“If all the women at Vassar were laid end-to-end…I wouldn’t be a bit surprised!” - Dorothy Parker
Anybody know the origins of the term? I wouldn’t bet against it coming from Vassar’s ceremony.
I’d never heard it used sexually before this. To me, it always meant a chain of flowers or electronic equipment. Now, of course, I’m going to use it non-sexually as often as possible and refuse to admit knowledge of any other meaning.
This seems like a good time to bring up one of my most prized T-shirts:
“Bryn Mawr College: 114 years of women coming together”
I have apparently led a sheltered life, as I have never heard f the sexual connotation, and indeed I would have trouble making the connection. The only times I have heard the term are 1) SCSI devices and 2) the linking together of a number of Claymore mines with the intent of detonating them all at once on the same trigger.
The Wikipedia article give a pretty good overview of the various meanings.
OED and RHDAS cites for earliest uses of the different meanings:
literal flower chains: 1841
a link in something(non-sexual): 1856
sexual meaning: a1927
I’ve never heard it used sexually. At work I’ve been dealing with power management devices that chain together, so we’ve been using the term “daisy-chain” a lot lately. Now I’m wondering if some of my (mostly male) co-workers have been smirking about this.
If it were not for the SDMB, I would have totally missed the tossed salad and dirty sanchez references during the second season of Veronica Mars.
That’s how I heard it-it goes around long enough that everyone’s getting and giving head.
However, I think it can be safe for a jewelry business, especially for a ten year old.
Ah! But did you learn what a Cleveland Steamer is? :eek:
This is the first time I’ve heard it to mean anything other than a wreath of flowers.
In elementary school, we made daisy chains out of strips of colorful construction paper.
And several years after that, I participated in the ***other ***kind of daisy chain a few times . . . all guys, oral only.
A daisy chain is when you have several little kids and only one adult and everybody holds hands to cross the street or to stay together at the zoo. More than one adult is allowed, but the point is that everybody ends up making a chain so that nobody gets lost or dead.
I would agree with that if she only used it in private. Otherwise, I think that sooner or later someone will notice it and make fun of her. Apparently she doesn’t know about any alternative meaning. If kids today still are like they were in my day, there’s a real chance that it will result in public humiliation. To me it seems a little unfair to let her go on without any warning.
Perhaps I overestimate the problem because we only have the term in its non-literal sense, nobody would use the English term for a chain of flowers.
Do you want to be the one to tell her why you don’t think it’s an appropriate name?
Googling “Daisy Chian” gives me a scrapbooking site, a local parents’ resource page, a managment consultancy, several florits, a landscape designer and a craft page.
So, even if she does go ahead and use it, she wouldn’t be the only one.
Sorry, I actually Googled “daisy chain”, of course!
No, but now I’ve looked it up, of course. Sigh.
Amen to that. I knew I shouldn’t have, I knew it, I knew it. :eek:
Flowers and SCSI devices. Never heard it with any sexual connotation before.
And, I’m going to try to pretend that I still haven’t - you people already ruined salad and wearing pearls for me 
As the arbiter of such things on this fine board (where’s the “contributor” under my screenname???), “Daisy Chain” illicits as many giggles as “pearl necklace”, “spam truncheon”, man spackle", and “reacharound”.
Long story short, yeah, it can certainly be construed as dirty. Would I?
Um. Yeah!
I had only used the term in a non-sexual context until a few months back. My first news that it had any kind of sexual connotation came from a discussion on this board - I think it involved furries…
There was a large wild field just across the street from our house, when I was little. Tiny pink-edged chains growed there and me and my friends would chain 'em up to make necklaces and tiaras for each other. It’s one of my fondest childhood memories.
I’m a mid 40s geezer, and the term to me has always meant a series of cascading events or the SCSI setup. Never sexual slang, nor actual flower arrangements.