[Ads-l] The UD isn't _always_ worthless!

[Marc Sacks]

Maybe the meaning of "sissy" has changed since I was a child, but in those
days it means roughly "girly." I was often called that name as a kid, but I
think it referred less to cowardice than to being intellectual and
disliking sports.

A friend of mine told me years ago that his Polish-American working-class
father discouraged him from taking music lessons because "only Jews and
sissies do that." I don't think cowardice was intended by the latter
epithet.

Marc Sacks

On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 7:44 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: The UD isn't _always_ worthless!
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------
>
> BTW, my impression is that "sissy," applied to children, always means
> "coward," but applied to men always means  'effeminate homosexual,' except
> fig., of course.
>
> OED doesn't bother to differentiate these two distinct senses. (Millions
> who use the "coward" sense have never even heard of the other one, IMO.)
>
> The earliest attestations are from the late 19th C.  Understandably they
> refer only to children.  (Grownups: OED 1969, HDAS files 1914.)
>
> JL
>
> On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 7:34 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Against the judgment of the editor, HDAS was compelled to prefer the
> > spelling "booty" on the OCD principle that the most frequently
> encountered
> > orthography must determine the shape of the lemma.  At least there's a
> > cross-ref. at "boody"!
> >
> > HDAS exx. go back to 1926.  A much later memoir places "boody" [sic] in
> > Kansas several years before that. (Complete with grade-school students
> > giggling at the  homophonous "booty.")
> >
> > JL
> >
> > On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 4:27 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> _Boody_
> >> booty _Boody is the traditional spelling for the word booty_. The
> spelling
> >> 'booty' became the accepted spelling at 70's band KC and the Sunshine
> Band
> >> had a popular hit called Shake Your Booty.
> >> "Man, she's got a big boody"
> >> #booty #ass #backporch #groundround #catcher's mitt
> >> by JimmyCatfish June 22, 2006
> >>
> >> Not when it agrees with me, anyway!
> >>
> >> In fact, of course, it would be great to have a cite. But it's very
> >> difficult to find a cite for a word unknown in the standard language and
> >> that's also considered obscene in BE. I personally have found nothing
> >> older
> >> than the record-titles "Boodie Green"/"Boo-Dee Green," dating only from
> >> 1950 and 1959, resp., IIRC.
> >>
> >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9dLY8qBGz0
> >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbeQ3RLchf4
> >>
> >> My interpretation of the not-obvious spellings is that they are
> >> euphemism-equivalents due to the word's perceived obscenity, as is also
> >> the
> >> case with _sissy_ re-spelled as _cissy_ in the record-titles, "Cissy
> >> Strut"/"Sophisticated Cissy," wherein its meaning is understood to be
> >> "fag(got)," though neither record has any words.
> >>
> >> --
> >> -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
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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