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CYA / Cover Your Ars

Posted by ESC on September 17, 2004

In Reply to: CYA / Cover Your Ars posted by ESC on September 17, 2004

: : Was the phrase "Cover Your Ass" or it's abbreviaiton "CYA" in popular circulation in 1971? That is, is the derivation prior to the early 1970s? I don't need to know the dates or history, just a yes or no. Thanks!

: Yes and no. It looks like the "cover your ass/tail" came first and then CYA gained popularity in the 1970s.

: Cover your a** or cover your tail was in circulation in the "mid-1900s" according to "Slang and Euphemism: A Dictionary of Oaths, Curses, Insults, Ethnic Slurs, Sexual Slang and Metaphor, Drug Talk, College Lingo and Related Matters" by Richard A. Spears (New American Library, Penguin Putnam, New York, Third Edition, 2001).

: Another source says the abbreviation CYA was a Beltway (Washington D.C.) and surrounding areas) term circulating in the 1970s. From "Speaking Freely: A Guided Tour of American English from Plymouth Rock to Silicon Valley" by Stuart Berg Flexner and Anne H. Soukhanov (Oxford University Press, New York, 1997).

Another source says CYA was used during the Iran-contra hearings, whenever they were. Safire's New Political Dictionary by William Safire (Random House, New York, 1993).

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