gam@amdahl.UUCP (G A Moffett) (03/17/85)
"Swell" has been a very flexible word over the last hundred years:
- A stylishly dressed person, usually male;...a genteel
or refined person (what is that song, "We're a couple
of swells..."?). [1955, becomming archaic]
- The present meaning of the word (excellent, grand,
enjoyable, etc) has been colloquial since about 1880,
with the current popularity starting about 1920.
(It seems to have progressed from a grand superlative
-- "What a swell place you have!" -- to a good-natured
compliment -- "you're a swell guy" -- over time).
- First used in print as an adverb, 1949. "I was
treated swell."
Unfortunately, the "Dictionary of American Slang" (Stewart
Berg Flexner) has nothing to say about "make love", though
I heard it in a radio program of the mid-late 40's, with
the older meaning intended (they had an FCC in those days, too).
It might be hard to tell at what point the meaning shifted to
a more explicitly sexual one, since it had at some point
been used with deliberate ambiguity. Today that ambiguity is
lost, of course.
--
Gordon A. Moffett ...!{ihnp4,hplabs,sun}!amdahl!gamtd@alice.UUCP (Tom Duff) (03/18/85)
The phrase `make love', meaning `have sex' was in use as early as 1941. See, for example, Anais Nin's Delta of Venus, written in 1940 and '41 (although published in the mid '70s.)