Church key anecdote

[Jonathan Lighter]

Seems to me the only other time I've encountered "choir practice" in a comparable sense was in Joseph Wambaugh's L.A. cop novel _The Choirboys_ (1975).  Any connection ?

JL

"Peter A. McGraw" <pmcgraw at LINFIELD.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Peter A. McGraw"

Subject: Church key anecdote
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A few years ago there was a discussion in this cyberspace of "church key"
as slang for a bottle opener. I had never heard the word until I went to
grad school in Wisconsin, where I heard it all the time. Nonetheless the
consensus on ads-l seemed to be that it wasn't a regional expression--a
judgment that seems to be confirmed by its absence from DARE.

Well, the other night I was at a poker game (which we call "choir practice"
in the messages we exchange via the college e-mail system in the process of
organizing a game). At some point I figured it was time for a beer, and
finding nothing in the host's kitchen to open it with (and possibly
influenced subconsciously by the fact that this was, after all, choir
practice), I asked him if he had a church key. My question met with blank
stares all around--nobody had the slightest idea what I was talking about.
So this scientific sampling of seven guys demonstrated 100% agreement that
the expression was unknown in the Northwest. FWIW, all but one of the
seven are in their 30s, and I think most of them grew up somewhere in the
NW. One went to college in Michigan, and I think all the others went to
Linfield.

Peter Mc.

*****************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw Linfield College McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************


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