[Ads-l] Three rare(?) words

[Wilson Gray]

Actually, _assmaster_ is in Google, from 1987. Saying that it was nowhere
to be found was merely the first hint of Alzheimer's.

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 10:59 PM, 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:      Three rare(?) words
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>
> As I was going to bed, this morning - a normal day for me runs from ca.
> 1200 hrs to 0400 hrs - a couple of words popped into my mind: _blindism_
> and _cockhound_. I'd come across the word
>
> _blindism_
>
> only once in my life: in a story about the then still-Little Stevie Wonder,
> in an issue of EBONY magazine published some time in the mid-'60's. Since
> this word isn't in OED 2, of which I own a copy of the micro-edition, I
> wondered whether it was a "real" word or merely a nonce term made up by the
> writer of the article. Googling reveals only about 4,190 results, making it
> relatively rare. One of the hits refs MW3. Hence, the term is clearly not a
> nonce term.
>
> The New Outlook for the Blind - Volumes 47-48 - Page 243
> https://books.google.com/books?id=3DIZEeAQAAMAAJ
> 1953 - =E2=80=8ESnippet view
> Frequently, blind children develop mannerisms which, because they are apt
> to be peculiar to the blind, are commonly referred to as _blindisms_.
>
> _Cockhound_ came into my mind because it, too, is a kind of hapax. Back in
> the '60's, this was pretty common in guy-talk in Los Angeles, but I heard
> it used, one time, by my girfriend of the day, whom I'd known since were
> both children in StL. So, I knew that she would have preferred to have had
> her tongue torn out, rather than to have used that word, if she had had
> *any* idea that "cock" was, in that word, just another term for "pussy"
> and/or "ass" in the obscene, sexual sense. And, of course, such terms were
> *far* more obscene, then, than they are now. Indeed, it was her using that
> word that caused me to assert, in these very pages, that women know nothing
> of slang, when I should have restricted myself to claiming that boojie
> chicks of my congeries have a bad understanding of the various nuances of
> male speech.
>
> This word is reminiscent of _cocksman_, going back to '03 in the UD and to
> 1896 in the HDAS. The following may be an antedating:
>
> Edmund Kean, Or, The Life of an Actor - Page 11-12
> https://books.google.com/books?id=3DdzI-AAAAYAAJ
> 1881 - =E2=80=8ERead
> Miss O'Neill, Mrs. Siddons, and the illustrious Kean. "Kean's frenzied
> method [didn't know that "method acting" was so old] converted Othello into
> a savage." And what else would he be, I wonder --a squire of dames,
> perhaps. ... Of course. _Cocksman_.
>
> These words, in turn, brought to mind _ass-master_ or however you want to
> spell it. This term is so rare that it's not in any of the usual suspects,
> as far as I can tell. The only time that I've come across the word was in
> 1961, when I was stationed in West Germany. A barracks-mate was given the
> soubriquet, "The Ass-master of Heilbronn," because, naturally, he wasn't. A
> local Kellnerin, "Franzoesin" A.K.A. "Frenchie," of some repute, was always
> trying to seduce him - or not; you never knew - because of his cuteness
> factor: the smallest man in the unit, with a basso-profundo voice carrying
> a pleasant drawl of North Carolina origin. And he was the only person that
> I've ever met to use "yon" in place of "that."
>
> Down home in Texas, the horse-opera cliche, "He went that-a way!" is "...
> yonder way." Otherwise, "yonder" replaces "there": "It's a man down
> yonder." "That thing was right yonder, a while ago." "Look (over) yonder!"
> --=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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>



-- 
-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

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