NANTUCKET VERNACULAR

[Gareth Branwyn]

Years ago, I asked a Nantucket boatbuilder to tell me some interesting trade
jargon/slang. The only one he could come up with was "queeb." In a fabulous
example of New England understatement, he claimed that a queeb is a huge
problem presented as a minor one. The example he gave: "Charlie, you might
wanna come down to the yard, we got a small queeb in the hull." (more than
likely meaning that the boat has a serious hole in it.)

A Web search finds that "queeb" is also surfer slang for a woman that thinks
she's God's gift to men (short for "queebie," from Queen).
http://www.skullyrecords.com/surfslang.htm

Also, a passage about a trip to Spirit Lake, Idaho has:
"I queeb when I think about it."

Can others here speak to this term?


-----Original Message-----
From: Bapopik at AOL.COM <Bapopik at AOL.COM>
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Date: Thursday, April 06, 2000 7:29 AM
Subject: "No checkee, no shirtee"



>---------------------------------------------
>NANTUCKET VERNACULAR
>
>    The WORLD, 13 September 1885, pg. 18, col. 3, had some interesting
>paragraphs on Nantucket vernacular:
>
>     Perhaps the reader may not know what "doing a hooter" is, or he may
even
>be so ignorant as not to understand "squiwinikie."  The terms are not
>Hindoostanee, however, but the pure Nantucket vernacular as explained to me
>by a native.
>     "Doing a hooter" means a coup-d'etat; "terribly stirred up," almost
>stifled; "buckatilt," ventre-a-terre; "to sprunt up," to "brace" up;
>"piecened," pieced; "faculized," clever (See DARE--ed.); "ranscoutin,'"
>exploring; "all over the coast," everywhere; "a coof," a person who does
not
>belong on the island (Illustration; see DARE--ed.); "coudumering," prying,
>meddling; "squiwinikie," blundering, awkward; "pea-vine," very bad writing;
>and "comeouter," a person who rises above the rest of the family (See
>DARE--ed.).
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
>---------------------------------------------
>     No, Fanny Brice didn't sing Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson."  That
>was reference to a month ago, when we had this whole long thread after I
had
>mistakenly placed the song "Second Hand Rose" in I CAN GET IT FOR YOU
>WHOLESALE instead of FUNNY GIRL.  If I mistake my show tunes on this trip,
>I'll never hear the end of it.
>     The NYPL has told me that it CANNOT get me the Chicago Journal through
>inter-library loan.  So the search for Walter Winchell's 1927 "Bloody Mary"
>column continues (ends?).
>