nookie

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>1868 Boyer diary in ed. Barnes _Naval Surgeon (1963) 16 Oct. <num>102: A
>grand 'John Nugi,' or, as some call it, a 'Johnnie Nookee.' In order for
>me to explain said affair, it will be necessary for me to state that a
>'Nugi' [<i>Nugu</i>, meaning to take off (one's clothing)] consists of
>nothing more ot less than a fine display of human form divine of ye fair
>but frail daughters of Japan. [...] Every girl follows a leader, and if
>she makes a mistake, why, she forfeits a portion of her clothing. This
>little game continues until everyone of the girls is as naked as she was
>when she came into the world. By this time the girls are about half full
>of saki; the gentlemen drink enough to make them feel their oats. As
>soon as the girls are naked, why, so soon do they commence to perform
>all manner of tricks, dancing in the most voluptuous manner, placing
>themselves in all the different kinds of attitudes that one might
>imagine men and women would take whilst having carnal communication with
>each other
>
>As things stand the cited first uses of 'nookie' are 1928, for the
>person, usu. a woman, seen as a sexual object and 1930 for the act
>itself. The etymology is considered to be unknown. ....

I think it's most likely only coincidence, in the absence of any further
paper trail. "Nugi" here refers to a sort of strip game/show as far as I
can tell, and not directly to lovemaking. Presumably this "Nugi"/"Nookee"
would have had the vowel /u/, while modern "nookie" usually has /U/ AFAIK
... however I would not consider this (in isolation) a decisive objection
to the derivation.

A message on this list --
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0510A&L=ADS-L&P=R2440&I=-3
-- noted 1923 "nooking" = "petting" which seems (to me) a likely relative
-- conceivably ancestor -- of "nookie". There are other possible relatives
too --
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0012D&L=ADS-L&P=R2081&I=-3
-- including that Dutch verb ... and maybe even "nook" as in "breakfast
nook" could be considered (a cozy place for some canoodling).

As for the Japanese, pending input from the savants, I'll present my naive
notions (please correct me if necessary). The verb "nugu" does mean
"strip", all right, and apparently it did back then too (it's in Hepburn's
dictionary from 1873 at MOA-Michigan). The form "nugi" could be either a
more-or-less arbitrary alteration (perhaps like "daijoubu" > "daijobi" by
US military) or a fragment of some combined form (e.g., "nugisuteru"), but
I suppose it might be an imperative [meireikei] "nuge", predictably
deformed to "nugi" (just as "sake" is deformed to "saki" in the above
excerpt and often in English today). As for the "John", perhaps this was an
interjection along the lines of "jaa"/"jaa ne"?

-- Doug Wilson

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