[Ads-l] Origin of the term "Cry Wolof"

[Laurence Horn]

Actually, I am happy to vouch for the fact that Jesse did indeed directly credit me for the term in the ORIGINAL original Slate piece, but somewhere along the way that credit disappeared from the posted version, as Jesse remarks.  If memory serves, that credit appeared as the third sentence within the author info at the bottom, which now reads in its entirety:

Jesse Sheidlower, formerly the editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary, is the president of the American Dialect Society. He is the author of The F-Word.

So the credit is still there, just in invisible ink.

LH

> On Oct 6, 2015, at 2:32 PM, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Oct 06, 2015 at 01:59:27PM -0400, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 1:50 PM, Z Rice wrote:
>>> 
>>> In discussing the term "Cry Wolof", I realized that it's origin is being
>>> attributed to two different people. I've been told that the term was made
>>> popular by Jesse Sheidlower, while a few ADS posts (I believe even Gary
>>> Wilson on the mailing list) seem to attribute its origin to Laurence Horn.
>>> 
>>> Does anyone know who originated the term and when?
>> 
>> I believe Larry gets credit -- he used it in an ADS-L post on Dec. 6, 2004:
>> 
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__listserv.linguistlist.org_pipermail_ads-2Dl_2004-2DDecember_043326.html&d=AwIBAg&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=wFp3X4Mu39hB2bf13gtz0ZpW1TsSxPIWYiZRsMFFaLQ&m=yyMj5RbQSjgk01INugl6Z1SAScylLigK2xvlykfaSOM&s=X4UU3JtpAo3eazG0sPg33t1QnJWInk9OwsQpPuwX8H0&e= 
>> 
>> Then Jesse popularized it in his Slate piece published two days later:
>> 
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.slate.com_articles_news-5Fand-5Fpolitics_hey-5Fwait-5Fa-5Fminute_2004_12_crying-5Fwolof.html&d=AwIBAg&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=wFp3X4Mu39hB2bf13gtz0ZpW1TsSxPIWYiZRsMFFaLQ&m=yyMj5RbQSjgk01INugl6Z1SAScylLigK2xvlykfaSOM&s=eGhU9AJT_wTJYwvTFsuWK4klRP7oEDgLshvmn66xOAk&e= 
> 
> Hmm. I'm rather sure that in the original piece, I explicitly gave
> credit to Larry (perhaps in the author-bio section), but that seems to
> have been removed. The oldest version on the Wayback Machine doesn't
> show this credit, though.
> 
> But in any case, since it doesn't show this on Slate, I will say here
> that yes, I got the expression from Larry.
> 
> Jesse Sheidlower
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.americandialect.org&d=AwIBAg&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=wFp3X4Mu39hB2bf13gtz0ZpW1TsSxPIWYiZRsMFFaLQ&m=yyMj5RbQSjgk01INugl6Z1SAScylLigK2xvlykfaSOM&s=WJ37pt_ZjL7T6xBgfvcyOZgIP7gp66y0gW-68ekplf8&e= 

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