Indeed, Cecil says as much. The same can be said for:[ul][li]“Indian corn” (what we Americans now simply call corn – in Colonial times, folks who were used to British grain crops found the stuff distateful),[/li][li]“Indian wrestling” (you’re not really wrestling, you’re just using one arm), and[/li][*]“Indian burns” (they’re unpleasant, but their nothing like a real burn).[/ul]
I did. The first one was a message board and the third mentioned “cocksucker” but not “suck”.
From what I’ve seen, the first printed use of “sucks” to mean “fellatio” was in 1928 while “suck eggs” appeared in 1707. All I’m saying is it’s possible that “sucks” didn’t originally imply fellatio but rather the eggs.
If “XXX Sucks!” , which started appearing in print around the 1960’s(albeit on restroom walls, etc.) meant “sucks eggs,” there would have been little reason for it to not have popped up sometime between 1707 and 1960. But it didn’t. It suddenly appeared in and around the early '60s, a period of time during which homosexuality and oral sex were becoming topics of conversation.
On the other hand the common phrase “XXX Stinks!”, which was in use in the decades before “XXX Sucks!” came along, expressed the same sentiment, and was regarded as crude language in polite circles.
Well, let me mention again The Daily Cardinal at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where the anti-“sucks” editorial appeared during the football season in the late 1940s. I saw it with my own eyes. Wish I had an exact date for you.
That the editorial did not have to explain what was offensive about “sucks” suggests it was slang that was already understood by its readers.
Walloon. I had noticed it earlier.
Thanks for the more detailed info. I’ve just posted it to the ADS. Maybe some enterprising individual over there will follow up on this.
I don’t think it became a common phrase until the late 50’s/early '60’s.
You certainly will win the prize for earliest cite. I’ll make sure OED gives you credit. 
Community pressure caused many of the chain’s locations to assume the “Jolly Tiger” name. I remember eating at one such restaurant in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1977 (I was about to start my freshman year of college). The decor featured the same India-inspired pictures that graced the Sambo’s franchises in my native Northeast Ohio. This cite is from a paper in the New York town of Rome, so opposition to the Sambo’s name wasn’t neatly divided along North-South lines.
Sambo’s suffered from two convergent problems.
First, Sambo is a name that appears in a number of British works of the 19th century applied to black men in erotic situations. (I am sure that that is not its only use, but there is enough British erotic literature floating around for the word to have been known by some (not defined) number of people.)
Second, and more importantly, one edition of the book Little Black Sambo that was widely distributed in the U.S. between the 1920s and 1950s discarded the original British/Indian illustrations, substituting really horrible racist caricatures of black Africans–huge red lips, enormous whites around the eyes, triple chins on the mother, etc. (I almost think they inserted some extra dialogue at the final breakfast scene with the father changing all his "V"s to"B"s, etc., but it has been a while since I saw that copy of the book.) And, of course, it made no sense in the context of tigers in Africa.
If this was the version (or even a version) known to most blacks, it is easy to see where they would not enjoy the association.
Does anyone know if the name Sambo was influenced by the South American word zambo, pronounced sambo, meaning black person?
Most of us in my Baby Boomer generation didn’t even know Okie was supposed to be derogatory until reading Grapes of Wrath in college, and I remember it sometimes being used as a quaint shorthand for “Oklahoman” sometimes in newspaper headlines. However, if someone referred to me as an Okie with a contemptuous sneer, I’d probably be offended. On the other hand, if someone referred to as anything with a contemptuous sneer, I’d probably be offended.
Actually, I think “Okie” must have lost its sting because it’s hard for most people to get worked up about Oklahomans in general.
Prussian means inhabitant or citizen of Prussia, which historically was in the North of Germany and was an independent kingdom for quite some time. The term dates back at least three centuries, but I guess it is much older. Using the term in this sense is not derogatory at all, to anybody.
However, after WW II parts of previously German territory became Polish (I think already after WW I, but to a lesser extent), which also affected former Prussia. I have heard right-wing Germans calling people from Poland Prussians, meaning that they were living on land that was supposed to be German. I can understand that Poles object to that use. It is too much of a stretch to say that it is even technically correct since it refers to people living in an area that used to be Prussia. On the other hand, using the term Prussian in a historically correct context in the presence of a Pole should be acceptable.
Independently, people from southern Germany have long been using Prussian as a slur for anybody from northern Germany.
That’s not what I’m saying. Clealy “sucks” has meant fellatio since at least 1928. Two questions: has it always meant fellatio and can we be certain?
One person I know objects to the use of ‘cack-handed’ to mean ‘clumsy’. His explanation is that ‘cack-handed’ is an old-fashioned term for a specific disability and should not be used as an insult. I did a quick search and the only things I could find refer to it meaning left-handed.
This is similar to the case of the word ‘cretin’ mentioned earlier in the thread. Wouldn’t ‘moron’ be in the same category?
This is an almost exclusive British English word. It is cited in the OED from 1854. Original spelling was “keck.” The is NO specific disability associated with it that I could find.
Going back even farther historically, the earliest meaning of Prussia was a Baltic nation that spoke a language related to Lithuanian and Latvia (Old Prussian, extinct for about 5 centuries now). The original Prussians were Balts, whose presence in what is now Kaliningrad and northern Poland predated the Slavs and Germans.