Words of the Year (Willie Pepping)

[George Thompson]

Still catching up with holiday postings:

Did any one answer Larry's question?
> Well, that would deprive the immortal Alphonse and Gaston from their
> rightful legacy.  Who were they, anyway?  A French vaudeville routine?

I believe that Alphonse and Gaston were a comic strip -- perhaps a
single-box cartoon.  I'm not sure whether it ran late enough for me to
remember, or whether the very hazy notion I have of it was learned from
my parents, who used the expression.

To Alphonse and Gaston would be different from Willie Pepping.  A & G
were hyper-polite, each deferring to the other: After you, my dear
Alphonse -- No, after you, Gaston.  This exchange could precede any
action -- going through a door, taking a sandwich from a platter.
Willie Pep -- I also have only very vague memories of him, probably from
newsreels, since I don't think he was still fighting when my parents got
their first TV -- was a very elusive boxer, who made himself hard to hit
by shifting from side to side; "bobbing and weaving" was my father's
phrase.  Willie Pepping would describe two people meeting in a corridor
and each shifting to the same side, so each continues to block the other.

I've never encountered the term other than in the post that set this
off.  If it was ever current I would expect it to be in the 1940s when
Pep was active.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Date: Wednesday, January 3, 2007 10:34 am
Subject: Re: Words of the Year

> At 11:58 PM -0500 1/2/07, davemarc wrote:
> >I look forward to the results of this week's vote!
> >
> >As an infrequent kibitzer here, I thought I'd mention the
> following....>
> >
> >"willie pep"--Is anyone here familiar with the use of the late
> boxer Willie
> >Pep's name as a noun? I've got an unsourced citation (possibly
> from The New
> >Yorker by March 9, 1990) that goes as follows:
> >
> >wil*lie pep n [fr. eponymous hero *Willie Pep* b. 1922, professional
> >prizefighter]: The act of two people attempting to go in opposite
> directions>who wind up blocking each other's path by spontaneously
> moving back and
> >forth rapidly, but always remaining directly in front of the other
> person.>"I'm sorry I'm late. I had a *willie pep* with a guy in the
> hall." (Frank
> >Gannon)
> >
> >I know this term isn't really used, but perhaps there's a way to
> pay tribute
> >to this useful but underused term when looking back on the year
> when Willie
> >Pep died.
> >
> Well, that would deprive the immortal Alphonse and Gaston from their
> rightful legacy.  Who were they, anyway?  A French vaudeville routine?
>
> LH
>
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