grex/ krex/ krechtz

[David Bergdahl]

related somehow to "kvetch" ??

On 7/10/07, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
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> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      grex/ krex/ krechtz
>
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>
> Not in OED. Both my grandparents (who were teenagers by
> 1902)  occasionally used this word / grEks / to mean "to whine or complain,"
> esp. in the phrase, "always grexing about something." It has the same
> negatively critical tone as "gripe" or "bitch" (which they didn't use). I
> omitted it from HDAS as too "colloquial," but that may have been a mistake.
> (Haven't checked DARE. If it's there, these cites may still be of interest.)
>
>   It seems to be from some form of Low German, but I haven't tried to
> trace the etymon.
>
>   1959 Lewis Herman & Marguerite Shalett Herman _American Dialects_  (N.Y.:
> Theatre Arts)261: The Pennsylvania-Dutch  Dialect...Stop Grexing!...Stop
> complaining!
>
>   1961 S. J. Perelman _The Rising Gorge_ (N.Y.: Simon & Schuster) 46:  I
> got a kind of a wounded, bleeding-hearts letter from him, grexing how
> selfish I was.
>
>   1970 Matt Gattzden _Black Vendetta_ (N.Y.:  Belmont) 173: Your father
> didn't krechtz - I mean he didn't wail.
>
>   1983 Lewis J. Poteet _South Shore Phrase Book_  (Hanstport, N.S.:
> Lancelot Press) 67: Lunenberg [Nova Scotia]. "You're always krexing about
> something."
>
>   1987 Gary Gates _How to Speak Dutchified English_  I (Intercourse, Pa.:
> Good Books) 34:  _Grex_: To complain; moan. "Ah, quit your grexing, you have
> a vonderful life."
>
>   1988 Robert Steiner _Matinee_ (Boulder: Fiction Collective Two) 260:
> Something to krex about.
>
>   1999 Rita Mae Brown _Six of One_ (N.Y.: Bantam) 50: "I've got no time
> for grexing." "You've only lost your husband. That's not the same as losing
> a child."
>
>   2001  _Elitist Ennui_ (USENET: mn.politics) (Nov. 14): By week's end
> they were at it again. carping, crabbing, krexing and moaning, but much of
> the steam had gone out of the media's attack on the war effort.
>
>   2007 _brik see us_  [http://brixius.wordpress.com/2007/04/] (Apr. 24):
> Julia, it seems, has other plans and begins grexing* upstairs....* You do
> know what "grexing" means, right? According to Aleisha, the owner of our
> downtown baby boutique did not. I can't imagine—Lancaster being the
> epicenter of Pennsylvania Dutch culture and her owning a store where there
> are bound to be fussy babies—that she had not heard it before.
>
>
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