[Ads-l] Kavanaugh yearbook

[Jonathan Lighter]

Of interest:

<goog_1160163250>
https://www.vox.com/2018/9/26/17901368/kavanaugh-yearbook-boof-devil-triangle-renate-beach-week

The only problematic terms I have any familiarity with, other than "ralph,"
are the "FFFFF" thing (called in a more innocent age "the 4-F method") and
the tangential "bufu" (cf. "mofo").  During the '80s this was a crudely
humorous term for "butt-fucker," defined as a gay man.

I never heard it used as a verb.  "Boofed" (possibly unrelated to K's
usage) was well known in the '70s as a reference to sporting the "bouffant"
hairdos of the early '60s.

JL

On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 9:59 PM victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks. That was the interpretation that I had as well. I had acquired the
> verb a few years later, well post the undergrad years which, ironically
> coincided with Kavanaugh's. I had an excuse - my English was very limited
> in 1983
>
> VS-)
>
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 8:45 PM Chris Waigl <chris at lascribe.net> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Chris Waigl <chris at LASCRIBE.NET>
> > Subject:      Re: Kavanaugh yearbook
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > My partner Melinda, who was born in 1956 and grew up mostly in Virginia
> (a
> > little, but not much, further out of DC than the people in question),
> uses
> > the verb ralph in this sense.
> >
> > Chris
> >
> > 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
> > > >
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> >
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> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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."

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