cootie catcher

[Barnhart]

Rima wrote:

>>>I recently encountered a device made of folded paper, that grade
>school
>>>kids used for telling fortunes (when I was one.)

>>Wow, haven't thought about those for years.  But I *never* heard the
>>term cootie catcher.  I can't remember what, if anything in
>>particular we called it, but it wasn't cootie catcher.  NYC in the
>>50s.

The fortune-tellers I do not recall from my youth.  My eight-year old
is fond of making them.  My wife and I remember the folde paper
(beak-like) device as a cootie catcher.  My memory of cootie catchers
is from the early '50's.  They were aimed at another's head as much as
the arm.   Perhaps the fortune-teller is the PC version of a cootie
catcher.

I haven't found any dictionary evidence of coctie catcher.

Regards,
David

David K. Barnhart, Editor
The Barnhart Dictionary Companion [quarterly]
barnhart at highlands.com
www.highlands.com/Lexik

"Necessity obliges us to neologize."
Thomas Jefferson-August 16, 1813