[Ads-l] intestinal/testicular fortitude
Neal Whitman
nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET
Tue May 12 12:49:01 UTC 2015
Wasn't the teachers' complaint about Dizzy Dean's grammar a hoax? At least, that's what I read in O'Conner and Kellerman's _Origins of the Specious_.
Neal
> On May 11, 2015, at 5:10 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: intestinal/testicular fortitude
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I have a post on the Lexicon Valley blog today about "testicular
> fortitude" (now in the news because Bill Simmons used it just before
> getting fired by ESPN):
>
> http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2015/05/11/bill_simmons_testicular_fortitude_the_etymology_of_a_phrase_and_the_sensibilities.html
>
> I start with "intestinal fortitude" as a euphemism for "guts"
> (credited to Ohio State football coach John Wilce, in print from
> 1921), which was malapropized as "testicle fortitude" by Dizzy Dean,
> before emerging as "testicular fortitude" (in print from 1971).
>
> We discussed both kinds of fortitude about ten years ago on the list.
>
> --bgz
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
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