Zob (1909-1920)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Most interesting, Doug.  Cullen may have been a (justly?) forgotten predecessor of Damon Runyon who deserves more attention from us.

I don't recognize "gum" at all, unless it is short for "gumshoe," which I doubt.

A "rum" was chiefly a drunk ("rummy"), but was sometimes applied to dimwits.

JL

"Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Douglas G. Wilson"
Subject: Re: Zob (1909-1920)
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I reviewed Cullen's column from the "Syracuse Herald" for 1912 from
N'archive; this is not rigorous since probably some issues didn't come up,
a few were illegible, some came up twice (I think I caught these), and the
usual. The following are words used more-or-less as one might use "guy"
today. "Fellow", "feller", and "chap" I take to be neutral; some of the
others seem to have some derogatory flavor, I think. Cullen surely likes
"zig", and this one does NOT seem uniformly opprobrious! Plurals are
included. No "zob".

Number of instances:

zig 22
fellow 20
feller 14
chap 8
gook 6
gink 6
duck 3
fish 1
coot 1
gum(?) 1
rum(?) 1

The (?) indicates that I'm not certain of the sense.

-- Doug Wilson


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