saditty, hincty + dicty

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sun, 24 Jul 2005 22:53:51 -0400, Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
>On Jul 24, 2005, at 6:27 AM, Margaret Lee wrote:
>> What is the pronunciation of 'dicty' ?  --'dick-ty' or 'dike-ty'?
>
>For me, it's pronounced as "dick-ty." I'd be willing to spell the word
>as "dickty."

And that is indeed the preferred spelling in what is perhaps the locus
classicus for "dic(k)ty" (adj. and n.), Rudolph Fisher's _The Walls of
Jericho_ (1928):

http://print.google.com/print?id=k-nkjwg0AdYC&q=dickty|dickties

And here's the "dickty" spelling from Marcus Garvey in 1920 (antedating
the 1923 cite in HDAS):

-----
Marcus Garvey, "The Negro World" (1920) in _The Marcus Garvey and
Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers_ (1984), p. 509
If these big Negroes and dickty Negroes knew what I do, they would come into
this movement now.
http://print.google.com/print?id=LBA_u5gz6vkC&q=dickty
-----


--Ben Zimmer