[Ads-l] "kick ass" 1862?

[Ben Zimmer]

Here are direct links...

JL's original ADS-L post:
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2017-October/149620.html

My post on the Strong Language blog:
https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2017/10/06/i-want-to-kick-ass-in-1862/

...now cross-posted on Slate:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/10/10/the_phrase_kick_ass_was_discovered_in_civil_war_correspondence.html


On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 12:59 PM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu>
wrote:

> I do not claim to understand the collocation in the 1862 Civil War letter,
>
> but maybe speculation besides accepting the sense known *over* a century
> later
>
> (with no intervening words between kick and ass) may be appropriate.
>
> I lost some email so here's the archive with links (also see Ben at Slate)
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2017-October/date.html
>
>
> Ben asked, more or less, whether the letter writer meant either to kick
> ass generally (gung-ho versus enemies)
>
> or to kick Old Captian Gilbert's ass. Of the two, in context, the latter
> seems to me
>
> relatively more likely.
>
> This soldier evidently does not want to enlist longer, at least not now.
>
> He may wish to resist the pressure to do so.
>
> By the way, there is ambiguity about what he wrote by his hand and what
> was dictated (if, in fact, both).
>
> Which was the interlinear?
>
> (And the first k is messy, but what else could fit?)
>
> "Ass" in some of these letters meant "as"--not that that instantly helps.
>
> Might--wild guess--this be an abbreviated "kick like an ass,"
>
> in resistance?
>
>
> Though it's not a really parallel case, another letter (by another author,
> Everett4 soldier from GA) includes:
>
> "iwant to See Some
> of the gals down thea in Hayneville you
> must tell them all howdy for me if
> you Can tell them that i love them
> as hard af [sic, as?] mule Can kick down hill
> i cant see any Gals up her at all"
>
>
> To "kick like a mule" (more or less, to really insist?) may have been
> common then.
>
>
> uncentainly,
>
> Stephen
>
>
>

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