Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 14:32:32 EST From: Larry Horn Subject: Re: G-string Ode on the G(ee) string, cont'd: We don't seem to have pinned it down, do we? The earliest citations all seem to refer to the article of (male?) Native Americans' attire and those earliest references all have the fuller spelling, gee(-)string. (These are from the 1870's through the turn of the century.) The first "G-string" is cited (or should I say, barely sighted) in 1891: "Some of the boys wore only 'G-strings' (as, for some reason, the breech-clout [sic] is commonly called on the prairie)." (Harper's Magazine) The parenthetical in that citations suggests any euphemistic understanding (G for genitalia, or whatever) was not necessarily standard (compare "gee" for "Jesus"), and the later transfer of the term (I think more often with the G string orthography) doesn't have a cite earlier than 1936 (Dos Passos), although I expect the OED might have missed the relevant publications for that use (= 'a similar piece of material worn by show-girls, strip-tease artists, etc.'). My guess is that "gee string" came first, although I can't find any of the 10 or so listings for nominal or verbal "gee" that offer a plausible derivation; then "G string" re- sults from a loss of transparency (what IS a gee, anyway?), driven by the existence of the musical item, that slender and dainty fourth string on the violin, third string on the cello, guitar, or viola, or first string on the bass (most of which I just learned from the OED entry). But what was that ur-gee? --Larry