paperhanger was jumper cables

[James C Stalker]

The derision of paperhanger in the US might have come from the use of the
term to mean a person who passes bad checks, a forger.  Farmer & Henley has
no entry for paperhanger.  Partridge gives ca. 1925, from US.  I can only
attest it from 1961 when I met a man recently released from prison after
fulfilling his sentence for paperhanging.  His sister was very graciously
letting us print our high school literary magazine at her shop, for cost.
Perhaps we were paperhanging as well.

OT (that's off topic, as I've learned), this guy was a childhood friend of
one of my paternal uncles, who, as far as I know, did not hang paper.  A
quick awakening to the smallness of the world for a 17 year old.

Jim



sagehen writes:

>>At NYU in 1970 I heard "Busier than a cat covering shit on a cement
>>highway."  My interlocutor had learned it from his father.
>>
>>"He was quiet as a wooden-legged man on a tin roof and busy as a one-armed
>>paperhanger with the hives" appears on p. 64 of Carl Sandburg's _The
>>People, Yes_ (1936).
>>
>>"Busier than a one-legged man at an ass-kickin' (contest)" shows up in
>>several WWII novels published in the '50s.
>>
>>JL
>> ~~~~~~~~~~
> "Busier'n a one-armed paperhanger," without further elaboration, was a
> common expression during my childhood.
> Since Adolph Hitler (a k a  "Shickelgruber") was rumored to have been a
> paperhanger at one point,  "paperhanger" itself became a derisive term.
> A. Murie
>
> ~@:>   ~@:>   ~@:>   ~@:>
>



James C. Stalker
Department of English
Michigan State University