"kicky" antedating

[Wilson Gray]

On Oct 25, 2004, at 10:13 AM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "kicky" antedating
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> On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 09:02:50AM -0400, Wilson Gray wrote:
>> On Oct 25, 2004, at 2:06 AM, Mullins, Bill wrote:
>>
>>> From OED
>>> 3. Providing 'kicks', exciting, lively. N. Amer. colloq
>>>
>>> first cite in OED is 1968.
>>
>> "Kicky" is so old that it's almost unbelievable that it didn't appear
>> in print until the mid-'Sixties.
>
> Except, of course, for that 1942 quote in HDAS.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
> OED
>

And a 1942 date for a print source no doubt implies a much older
origin. No wonder that that jingle always sounded so lame. It was
already old-school before it hit the airwaves!

And I do have HDAS. Unfortunately, I went for Bill's okey-doke and
didn't check it. Exactly why "go for the okey-doke" means "allow
oneself to be duped" I have no idea. But I do have a theory. It started
out as in-group slang among people to whom the origin was crystal-clear
and then escaped into the greater world. When I was eleven or so, my
peeps and I used "that's don" to mean, basically, "that's fucked up,"
whereas "that's ain't don," wherein "ain't" received main stress, meant
"that's really cool." I know exactly how this usage came about. But,
had "don/ain't don" escaped into the larger world, its origin would be
a complete mystery.

-Wilson Gray