"opening the kimono" (1979?, 1984)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Right back at you, poppa-stoppa !  If I'm lyin', I'm dyin' !!

JL

Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: "opening the kimono" (1979?, 1984)
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On Jun 20, 2005, at 7:05 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

>
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: Re: "opening the kimono" (1979?, 1984)
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> Making allowances for regional phonology, that's the usual
> pronunciation, isn't it?
>
> I've rarely heard anything other than / kI 'mo n@ /.
>
> JL
>

I got your back, Jon (accompanied by imaginary reciprocal giving of
skin).

-Wilson

> Victoria Neufeldt wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Victoria Neufeldt
> Subject: Re: "opening the kimono" (1979?, 1984)
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
> 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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