[Ads-l] rude: noisy? frolicksome?

[Laurence Horn]

> On Sep 25, 2017, at 12:01 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU> wrote:
> 
> I had noticed the entry for "rude boy" in the OED.  As for "rude" meaning
> obscene, I don't suppose that that was what Miss Connecticut was admitting
> to in what the editor called a diary but seems in fact to have been a
> letter or series of letters to a girl friend.

Missed this somehow.  Link?

> 
> I spoke of the writer as being a landsman -- she used the word
> "Connecticutarian" which I hope Larry will proudly accept as well.
> 
> GAT, born in Meriden.

Nope, it’s “Nutmegger" or die for me.  If Massachusettsans can live with being “Bay Staters”, we should be proud to derive our identity from the spice that’s both valuable enough to cause Reagan to invade Granada over it *and* tasty enough to flavor our eggnog.    

LH
> 
> On Mon, Sep 25, 2017 at 8:48 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> In my experience, "rude" = 'bawdy; obscene' is known to older British
>> speakers as well.
>> 
>> I must have encountered it in the '60s, with no suggestion that it was a
>> novelty. I associate it with the sometimes hilariously "rude" rugby song
>> repertoire.
>> 
>> "Outway rude" may have been the collocation I met with.
>> 
>> JL
>> 
>> On Sun, Sep 24, 2017 at 9:47 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Sun, Sep 24, 2017 at 6:22 PM, Jim Parish <jparish at siue.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> The senses of “rude” as applied to human behavior are, I think, all
>>>>>> 
>>>>> negative.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Except in BE slang , of course, wherein, like “hard,” It’s a synonym
>> of
>>>>> “bad.” “Rude”and “hard”In the sense of “bad” go so far back that I
>> don’t
>>>>> know f’ sho’ where I first heard them. The time-frame is between 1945
>>> and
>>>>> 1950, though.
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> What does it mean in the title of Desmond Dekker's "Rude Boy Train"? (I
>>>> love the sound of his voice, but I very rarely understand what he's
>>> saying.)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> OED3 (Mar. 2011 update), under "rude":
>>> 
>>> _rude boy_  n.  (a) (orig. and chiefly Jamaican) any of a class of
>>> unemployed black youths inhabiting the poorer areas of Jamaica and
>>> typically seen as indolent and apt to commit petty crimes; a comparable
>>> youth in another society;  (b) (with reference to such youths as a
>> frequent
>>> subject of ska lyrics) a member of the subculture associated with ska,
>> esp.
>>> in Britain.
>>> 
>>> 1967   _Caribbean Q._ Sept. 39   Rude bwoy is that person, native, who is
>>> totally disenchanted with the ruling system; who generally is descended
>>> from the ‘African’ elements in the lower class... Rude bwoys are largely
>>> centred in those urban areas that suffer from chronic depression.
>>> [etc.]
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> 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
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 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 -- also known as The Dunghill Toadstool.  (Here's a
> picture of his great-grandfather.)
> 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

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