British "geezer" = American "gangster"?
Jonathan Lighter
wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM
Wed Jan 24 20:36:27 UTC 2007
I've seen at least one late 19th C. American ex. of "geyser" represented as "geezer" in Western speech.
JL
sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: sagehen
Subject: Re: British "geezer" = American "gangster"?
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"Geezer" also is, or was, the British pronunciation of *geyser*, which, as
the word for a type of on-site, on-demand water heater, sometimes rather
alarmed the American tourist in the UK, on being given instructions as to
how to manage the geyser in the bathroom.
AM
~@:> ~@:> ~@:> ~@:>
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