Subject: re: Getting Snickered

[Dennis R. Preston]

L,

This is not my sense of "snookered" (principally "cheated" or "done
in by deceit," synonymous with "sneetered"). Partridge has it from
1914, presumably from "snooks," an imaginary game devised by a
practical joker, cited by Farmer and Henley from around 1800.
Apparently unrelated to "cock a snook," the derisive gesture of
thumbing the nose; this sense of "snook" is not attested until the
end of the 19th C. I can't find my synonymous "sneeter" since neither
DARE nor HDAS go that far.

In short, I'm with the chocolate=feces interpretation of the Gitmo term.

dInIs

>>Jerry E Kane <Jerryekane at AOL.COM> wrote:
>>  >>>
>>  I just heard the expression on the Fox news channel.  When a prisoner at
>>Gitmo throws feces on a guard it is called "getting snickered".
>>  <<<
>>
>>Might the term come from the chocolate candy bar called Snickers(tm)?
>>
>Are we assuming (I guess I am) that this is indeed an eggcorn in
>which "get snookered" is reanalyzed by influence of the name of the
>candy bar?
>
>L


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
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