I’ve been trying - and failing - to identify the comedian and the exact language of a particular very off color joke, namely, that he was a teenager before he knew mother was only one word. (That’s an approximation of the joke. Maybe he said before it could be used by itself). The comedian was black, but I don’t remember who it was (Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Bill Cosby, someone else?) , nor do I remember the precise language. Any help Doper nation could provide would be appreciated because this has been bugging me.
Pretty sure it’s not Bill Cosby. Really doesn’t seem like his style.
One I heard from one of those types along similar lines went:
My baby just said half a word today.
Yeah, what was it?
Mother
Definitely not Cosby, but I could imagine Richard Pryor saying it.
I find lots of sources for the phrase “mother is half a word” and one (attributed to Bill Russell, although the poster is paraphrasing from memory) with the phrase “mother was a separate word.” It doesn’t really make sense, at least to me, as “mother was only one word.” It needs to be “I was 14 before I knew mother wasn’t half a word” or (less effectively) “I was 14 before I knew mother was a separate word.”
LaWanda Page (Aunt Esther on Sanford and Son), believe it or not, had a comedy album with that title…
That was in basketball great Bill Russell’s book? Well, that’s a surprise! I was thinking that Richard Pryor was a very good guess, something like, “I grew up in a tough part of the 'hood. It was so tough, I was 14 before I found out that the word ‘mother’ could be used by itself.”