[Ads-l] Kavanaugh yearbook

[Jonathan Lighter]

Yup. To "ralph" (occasionally "rowf") was also common at NYU in 1970.

But I never knew of a club.

There were various synonyms, such as to "Buick" (or to "sell a Buick"), to
"toss your cookies," and to "call Ralph."

JL

On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 7:25 PM Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu>
wrote:

> > On Sep 26, 2018, at 4:20 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >
> > from my undergrad years, 1958-62: "to ralph" was a (very) common
> alternative to "to barf", both sound-symbolic / echoic / imitative for 'to
> vomit' (and both attested from the 1960s...)
>
> addendum: my experience was not just from 1958-62, but from the Ivy League
> -- usage from guys who seem to have brought the vocabulary with them from
> (mostly Eastern) prep schools.
>
> arnold
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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