"opening the kimono" (1979?, 1984)

[Wilson Gray]

On Jun 20, 2005, at 9:49 AM, sagehen wrote:

>
>
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "opening the kimono" (1979?, 1984)
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> Victoria Neufeldt writes:
>> 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

Yep, me too.

>> 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.

Yep, me too.

>> 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.

Right. It was an article of women's clothing. And, considering that we
were fighting the Japanese at the time, if people had known that they
were speaking pseudo-Japanese, the name would have been changed to
"freedom robe."

>>
>> Incidentally, I don't recall ever encountering the expression "open
>> the kimono" before reading about it on this list.
>

Nope, me neither.

> Victoria
>  ~~~~~~~~~~
> This is almost exactly what I would have said in responding to this
> thread,
> including the last sentence.
> A. Murie

Yep, me too.

-Wilson Gray