[Ads-l] Long-haul trucker's lexicon + a surprise

[George Thompson]

So is any drawer a vagina, or must it be a lingerie drawer?  (JL)

Or maybe it’s the drawers themselves…  (LH)

When I was in college, a professor pointed out to us (discretely, the
Eisenhower administration being a recent memory) an unconscious (or maybe
not?) obscenity in a novel by George Eliot.  Eliot asserted of a female
character that "she had only the blackest and curliest hair in her drawers"
-- meaning that she wore a black, curly wig which she kept in her dresser.
I don't now remember which novel this appears in, but at the time, showing
a precocious talent for being a reference librarian, using the print
sources in the college library, I was able to find it.

GAT

On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 9:47 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> > On Jun 1, 2017, at 9:45 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> > So is any drawer a vagina, or must it be a lingerie drawer?
> >
> > JL
>
> Or maybe it’s the drawers themselves…
>
>
> >
> > On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 9:22 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/books/review-long-haul-
> >> trucker-memoir-finn-murphy.html
> >>
> >> This is Jennifer Senior's review of a book by Finn Murphy, a long haul
> >> trucker who reads both Chinese and Jane Austen.  The review touches on
> >> various specialized lexical items of the trade Finn wields, several of
> >> which are old hat even to inveterate non-truckers like me
> (“deadheading”,
> >> “suicide jockey”), some not so much (“bedbugger”, “chowder”).  You’ll
> have
> >> to read the review to find out what they are.  But my favorite bit, in
> the
> >> light of our recent thread:
> >>
> >> =============
> >> Nor will I think about the fact that movers sometimes inspect the
> contents
> >> of your boudoir. Murphy’s recommendation: “Salt the lingerie drawer with
> >> plastic snakes or a loaded mousetrap.” (Who says the vagina dentata is a
> >> myth?)
> >> =============
> >>
> >> I can only assume that Ms. Senior has been dipping into our list.
> >>
> >> LH
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> 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."
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
George A. Thompson
The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998.

But when aroused at the Trump of Doom / Ye shall start, bold kings, from
your lowly tomb. . .
L. H. Sigourney, "Burial of Mazeen", Poems.  Boston, 1827, p. 112

The Trump of Doom -- affectionately (of course) also known as The Dunghill
Toadstool.  (Here's a picture of one.)
http://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/james-gillray/an-excrescence---a-fungus-alias-a-toadstool-upon-a-dunghill/3851

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