[Ads-l] "a nice name for a nasty thing"

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

LH: In modern times, Alan Bennett's 2004 play "The History Boys" has
an instance: "Only a euphemism is a nice way of saying something
nasty." (Match visible in Google Books Preview).

Here are two pertinent citations from a preliminary search. Please
double-check for typos and other errors before use.

Date: July 23, 1880
Periodical: The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer
Quote Page 2
Newspaper Location: Wheeling, West Virginia
Article: The Scene of Wednesday's Catastrophe--The Great Tunnel
Underneath the Hudson
Database: Chronicling America

http://1.usa.gov/25XRiEh
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026844/1880-07-23/ed-1/seq-2.pdf

[Begin excerpt]
The borings determined that the bottom of the river was a silt,—a nice
name for nasty mud, of a blue-black color in this instance,—growing
more and more tenacious the further it was penetrated.
[End excerpt]


Date: August 05, 1897
Periodical: Ranche and Range
Quote Page 12
Newspaper Location: North Yakima, Washington
Section: The Apiary
Article: The Failure of a Honey Corp
Author: J. P. Berg
Database: Chronicling America

http://1.usa.gov/23BWUSH
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2007252185/1897-08-05/ed-1/seq-12.pdf

[Begin excerpt]
The third is the absence of flowing nectar in the flower, caused by
extreme wet, dry or cold weather. In the absence of this nectar the
bees will hunt for a substitute and in doing so will find honey-dew (a
nice name for a nasty thing;) neither honey or dew, but  the refuse of
the aphis.
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 2:09 PM, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:
> Grose's _Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue_ (1785) famously defined "C**t" as "a nasty name for a nasty thing".
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
>
> On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 02:04:55PM -0400, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> Can anyone help me track down the first use of this definition of euphemism?  Google hits on the phrase are amazingly scanty--just four, including this as the earliest:
>>
>> The Observer March 9, 1939 Page 1
>>
>> "Birth control is a nice name for a nasty thing"
>>
>> (In the left column--well, physically left, anyway--just under the story about the heroic victory of the Spanish people, under the steady guidance of Generalissimo Franco with a little help from his friends, over the "foul and fell foes of the Spanish and Catholic name")
>>
>> But this usage seems to presuppose an earlier common ground in which the phrase is standardly used to characterize euphemism.  Garson? Anyone?
>>
>> LH
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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