"skunked" and "dirty katie"

[Clark Whelton]

Last summer in Maine, while playing the card game "hearts," two of the
players referred to being hit with the queen of spades as being "skunked."
This was a first for me.  I've always heard the queen of spades called
"dirty katie," a term unknown to these players.  Is "dirty katie" fading
away?

----- Original Message -----
From: "carljweber" <carljweber at MSN.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 11:04 PM
Subject: Re: "skunked" from "Chicagoed"


> It looks like "skunked 'em" might have developed into "Chicagoed" 'em.
> Dictionary of Americanisms: 1891 Chicagoed: "equivalent of 'skunked'
> or beat out of sight.baseball team. phenomenal successes. Other competing
> clubs which ended the game without scoring were said to have been
>  Chicagoed."
>
> 1840 "skunk of a person."
> 1850 Amer. Whig. Review: "A severe defeat at a
> game of draughts was formerly and probably now is, termed 'a skunk'."
>
>
> Gerald Cohen said
> >   But who developed the sports expression "skunked"?  The average
> >sports fan probably has no idea about the etymology of "Chicago."
>
> Not the average, but a good case could be made that 1890s Americans and
> Chicagoans were much closer than sports fans today to Amerindian names and
> imagery. In 1890 Custer had stood last as recently as '76. The many
> unindexed rewritten editions of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, after 1850,
national
> expert on all things Amerindian, had for decades been grist for the
national
> intellectual mill. Schoolcraft, though he, over the years, revised his
> etymology of Chicago in other ways, he consistently said Chicago is named
> for the skunk. In what social circles is now unknown, but people would
have
> in the 1890s been hip to Schoolcraft's Chicago = skunk, sufficiently hip
to
> make punning remarks.
>
> >_Dickson's Baseball Dictionary_ mentions zero as one of the meanings
> >for "skunk." (1943 example: "We beat them three to skunk."). Here's a
> >pure speculation: A team that got whomped without even scoring might
> >say: "We stunk like a skunk."  So the team that beat them "skunked"
> >them.
>
> Carl Jeffrey Weber
> Chicago
>