"Keister" etymology (valise=turkey?)

[Wilson Gray]

On 12/11/05, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "Keister" etymology (valise=turkey?)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> > > >Any updates on "keister"?
> > >
> > > HDAS derives it from German "Kiste" ....
> > >
> > > Here's a spelling variant (from N'archive):
> > >
> > > ----------
> > >
> > > _Evening Democrat_ (Warren PA), 27 Nov. 1894: p. "2":
> > >
> > > <<He [the baggageman] approaches you with a smile, goes away with
> > > twenty-five cents and ties your bruised and battered kister with a tow
> > > string.>> ....
> >
> >Then, how is the timbre of the /i/ in "keister" to be explained? That is,
> >why [kiystr] and not [kIstr]," if the source is German "kiste" [kIst@] or
> >Irish "ciste" approx. [kISCI] or English or Scots "kist"?
>
> I don't know.


Given that I have no counter-theory of my own, I aceept that.

BTW: The "Concise Scots Dictionary" shows pronunciation /kIst/ but also
> 'obsolete' pronunciations /kist/, /kEst/.


With that kind of variation, I guess you probably had to have been there.

The Irish cognate is/was also
> written "cisde".


Yes, that's true. That is, that "cisde" is still a valid alternative
spelling.

The above spelling variant "kister" might suggest the
> existence of /kIstr/ in pre-1900 English ... unless it's just a typo. The
> spelling "keyster" also appeared pretty early.
>
> Pre-1900 words spelled "keister"/"kiester"/"kister" apparently were most
> often surnames, of which "Kiester" and "Keister" were more frequent than
> "Kister" judging from a glance at the newspaper archive (I'm not sure what
> the pronunciations were ... I guess probably variable). So one (entirely
> speculative) possibility would be that a spoken word like "kister"/"kista"
> was taken to be an eponym or otherwise pronounced "Keester" following a
> surname. Of course another possibility is that the word really did have an
> eponymous origin, but I don't find any evidence for one at a glance.
>
> -- Doug Wilson


Given that all that it took was one joking mispronunciation in one scene in
one movie to change the pronunciation of "buttocks" from [b^t at ks] to
[b^tOks] and to cause the word to be treated as a singular instead of a
plural "buttox" - I kicked him in his left but-tocks. Well, you never know
what can motivate a sound change.
--
-Wilson Gray