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Unpleasant places

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July 07, 2005, 10:48
wordcrafter
Unpleasant places
Let's visit some undesirable places.

Dogpatch – the prototype of the low-class, rural hick
[From the comic strip Li'l Abner by Al Capp, set in the mythical town of Dogpatch]

Since this term has not been included in any dictionary, I'll support it with more citations than usual.

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July 07, 2005, 12:10
arnie
Two of the citations tie Dogpatch and Arkansas together. Was Li'l Abner specifically from Arkansas, or is it that the state just has a high proportion of hicks?


Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
July 08, 2005, 08:53
wordcrafter
A slough is a stagnant bog or mire, mucky and difficult to slog through. Hence,

slough of despond – a state of extreme depression
[From John Bunyan's allegory, Pilgrim's Progress: "Now I saw in my dream, that … they drew near to a very miry slough … ; and they, being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was Despond. Here, therefore, they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt; and Christian … began to sink in the mire."]
July 08, 2005, 09:08
Richard English
Slough is also the name of a town west of London. It is a dismal place whose attractions were immortalised by John Betjemen who wrote a poem that started:

"Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,"

You can read it all here: http://www-cdr.stanford.edu/intuition/Slough.html


Richard English
July 08, 2005, 21:00
KHC
Arnie,
I'm so glad you all escaped injury in the bombings! My heart goes out to London...

Re your previous post - Dogpatch.. I'm sure Arkansas has plenty of hicks, as do all the remaining 49 states... I have relatives in Minnesota and New York, who would certainly qualify..Smile And, of course, Arkansas did produce Bill and Hilary... I won't say anymore.

There is a good website on Lil' Abner.... http://www.lil-abner.com... if you care to visit it.. Al Capp was a great social satirist.

Stay safe!

[Edited to correct link by arnie]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: arnie,
July 08, 2005, 21:56
wordcrafter
potter's field - a burial ground for burying paupers and unclaimed bodies; also figurative
[alludes to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 27]

The term is more interesting when used figuratively. For example:
July 09, 2005, 10:17
arnie
Thanks KHC!

According to that site there used to be a Dogpatch theme park in Arkansas...


Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
July 09, 2005, 21:13
KHC
Arnie,

Wouldn't you just LOVE to visit that park? Thanks for correcting my post... I'm just not sure what I did wrong. Glad you are safe and sound..
July 09, 2005, 22:35
wordcrafter
The Bible tells that Judas was paid thirty pieces of silver to betray Christ. That money was used to buy a potter's field, which became known as the "field of blood" – which, in the local tongue, was Alcedama. Acts 1:19; Matthew 27:8. Hence today's word, which is quite rare.

aceldama – a field of blood; a bloody battlefieldNotice the unusual use of intestine in the first quote.
intestine (adj.) – internal
July 11, 2005, 10:22
wordcrafter
Hooverville – a shantytown of temporary homes
[Areas like this, thrown up at the start of the Great Depression, were sardonically named after then-president Herbert Hoover]

Would you agree that this term, unlike (say) 'slum' or 'shantytown', conveys a sense of disconnection, dispossession?
July 11, 2005, 21:01
wordcrafter
take to the woodshed (or 'to woodshed') – U.S politics: 1. orig.: to 'grill' someone brutally, in private; to subject to no-holds-barred questioning 2. more commonly: to criticize scathingly.
From the image of a pioneer father taking his son "out behind the woodshed" for a serious talking-to, perhaps using a leather strap to emphasize his point.To explain and use the original sense, we turn to A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures by newspaper editor Ben Bradlee, whose reporters broke the Watergate story.

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July 11, 2005, 23:58
tinman
From the OED Online:
quote:
woodshed, n.

2. fig. a. Phr. to take into the woodshed and varr.: to reprimand or punish. N. Amer. Colloq.
From the old tradition of giving a child a spanking in the woodshed, i.e. not in the presence of others.

1907 St. Nicholas July 826/2 He could save himself and most of his companions from unpleasant reckonings in various and sundry woodsheds. 1949 Time 18 Apr. 22/2 If you don't do what we tell you to do we are going to take you out into the woodshed. 1966 Toronto Daily Star 21 Dec. 14 (heading) Taking the Senator to the woodshed. 1983 Chicago Sun-Times 16 July 34 Assuming the Fed is traditionally pliant, why does not Reagan simply take Volcker to the woodshed and tell him to ease up?

c. Mus. Slang. As a place where a musician may, or should, practise in private (see also quot. 1937).

1937 Printers' Ink Monthly May 45/3 Wood shed, a severe rehearsal. 1946 Hollywood Note June 4 T.D. [sc. Tommy Dorsey] goes back to the woodshed. 1977 Rolling Stone 16 June 66/2 Leavell's playing won't scare many jazz pianists into the woodshed.

woodshed, v.

Mus. slang.

trans. and intr. To practise or rehearse, esp. privately (see also quot. 1978).

