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[Jonathan Lighter]

My impressions as an NYC white guy were very much the same.  Things began
to change, I think, around 1970, but took another generation to become
undeniably obvious.

JL




On Mon, Sep 11, 2017 at 4:40 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> > So sexist!
>
> Can’t help it. Back in my youth, it was assumed that women and girls were
> unaware of any slang terms of a sexual nature or any other kind of “bad
> word” or even of “non-standard” slang, in general, because they had never
> heard them, since no gentleman used such language in the presence of a
> lady.
>
> This led to such oddities as a college classmate tittering to me a joke
> whose punch-line contained the phrase, “God damn.” I heard a cruder version
> of the same joke when I was in the first grade, for heaven’s sake. The
> punch-line of her version:
>
> “Will you pass those Goddamn peas?!”
>
> The punch-line that I heard in the first grade was:
>
> “Pass them peas before I shit on you!”
>
> Another time, I was startled to hear a female friend use “cocksman.” If she
> had had the slightest clue as to the meaning of _cock_ in that term - the
> mirror-image of what it means in standard English, but still… -  she would
> have cut her tongue out before using it
>
> It was this that led me to claim, in these pages, that women knew nothing
> about slang. Nowadays, thanks to the popularity of rap and hip-hop, once
> thuggishly-manly turns of phrase have been totally emasculated. I hear
> white women in sit-coms casually using language that, in my lost youth,
> _black_women had never heard and wouldn’t have understood, if they had
> heard it, as in the case cited. There was a commercial featuring two white
> ladies at a table at a sidewalk cafe. A good-looking man passes by and one
> white lady says to the other, “I’d like to hit that!” On another sit-com, a
> white lady used the phrase, “split it, hit it, and quit it.”
>
> Lord have mercy! In my day, only the crudest, no-class,
> reform-school-drop-out rogues hanging on the corner smoking reefer on the
> poor side of Darktown would use those turns of phrase! In fact, at that
> time, it wouldn’t even have been grammatical for a woman to say, “I‘d  like
> to hit that,” as Larry has demonstrated, writing pseudonymously, in a paper
> published in the McCawley festschrift, Studies out in Left Field.
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 10, 2017 at 7:56 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > So sexist!
> >
> > JL
> >
> > On Sun, Sep 10, 2017 at 4:44 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > > How about syn. “junk"?
> > >
> > > I don’t know. Isn’t that just for guys?
> > >
> > > On Sun, Sep 10, 2017 at 10:13 AM, Jonathan Lighter <
> > wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com
> > > >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > How about syn. "junk"?
> > > >
> > > > JL
> > > >
> > > > On Sat, Sep 9, 2017 at 11:48 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > "8. in sexual contexts [20C+ use is usu. US black].”
> > > > >       (a) the [vulva]… fig. used as female sexuality.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > "Usu. US black” is certainly true, in my experience. It’s a clip of
> > > _that
> > > > > good stuff_ , a quasi-euphemistic alternate term for _pussy_.
> > However,
> > > it
> > > > > appears to be breaking the bonds of race, sex, and nationality..
> > > > >
> > > > > Here’s an instance of its use by a black Englishwoman:
> > > > >
> > > > > “He sat next to me and started touching my stuff.”
> > > > >
> > > > > https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-41038652/he-touched-my-
> > > > back-down-to-my-bum
> > > > > ca.0:03
> > > > >
> > > > > Also, as is the case with _tap that ass_, the term has clearly lost
> > its
> > > > > former level-10 obscenity.
> > > > >
> > > > > --
> > > > > -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."
> > > >
> > > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > > 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
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "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
>



-- 
"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