[Ads-l] Antedating of "Come Out of the Closet" (Homosexuality)

Thu Jan 25 18:22:23 UTC 2018

There is also "closet case"
  closet case  n. slang (orig. U.S.)  (a) an unattractive or embarrassing
person, a social outcast;  (b) a homosexual who conceals or denies his or
her sexuality (cf. sense 10b
<http://www.oed.com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/view/Entry/34625?redirectedFrom=closet+case#eid9160299>
).
1946    Washington Post 7 Oct. 5/2   Unattractive girls are ‘strictly closet
cases’, meaning they should be in the closet when men are around.
1966    Oshkosh (Wisconsin) Daily Northwestern 24 Sept. 22/2   Presidential
nominee Barry Goldwater is being treated by Republicans as a campaign closet
case this time around.
1969    S. Harris Puritan Jungle x. 191   They're what we call ‘closet cases’,
hiding and scared to death of exposure.
2003    Out Feb. 14/1   Out 's getting less willing to shower
accolades on closet
cases who emerge seconds before tabloids push them out.

GAT

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 5:06 AM, ADSGarson O'Toole <
adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:

> The Oxford English dictionary entry for "to come out of the closet"
> presents a general meaning based on the cessation of concealment. The
> first OED citation is in 1963. Below are some additional citations
> beginning in 1960.
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> closet, n.
>
> 3.d. to come out of the closet: to admit (something) openly, to cease
> to conceal, esp. one's homosexuality. Opp. to be in the closet. Cf.
> sense 10   below. slang.
>
> 1963   S. Plath in London Mag. Jan. 16   Come here, sweetie, out of the
> closet.
>
> 1972   Pride of Lions (Columbia Univ.) Apr. 2/1   For those who have
> come out, tried it and like it, read no more. For those, ‘in the
> closet’, you need to read on, get right on!
> [End excerpt]
>
> Date: July 14, 1960
> Newspaper: Fort Lauderdale News
> Newspaper Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida
> Article: Tell Us, Ol' Chap, Is It Sudsy, Too?
> Author: Hugh A. Mulligan
> Quote Page 9A, Column 4
> Database: Newspapers.com
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> A BOY SCOUT pulling on a canteen would be as suspect as a Bowery bum
> swigging on a pint bottle in a doorway.
> The country's myriad closet drinkers could at last come out of the
> closet and get their kicks with the garden sprinkler.
> [End excerpt]
>
>
> Date: June 21, 1962
> Newspaper: El Paso Herald-Post
> Newspaper Location: El Paso, Texas
> Article: Van Horne on TV: Subject of Mental Illness Is Dramatists Main
> Topic
> Author: Harriet Van Horne
> Quote Page B4, Column 1
> Database: Newspapers.com
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> During the past 15 years--ever since the human condition, as viewed by
> Freud, came out of the closet and into the salon -- we have had enough
> mad scenes on our small screens (not counting Ophelia's) to cram the
> case files of a major state hospital.
> [End excerpt]
>
>
> Date: September 15, 1962
> Newspaper: The Kansas City Times
> Newspaper Location: Kansas City, Missouri
> Article: Disease Better Known: Multiple Sclerosis Society Meets
> Quote Page 6, Column 2
> Database: Newspapers.com
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> Jack Brauntuch, assistant director of patient services for the
> National Multiple Sclerosis society, said last night. Even though
> there is no cause or cure known, he said, the disease is coming out of
> the closet.
> [End excerpt]
>
>
> Date: November 2, 1962
> Newspaper: Oakland Tribune
> Newspaper Location: Oakland, California
> Article: The Retarded Child: Era of Indifference Drawing to a Close
> Author: Serena T. Scheer
> Quote Page 26D, Column 5
> Database: Newspapers.com
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> Mental retardation is finally coming out of the closet.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 4:30 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
> >> On Jan 23, 2018, at 3:16 PM, MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY
> RDECOM AMRDEC (US) <william.d.mullins18.civ at MAIL.MIL> wrote:
> >>
> >>>>> There’s also this but I don’t know the broader context of the
> excerpt:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 1963   S. Plath in London Mag. Jan. 16   Come here, sweetie, out of
> the closet.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> It’s not bracketed, so I assume it’s metaphorical in one sense or
> another.
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> The Plath cite is from a poem:
> >>>> Chttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57419/the-applicant
> >>>>
> >>>> and I am not able to tell what the author meant by this use.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> Thanks, Bill.  If it were my entry, I’d have at least bracketed if not
> entirely omitted this occurrence, which I don’t see as having to anything
> >>> obvious do with the sense glossed above, 'to admit (something) openly,
> to cease to conceal, esp. one's homosexuality’.
> >>>
> >>> LH
> >>>
> >>
> >> That is my take as well, but like I said, it is pretty opaque to me,
> and I wanted to allow for the possibility I was missing something that was
> obvious to a Plath scholar (or even an run of the mill English major).
> >>
> > FWIW, the Genius annotation, which may or may not have been provided by
> an English major, annotates the relevant bit—
> >
> > Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
> > I have the ticket for *that*.
> > Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
> >
> > --as follows (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57419/the-applicant
> ):
> >
> > We can speculate why the woman is in the closet. She may be hiding, to
> try to escape her fate. Or she may be too timid to assert herself.
> > =========
> >
> > Plath in this poem, and others (and at times in The Bell Jar, for that
> matter), depicts women in contemporary America as mannequins (or, to link
> with the previous thread on digisexuality, as robots designed for servicing
> men), another reason to take the closet in which the applicant is hiding to
> be a literal closet, or at least not a metaphorical closet of the relevant
> kind.
> >
> >
> > LH
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > 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 -- 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