1936 L. ARMSTRONG Swing that Music 71 We used to practice together, ‘wood-shed’ as we say (from the old-time way of going out into the wood-shed to practice a new song). 1946 MEZZROW & WOLFE Really the Blues viii. 108 I'll have to woodshed this thing awhile so I can get straight with you all. 1950 BLESH & JANIS They all played Ragtime (1958) x. 203, I would hear the tunes and, to make sure, go home and ‘woodshed’ them in every key, put them in major and minor and all the ninth chords. 1968 A. YOUNG in A. Chapman New Black Voices (1972) Drew's got an alto [horn]... Drew dont hardly touch it, he too busy woodsheddin his drums. 1978 Amer. Speech 1975 L. 302 [Jargon of barber-shop singing.] Woodshed, work out the harmony parts (to a known melody) by ear; sing as a group for the first time..; improvise (an interpretation).

Hence woodshedding vbl. n., (a) the dispensing of punishment; (b) the practice or rehearsal of music; (c) spontaneous or improvised barber-shop singing.

1940 Amer. Speech XV. 205 Woodshedding, disciplinary action. 1946 MEZZROW & WOLFE Really the Blues ix. 151 Instead of woodshedding, he went out after the big money with the primitive equipment he had when he started. 1955 SHAPIRO & HENTOFF Hear me talkin' to Ya xi. 190 It was here that the term ‘woodshedding’ originated. When one of the gang wanted to rehearse his part, he would go off into the woods and practice. 1956 S. LONGSTREET Real Jazz xiii. 101 Bix [Beiderbecke] did plenty of woodshedding, playing alone, to some recording on the family Victrola. 1973 T. PYNCHON Gravity's Rainbow I. 129 No head falsetto here but complete, out of the honest breast, a baritone voice brought over years of woodshedding up to this range. 1974 Harmonizer Jan.-Feb. 18/2 Woodshedding is not a ‘spectator sport’ only participants can fully enjoy it. 1976 Times 27 Sept. 12/4 Spontaneous barbershopping is known as woodshedding, because a woodshed is as good a place as any to burst into sudden song.

It seems from these quotes that the phrase originally referred to applying physical discipline, and later acquired a musical meaning (which I had never heard of). The political meaning is simply a metaphorical extension of the original meaning.

Tinman
July 12, 2005, 07:16
arnie
I must say that none of these US uses for woodshed appear to have crossed the pond.

My first thought is of Great Aunt Ada Doom in Stella Gibbon's wonderful novel Cold Comfort Farm, who saw something nasty therein.


Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
July 12, 2005, 09:24
Richard English
Years ago I had a record called: "In the Woodshed She said She Would", which I always thought was by Lesley Sarony. However it seems it was written by H Johnson and M Siegel. Maybe Sarony perfomed it but, as he used usually to write his own material, that seems strange.

In this instance the woodshed was the solution to the lovelorn singer's prayers since it was in the woodshed that she said ahe would (kiss him, that is - this was 1928 after all!)


Richard English
July 12, 2005, 11:27
tinman
“Woodshed” also appears in the phrase, “something nasty in the woodshed” in the OED Online:
quote:
d. something nasty in the (also his, etc.) woodshed: a traumatic experience or concealed unpleasantness in a person's history (in allusion to quot. 1932); also in extended use.

[1932 S. GIBBONS Cold Comfort Farm x. 141 When you were very small..you had seen something nasty in the woodshed.] 1959 Sunday Times 5 July 6/6 He enjoyed a temperate childhood: nothing nasty in his woodshed. 1968 B. BAINBRIDGE Another Part of Wood ii. 70 They had all, Joseph, brother Trevor, the younger sister,..come across something nasty in the woodshed, mother or father or both, having it off with someone else. 1992 J. BURCHILL Sex & Sensibility 176 ‘Little people’..always, instinctively, knew that extreme promiscuity..led to heartbreak, confusion and Something Nasty in the Woodshed.

Look again at the 1968 quote, “…something nasty in the woodshed, mother or father or both, having it off with someone else.” That may be the precursor to the 1980s U.S. slang phrase, “doing the nasty.”

Tinman
July 13, 2005, 10:10
wordcrafter
ghetto – a part of a city in which a group is isolated (esp. a poor part, with confinement by social, legal, or economic pressure). fig: a similarly isolating situaton (esp. one of poor status or poor opportunity)

Though the word is familiar, its origin is not. It comes from the area in which 14th-century confined its Jews. The neighbor had formerly been an iron foundry; in Italian, getto.

A 1555 papal bull forced the Jews of Rome to live only in the designated ghetto area. It is perhaps appropriate that the title of that bull was Cum nimis absurdum.
November 27, 2005, 18:31
wordnerd
I just now came across tinman's statement that "the phrase, 'something nasty in the woodshed' [is] in the OED Online."

OED, and the sources it quotes, are coating an earthier phrase with a whitewash of euphemism. The original phrase is "nigger in the woodpile," though there are a few ghits for "nigger in the woodpile."

Each seems to have originated in the US (and apparently woodshed and woodpile did too). The earliest I cite I could find are these, from 1870. OED's cites (which have been changed since tinman's post) are much later, and if I don't miss my guess they are from the UK. Perhaps the phrase got scrubbed up a bit with the passage of years and of ocean.

