"coony" adj. = sly, cunning, 1910

[Alison Murie]

On Feb 3, 2010, at 6:49 PM, Alison Murie wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Alison Murie <sagehen7470 at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "coony" adj. = sly, cunning, 1910
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> On Feb 3, 2010, at 5:27 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> Subject:      "coony" adj. = sly, cunning, 1910
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> The OED has "coony" (adj) only as "bald like a raccoon", with its
>> only quotation
>> 1887 Sat. Rev. 16 July 71 Hat-wearing man becomes Alopeciac, or
>> 'coony'.
>>
>> The following seems to be an instance of "coony" (adj) = sly,
>> cunning, from 1910.  Perhaps a variant of "canny", for which the OED
>> says "Also in north Eng. dial. conny."?
>>
>> "In order to avoid accidents coony old Antonio had had false bottoms
>> put in his two valises as well as his trunk, and in the pocket of one
>> of them he had stowed away the baggage-check and a sight draft for
>> twenty-four hundred pounds."
>>
>> From Arthur Train, "The Spanish Prisoner," "Originally published in
>> the March, 1910, issue of THE COSMOPOLITAN
>> MAGAZINE."  Source:
>> http://www.hidden-knowledge.com/funstuff/spanishprisoner/spanishprisoner1.html
>> ,
>> page 2.
>>
>> Joel
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
> ' "bald" like a raccoon??'  Coons ain't bald.  Far from it.  'Possums
> look bald, but aren't.   Perhaps the meaning of "coony" is really
> cunning, which would be more appropriate altogether.
> AM
~~~~~~~~~~
Ooops.  Somehow I missed para 2 in Joel's post.  I'm sorting through a
mountain of backlogged mail.  I was away from my desk for ten days
getting a bad hip replaced & being whipped into a semblance of normal
functioning by a crew of therapists.  Medicare is wonderful.  (Only it
didn't get me to read my mail more carefully.)
AM

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