"opening the kimono" (1979?, 1984)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Making allowances for regional phonology, that's the usual pronunciation, isn't it?

I've rarely heard anything other than / kI 'mo n@ /.

JL

Victoria Neufeldt <vneufeldt at MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Victoria Neufeldt
Subject: Re: "opening the kimono" (1979?, 1984)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Sunday, June 19, 2005 9:51 PM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>
> I have exactly the same memory, of the robe and the
> pronunciation, as
> Vicki! My Midwestern mother used it, so it goes back a
> ways, to the '20s
> or '30s, I'd guess.

Wow! You mean my family may have been normal after all?

Vicki

>
> At 11:46 PM 6/19/2005, you wrote:
> >Doug Wilson made a good point about the use of the term 'kimono'.
> >That's what we used to use for 'housecoat', pronounced
> something like
> >(k@ mo' n@) with "long o" in the stressed syllable and the
> last vowel
> >not really a '@', but almost an 'a' as in 'far'. I knew
> the word as a
> >kid in western Canada, long before I ever saw it in print. When I
> >first saw it, I was very surprised by the spelling and
> henceforth felt
> >self-conscious about saying it. As Doug suggests, as far as I can
> >remember, we did not think of that article of clothing or
> the name in
> >relation to the Japanese robe at all. I think the
> reference was to a
> >woman's/girl's robe, not a man's.
> >
> >Incidentally, I don't recall ever encountering the expression "open
> >the kimono" before reading about it on this list.
> >
> >Victoria
> >
> >Victoria Neufeldt
> >727 9th Street East
> >Saskatoon, Sask.
> >S7H 0M6
> >Canada
> >Tel: 306-955-8910
> >
> >
> >On Saturday, June 18, 2005 8:19 PM, Doug Wilson wrote:
> > >
> > > It is not necessarily obvious IMHO that there was any
> > > Japanese reference
> > > at all in the original metaphor. The word "kimono" was used like
> > > "housecoat" or "dressing-gown" a few decades ago (maybe
> > > some people still
> > > use it so?); I suppose people who gave the matter any
> > > thought knew that
> > > the word came from Japan, but a reference to a US woman
> > > lounging around in
> > > a kimono might not have had much (if any) reference to
> Japan (as an
> > > inexact analogy, probably few native Anglophones think of
> > > India when they
> > > think of pajamas). "Open the kimono" might have had a
> > > non-ethnic sense
> > > like "open the bathrobe" originally, especially if it dates
> > > from before WW
> > > II. Still it would probably have referred to a woman, I
> > > think, although
> > > perhaps not entirely exclusively.
> > >
> > > The quotation from the fox-and-badger article is a little
> > > peculiar since I
> > > would expect something like "open his or her clothing"
> > > rather than "open
> > > the kimono" in English text. Two possibilities (among
> > > others): (1) "open
> > > the kimono" was already a fixed expression in English
> > > meaning "expose
> > > oneself" or so; [or] (2) this was translated more-or-less
> > > word-for-word
> > > from some Japanese conventional expression with similar
> > > meaning (with
> > > "the" arbitrarily added in translation) (in this case the
> > > same Japanese
> > > expression might have been translated again independently
> > > for the modern
> > > metaphor).
> > >
> > > -- Doug Wilson
> > >
> > > ---
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