New retroacroetymythostupidnym

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Mon, 22 Aug 2005 23:07:13 -0700, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

>does no one know that the pogey is also a fish?  the word denotes the
>menhaden or some closely related fish.
>
>this might help making sense of "pogey bait", no?

Well, Doug did say:

>[Alternative: Conceivably it could be from the name of a fish.]

OED gives the derivation a "perhaps".

Is there a theory as to why candy or sweets would be used as bait for that
particular kind of fish? Or is the idea that the unwitting target of the
candy-as-bait has some similarity to the fish (easily caught, perhaps)?

I think the Italian-via-Polari derivation from "poco" mentioned by Doug
makes a bit more sense. But perhaps the name of the fish at least helped
influence the form that eventually appeared in English.


--Ben Zimmer