[Ads-l] the gift that keeps on giving

[Barretts Mail]

I recall doing an article for a college newspaper on STDs around 1987. (If memory serves correctly), the nurse told me that VD had been replaced by STD because people didn’t think of chlamydia when you say VD. There might have been other diseases, too, but chlamydia I definitely remember because that was a big one they were trying to get the word out about.

Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA

> On 12 Dec 2017, at 17:10, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
>> I must mean "STDs"!
> 
> Once upon a time, "social disease," preferred both by my mother and by her
> mother, was more P.C. than "venereal disease." But "VD" was commonly used,
> whereas I don't recall a single instance of "SD." FWIW, when I gear "the
> gift...," I think, specifically, "genital herpes."
> 
> On Mon, Dec 11, 2017 at 11:12 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Earliest?:
>> 
>> 1924 _Seattle Daily Times_ (Dec. 10) 4: The Christmas gift that keeps on
>> giving through every month of the year.  A VICTROLA.
>> 
>> 1924 _Trenton Evening Times_ (Dec. 18) 2: The gift that keeps on giving is
>> the best gift of all. The Christmas Victrola will give you entertainment
>> for every day in the year!
>> 
>> 1924 _Times-Picayune_ (N.O.) (Dec. 17) 12: "The Gift That Keeps on Giving"
>> [Victrolas are illustrated.]
>> 
>> 
>> By the 1970s, the cliche' had become a sardonic descriptor of chronic
>> venereal disease. (Oops! I must mean "STDs"! "Venereal" involves love!).
>> 
>> JL
>> 
>> --
>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> -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

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