Mae West: Subtraction
on Thursday, August 12, 2010Mae West Money Quote helps us to understand the concept of subtraction when with a man, whereby she extracts $98 from every $100 and leaves him with a $2 remainder.
“A man has one hundred dollars and you leave him with two dollars, that’s subtraction” — Mae West
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In this quote, Mae West is making a play on words with “subtraction”. On the surface, she is referring to a scenario where a man had $100 and was left with only $2 after an encounter, implying that $98 was subtracted from his original amount.
However, the implication seems to be that the reason he was left with only $2 is because he spent money on (or was otherwise financially impacted by) her or another woman.
So the “subtraction” is both literal, in terms of the amount of money remaining, but also figurative in that the woman was the cause of him having much less than what he started with.
Overall, the quote is using a double meaning of the word “subtraction” to jokingly refer to a woman taking or diminishing a man’s money.
Birthday August 17, 1893 Died on November 22, 1980