[Ads-l] "prostitute/whore with a heart of gold"

[Galen Buttitta]

I've heard that as "hooker with a heart of gold", which is how TV Tropes puts it IIRC.

> On Apr 26, 2015, at 17:45, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "prostitute/whore with a heart of gold"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> OED has "with a heart of gold" only from the 19th c., though "heart of
> gold," n., as "a noble-hearted person" goes all the way back to the 16th.
> 
> But what of the cliche' "a whore with a heart of gold"?  It seemed to me
> that it is chiefly a drama critic's phrase.  GB supports this view. All the
> exx. appear to describe fictional characters. (Well, duh!).
> 
> 1941 _Commonweal_  (Oct. 24?) [GB]: The debonair bootlegger and the pretty
> singer; the heart-of-gold streetwalker and the tap dancer; the hat-check
> girl and the torpedo; the sentimental proprietor and his gunman pal.
> 
> 1947 _Life_ (Feb. 10) 56: In a series of some 23 productions she was never
> once ... the prostitute with a heart of gold...nor any of a great many
> other admirable and familiar figures.
> 
> 1958 _Commonweal_ [GB snippet: original not seen]: Marina Vlady [is] the
> heart-of-gold prostitute who convinces the student of the evil of his crime.
> 
> 1960 Leslie Fiedler _Love and Death in the American Novel_ 279: [Crane and
> Dreiser] replaced the Good Good Girl with the Good Bad one - the sanctified
> virgin with the hoyden or the whore with a heart of gold.
> 
> 1962 Joseph Hayes _Don't Go Away Mad_ (N.Y.: Random House) 38" Let's see -
> perversion, miscegenation, the whore with a heart of gold, the horrors of
> marriage and the mockery of all love betrween two people of the opposite
> sex - did he leave anything out [of the play]?
> 
> 1965 _Films in Review_ [GB snippet: original not seen]: Kim Novak seems
> well cast as the dim-witted whore (with a heart of gold).
> 
> 1971 _Life_  (July 30) 14: She is not a hooker with a heart of gold.
> 
> Etc.
> 
> Fiedler refers to Crane's Maggie and Dreiser's Carrie as the types.
> 
> Nowadays prostitutes seem to be the people most likely to be credited with
> hearts of gold.
> 
> Go figure.
> 
> JL
> -- 
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org