[Ads-l] Euphemism?

[Ben Zimmer]

On Sun, Oct 13, 2019 at 9:11 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

>
> I don’t see “wisearse” or, unsurprisingly, “wiseass” in the OED; the
> latter is spell-checked by my mailer to “wiseacre”, which preserves the
> sense (and has its own mysterious etymology). Jon, any early cites for
> “wiseass” in your W files?
>

Try hyphenating. OED2 has "wise-ass" from 1971 (Current Slang, Univ. S.
Dakota), and also "wise-assed" from 1967 (Tamony's "Americanisms"). Green's
Dictionary of Slang, meanwhile, has "wise-ass"  from 1961 and "wise-assed"
from 1960.

https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/p7oyyzi
https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/laf3gkq

--bgz

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