"gook" (rhymes with "book")

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Goog" is attested in HDAS (s.v. "gook").

I've never seen "guke"; have you checked ProQuest ?  (One thing militating against this spelling is that it could represent the sound in "cuke" cucumber.)

How far back is "way back" for / gUk / ?  "Book / gUk /" may simply represent a minority pronun. or a purely factitious term. The phr. itself is attested independently only once, right ?

Do we know the usu. early pronun. of "gook" (blockhead) ?  Do we even know its ety.? Cf. "goop" and "goopy," both fr. the same era, both pronun. solely with / u /, so far as I know.

You'll have to search for early indications of the pronun. of "gook" (native).  I don't know just when it first appeared in a standard dictionary, or whether a pronun. ever appeared in AS.

The burden of proof is on the argument that for some unkn. reason the most freq. pronun. of "gook" (native) has swung from / gUk /  to / guk / .  Why should the proportions have been significantly different in the past ?  And why should the spelling "gook" have been assoc. with the sound of "book," etc., rather than that of  "spook" ?

Am no longer sure of the technical nuances of "free variation."  I don;t think it's strictly "free" if there's a regional pattern to be found.

JL

"Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Douglas G. Wilson"
Subject: Re: "gook" (rhymes with "book")
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>Hmmmmm. Not sure. All we have, I think, is "googoo / gugu" > "goog" > "gook."

Maybe. Is "goog" attested?

>"In my experience, / guk / is by far the most freq. pronun. (Am sure I
>heard / gUk / only once or twice, / guk / a hundred times. And I don't
>believe i"ve ever heard / gUk / on TV or in movies. If / gUk / was ever
>prevalent, surely there would be more and better evidence of it ?

Here is some suggestive negative evidence. Words spelled "-ook" are usually
pronounced with /U/. In fact we know that "gook" /gUk/ existed way back. If
one desired to represent /guk/, never having seen it in print, would he
write "gook"? Maybe. But somebody else would write "guke", probably, or at
least [e.g., in "American Speech"] append a pronunciation note like <[rhymes with "spook"]>>. Where is "guke"? Where is the early pronunciation
note?

There may also have been free alternation [is that the right term?] like
with "hoof" (/huf/ or /hUf/).

-- Doug Wilson


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