FW: palooka: M-W's Word of the Day

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Mon, 16 May 2005 22:00:35 -0700, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:

>Have mentioned somewhere that I once stumbled across a (genuine) Irish
>word that seemed to be a conceiveable etymon, but I can't remember what
>it was. Began with "b" or "bh" maybe ? I stress "conceiveable."

Perhaps it's from Celtic _ploc_ 'a large, bull-headed person', which some
have suggested as the etymon for _bloke_.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-blo3.htm

Have any etymologists conjectured that _bloke_ and _palooka_ share a
common origin (from Celtic, Dutch, Shelta, Romany, or what have you)?  The
_baluke_ variant mentioned elsethread seems like it's halfway between the
two.


--Ben Zimmer