[PW] Plut

[Meredith Dixon]

This is just for me, for that history of Randolph-Macon Woman's College
that I'm writing.  In 1944 and 1945, the plot of my school's Sophomore
Play, which was written each year by the Sophomores themselves, turned
upon the use of the "magic word 'plut'".  I've asked alumnae of the
period about this, and they've all told me that the word was much in
vogue on campus during World War II as a mild expletive, but that none
of them attached any actual meaning to it.  As far as they knew it was
just a satisfyingly emphatic monosyllable which could serve as an
euphemism for stronger terms.

Two of them have told me more.  One says that she thinks the term was
invented by one of her hallmates in 1942, and was only used on our
campus.  The other says that when she came home for Christmas and used
the word in front of her mother, her mother made her stop using it until
she had checked to see whether either her father or her brother in the
Army knew an obscene meaning for it.  Neither of them had ever heard of
it.

A check of the Urban Dictionary online shows several crude and/or
scatological meanings for it.  However, it seems to me quite likely that
the word could have been independently re-invented in the course of 68
years.  I'd like to find out whether it had any such meanings in the
1940's.

The Compact Oxford doesn't have it, and I don't have access to a slang
dictionary.  Could someone who does please check?  Again, I'm not so
much interested in its meanings (which I can't include in my G-rated
college history anyhow) as in whether the word was used in any of those
senses during World War II.








-- 
Meredith Dixon <dixonm at pobox.com>
Check out Raven Days <http://www.ravendays.org>
For victims and survivors of bullying at school.
And for those who want to help.