"as lousy as a coot"

[Wilson Gray]

So, "cootie" was originally short for "coot"? ;-)

-Wilson

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 10:26 AM, Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "as lousy as a coot"
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>
> So the etymology may not be very exotic after all.
>
> Slightly earlier exx. of  "coot," also British:
>
> 1915 (Apr. 22) in  Harold Chapin _Soldier and Dramatist: Being the Letters
> of...[an] American Citizen who Died for England at Loos on September 26,
> 1915_ (London: John Lane, 1917) 141: Two of the four Corporals have
> celebrated the occasion by "going cooty," otherwise declaring possession of
> one or more lice and being quarantined in the scaby ward. Â  (Sept. 17) Ibid.
> 270: Willet...grappling with an enormous "coot" (otherwise louse).
>
> In April, 1915, Chapin was a member of the 6th Field Ambulance of the Royal
> Army Medical Corps stationed near Givenchy.
>
> "Coot" was also a frequent synonym in the U.S. Army. I'd hastily assumed it
> was short for "cootie," but perhaps the opposite was originally true.
>
> JL
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 8:06 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu> wrote:
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>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â "as lousy as a coot"
>>
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>>
>> Google Books gives 22 hits for "as lousy as a coot" up to "1916."
>>
>> Stephen Goranson
>> http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
>>
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--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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