Your Staff Report dated 25/5/04 has dissolved my puzzlement about this phrase which (being English and there being no raccoons in England), I had not come across before, other than to have read it in one of my favourite novels: Birds of America by Mary McCarthy (1971). On page 67 of my edition of this hilarious and piquant commentary on changing manners and tastes in the 60s, a shopkeeper tells Peter’s mother: “Button man hasn’t been through in a coon’s age…” Your explanation of this expression lends it a genuine charm that I had suspected was lurking there, all the time…
I was wondering about this recently also when a black friend commented on another message board that he hadn’t seen me “in a coon’s age”. I thought that it referenced raccoons but has such racial overtones now that I was more than a little bit surprised by his choice of words. This cleared it up for me.
In an age where you can get in trouble for using the word “niggardly”, even though it is unrelated in origin to the very similar-sounding racial slur, does it matter that the term comes from “racoon”?
In the article, Dex says, “Whatever the case, the usage is highly offensive today”
I’ve heard the phrase used by people of different ethnicity and have never seen someone react to it meaning anything other than “a long time.”
I’ve also never heard the word “coon” used outside of that phrase, either as a reference to an animal or a person of any color. I live near Los Angeles.
Does anyone find the expression or the phrase to be offensive?
I think Dex was saying that using the word “coon” to refer to a black person is highly offensive today. And it is. He didn’t mean that using the phrase “in a coon’s age” was highly offensive.
If you ever talked to some good old Southern Boys in the 1950s or 1960s, it wasn’t unusual to hear the word “coon” applied as a mild epithet when referring to a black person.
It was such an accepted epithet at the turn of the century that you can find tons of sheet music with the phrase. They were termed Coon Songs at the time. Popular from 1880-1915 or later.
I like his idea to say “In a dog’s age.” I think I’ll be using that.
Since Hector was a pup.
Heck, since Noah forgot his umbrella.
Since dinosaurs walked the Earth.
Many moons.
Forever and a day.
Since the Truman Administration.
Since I was knee high to a grasshopper.
I’m formerly from L.A., and I first heard ‘coon’ referring to raccoons. But then, I’m old enough to remember watching reruns of Daniel Boone (Fess Parker) on local TV. ‘From the coonskin cap on the top of old Dan, to the heel of his rawhide shoes…’
In Louisiana there’s also ‘coonass’ as a derogatory term for Cajuns. Some Cajuns have adopted the sobriquet much in the same way ‘rednecks’ have adopted theirs; but I believe it officially considered a racial slur.
I’m well aware of the use of “coon” as a slur but I use “in a coon’s age” all the time and never thought of it as anything but a reference to the lifetime of a racoon. What’s the bad interpretation? "In the age of a . . . black person . . . who lives as long as everyone else . . . "???
since christ was a corporal
For a funny use of the phrase, here’s my favorite scene (less than a minute) from the otherwise much-hated *Wild Wild West *movie. What you have to know is that Dr. Loveless, Agent James West’s courteous adversary, has no legs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAjPOpws0eE&feature=related
Here’s one example: the cat breed known as Maine Coon. (Not the most representative of pictures. Their typical coloring tends to be a mixture of dark shades. That, and their often hefty size make them look rather racoonish from a distance.)
I don’t find the phrase “coon’s age” offensive (understanding it to refer to a raccoon), but as I think about it, I haven’t heard anyone use the term in a - long time.
Johnny L.A. and BJMoose - you both listed occurrences of Coon that I had been exposed to but had forgotten, thanks!
Since Christ was a corporal
Since Moby Dick was a minnow.
I’ve always heard it as “in a dog’s age”.
I also never knew the playground rhyme was anything other than “catch a tiger by the toe” until I was in my late 30s.
Since christ left Winnipeg.
I always heard it as ‘nigh onto a coon’s age’, with a certain inflection to convey an image of a hillbilly talking. Hillbillies hunting raccoons with a muzzle-loader is just one of those memes.
As I implied, I was born and raised in L.A. and San Diego Counties and lived there (except for a year and a half in Japan when I was little) until I moved to the PNW five years ago. IME nobody used ‘coon’ as a racial epithet. Most people did not refer to the animal as a coon either, calling them ‘raccoons’. ISTM that shortening raccoon to ‘coon’ might be something of a regionalism. (Or else calling raccoons ‘raccoons’ is a SoCal regionalism. 
)