[Ads-l] _-ass_

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Silly ass" was virtually SE (esp. in Britain), though it's a little
unusual to see it used  as an adjective.

I doubt that it was much of an influence on intensive "-assed,"
because it seems largely to have been an upper-class thing.

One slang dictionary I could name has cites from the 1920s - and an
American adj. "silly-ass" from 1919-20.  Lawrence of Arabia included
"short-arsed" in a diary entry for 1922.


JL

On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 6:00 AM, David Daniel <dad at coarsecourses.com> wrote:
> My hypothesis would be that when they said "silly-ass" and "you're an ass"
> back in 1905 or 1908 they were thinking of donkeys. When we say it today we
> think of butts.
> DAD
>
> Enviada em: sexta-feira, 10 de junho de 2016 00:06
> Para: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Assunto: Re: _-ass_
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: _-ass_
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---
>
> On Thu, Jun 9, 2016 at 10:18 PM, Peter Reitan <pjreitan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I was recently surprised to see "silly-ass" in a Jerome Kern song
>> lyric published in 1908, in the song, "Meet Her With a Taximeter" from
>> the Charles Frohmann musical revue, Fluffy Ruffles.
>>
>> "Take her in a Taxy that's the thing to do . . . . Till the chauffeur
>> cha=
> p
>> has some silly-ass mishap and a crowd gathers round!"
>> Sheet music published by T. B. Harms, 1908, viewable at:
>>
>> http://digital.library.ucla.edu/apam/librarian?ITEMID=3DSY105865
>>
>> Here's my blog post that mentions it:
>>
>> http://esnpc.blogspot.com/2016/05/taximeter-taximeter-uber-alles-histo
>> ry.=
> html
>
>
> That would be an attributive use of "silly ass" ('foolish person'), which
> OED takes back to 1905:
>
> 1905   Punch 22 Mar. 214/2   He inquired if Phyllis =E2=80=98had done the A=
> cademy
> yet=E2=80=99? Which, as it didn't open for some days, was a silly-ass thing=
> to say.
>
> Also this from Orwell:
>
> 1945   =E2=80=98G. Orwell=E2=80=99 in Windmill No. 2. 18   The silly-ass En=
> glishman with
> his spats and his monocle.
>
> I'd say "silly-ass" is independent of (though perhaps an influence on) the
> later extension of "ADJ-ass(ed)" as a general intensifier, which the slang
> dictionaries date to the '50s.
>
> --Ben
>
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