Date:    Thu, 26 Mar 1998 10:22:15 -0500
<br>From:    Mark Mandel  Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM 
<br>Subject: Suck eggs and die!
<br>
<br>The estimable RonButters  RonButters[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM  writes:
<br>
<br>      
<br>In a message dated 3/23/98 7:55:19 AM, someone wrote:
<br>
<br>  In this view, the performer might not "suck blood . . ." or "suck money . . ."
<br> but merely "suck."  This suggests that some
<br>people don't look for a direct object of "suck" used this way.  Maybe that's why
<br> it is no longer necessarily considered
<br>obscene--an implied off-color object ("That sucks []") doesn't even figure in
<br> (younger?) people's use of the phrase.  
<br>
<br>There is considerable evidence that SUCK in its slang senses was NEVER
<br>"considered obscene." I mean, direct objects were ALWAYS expressed in the
<br>1920s-60s and they were "wind," "eggs," and "rope" (e.g., "You suck eggs!"
<br>"That really sucks wind!/rope!"). "Historically, the use of SUCK as an expletive
<br> with an "off-color object" does not exist in
<br>the written record in any place that I am aware of. Whatever you are filling in
<br> for the "[]" has no historical basis--except
<br>maybe as a kind of semantic back-formation, but the
<br>"off-color object" is very much in the mind of the beholder; it ain't in the
<br> historical record, even as it is definitely not in the
<br>minds of most contemporary users.
<br>
<br>     
<br>
<br>And what IS "in the historical record"? What got written and published. IIRC,
<br> the expression "suck" without d.o.
<br>originated, or at least spread to cover the country, ex oribus teenagers, at a
<br> time when "suck" with d.o.s such as you
<br>list was obsolete or obsolescent in colloquial speech with any meaning at all
<br> like the current one (which I would express
<br>as "be bad, be of poor quality, be undesirable, be despicable; [of an event or
<br> situation] be unfortunate").
<br>
<br>IMHO the "off-color object" was definitely in the minds of the beholder *and the
<br> user* at the time when the objectless
<br>verb became popular, which was probably part of its shock value. A generation
<br> has elapsed -- several generations of
<br>teenagers -- and if the implied object and its connotations have faded in
<br> transition, we should neither be surprised nor
<br>conclude that they were never there.
<br>
<br>       Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
<br>    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 796-0267
<br> 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
<br>           Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/
<br>