[Ads-l] "X sucks" in the East Village Other

[Ben Zimmer]

Green's Dictionary of Slang has "suck eggs" back to 1903:

https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/negmwcy

It's one of several pejorative constructions that use "suck" as a
transitive verb (e.g., "suck wind," "suck rope," "suck the hind teat"). As
Ron Butters explains in his 2001 article for _Dictionaries_, these were all
precursors to the use of intransitive "suck" starting in the mid-'60s.

https://www.academia.edu/8182369/We_didnt_realize_that_lite_beer_was_supposed_to_suck_The_Putative_Vulgarity_of_X_sucks_in_American_English


On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 3:35 PM Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:

> As a lark, I looked to see how far back I can find "sucks eggs", and that
> also goes back to 1966 in Google:
> You Can Always Tell A Harvard Man
> Richard Bissell
> eNet Press, 1966
> p191
>
> DanG
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 1:36 AM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > For a while now, I've been interested in finding the earliest print
> > occurrences of "X sucks" = 'X is bad.' There are a couple of early
> examples
> > that have been found in a 1963 letter and a 1964 journal entry, but 1966
> > appears to be the year when the expression started showing up in print,
> at
> > least in alternative newspapers. Previously I found a poem with the line
> > "EVERYTHING SUCKS!!" printed in The Paper, a Michigan State publication,
> in
> > its Oct. 13, 1966 issue (and reprinted later that year in The Screw from
> > Univ. of Kansas):
> >
> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2015-August/138481.html
> >
> > Now thanks to the Independent Voices archive, it's possible to find
> > slightly earlier print examples in The East Village Other. The Oct. 1,
> 1966
> > issue of The EVO has two examples where they say the actor George
> Hamilton
> > "sucks." (I'm not sure why they had it in for George Hamilton in
> particular
> > -- perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he was dating Lynda
> > Bird Johnson at the time. Or maybe they had a premonition he would play
> > Dracula in the 1979 movie "Love at First Bite.")
> >
> > ---
> > https://voices.revealdigital.org/?a=d&d=BFGHCGB19661001.1.4
> > The East Village Other, Oct. 1-15, 1966, p. 4
> > George Hamilton (who sucks) says that "undesirable" stars should be
> weeded
> > out to prevent further deterioration of the American image at
> international
> > film festivals.
> > ---
> > https://voices.revealdigital.org/?a=d&d=BFGHCGB19661001.1.21
> > The East Village Other, Oct. 1-15, 1966, p. 21
> > George Hamilton sucks.
> > ---
> >
> > Here's another example from The EVO later in '66, in an interview with
> > fashion designer Diana Dew, conducted by Philip Proctor of Firesign
> Theatre
> > fame:
> >
> > ---
> > https://voices.revealdigital.org/?a=d&d=BFGHCGB19661115.1.9
> > The East Village Other, Volume 1, Issue 24, Nov. 15-Dec. 1, 1966, p. 9
> > "Diana and her Electric Dress" by Philip Proctor
> > EVO: And what do you think of organized religion?
> > DD: It sucks.
> > ---
> >
> > There are many more examples of "X sucks" in The EVO starting in early
> '67.
> > The first issue of the year returned to the George Hamilton theme,
> followed
> > by the punny use of "Dracula Sucks" in a headline for an article in which
> > "the establishment" is depicted as a vampire:
> >
> > ---
> > https://voices.revealdigital.org/?a=d&d=BFGHCGB19670101.1.2
> > The East Village Other, Jan. 1-15, 1967, p. 2
> > P.S. George Hamilton still sucks (but not well).
> > ---
> > https://voices.revealdigital.org/?a=d&d=BFGHCGB19670101.1.11
> > The East Village Other, Jan. 1-15, 1967, p. 11
> > DRACULA SUCKS, by Lorraine Glennby
> > ---
> >
> > Two more examples from EVO in early '67 are notable because they appear
> in
> > letters from soldiers criticizing Army life:
> >
> > ---
> > https://voices.revealdigital.org/?a=d&d=BFGHCGB19670215.1.2
> > The East Village Other, Feb. 15-Mar. 1, 1967, p. 2, col. 2
> > To continue, may I say that the army sucks and bites.
> > [letter from Randall S. Strome, U.S. Army Medical Command]
> > ---
> > https://voices.revealdigital.org/?a=d&d=BFGHCGB19670401.1.2
> > The East Village Other, Apr. 1-15, 1967, p. 2, col. 3
> > I wouldn't wish this fuckin life on anyone. It sucks. It's no fuckin
> good.
> > [letter from Pvt. Jack G. Court]
> > ---
> >
> > That usage of "sucks" (and "bites") is in line with Army graffiti
> > documented from that time. Back in '05 I shared Vietnam-era graffiti
> > examples written on canvas bunk bottoms in troop transport ships (as
> > catalogued by Texas Tech's Virtual Vietnam Archive):
> >
> >
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2005-October/054831.html
> >
> >

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