Dreidle (1920)
Bapopik at AOL.COM
Bapopik at AOL.COM
Mon Jun 24 19:22:09 UTC 2002
"I feel like a spinning top or a dreidel. The spinning don't stop when you leave the cradle. You can't slow down."
--Don McLean, "Dreidel"
(the album after "American Pie")
OED has 1934 for "dreidel." Merriam-Webster has 1926. I had posted something a day or two ago that was very much like "dreidel."
THE YOUNG JUDAEAN here in the NYPL's Jewish division has a few months missing in 1918 and 1919. The publication became in 1912 or 1913.
From THE YOUNG JUDAEAN, November-December 1920, pg. 86, col. 1:
Little David was an expert _dreidle_ player and he felt sure that he could win his brothers' money from them. (...)
Z-z-z-z ... round and round went the _dreidle_.
(...)(Col. 2--ed.)
Whiz...round went the _dreidle_. The _dreidle_ was evidently telling wonderful secrets in a mysterious language. Oh, how that _dreidle_ hated to fall and give up its precious secret, but since the creation of the world it is preordained that _driedlach_ must fall, and finally the _dreidle_ understood, that it was far more comfortable to lie on your back than to run on one leg.
(WHERE ARE MY 1920 "LATKES"???--ed.)
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