Re: Billy's grammar confusion re: "pimping"

[ross smith <smithr@wfu.edu>]

On Thu, 1 May 1997, parcherj wrote:

> I always thought case pimps was short for case pimples - small, annoying
> disturbances on the surface of the case.  


Actually it was shortened from "pesky imps", a redundancy of sorts, 
offensive to Hoyas and other mythcal beings. So, to eliminate the 
redundancy, save syllables, and to pick on a really deserving group, 
Irwin Chemerinsky (or some other early master of word economy, so the 
story goes), shortened the sobriquet for these arguments to the present 
day form, pimps.

If we really wanted to be logical and precise in our language use (but 
that's not the nature of language, is it?), then we would reserve the 
word, pimp, for one form of debate argument: the debate as Sado-masochistic 
theatre critique. That one is a cheap, offensive, deceptive, sex-selling 
exploiter (see cx-l for further discussion).

Ross Smith
Wake Forest University Debate
910-759-5268
Box 7324 Reynolda Station
Winston-Salem, NC  27109

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References:

• Re: Billy's grammar confusion re: "pimping"
• From: parcherj <parcherj@mci2000.com>

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