lookit

[Jesse Sheidlower]

It's also in DARE, to which I don't have access right now, at the
airport....

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

On Apr 12, 2009, at 11:23, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU> wrote:

> On Apr 11, 2009, at 6:28 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote about:
>
>> ... "look at t" as an
>> interjective substitute for faux imperative exclamation "look"
>> (="consider this"). E.g., "Lookit, here's what we decided--take it or
>> leave it." At some point in the past, I noticed that this expression
>> is
>> commonly used by Rush Limbaugh, although I know a number of other
>> people who also use "look at t" exclusively where I would use "look". A
>> small number of people sometimes (non-exclusively) use "look here".
>>
>> I don't know if it's a deform of "look at" or its own malapropism,
>> but
>> it always creeps me out when people use it.
>
> not in AHD4, but the Oxford folks are on to it.  NOAD2 has an entry
> labeled "informal" for it, with subentries for a verb ('phonetic
> spelling of "look at"') and an exclamation ('used to draw attention to
> what one is about to say').  OED2 has an entry with the gloss
> 'Listen!' and (surprisingly) no style or region label.  its etymology
> derives it from "look" with an arbitrary final element.  there are
> cites from 1917 (Dialect Notes) through 1972.
>
> i suspect that people with "lookit" also have plain "look" for this
> purpose.
>
> arnold
>
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>

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