Whiz & names

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM
Wed Sep 26 00:55:39 UTC 2007


The older Scots spelling, "Quhiz Kid," might be useful here.

  JL


Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: Whiz & names
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Jon, you are so absolutely correct WRT to "quiz" v. "whiz" that I am
unable to express my chagrin. Damn, I hate it when that happens!

-Wilson

On 9/25/07, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: Re: Whiz & names
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Paul
>
> Subject: Re: Whiz & names
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
> > come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> > -----
> > -Sam'l Clemens
> >
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> >
> >
>
> --
> You have to mutate the mutanda
>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Sam'l Clemens

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