[Ads-l] Rocky - '50s slang for busty

[Jonathan Lighter]

Not in HDAS files either.

JL

On Wed, Aug 5, 2026 at 3:28 PM Emily Gordon <
0000205244c4ee9d-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> My stepmother lived in suburban Virginia in when she was in 7th grade,
> circa 1958–59. She told a story about the girls and boys in her class that
> included the word "rocky"—slang for girls who had developed breasts. As in,
> "Susie's gotten rocky! She really fills out that dress." Were "rocks"
> breasts too?
>
> I wouldn't expect this kind of word to be printed in a newspaper. Not in
> Green’s Dictionary of Slang. Anyone have a source or memory?
>
> Probably unrelated, but I was interested to see this phrase in a Reddit
> discussion of slang terms for breasts in the '40s:
>
> [begin quote]
>
> I can’t find it but I remember a line from Raymond Chandler I think. ‘She
> had a pair of 38’s and a loaded 45.’
>
> Not in 1940 but after the U.S. entered the ear, there were lots of
> guns/bomb/bullet allusions to breasts.
>
> Ive also read Sweater Puppies, sweater bombs, ‘she was aerodynamic in all
> the right places.’
>
> Also, ‘Do you prefer the Rocky Mountains or the Appalachians? (Big breasts
> or small?)
>
> [end quote]
>
> https://www.reddit.com/r/answers/s/OH6Z7fitzv
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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."

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