"fanelights"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I believe so. I believe it accompanied the exclamation "King's X !" which memory claims was slightly more common than "fins !"

  JL

"Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
Subject: Re: "fanelights"
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At 10/1/2006 11:26 AM, you wrote:
>In NYC in the '50s I sometimes heard "fins !" in precisely the
>general sense indicated in the 1870 quot. The fingers of each hand
>were crossed as an accompanying visual signal.

My faint and unreliable recollection too. Was the gesture sometimes
crossing the index finger of one hand over the other?

Joel

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