NYT on Daniel Cassidy---( "big shot")

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

    Here's another troubling example from Cassidy's book (there's no shortage of them): On p. 90 he derives "shot" of "big shot" ("a very influential, important person,...") from the  Irish forms "Seod" (accent aigu over -o-), "Sead" (accent aigu over -e-), and "Sead" (accent aigu over -a-), which he defines (citing two Irish dictionaries)  as "a jewel; fig. a (big) chief, a warrior, a hero, a valiant person."

    A more likely etymology appears in HDAS, which under "big shot" (first attestation: 1927) refers the reader to "big gun" ("a prominent, powerful, or influential person; leading individual"; first attested in 1834). If an important person can be likened to a big gun, the term "big shot" can be seen to express essentially the same idea.

    If Cassidy considers this obvious etymology incorrect and prefers to derive the term from Irish, it would be nice if he advanced evidence for this.  In particular, it would be nice if he acknowledged the present etymology and informed us why he believes it's inaccurate.  And it would be even nicer if he expressed an awareness of the possibility of coincidence in lexical similarity.

    Btw--and here I am truly puzzled--why would Cassidy in his bibliography (and there *is* a bibliography--remarkably short and somewhat obscurely placed on page 77) include Wentworth-Flexner's 1960 _Dictionary of American Slang_ but omit Jonathan Lighter's more recent and universally acclaimed _Historical Dictionary of American Slang_ ?  To state the obvious, HDAS is indispensable for the study of American slang.

Gerald Cohen

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