[Ads-l] _Hawaiian disease_

Peter Reitan pjreitan at HOTMAIL.COM
Tue Mar 13 00:15:39 UTC 2018


There's a Hawaiian-themed restaurant in Mammoth Lakes California called Lakanuki Cafe, and they make no obvious effort to play-up the joke of their name.

It was probably the third time I ate there that I figured it out.

Either they were very subtle or I was very dim.  I prefer to believe it was the former.

(Shut up!)


________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2018 3:08 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: _Hawaiian disease_

---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: _Hawaiian disease_
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Have you checked "lakanuki" in HDAS?

JL

On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 6:01 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> In Green's, the primary [=3D straight] definition is "the lack of female
> company." In '50's St. Louis, it was part of the set-up to the following
> pun:
>
> a. Do you know what the "Hawaiian disease" is?
> b. No. What?
> a. Lack o' nookie.
>
> At one time, the Hawaiian lovesong, K=C4=81ua I Ka Huahua=CA=BBi, mistran=
slated into
> English as "Hawaiian War Chant," was sufficiently popular that everybody
> knew enough about what Hawaiian sounded like to understand the point of t=
he
> punning answer to the question.
>
> Googling reveals an alternative answer: "Lack o' moolah." HDAS dates
> _moolah_ "money" from at least 1939. So, who knows which version is older=
?
>
> Oddly, the home of St. Louis's Shriners is the Moolah Temple of the Mysti=
c
> Shrine. Whether this name has anything to do with the slang term I have n=
o
> idea, though I've been wondering about it since '40's..
>
> Another "oddly" is that the "lack o'" version seems not to show up in pri=
nt
> till 2010 or so and neither HDAS nor GDS has it, seemingly.
>
>
> --
> -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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--=20
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list