needy

[Ben Zimmer]

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 11:28 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>
> At 9/19/2012 11:10 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >
> >On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >
> > > At 9/19/2012 09:26 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > > >Cf. the recent disdainful sense of "needy," i.e., "needing or
> > > > demanding attention from another person."
> > >
> > > How recent is the disdainful" needy?  Or by "recent" do you mean
> > > "lately becoming more frequent"?  The OED has (2.b, "In need of a
> > > thing"):
> > >
> > > 1993   J. Green It: Sex since Sixties 420   Men are as needy of touch
> > > as women, if not more so, because they don't get as much as women do.
> > >
> > > Close, if not a cigar?
> >
> > 1993 is pretty damned recent by  my standards. I was an experienced
> > grownup by then, who would have thought it sounded weird had I noticed it
> > that early.
> >
> > Anyway, it's more specific as I've heard it than "in need of a thing."  I
> > have heard at least one kid admonished, "Don't be so needy!" (I.e., "quit
> > whining for attention.")
>
> I agree the 1993 quote isn't quite "whining for attention", but I
> still feel I heard that sense earlier.  No evidence, of course.

I checked with Jonathon Green, author of _It: Sex Since the Sixties_,
about the quote. It's from an interview he conducted (the book
consists of a series of interviews). Jonathon writes:

----
I started looking for the line in my transcripts and found this which
seems to fit the whining bill better than the one OED chose:

'I feel rejected if my partner doesn't want sex with me. I'm needy and
demanding around sex.'

That from a self-proclaimed 'new man' of the era (i.e.
self-proclaimedly non-macho).
----

You can see both quotes in snippet view:

http://books.google.com/books?id=byobAAAAYAAJ&q=needy

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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