[Ads-l] More "hard leg" trivia

[Jonathan Lighter]

Cf. HDAS.

JL

On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 12:48 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:      More "hard leg" trivia
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> Cassell's Dictionary of Slang - Page 681
> https://books.google.com/books?isbn=3D0304366366
> Jonathon Green - 2005 - =E2=80=8EPreview
> hard leg n. (also hard legs) (US Black) 1 [1940s+] a tough man or boy. 2
> [1940s+] a man who devotes all his time and energies to pursuing the street
> life and the world of strictly male endeavour - pimping, HUSTLING n. etc. 3
> [1960s+] an ugly woman, esp. an old, worn-out prostitute.
>
> Nothing in this definition corresponds to my personal experience of the
> term, living in The Lou from ca. 1941-1962. I don't know any slang that
> means "an old, worn-out prostitute."
>
> Clearly, Saint Louis is a slang-island as well as a speech-island, which is
> not to say that there was any unnatural prissiness in the local slang.
> Local suds didn't think twice before using a term like "my whore" in place
> of "my girlfriend" or "your/his whore" in place of "your/his mother."
>
> OTOH, Cassel's does correctly, IME, define "scag" as "an unattractive woman
> [or girl]. [var."
>
> Unfortunately, the snippet ends there. I've always considered it to be
> possibly a variant of "scank." Back in the day, both words referred only to
> a woman's looks and not to her morals and were used interchangeably, with
> no distinguishing nuances. Cassell's says "1960s+" and "US campus/black."
> "Scag is, IME, younger - dating from the '50's, hence black and not campus
> - than "skank" - two days older than water.
>
> Because I read a lot, I knew about "scag" as doper-talk, but I've never
> heard it used that way in the wild. Too boojie ever to have come into
> contact with people of that ilk, I reckon. My friends and I didn't even
> have any contact with (black) people who used weed, in my glory days.
> Nevertheless...
>
> Legalize it!
> --=20
> -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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