I've read and heard it before on albums and books from over 50 years ago, and then when I was waking up, I remembered a scene from The Godfather: Part II.... Fredo's wife is dancing all over the floor drunk, and he threatens "to belt her".. I thought it literally meant = take off hiis belt, and whack her. But it means basically "to punch"
sharei was watching something from the 1940s on the criterion streaming service recently - i think it was white heat, the famous cagney film, but i'm not 100% sure - where one of the characters said 'that's very white of you' when someone did them a bit of a favour.
i'd heard that phrase once in my life, in beetlejuice i believe, and always thought it was a crass, off-colour joke, but a bit of googling tells me that it was once a fairly common phrase. there seems to be a bit of uncertainty whether it was a truly racist term, or if it was just meant in the sense of purity & virtue, as opposed to darkness equating to a stained, tarnished character.
regardless, it's a term well past its sell-by date, and i doubt we'll ever see it come back.
30s-50s to be drunk was referred to as "tight" or "stoned" (which also meant real tired)
share