Date:  Tue, 30 Nov 1993 06:43:53 +0500

From:  "Connie C. Eble" <cceble[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GIBBS.OIT.UNC.EDU>

Subject: Re: Rock'n Roll



  I think that you figured out from context just exactly what rock 'n'

roll means to your classmate--that he thinks something is good or great.

This example is probably a specimen of the slang of your classmate's

group. I think that I have the expression in my corpus of college slang

from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but I do not have my

files at hand to check it now. As for the origin of the phrase as a term

referring to music (which the originator of rock'n'roll as a slang

expression for great probably had in mind), Gerald Cohen has a excellent

piece in Comments on Etymology, I think in the December issue of 1992, or

somewhere around that time.

  Do you know Jonathan Lighter in the English Department at the

University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He is completing a dictionary of

slang and might have some information for you.



      Connie Eble  cceble[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]gibbs.oit.unc.edu