Re: Re: duke and dook

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 9/23/04 9:59:32 AM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:


> I agree with Alice in the claim that even those who say [djuk] would use
> [dukiz] derisively.  What I don't know is whether this is prompted by
> the association with the barbarian non-palatalizing Yankees, with the
> scatological euphemism, neither, or both.
> 
I agree too. That was in effect what the Carolina kids were doing when (I am 
told) they painted "dook" the Duke campus bridge in the early 1960s. And my 
sense is that they were punning--implying that the "barbarian non-palatalizing 
Yankees" who were increasingly attending the University from places like New 
Jersey were too stupid to realize that they were, in effect, calling their 
school a giant pile of dung when they uttered the school name in the Yankee way. I 
suspect that the diminutive ending "-ee" (as in "dookee") was also a bit of a 
putdown, especially given that "Yankee" ends with the same sound. I'm not sure 
how long Duke students have self-referred as "Dukies," or even if they do 
now, but I suspect they didn't do so back in the old days. Carolina students and 
alums never call themselves anything that ends in [i] so far as I know. 

Doubtless "Yalies" has been around for quite a while.