early "tits"

[Benjamin Torbert]

I've always figure the booty/boody/boodie business was due to American
alveolar flap--which makes all these homophones.

Benjamin Torbert


On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 12:15 AM, 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:      Re: early "tits"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 11:55 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com
> >
> wrote:
>
> > "bubs"
>
>
> I didn't come across this particular use of the sound, [b^bz], till I was
> about to graduate from high school in 1954. Since it was spoken be a fellow
> colored fellow, I thought that he had said "bulbs." However, context made
> clear that he was talking about the breasts of a girl on the bus with us
> and, of course, "bulbs" makes  perfect semantic sense.
>
> As it happen, this was a hapax. After years of never hearing this spoken,
> again - still true as of this nanosecond - while, thanks to the loosing of
> the bonds of censorship, finding many hundreds of examples of "bubs" in
> print and none of "bulbs" in the relevant sense, I have come to realize
> that there is no slang-term, "bulbs," meaning "breasts," in B, or in any
> other variety of, E.
>
> Why not, I wonder? It's so obvious and the two words, in some dialects, are
> indistinguishable. "Boody" was immediately "corrected" to "booty." Yet,
> AFAIK, "bub" lives on.
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> However, almost amusingly, the UD has the following:
>
>
> bulb
>
> What your mother calls a tit.
>
> "Don't pinch my bulb."
>
> by christine February 06, 2004
>
>
> I would not be surprised to discover that her mom does, in fact, use "bub,"
> "bub" as "breast" being as unknown to the UD as it once was to me.
>
> Again,
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> --
> -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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