"Chick" = nickname for "Charles"

[Jonathan Lighter]

She'sd have been safer saying she was going with Chick to the flick.

  JL

"hpst at earthlink.net" <hpst at EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "hpst at earthlink.net"
Subject: Re: "Chick" = nickname for "Charles"
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Allan Metcalf and my late uncle Charles was called Chinks by the family.

Then there is Charles "Chic" Sale who gave his name to the outhouse via his
best selling book -- millions of copies -- The Specialist.in which Lemuel
Putt describes the way he built outhouses and was a specialist. Frank
Crumit wrote and recorded a song based on it.

If you want to laugh yourself silly look up the book online. It is
downloadable.

Do yourself a favor and look up the book.

A friend of mine once attempted to use it in his seventh grade social
studies course as an example of specialization only to be told by his
principal that he couldn't because outhouses were inherently dirty and not
a fit topic for seventh graders despite the fact that Chic used it as a
comedy routine in vaudeville for many years.

Ah how times have changed.

Leonard "Chico" Marx apparently got his name, according to Groucho at
least, because he was a chicken chaser, ie. he chased women although, of
course, the final o fit in with the names of the other brothers, Groucho,
Harpo, Gummo and Zeppo. I'm guessing that the name also sounded like it
might be Italian since that was his persona.

Talk about a wasted life, learning all this useless crap, and I will not
tell you the story about the reason that a young lady's father refused to
let her go out with her boyfriend whose name was Chuck.

Oh well. here it is in truncated form.

His first daughter tells him she is going out with Jim to swim. His second
daughter says she is going out with Paul to the mall. Then his third
daughter tells him she's going out with Chuck, and he interrupts her and
says, no you're not.

Page Stephens

> [Original Message]
> From: Charles Doyle
> To:
> Date: 9/19/2006 8:30:13 AM
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] "Chick" = nickname for "Charles"
>
> Could the situation here reflect a pronunciation variant that on occasion
has manifested itself in a different spelling (perhaps a "barred i"
represented as an "i" rather than a "u")?
>
> The OED gives one sense of "chuck" as "chick, chicken, fowl" (n.2.2),
marked "north. dial."--following the entry for "chuck" as "a familiar term
of endearment" (n.2.1), which was "taken by Dr. Johnson to be corrupted
from CHICK, CHICKEN."
>
> --Charlie (neither Chuck nor Chick)
> ________________________________________
>
> ---- Original message ----
>
> >Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:49:44 -0700
> >From: Jonathan Lighter
> >Subject: "Chick" = nickname for "Charles"
> >To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> >
> >An "early" printed ex. of this (obs.?) U.S. alternative to "Chuck":
> >
> > 1913 Charles E. Van Loan _The Lucky Seventh_ (Boston: Small, Maynard)
238:
> > "Hello, Chick ole boy!"..."Charles!" she said. "Who are these men?"
> >
> > According to at least one source, Maj. Charles Whittlesey (1884-1921),
once famous as the commander of the "Lost Battalion," was nicknamed "Chick"
at Williams College about 1904, but I've not seen the documentation.
(Richard Slotkin, _Lost Battalions_ [N.Y.: Holt, 2005], p.80.)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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