[Ads-l] hog molly

[George Thompson]

​A column by Art Stapleton of the North Jersey Record on the New York
Giants football team that was printed in today's (March 1) issue of the
Poughkeepsie Journal and no doubt in some other newspapers in the Gannett
chain, quotes Dave Gettleman, the new general manager of the Giants as
saying that having outstanding guards on the offensive line was very
important; when the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl "they had two hog
molly guards. . . ." ​


DARE
​ has
 "hog molly" as a
fish of the sucker family
​, ​
from 1877, including​
​
:

1928  Outdoor Life 35/2 OK, I made a leisurely, light-hearted cast with a
big “hogmolly”—I never knew where the Choctaws got the name. He was a
sucker-mouthed individual with a pied or mottled skin. . . I figured he was
just about what should run a big lineside bass crazy.
1933  AmSp 8.1.49 Ozarks, Hogmolly. . . A fish of the sucker family. The
term is in common use among the Choctaws in Oklahoma.
1939  Hall Coll.  ceTN, The creek was full of fish—bass, white suckers,
silversides, red-horses, hog mollies.
1954  Milwaukee Jrl. (WI) 14 Mar sec 4 4/7 swMO, Jim Owen, float trip
outfitter on Ozark streams for 20 years, has sent many customers a
dictionary of hillbilly outdoors terms, as follows: . . Hogmolly, a sucker.

​The OED also has it in that sense from 1877.

I don't know where Gettleman is from.

He may be thinking of the term as "a sucker" (fish) and transferring it to
"sucker" (generic person).
The OED has ​
Sucker 1b.  fig. A greenhorn, simpleton. orig. N. Amer.,
dating to the early 19th C.
but the OED doesn't have "sucker" in the sense of "thing", as in "Let me
​take a ​
look at that sucker".

Green's Dictionary of Slang has "sucker" as
sense 3 (c) [mid-19C+] a person (occas. animal) or object, irrespective of
status.
​or
sense 3 (e) [1910s+] a general term of address, either derog. or teasing.

And reinforcing the connection might be the thought that a hog is a large
and powerful animal.

Green's Dictionary of Slang has "
​hog" as (sense

3
)
 a (large and powerful) vehicle [fig. ref. to the size and power of a SE
*hog*]
​,​
 & (sense
4
)
 of those possessing ‘masculine’ characteristics [the toughness of the
animal].​

​Wasn't there a briefly-celebrated football line that referred to itself as
"the hogs"?  (Not "briefly" celebrated by the team's fans, of course; only
by the rest of us.)

GAT  ​

--
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

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