colder than a witch's kiss

[Laurence Horn]

On Dec 15, 2013, at 11:45 AM, W Brewer wrote:

> Chronology
>
But that can be notoriously misleading when dealing with taboo terms that are unlikely to have been recorded.  If "situation normal all fouled up" is attested earlier than "…fucked up" as a gloss for SNAFU, do we conclude that "fucked" is a dysphemism for the original "fouled"?  (I'm not saying it was attested earlier; after all, we may have contemporary journals or letters of soldiers who recorded the actual taboo meaning before the first appearance of the euphemistic version; I'm just saying that if we don't, we wouldn't conclude that "fouled" was the original expression.)

LH

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