Subject: re: Getting Snickered

[Jonathan Lighter]

What is this "sneetered" you speak of ?

JL

"Dennis R. Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Dennis R. Preston"

Subject: Re: Subject: re: Getting Snickered
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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 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
Morrill Hall 15-C
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1036 USA
Office: (517) 453-4736
Fax: (517) 453-3755


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