"piece of ass" huge antedate

[Shapiro, Fred]

The Syrett book looks quite scholarly and the quotations and footnotes are probably accurate.  The ultimate source of the letter is a collection of papers at the Southern History Collection, University of North Carolina.

Fred Shapiro



________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Jesse Sheidlower [jester at PANIX.COM]
Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2014 3:08 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "piece of ass" huge antedate

Tipped off by an article in The Atlantic.

"piece of ass" is in OED from 1816 in possibly euphemistic variants like
"piece of stuff/skirt/tail", but OED's earliest with "ass" is from 1978.
HDAS has evidence from the 1910s onwards. But a history of fraternities
reveals a young Princeton man with this charming thing to tell a friend
back home:

  1857 J. Holland _Let._ 14 May in N. L. Syrett _Company He Keeps_ (2009)
  75, I did get one of the nicest pieces of ass some day or two ago.

Haven't checked the footnote in Syrett, so I don't know what the
ultimate source of the letter is.

Jesse Sheidlower

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