[Ads-l] Kavanaugh yearbook

[Laurence Horn]

“Upchuck”, “puke”, and “heave" were also big around the same time as “barf” and “ralph”.  


> On Sep 26, 2018, at 10:32 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
>> "to ralph" was a (very) common alternative to "to barf"
> 
> I'm familiar with these two, plus "blow chunk" and "hurl" as white-guy
> slang. Amongst the colored (of only my era?), the polite term is "throw up"
> and the usual vulgar term, used to gross out the school cafeteria at
> lunch-time, is, "vomit," very commonly pronounced "vomic."
> 
> 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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>>> truth."
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>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
> 
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