On 8/8/07 11:25 AM, "Christopher D. Morris" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> corporsosity seem to
> segashuate

That's a good one.

One website explains:

Mike Schwitzgebel cites his Ohio grandfather's use of the word
"copperosity".  He tracks this via the OED to corporosity , "Bulkiness of
body.   Also used in a humorous title or greeting', with a citation to James
Joyce Ulysses 418 "Your corporosity sagaciating O K? ". This in turn is
apparently a reference to Joel Chandler Harris' The Tar Baby and other Tales
of Uncle Remus, where "copperosity" and "segashuate" represent the
African-American vernacular pronunciations of these words.

Schwitzgebel tracks the Harris/Joyce greeting further to Nicholas Doran P.
Maillard's 1842 History of the Republic of Texas . Maillard was a British
lawyer    who lived in Richmond, Texas, for about nine months during the
year 1840. His book was a virulent anti-Texas screed, published in the hope
of influencing British public opinion against diplomatic recognition of the
Republic of Texas.  Maillard describes the infant republic as "stained with
the crime of Negro slavery and Indian massacre", and "filled with habitual
liars, drunkards, blasphemers, and slanderers; sanguinary gamesters and
cold-blooded  assassins; with idleness and sluggish indolence (two vices for
which the Texans are already proverbial); with pride, engendered by
ignorance and supported by fraud." Maillard also cites "How does your
copperosity sagaciate this morning?" as a typical Texas greeting.


Harold K. Bush, Ph.D
Saint Louis University