[Ads-l] "spaz(z)" redux

[Ben Zimmer]

Now Beyoncé has, like Lizzo, announced she's replacing "spaz" in the lyrics
to one of her new songs. I wrote up the history of "spaz" for Slate.

https://slate.com/culture/2022/08/beyonce-renaissance-lizzo-spaz-ableist-slur-lyrics-history.html

On Tue, Jun 14, 2022 at 7:02 PM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:

> Lizzo has revised the lyrics of her new song "Grrrls" to remove a lyric
> that has been criticized as containing an ableist slur: "I'ma spaz" (or
> "I'ma spazz").
>
>
> https://www.npr.org/2022/06/14/1104925003/lizzo-rerecords-grrrls-criticism-ableism
>
>
> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniesoteriou/lizzo-new-version-grrrls-backlash-lyrics-ableist-slur
> https://thegrio.com/2022/06/14/lizzo-records-new-version-of-grrrls/
>
> "I'ma" is also transcribed as "I'mma" or "Imma" -- see Neal Whitman on
> this form (equivalent to "I'm gonna" in AAVE and elsewhere):
>
> https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/dictionary/prime-time-for-imma/
> https://literalminded.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/thoughts-on-imma/
>
> Since it's "I'ma spaz" and not "I'm a spaz," we're dealing with the verb
> "spaz" and not the noun. We've discussed both noun and verb here before,
> and I wrote up some research on this for Language Log back in 2006:
>
> http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003020.html
>
> As I discuss there, "spaz" (noun and verb) emerged in the 1950s from
> "spastic" (influenced by "spasm" and "spasmodic") but developed more
> negative connotations in the UK than in the US. (At the time, Tiger Woods
> apologized for saying "as I got on the green I was a spaz" in an interview
> after the Masters -- he faced mostly UK backlash, as seems to be the case
> with Lizzo now.)
>
> An excerpt from the Language Log post:
>
> ---[begin excerpt]---
> Many people report that _spaz_, meaning a clumsy or foolish person, was in
> common use in the mid- to late '50s here in the U.S. In a discussion on the
> alt.usage.english newsgroup, Joe Fineman (Caltech class of '58) reproduced
> this journal entry he wrote in 1956, in a section on the language of
> Caltech students:
>
> SPAZ, n.R (shortened from _spastic_) 1. _Obsolete._ A person lacking in
> the common social skills & virtues. See TWITCH. 2.
> To surprise a person in a way that causes him to take some time to react.
> v.R
>
> (The "R" means "regional or national" — i.e., I was aware at the time that
> this was not just Caltech slang. The noun was, of course, obsolete only at
> Caltech, where it had been replaced by the allusive "twitch".)
>
> The term may have already been on its way out at Caltech, but both the
> noun and verb were catching on in various parts of the country in the late
> '50s. The earliest print reference cited by the OED is actually for the
> verb, even though the noun form must have come first:
>
> 1957 Hammond (Indiana) Times 6 Nov. B2/6 Jewelers, furriers, and furniture
> dealers go through similar merchandising tortures whenever Wall Street
> spazzes.
> ---[end excerpt]---
>
> Link to Joe Fineman's alt.usage.english post:
>
> https://groups.google.com/g/alt.usage.english/c/Vot_tWlv4LA/m/jIzcq4h47b0J
>
> ...which I shared here back in 2005 (and is now included in the Green's
> Dictionary of Slang entry):
>
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2005-June/051326.html
> https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/5mhfosq
>
> At the time, the OED had just added an entry for "spaz" as a verb (defined
> as "to lose physical or emotional control, usually as the result of an
> intense emotional experience; to act in a bizarre or uncharacteristic
> way"), with the 1957 cite above. Looking in the databases now, I see an
> antedating for the verb, taking it back another year:
>
> ---
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/103753933/spaz/
> Hartford Courant, Oct. 22, 1956, p. 15, col. 1
> "We were a little spasmodic, but when we didn't 'spaz' we looked very
> good," the coach laughed.
> [quoting Yale football coach Jordan Olivar]
> ---
>
> It still seems likely that the noun predated the verb, but I haven't found
> examples for the noun earlier than Joe Fineman's diary entry, also from
> '56. (OED's earliest for the noun is from 1965, from Pauline Kael's _I Lost
> it at the Movies_.) "Spazz" appears in Dr. Seuss's _On Beyond Zebra_ (1955)
> as a fanciful letter of the alphabet (used to spell the name of a beast
> called "Spazzim"), but that doesn't seem relevant.
>
> --bgz
>

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