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November 27, 2005, 18:57
wordnerd
PS, antedating the above:

Here (bottom of page) is an earlier cite, a bit of a ditty from 1863. The author puns – note his title – and plays on "out of the woods" and "nigger in a woodpile". There's further punning if "made your pile of wood" was slang for "made your fortune", like "He made a pile in that deal."
November 28, 2005, 11:20
arnie
Wordnerd,

I don't see that 'something nasty in the woodshed' was an euphemism for 'nigger in the woodpile'. Beyond the use use of 'wood', there is unlikely to be any connection, I'd say.

At the time of writing in 1932 'nigger in the woodpile' was not uncommon over here, and Stella Gibbon would have been unlikely to have wanted to 'sanitise' the phrase.

In any case, we are left in doubt as to exactly what Great Aunt Ada had seen, although we are led to believe it had a sexual connotation. The other phrase has a quite different meaning, that of a problem or stumbling-block.


Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
November 28, 2005, 21:14
wordnerd
arnie, I don't think I agree with you, but this may get to be a long discussion. A few quick points.This is getting very interesting. To be continued, I hope.

PS: Does anyone have Cassell's Dictionary of Slang? It seems to define the n-word phrase, but the relevant page is not available in google-books.
November 29, 2005, 11:47
arnie
I'm basing the statement about the 1930s on my own memories. Although the thirties were before I was born, I can remember the 'nigger' phrase being used in the fifties and sixties over here. As I said, it was not uncommon in those times; if anything I suspect it would heve been even more common twenty years earlier.

I feel reasonably sure that 'something nasty in the woodshed' was coined by Stella Gibbon and caught readers' imagination. Possibly she heard someone talking about something nasty and used it in her novel; we cannot tell now.

I can't agree that two two phrases have close enough meanings to indicate that they come from the same root or that the 'nasty' phrase is an euphemism for the 'nigger' phrase.


Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
November 29, 2005, 18:10
<Asa Lovejoy>
Back to Dogpatch: Since L'il Abner has been gone for a long time, my memory may be hazy, but I do NOT remember it as being an unpleasant place - ESPECIALLY with Daisy Mae around! Big Grin

Asa, native of a little hick town in South Carolina
November 29, 2005, 21:15
tinman
quote:
Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
... ESPECIALLY with Daisy Mae around! Big Grin

I thought you gave up Daisys for Sunflowers!

Tinman
November 29, 2005, 21:33
Seanahan
I remember a camp song I learned from my father called "Happy Sunday School", which is how he learned it. It is a cute and catchy song which I sang at many campfires with my Boy Scout Troop. At some point it was discovered the original song was "Darkie Sunday School", and it was no longer appropriate for us to sing in front of the camp.

I thought this was ridiculous, and we still sang it amongst our (all white from a white suburb) troop, but couldn't at the campwide events. A list of the various choruses is here, as well as a ridiculous number of verses. http://www.whitetreeaz.com/yfof/yfofword.htm
November 29, 2005, 22:22
tinman
quote:
Originally posted by wordcrafter July 11, 2005:
Hooverville – a shantytown of temporary homes
[Areas like this, thrown up at the start of the Great Depression, were sardonically named after then-president Herbert Hoover]

Hoovervilles

Tinman
November 30, 2005, 18:00
<Asa Lovejoy>
Daisy's just a distant memory! Smile Besides, she's L'il Abner's girl! Daisys and Sunflowers are pretty similar anyhow, but Sunflowers have more seeds! Big Grin
December 19, 2005, 14:31
shufitz
A further illustrative quote on Dogpatch, the word that started this thread:
December 19, 2005, 18:23
<Asa Lovejoy>
Whatever bacame of her? Anyone know?
December 19, 2005, 19:10
Kalleh
Asa, none of us has been able to reach her after she lost her Internet connection. I was in Atlanta at a conference once and tried to call reach her, to no avail. I hope that she has just forgotten about little old Wordcraft and has moved on.
April 20, 2009, 21:15
Kalleh
Reviving a thread...

I have been reading a book on Jews in the early part of the century, and the author refers to Louis Wirth's Ghetto, which I haven't read. Apparently at that time some used the word ghetto merely to mean "community." From what I can tell, there didn't seem to be a negative connotation. For example, this is a quote from Robert Park during that time: "Every people and every cultural group may be said to create and maintain its own ghetto." I've only thought of ghetto in a negative light. Have some of you seen it used to mean "community"?
April 25, 2009, 09:53
<Asa Lovejoy>
I'd only heard stetl for "community."
April 25, 2009, 10:20
zmježd
Not having read either book, I hesitate to opine, but ... I see how a ghetto could be considered a community (as well as a shtetl), but I would hesitate to use the terms synonymously. Wirth's book is not fully available on Google Books, but I did read a new introduction to The Ghetto by Hasia Diner (link). Ghetto is an Italian word originally. It is the name of an island near Venice to which Jews were restricted in the 16th century. Its etymology is uncertain. Shtetl is from Yiddish and means literally 'small city'.


Ceci n'est pas un seing.