Lousy-ana; Stepwell

[Jonathan Lighter]

1942 Berry & Van den Bark _American Thesaurus of Slang_ (N.Y.: Crowell) 50  LOUISIANA. ...Lousy-Anna.

I was familiar with this pun when I was kid in the mid to late '50s.  It didn't make it into HDAS because these were the only occurrences I knew of.

Shoulda asked more people.


JL

Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Bapopik at AOL.COM
Subject: Lousy-ana; Stepwell
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STEPWELL
...
STEPWELL + BUS--849 Google hits, 39 Google Groups hits
...
I took a bus today and noticed the word "stepwell" for where I was standing.
"Stairwell" is well-attested (bad pun) in the OED. "Stepwell" is not in the
OED?
...
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LOUSY-ANA
...
LOUSYANA--3,890 Google hits, 210 Google Groups hits
LOUSY-ANA--3,220 Google hits, 59 Google Groups hits
...
...
This Louisiana nickname is much older than this past month. HDAS????
...
...
(GOOGLE NEWS)
...
_Vietnamese evacuees shun shelters_
(http://www.thsv.org/news_details.aspx?newsID=721)
Union of Vietnamese Student Associations of Southern California, CA -
Sep 1
... month ago. "It used to be Louisiana, but now we call it Lousy-ana," said
Thanh, who is staying at the Buddhist temple. Some Vietnamese ...


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