[Ads-l] Cooting not Obs. in 1885; was Re: ridley (sea turtle) antedated to 1885

[Stephen Goranson]

>From the same 1885 article mentioned below that mentions ridley three times, I neglected to mention another word of potential interest. 
OED has "coot, v.1 ? Obs. intr. Of tortoises: To copulate." Then three quotations from 1667, 1699, and 1750, the last from Nat. Hist. Barbados. From the 1885 report off South Florida, re-attesting the word 135 years later (col. 1):

The best time for pegging turtles is during the months of February, March and April, when they are pairing or "cooting," as it is called in Florida....

short link:
http://tinyurl.com/ns9pnfm

Stephen Goranson
http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society ... on behalf of Stephen Goranson ...
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2015 11:46 AM
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Subject: [ADS-L] ridley (sea turtle) antedated to 1885

OED has it from 1897 "Etymology:  Origin unknown.

Various suggestions have been made about the etymology of the name, but none seems convincing. For a full discussion see H. A. Dundee in Marine Turtle Newsletter 58 (1992) 10-2."

The text below fits with the so-far know local use in South Florida (and the Bahamas). It may be early enough to further discount the proposal that it was named after H. N. Ridley, who has no clear connection to this turtle or its area. It does not prove another proposal, but does not contradict the proposal that this turtle, sometimes locally called the "bastard turtle" might be a local development from riddle (to riddler?) to ridley, supposedly from its uncertain parentage, locally supposed crossbreed between loggerhead and green turtles (as reported in the article cited by Dundee, "The Etymological Riddle of the Ridley Sea Turtle" [1]). The name here is not capitalized.

Since the article, Pegging Turtles," is freely available online, I won't quote extensively.  Thursday, May 7, 1885 p. 9 col. 1-2, here col. 2, The Yazoo Sentinel (Yazoo City, Miss.).
"....We pegged a ridley, or yellow turtle ten minutes later. This was estimated to weigh 350 pounds....We let the ridley go after extracting the 'peg'...."

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87065683/1885-05-07/ed-1/seq-9/#date1=1836&index=0&rows=20&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&words=ridley+turtle&proxdistance=10&date2=1922&ortext=&proxtext=ridley+turtle&phrasetext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1

Stephen Goranson

http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/

[1] http://www.seaturtle.org/mtn/archives/mtn58/mtn58p10b.shtml
<http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/>

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