I’m not interested in the phrase “make out” per se, but it is an excellent example of a phrase that I have no idea how it could ever have come about.
Basically, the two components “make” and “out” have no relationship to the final meaning of the phrase.
In this case, how was this phrase first uttered? The first person to have said “Let’s make out” must have gotten the response “What the hell do you mean?” How did the first person to say it even think about putting those two words together to mean what “make out” currently means?
As I said above, I’m not interested solely in the phrase “make out”, but in any such phrase which is made up of components that have nothing to do with the final meaning of the phrase.
How do they get put into use the very first time?
Is there a linguistic mechanism by which these come about?
Phrases like ‘making love’ or even ‘making whoopee’ are less ambiguous than ‘making out’. I would suggest that ‘making out’ caught on (in America at least) because it is a cleaner, more euphemistic expression.
“Making love” used to mean “courting.” (This results in some unintentionally amusing sentences when reading Trollope or The Forsyte Saga.) It’s perhaps easier to see “making out” evolving therefrom.
guizot, it seems to me that you’re describing something like a metaphor, while the OP is describing something more like a euphemism.
I think from the context that the OP is referring to activities of physical romance, but one really needs to be clear, with a phrase like “make out”. Depending on the context, it can have dozens of completely different meanings.
This also serves to demonstrate how supra-segmental pronunciation can shape meaning in very significant ways–and quite apart from the multiple meanings of this particular verbal configuration.
If Cosmo’s response sustains a high intonation on the last four syllables, it carries one significance. If the intonation falls steeply on last two, it carries another. It shows how much language is first and foremost a spoken phenomenon.
Even in that case (or in any similar case), how/why did Jerry or Kramer use that phrase on the next person?
That is, after the above exchange (or several such exchanges), Elaine comes in, and Jerry says “Kramer made out with Tina last night”?
How do you tell the term to the first person who is not in on your little joke?
Similar question in case ‘make out’ evolved from ‘making love’. Given that ‘making love’ is a known term, how/why does one then use, for the very first time, the term ‘making out’?
BTW, I would like this question to be more general, but I can’t easily think of another example where the component words have no relationship to the final meaning.
For example, the phrase ‘get up’, at least has the word ‘up’ in it, so it might help someone understand what the other person is saying, even if the word ‘get’ is nonsensical in that context.
Maybe ‘get cracking’ is a good example, since its meaning (“To begin to work”) is not related to either of the component words.
I’m pretty sure the word sleuths in this board can come up with much better examples
(Come to think of it, maybe the phrase I just used above (“come up with”) is a good example. Just imaging hearing it for the first time and someone asking you what it means)
Jerry: “Kramer made out with Tina last night.”
Elaine: “Made ‘out’ with her?”
Jerry: “Made. Out.”
Elaine: “Ohhh. Made out.”
Jerry: “Yeah. What’s the deal with that. What did they make?”
Elaine: “Oh, they made, all right.”
Kramer: “Oh yeah.”
Well, if Jerry and Kramer are using it with eachother, Elaine will get jealous and want to use it too, after she gets on what it means. The more mysterious it sounds, the more she’ll want to know and use it in front of others. Indecipherable slang is invented all the time, often based on some pun or joke. However, it often doesn’t get far precisely because it’s hard for newbies to understand. Once in a while, when the phrase’s meaning is truly useful, it lives.
Btw, it makes a lot of sense if it derived from “make out” like in the proposed exchange, which is the same “make out” as in “make out like a bandit.”
Which of course begs the question*: How did ‘make out’ get the meaning it has in ‘make out like a bandit’, since taken literally, it is nonsensical to say that a bandit made out.
[SIZE=“1”]* I know this is not the strictly proper usage of the term ‘beg the question’[/SIZE]
The bandit made it out of the bank with all the money.
Seriously I think that’s where all this is coming from. Making out means achieving a destination. The parallels to lovemaking are obvious, as is the origin. It’s a simple mutation that leaves out the usual phrase between make and out.
I think some sense of how the phrase probably evolved can obtained from the variety of other meanings of “make out”.
“Make out” basically means to achieve an outcome or result. “Make” here is in the sense of “to do;” “out” signifies an outcome or result. “How did you make out at the races?” “How are you making out at the new job.” The meaning is “what results did you have?” “Making out” in the sexual sense means having success in that endeavor.
A very common example is understand. (One “word”, I know. Same idea.) What are you standing under when you understand something? Who knows? (Well, Proto-Germanicists probably know. *I *don’t.)
Sorry that this doesn’t help to answer the OP. How such phrases come about (there’s another one!) is an interesting question. A lot of phrasal verbs surely start as slang.
