Heres a little something to help pass the time while you wait in line for your nerd phones: I tripped across an interesting little tidbit the other day about the etymology of some slang.
During Jerry Thomas’ time in the late 1800s—no wait, hold on. I know, I know, history is for old people but keep reading. Anyways, sugar used to come in cones varying from 4” in diameter and 10” high for the primo stuff, to 10” -15” around for skagg cane that measured about 30” tall. Victorians being Victorians used custom metal sugar snips to cut a serving of sugar and for some damn reason, called the cone of sugar, a “loaf.” The sugarloaf wasn’t as malleable as brown sugar or dry and crumbly like a sugar cube, apparently, it was somewhere in between; Firm, giving a little when pressed but it maintained its form.
A large sugarloaf was as common in a bar as a politician or a prostitute. The bartender would scrape, cut or pinch what he needed from the top, wearing the cone down into a dome from making mad cocktails like the Mint Julep. It didn’t take long before some scoundrel made the comparison between a firm, dome shaped sugarloaf and a woman’s booty cheeks. Please, stop giggling. I’m trying to be professional here.
They called it “the sweet cheek.” The smaller, high quality sugarloaf was called a “sweet tit.”
It was a different time. See, when a gentleman, slapped a woman’s ass, it meant “hey, I appreciate all that you have to offer.” It was also a test to see if, hidden under that 19th century burka, a lady had sweet cheeks. This term of endearment is still used today everywhere from Justice Clarence Thomas’ private chambers to metropolitan construction zones.
A true degenerate, or politician, would always take it too far. Instead of the affirming butt smack, he’d pinch her derriere. Now, before we, as a society, settled on “goosing,” some sophisticated mind came up with the the euphemisms, “a pinch of sugar” or “pinching a loaf.”
And it was a hit. It was the “that’s what she said,” of its time.
That Josephine sure is sweet. I’d like to pinch her loaf to see just how sweet. (Har Har!)
How did you two meet? Well, I pinched her loaf and knew she was the one for me. (Oh you!)
Girl. Lemme aks you somethin’. You ever have a man take a pinch of your sweet loaf? *toofsuck*
Around the turn of the century, advances in technology allowed sugar refineries to extract more moisture, making it lighter and allowed for more product to be packed into cargo holds. Granulated sugar and sugar cubes became the new sugar shipping standard. Progress being progress and all, the world industrialized and people forgot that sugar once came in solid loaves. Somehow the phrase, “pinch a loaf” survived but took on an entirely different meaning in the trenches of World War One… More on that another time, until then, bottoms up and I made up everything after the second paragraph.
Now you know something interesting about sugar.
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