Saturday, July 15, 2006

I'm amused.

In H. P. Lovecraftt's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," the residents of Innsmouth are described as "white trash." The way Lovecraft is using the word isn't quite the way we use white trash today (where it is strongly correlated with Redneck). He refers to it as meaning "lawless and sly, and full of secret doings." The origin of the term comes from Southern black slaves, who used this term for some of the white people working the fields with them (for people who were viewed as even lower than them).

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