Props

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>I always heard it as "profits"

I heard "propers", but then I hear lots of mondegreens in popular songs ....

Both versions are all over the Web.

Ware (1909) coyly gives "propers" = "meaning refused ... erotic."
Interpreted by Jonathon Green as "?sexual intercourse" (seems to me a good
guess). Apparently not understood (but quoted anyway) by Partridge.

I would have guessed "my propers" to mean not "proper respects"
particularly but rather more generally "those things which are proper to
me", i.e., "what I should have" or "what I've got coming to me".

-- Doug Wilson