"Piker"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Yes, Mark, this is the alternative I'm considering.  To "pike" is also a verb meaning "to go, travel, walk, etc."  At the moment, however, the "Pike Co." ety. still seems more probable.

  JL

"Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Mark A. Mandel"
Subject: Re: "Piker"
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Jesse Sheidlower observes:
>>>>>

For what it's worth, the OED's current treatment, soon to be
published, has the English 'tramp' sense from the 1830s; puts
the 'poor resident of Pike Co. Missouri' sense (for which we
have 1859 evidence) as an etymologically distinct item, and
derives the 'small-timer' sense (first attested in Matsell)
from the verb _pike_ 'to gamble small amounts' (from the
same period).
<<<<<

Could the English 'tramp' sense derive from "pike" as a short form of=20
"turnpike" for a toll road?: 'someone who spends his time on the road'. OED=
=20
Online has this definition with an English* 1812 citation:

2. a. A turnpike road, =91turnpike=92, highway. [...]

1812 M. EDGEWORTH Absentee in Tales Fashionable Life VI. xvi. 377 Keep the=
=20
pike till you come to the turn at Rotherford, and then you strike off into=
=20
the by-road to the left.=20

* OED Online bibliography link, "Edgeworth, Maria";=20
http://homepage.tinet.ie/~jmac/MEdgeworth.htm

=09----

By the way, the hits are sorted in alphabetical order, not numeric (these=
=20
numbers are all superscript on the web site):=20

1 =09 pic2, pike =09* =09
2 =09Pike, n.10 =09* =09
3 =09pike, n.11 =09* =09
4 =09pike, n.1 =09* =09
5 =09pike, n.2 =09* =09
6 =09pike, n.3 =09* =09
7 =09pike, n.4 =09* =09
8 =09pike, n.5 =09* =09
9 =09pike, n.6 =09* =09
10 =09pike, a. =09*

-- Mark
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]

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