[Ads-l] More on "Your Mama" (Not in OED)

[Shapiro, Fred]

The "your mama" formula of "dozen game" insults is used in Richard Wright's short story "Big Boy Leaves Home," published in 1936 in the anthology The New Caravan.  The relevant line in Wright's story is "Yo mama don wear no drawers."

According to Elijah Wald's book The Dozens: A History of Rap's Mama, the line "Your mama's out on the street doin' I don't know which" occurs in a song by Speckled Red titled "The Dirty Dozen No. 2."  Wald cites this to Brunswick 7151, 1930.

Fred Shapiro

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