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

Stephen Goranson goranson at DUKE.EDU
Fri Jun 2 11:31:38 UTC 2017


So of her curled fronts: Mrs. Glegg had doubtless the glossiest and crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well as curls in various degrees of fuzzy laxness...

Mill on the Floss


Stephen Goranson

http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/

<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.americandialect.org&d=DwIFaQ&c=imBPVzF25OnBgGmVOlcsiEgHoG1i6YHLR0Sj_gZ4adc&r=uUVa-8oDL2EzfbuMuowoUadHHcJ7pjul6iFkS5Pd--8&m=08me09fZR5EsA5QZYiOb1TFiR0tF_qwkRSAdkUyNpjA&s=m_K5_zzj87FycK64pXnW_GDVcpcHmtDh0WavX_95NOM&e=>**
> 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

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