crapper 1910...and more

[Jonathan Lighter]

Thanks, Doug. Regardless of the fate of the form "cropper," it's hard to imagine crapulosity-linked "crapper" surviving the popularity of crap-linked "crapper."

  Now I wonder whether "crapulous" has any bearing on the development of the earlier "crapper."

  JL

"Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Douglas G. Wilson"
Subject: Re: crapper 1910...and more
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As JL has already intuited, "crapper" has a variant "cropper" (or vice versa).

At Google Books, I searched for <> and for <>
from 1700 to 1850, and found several examples of "cropper" = "shot
[of liquor]" or so.

Here's one example, a quotation from the Dublin U. Magazine, 1844, in
a poem about schnapps:

<>

A noggin is/was usually more-or-less a quarter-pint, I think, which
would make the cropper something like an ounce ... like a "shot", sure enough.

Tell me the origin of "noggin" and I will try to tell you the origin
of "cropper".

I don't see this "crapper"/"cropper" in the dictionaries. Its
[apparent] disappearance may not be because of "crapper" =
"latrine"/"toilet", since "cropper" survived OK in other senses.

-- Doug Wilson


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