Further note on "gizmo" and one on "God box"

[Jonathan Lighter]

HDAS includes the uncommon use of "gizmo" as "a foolish or inconsequential fellow," which, BTW, is as old in print as the more usual sense.

  Here is a further nuance, novel to me, which, despite the date of the evidence, was app. in use during WWII. The writer is discussing his father's service in the Marines during the war:

  2000 Jack H. McCall, Jr. _Pogiebait's War_ (N.p.: Xlibris) 27: The young Marine was a "gizmo" - a technical specialist...in this case a water purification man.

  McCall uses another uncommon USMC term as well (p. 53):

  "A Marine [in boot camp] did not attend chapel, he went to the _God box_."

  The latter word sometimes appeared in lists of "jazz slang" with the definition "a church organ."

  JL


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