'kife' vs. 'kipe'

[JP Villanueva]

I'll corroborate 'kipe,' although I have some vague feeling it should be
spelled with a "y."

Other Northwestisms:  "to cap"--to insult, mostly used in Seattle.
"greener"--hippie, used in Olympia.  Also, when I went to grad school in
the midwest, I noticed that we Northwesterners had a very specific
espresso-related vocabulary that was not shared by the rest of the US.

                        -johnpatrickVillanueva-
                        -----------------------
                          jvillanu at ctc.ctc.edu


On Wed, 12 Jul 2000, David Bowie 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
>