actually warning his undergraduates to avoid those deceptive and vicious scurves.

LH

> On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 1:22 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> Subject:      "scurve", noun, = 'contemptible person', 1730; not in OED
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> "We have just published a Silly Rapsody of Puerilities,
>> Impertinencies and Scurrilities, by way of a Letter to Mr Boylston;
>> it is beneath any Answer, and serves only to expose a Scurve, this
>> Writer, and his Friend Mr. Boylston whom he Ridicules by Burlesquing
>> his assumed Title and celebrated Practice."
>>
>> Boston Gazette, 1730 March 16, 2/1.  EAN.
>>
>> "scurve", noun, = 'contemptible person', 1730; not in OED.  This is
>> "scurvy, adj.", sense 2.a., "Sorry, worthless, contemptible. Said
>> both of persons and things" (used by Swift and Smollet around this
>> time, and Shakespeare earlier but not originally), transformed into a noun.
>>
>> The "just published ... Silly Rapsody" is Samuel Mather's
>> anonymously-published "A Letter to Doctor Zabdiel Boylston,"
>> defending Boylston against William Douglass's attack in his
>> "Dissertation Concerning Inoculation".  Thus the "Scurve, this
>> Writer", unnamed by but likely known to the BG letter-writer, is Samuel
>> Mather.
>>
>> Joel
>>
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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