[Ads-l] what's the latest [,] dope/poop/skinny?

[Wilson Gray]

> in the odd form "the skinnay"
Punning on the name of the once well-known pop-singer, Skinnay [skIni]
Ennis?

On Sun, Sep 15, 2019 at 6:20 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks, Garson.  I didn't see Green's sugg. ety. until after I posted.
>
> BTW,  Ernest Frankel, author of "Band of Brothers" is a retired USMC
> colonel, a veteran of Okinawa and Korea, a a novelist, and TV scriptwriter.
> "Band of Brothers"  (1958) is set early in the Korean War.  Another early
> user of "the skinny" (in the odd form "the skinnay") was novelist Anton
> Myrer, also a Marine vet of WWII (and like Hallet, a Harvard grad, FWIW).
>
> JL
>
> On Sun, Sep 15, 2019 at 5:54 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > The earliest discovered exx. of "the skinny," acc. to HDAS, appear in the
> > adventure memoir, _The Rolling World_ (Boston: Houghton, 1938), by
> Richard
> > [Matthews] Hallet.  Hallet (1887-1967), from Boothbay Harbor, Maine, had
> > two degrees from Harvard when in 1912 he decided to ditch his law career
> > and go to sea.  His book mainly covers the period of 1912 to about 1932
> and
> > recounts as well time he spent in Australia and Arizona.
> >
> > Hallet uses "the skinny" at least twice, in a book published decades
> > before the term went mainstream. It seems significant, however, that the
> > word is neither defined nor placed within quotes:
> >
> > P. 287:  "But the elfin corners of Lehua's mouth suggested her gift of
> > improvisation. Had she really given me the skinny of an actual legend
> from
> > the archives of her race, or was she wafting me the native poetry of her
> > soul?
> >
> > P. 332:  "We lit our pipes.  I gave him the skinny of a yarn I had
> written
> > of this western country. It was called 'The Snap of the Cap,' and had to
> do
> > with a man who had fallen in love with a girl out here somewhere in these
> > mountains."
> >
> > What may also be significant is that both exx. are "assigned" to the
> > period after 1928, when Hallet accompanied Navy Secretary Curtis Wilbur
> to
> > Pearl Harbor in the battleship _California_. (He met "Lehua" on Oahu.) It
> > is thus possible that Hallet picked up a word that already had notable
> > currency in the Navy, or at least in _California_.  That could explain
> the
> > absence of definition or quotation marks.
> >
> > But so could a lot of things.
> >
> > The ex. on p. 287 is easily interpreted as "the real truth," as is now
> > common, but the second ex. is not; there "the skinny" seems to mean, more
> > precisely, the (bare?) basic facts.  Get it? "Skin-ny."   (Don't blame
> me;
> > I didn't make the usage up.)
> >
> > Of course, the pre-existing naval currency of "Skinny"  at Annapolis as
> > "physics and chemistry" ("hard sciences" as Stephen observes) wouldn't
> have
> > hurt the rise of the new meaning.
> >
> > JL
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Sep 15, 2019 at 3:54 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com
> >
> > wrote:
> >
> >> The earliest discovered exx. of "the skinny," acc. to HDAS, appear in
> the
> >> memoir, _The Rolling World_ (Boston:
> >>
> >> On Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 5:50 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <
> >> adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>>  Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >>> > Garson,  that seems to be the glossary appearing in Lee's "Fag-Ends."
> >>> >
> >>> > The book's pub date is 1878, but the copyright is 1877.
> >>> >
> >>> > Significantly, even if P. J. Dashiell was still in school in 1877,
> Lee
> >>> > alludes to a professor nicknamed "Skinny" on p. 41.
> >>>
> >>> Here are some links into HathiTrust plus a Google Books link
> >>>
> >>> Fag-Ends From the Naval Academy
> >>> https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015016768346
> >>>
> >>> The Last Section - Page 41
> >>> https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015016768346?urlappend=%3Bseq=95
> >>>
> >>> A Dictionary (Second page of dictionary which lists skinny) - Page 99
> >>> https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015016768346?urlappend=%3Bseq=215
> >>>
> >>> Fag-Ends From the Naval Academy
> >>> https://books.google.com/books?id=NtExAQAAMAAJ&
> >>>
> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> 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."
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
>
>
> --
> "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
>


-- 
-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

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org