Miss Nancy

[poliphilo]

Talking about phrases having longer histories than one might suppose, I've just come across "Miss Nancy"- meaning "Nancy Boy"- a usage I'd have guessed was 20th century- in Anne Bronte's Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Comments

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

It goes back at least to the 1840's. President Buchanan might have been gay. From wiki: The two men lived together for 13 years from 1840 until King's death in 1853. Buchanan referred to the relationship as a "communion,"[62] and the two attended all parties together. Contemporaries also noted the closeness. Andrew Jackson called them "Miss Nancy" and "Aunt Fancy" (the former being a 19th century euphemism for an effeminate man[64])

footnote 64 refers to The Wordsworth Book of Euphemisms by Judith S. Neaman and Carole G. Silver (Wordsworth Editions Ltd., Hertfordshire)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that.

It would be statistically very odd indeed if the USA hadn't had a number of gay presidents.

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

Two that we know of - Buchanan and Lincoln.

[veronikos.livejournal.com]

I loved that book.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's growing on me.

I was thinking I couldn't take much more of the blokey facetiousness of the narrator- and then the heroine took him apart.