saditty, hincty + dicty

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sun, 24 Jul 2005 23:46:17 -0400, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> wrote:

>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
>-----

One more interesting Google Print cite...

-----
_Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage_ (2003), edited by Richard Allsopp,
p. 191, col. 2
*dick ty* (dic ty) [dIkti] adj (Antg, Baha) [IF] [Usu of women] Elegantly
dressed; [Derog] proud and haughty looking; [of a hairstyle] glamorous and
showy. [Prob < (SE) _dignity_ with reduction and devoicing of intervocalic
consonant cluster [dIgn at ti > dIgnti > dIkti]
http://print.google.com/print?id=PmvSk13sIc0C&q=dickty
-----

Does the "dignity" derivation seem plausible? And could it have originated
in Caribbean English? Marcus Garvey was born in Jamaica, after all.


--Ben Zimmer