Whiz & names

[Jonathan Lighter]

Those radio stars were "Quiz Kids,"not "Whiz Kids."

  WNCD9, however, dates "whiz kid" to ca1942.  Baseball fans may recall that the 1950 Philadelphia Phillies were nicknamed the "Whiz Kids," a name more sarcastically applied much later to Robert S. MacNamara's advisers and analysts at the Pentagon.

  As for the verb to "whizz," OED shows D H. Lawrence thinking of doing it in a policeman's eye in 1929. Lawrence, FWIW, lived in New Mexico for a couple of years around 1925.  Yet this is far earlier than anything I've encountered in the U.S., leading me to suspect the term is a Briticism.  (OED's "take a whizz" is from 1971.)

  JL



Paul <paulzjoh at MTNHOME.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Paul

Subject: Re: Whiz & names
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I'm 72, grew up in Chicago and remember several women of my mother's
generation, nicknamed Whiz. Two of them were small time entertainers
from the '20s. one a dancer and the other was something like the
magician's assistant. Both had great legs at least to my 10 year all
believing eyes.

Wilson Gray wrote:
> I don't recall The Whiz Kids" as a game show. Wasn't it more like a
> "Look-how smart-these-children-are!-Ask-them-any-question-and-they-can-answer-it!-Aren't-they-amazing?!-They-can't-be-stumped!"
> kind of show that went back to radio days? The TV main Kid, Joel
> Kupperman (or "Kupferman" or something similar? Back in those days, I
> wasn't hip to, uh, I didn't know from Jewish names; I didn't even know
> that the legendary Arnold Stang was Jewish.) looked like a buddy of
> mine who was physically white but racially black.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On 9/25/07, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Laurence Horn
>> Subject: Re: Whiz
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>> At 2:25 PM -0400 9/25/07, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>>
>>> On 9/25/07, Charles Doyle wrote:
>>>
>>>> Google Books seems to show "take a whiz" from 1925--Benjamin De Casseres,
>>>> _Mirrors of New York_: "There was a cellar, however, three blocks
>>>> up the avenue
>>>> where a gentleman could take a whiz at the wheel. No, we couldn't
>>>> do anything
>>>> with the wheel today." Although it's attractive to envision a
>>>> small waterwheel
>>>> installed inside a urinal for the recreation of well hydrated
>>>> whizzers, I assume the
>>>> reference is to some other activity.
>>>>
>>> Presumably along the lines of "take a whirl/whack/crack/stab at".
>>>
>>>
>> And by the late 40s and early 50s, when "the whiz kids" was a
>> standard locution not only for the group that came to Ford after WWII
>> (including Robert F. Macnamara, for the term eventually turned
>> ironic) but for other groups of wunderkinder, including the
>> pennant-winning 1950 Phillies or TV game show contestants, I don't
>> think there was any snickering about any possible micturitional
>> double meaning.
>>
>> LH
>>
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>
>
> --
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> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
> -Sam'l Clemens
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