'kife' vs. 'kipe'

[Joan Houston Hall]

DARE enters it at "kipe," with "kife," "kipp," and "kype" as variant forms.
 We say "[Etym uncert; cf _EDD kip_ v.4 "To take the property of another by
fraud or violence"; _OED kip_ v. '_Obs._']"  The regional label is
"scattered, but esp West."


At 09:10 AM 7/12/2000 -0600, you wrote:
>Jeanne, my wife, came across a slang variant i'd never heard before. I'd
>grown up with one of the available slang terms for 'to steal' being 'to
>kife', as did Jeanne. (For reference, we're both 29yo, from opposite ends of
>Maryland.) Her boss, however, who's 40-something and from the US Northwest,
>insists that the correct pronunciation is 'kipe'.
>
>There's one other woman (early 20s) in the office from the US Northwest, and
>she agrees that it's 'kipe'.
>
>The other three people in the office, all in their early 20s and IIRC from
>somewhere in the Intermountain West, say that the correct pronunciation is
>'kife'.
>
>This is a terribly small sample, of course, but at first glance 'kife'
>appears to have wider geographical distribution, but i've got an earlier (in
>apparent time) attestation of 'kipe', so it's unclear which one's the
>original form and which one's the innovation. Anyone know anything about the
>history of this term/have judgments of their own?
>
>David Bowie                                       Department of English
>Assistant Professor                            Brigham Young University
>db.list at pmpkn.net              http://humanities.byu.edu/faculty/bowied
>   The opinions stated here are not necessarily those of my employer
>