Use Itch-X...

[Jonathan Lighter]

When I was recording folk similes from my students in the mid '70s, one
frequently encountered was "hornier than a three-peckered billygoat."

Not that it has much connection with the "three yards" of 1693, but OED has
conspicuously overlooked it in its 2005 update of "pecker."

JL

JL


On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 8:39 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Use Itch-X...
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> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Jun 2, 2014, at 5:24 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> > 18th C. VD?
>
> Good one.  I've always wondered what sort of fun-house mirrors (or rulers)
> those ancestors of ours were using when they used the term with reference
> to their "virile member" [OED, s.v. "yard", 11].  Those mirrors have
> evidently been around for a while, given the cites back to 1379.  Some
> colorful cites there, including:
>
> 1683   A. Snape Anat. Horse (1686) iii. v. 114   It [sc. the pineal gland]
> is also called the Yard or Prick of the Brain..because it resembleth a
> Man's Yard.
> 1693   A. Wood Life & Times (1894) III. 420   A monstrous child..It hath
> three yards and he makes use of them all at once.
>
> All we'd need is three such monstrous children, and we'd have the
> whole…well, you know.
>
> LH
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 3:32 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
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> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> >> Subject:      Use Itch-X...
> >>
> >>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> against _yard rash_, whatever that is.
> >>
> >> Only 2350 raw hits.
> >>
> >> --
> >> -Wilson
> >> -----
> >> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> >> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> >> -Mark Twain
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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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