"No checkee, no shirtee"

Bapopik at AOL.COM Bapopik at AOL.COM
Thu Apr 6 11:28:34 UTC 2000


"NO CHECKEE, NO SHIRTEE"

     We discussed this phrase a few years back, as "No tickee, no shirtee."
I think I had found it in 1886 (when I was looking for "Windy City").
     The (NEW YORK) WORLD, 2 August 1885, pg. 14, col. 6 (I was again looking
for "Windy City"--it's not used in several long Chicago articles) has a
Chinese laundry illustration.  A sign on the wall is "NO CHECKEE NO SHIRTEE."

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NANTUCKET VERNACULAR

    The WORLD, 13 September 1885, pg. 18, col. 3, had some interesting
paragraphs on Nantucket vernacular:

     Perhaps the reader may not know what "doing a hooter" is, or he may even
be so ignorant as not to understand "squiwinikie."  The terms are not
Hindoostanee, however, but the pure Nantucket vernacular as explained to me
by a native.
     "Doing a hooter" means a coup-d'etat; "terribly stirred up," almost
stifled; "buckatilt," ventre-a-terre; "to sprunt up," to "brace" up;
"piecened," pieced; "faculized," clever (See DARE--ed.); "ranscoutin,'"
exploring; "all over the coast," everywhere; "a coof," a person who does not
belong on the island (Illustration; see DARE--ed.); "coudumering," prying,
meddling; "squiwinikie," blundering, awkward; "pea-vine," very bad writing;
and "comeouter," a person who rises above the rest of the family (See
DARE--ed.).

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     No, Fanny Brice didn't sing Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson."  That
was reference to a month ago, when we had this whole long thread after I had
mistakenly placed the song "Second Hand Rose" in I CAN GET IT FOR YOU
WHOLESALE instead of FUNNY GIRL.  If I mistake my show tunes on this trip,
I'll never hear the end of it.
     The NYPL has told me that it CANNOT get me the Chicago Journal through
inter-library loan.  So the search for Walter Winchell's 1927 "Bloody Mary"
column continues (ends?).



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