[Ads-l] rookie-doo

ADSGarson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Fri Jul 8 18:13:28 UTC 2016


The type is difficult to read in this citation from 1972, but I think
it contains an instance of "rookie-dooed".

Date: December 22, 1972
Newspaper: Northwest Arkansas Times
Newspaper Location: Fayetteville, Arkansas
Article: Judge Dismisses Madison Election Challenge By GOP
Quote Page 2, Column 6

https://www.newspapers.com/image/18785305/?terms=%22rookie-dooed%22

[Begin excerpt]
Judge Enfield was quoted as summarizing the plaintiffs' case as
follows: "We (the Republicans) think this thing ought to be checked
into to determine if we got rookie-dooed out of the election."
[End excerpt]

Garson


On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 12:06 AM, Neal Whitman <nwhitman at ameritech.net> wrote:
> For years, my family has used the verb "rookie-doo" to mean cheat or
> deceive, typically in passive-voice phrases such as "He got rookie-dooed out
> of getting to go on the trip," or "I feel rookie-dooed". It finally occurred
> to me to look into the origin of this word, and it seems to be associated
> with Louisiana, which makes me wonder if my dad picked up the term when he
> went to college at Tulane (mid-1960s). In particular, the term is associated
> with the Louisiana legislature, as you can see in news articles like this
> one, where I learned that "rookie-doo" is also a noun, and has a synonym in
> another noun, "fugaboo":
>
> http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/05/littleknown_legislator_pulled.html
>
>
>      Little-known legislator pulled 'rookie-doo' on state House
>
>    <http://connect.nola.com/user/rscott/index.html>By Robert Travis
>    Scott, The Times-Picayune
>    <http://connect.nola.com/user/rscott/posts.html>
>
>    BATON ROUGE -- The rookie-doo and fugaboo are still in style.
>
>    Those are oft-used terms learned the hard way by legislative
>    freshmen. An incident last week was proof once again that getting
>    fooled on a bill is common enough that it deserves its own vocabulary.
>
>    In a masterful rookie-doo that made national headlines, Rep. Avon
>    Honey, D-Baton Rouge, simultaneously flummoxed the entire House of
>    Representatives and upset one of Gov. Bobby Jindal's top agenda
>    items for the current lawmaking session.
>
>    With a brief mumble and a procedural flourish, Honey slipped an
>    audacious amendment to expand state jobless benefits into an
>    innocent bill while an unsuspecting House was wrapping up a long
>    session Monday evening.
>
>
> I suspect that the term is derived from /rook,/ in particular these
> definitions (taken from the OED) with the diminutive suffix /-ie/ and the
> silly suffix /-doo/ attached:
>
> *rook, n.^1 *
>
> *2.* In extended use.
>
> * b. A cheat, swindler, or sharper, esp. in gambling.
> *
>
> *rook, v.^2
> *<http://www.oed.com.webproxy3.columbuslibrary.org/view/Entry/167278#eid24891815>
>
> *Etymology: *< rook n.^1
> <http://www.oed.com.webproxy3.columbuslibrary.org/view/Entry/167278#eid24891815>
> (compare rook n.^1 2b
> <http://www.oed.com.webproxy3.columbuslibrary.org/view/Entry/167278#eid24892126>).
>
> *1.*
>
> *a. /trans./ To cheat or swindle; /esp./ to win or extract money from (a
> person) by fraud; to charge (a person) extortionately. Chiefly in slang or
> colloquial use.*
>
> *
> *
>
> /Rookie-doo/ itself isn't in the OED, so I'm trying to find early
> attestations myself. So far, not much luck in Google Books, ProQuest, COCA
> or COHA. Tomorrow I'll see if it's in our library's copy of DARE. In the
> meantime, is anyone here familiar with the term?
>
> Neal
>
>
> **
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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