etymology - Does "This blows!" (it's bad) derive from "This sucks!"?


The origin of blow = suck, be bad/unpleasant recently came up in comments to this ELL question.


I'd always assumed it was a standard slang "meaning reversal" from suck. But a few minutes on Google failed to confirm this for me, and in that ELL link, Feral Oink credibly suggests it's from blow chunks - to be very bad, inadequate, unpleasant, or miserable; to thoroughly suck.


Does anyone know when and why the usage arose?



Answer



The OED’s definition 15f of suck is ‘To be contemptible or disgusting’. The earliest citation is from 1971. The OED relates it to the noun suck, Canadian slang for ‘A worthless or contemptible person’. This in turn may or may not (the OED doesn’t say) have something to do with ‘sucks’ used, particularly by children, as an expression of contempt.


The OED also has an entry for blow as a draft addition in 2009, where the definition is given as ‘To be contemptible, tiresome, or disagreeable’. It is described as North American slang, and there is a cross reference to suck. The earliest citation predates the earliest citation for derogatory suck by 11 years.


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