[Ads-l] snatch 'female pudenda'

[Laurence Horn]

On Dec 2, 2014, at 2:10 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> I can't vouch for the specific quote, but the time-frame is not
> unbelievable.
> 
> "Snatch" is listed in Farmer & Henley (1890-96) as "American."
> 
> JL

Hmmm.  Do you have a different edition?  Mine (the 1970 Arno Press reprint) doesn't have that.  It has "snatch-blatch" ("venery") for 'the female pudendum' (no "American" annotation, though), and under "snatch" itself it has a semi-relevant ("venery") sense, but as a (not specifically American) verb, 'a hasty act of kind, a flyer', i.e. 'quickie'.

Oh I see, cancel that--under "Monosyllable", which is of course the main "female pudendum" entry F&H do indeed include the American "snatch" among the 1001 or so synonyms.   

LH  
> 
> On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 11:51 AM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
> 
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
>> Subject:      snatch 'female pudenda'
>> 
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> =0A=
>> An article in the recent (Dec. 2014) _Smithsonian_ magazine, vol. 45, no.
>> 8=
>> , pp. 50-57, "Massacre at Sand Creek," by Tony Horwitz, quotes a dispatch
>> w=
>> ritten by Capt. Silas Soule, regarding the 1864 massacre of a thousand
>> Chey=
>> ennes and Arapahos (men, women, and children) by the U.S. army near Sand
>> Cr=
>> eek, Colorado:=0A=
>> =0A=
>> "Squaws [sic] snatches were cut out for trophies" (p. 54).=0A=
>> =0A=
>> The OED's earliest citation for that sense of the word (snatch n.14) is
>> fro=
>> m 1904, in the _English Dialect Dictionary_.=0A=
>> =0A=
>> I wonder if the American instance from 1864 or 1865, as given in the
>> quotat=
>> ion, is credible.=0A=
>> =0A=
>> --Charlie=
>> 
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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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