Jonathon Green has published another of his quarterly updates for Green’s Dictionary of Slang, in which he focuses mainly on one of those obscure language folk who I think should be better known:
The work of the independent Australian scholar Dr Gary Simes (1950-2017) has already been sampled for GDoS. Aside from a variety of general publications, often on gay themes, his Dictionary of Australian Underworld Slang, featuring two hitherto little-known glossaries of criminal jargon, was published in 1993, and a major discussion of early gay speech, ‘Gay Slang Lexicography’, was featured in the specialist journal Dictionaries volume 26 (2005). When he died in 2017 he was at work on his magnum opus, the Dictionary of the Language of Sex and Sexuality in Modern English. Like the OED and my own lexicon of slang, it is prepared ‘on historical principles’, i.e. underpinning each headword and its senses with a chronological list of citations of usage.
It would, undoubtedly, have been a major contribution to lexicography in general and that of (gay) sexuality in particular. Nonetheless, even though the project could not be finished, and absent substantial funding will never be so,² Dr Simes had typed up a manuscript from the many file cards which – he was no fan of computers – held his research. The ms is far from complete, but a substantial amount exists and much of the research, especially as regards slang, has never so far been included in a dictionary.
It is thus a text that deserves wider circulation. To that end, and thanks to the trustees of Dr Simes’ estate and GDoS contributing editor James Lambert, who is responsible for safeguarding and overseeing the use of the physical materials, we have been allowed to see the ms, and to extract from it for GDoS use such slang-based material as seems valuable. This is a lengthy task and will doubtless consume many months work. Extracted text will appear under the tag Simes:DLSS and new tranches will become available as the regular 90-day updates continue.
I am in equal parts charmed and annoyed by scholars who refuse to use computers; thank goodness his work won’t disappear due to the good offices and hard work of both Lambert and Greene, and I look forward to Greene’s essay on the decline of reference publishing.
I like that Green’s post on gay slang is illustrated with a pigeon (голубь)—just by coincidence? The etymology in the Wiktionary for голубой has some very specific details… I wonder, does this account hold up on inspection? Here is Anikin, Русский этимологический словарь, no. 17, on this sense of голубой, with none of that:
(LH readers who cannot read Russian will be able able to run this through their favorite online translator.) ЗРС 2004 is Вальтер Х. и др., Словарь. Заимствования в русском субстандарте. Англицизмы (2004), which I have not been able to consult. And the reference to голубóк 1 eventually leads to голубе́ц 1:
It seems like a good philological study devoted to голубой ‘gay’ ought to have appeared by now in Russian, but Anikin published this fascicle of his dictionary in 2017, so apparently none had by then… Maybe some LH readers can add to this?
(I will refrain from exploring an association with the other голубец (usually pl.), ‘cabbage roll stuffed with meat’.)
голубец
Not a good thing to consume before a night of cruising…
Reminiscent of פֿייגעלע.
And gonsel. And indeed Russian петух again.
It seems like a good philological study devoted to голубой ‘gay’ ought to have appeared by now in Russian
It certainly does. Maybe scholars have studied it but been nervous about publishing in today’s climate?
A small point, but it took me a while to figure out that you need to click on the “live” footnote link in what hat block-quoted in order to see the footnote in which Green threatens to write the essay that hat is looking forward to.
‘cabbage roll stuffed with meat’
Sigh. I used to walk miles for those, not just camels.
Food of the gods
Sigh. I used to walk miles for those
What happened? They’re frequently available at the meat counter at my preferred EDEKA market, and I guess Cologne also has its share of Russian and Polish shops, so they should be obtainable?
What happened?
Libido fail.
== > (I will refrain from exploring an association with the other голубец (usually pl.), ‘cabbage roll stuffed with meat’.)
I have it on good authority that proper gołąbki are made with buckwheat instead of newfangled rice.
I’ve seen “columbine” as a color name for light blue, in the context of housepaint swatches or premodern textiles.
I wonder if it’s named after doves or the flower, which comes in the same light blue as a dove’s neck?
Wiktionary says the flower name is from the petals looking like “five clustered pigeons.”
My understanding is that a dove is just a pigeon you feel well-disposed toward.
My understanding is that a dove is just a pigeon you feel well-disposed toward.
As the RSPB says:
#
People tend to refer to the smaller, more delicate birds as doves and the stouter and more urban birds as pigeons.
#
So it’s basically hicks versus New Yorkers.
My pigeon-racing coal-mining grandfather would (I think) not have appreciated any suggestion that he was keeping doves.
(I will refrain from exploring an association with the other голубец (usually pl.), ‘cabbage roll stuffed with meat’.)
I didn’t just pull this notion out of… thin air. French enviandé is at least a century old now.
I didn’t just pull this notion out of… thin air.
Lol. Of course you didn’t, dear. That’s why it resonated with me. I was not born under a cabbage leaf.
In the 70s I zhuzhed up my French vocab with comics by Copi. One of them was titled L’enculé de l’histoire. I suspect we all have experienced feeling like that at one time or another. It transcends gender. Like spitballs in classrooms.
@David Marjanović: Buckwheat would be really good too.
Apparently, the name buckwheat comes from the similarity in shape of buckwheat seeds and beech nuts. Both are rather angular. Beech itself goes back more or less regularly to Proto-Indo-European.
@David E.: My pigeon-racing coal-mining grandfather would (I think) not have appreciated any suggestion that he was keeping doves.
I take it they didn’t live in a dovecote?
Certainly not. They lived in a pigeon loft, like all decent pigeons.