Guido x 2

[George Thompson]

I moved into the Gravesend district of Brooklyn in the 1970s.  At the time it was a neighborhood with a considerable Italian population, the adults mostly born in Italy.  I heard "goombah" once or twice, applied to old men.  It's from the Italian word "compare", a relationship arising from standing as godfather to a child.  Instead of "guido", young men were referred to as "cugines", from the Italian word for "cousin".  Presumably old men were likely to address each other as "compare", and the young were likely to be cousins, and to address each other as such.
The one occasion I can recall clearly when I heard "goombah", it was used patronizingly but not negatively.  "Cugine" was disapproving, used by adult Italian-American.
I recall once, in a store, noticing a group of 2 or 3 teens; a friend entered the store; one of the kids greeted him with "hey, cugine!".  From the way they all snickered I got the impression that he was being smart and imitating a current movie or TV show.  I can't date this memory: probably late 1970s or early 1980s, not after the mid 1980s, I don't think.

Cugine isn't in HDAS
OED has
    A young Italian-American man (usu. depreciative). Also: a young man seeking initiation into the Mafia. Cf. GUIDO n.

1988 N.Y. Newsday 21 Sept. 34/2 The fat cugine asked if you can get your freakin' knee off his throat? 1996 R. K. TANENBAUM Corruption of Blood 122 What is this, Guma? Since when are you running errands for the cugines? 2000 Vanity Fair July 179/2 We called them the cugines those were the male guidos, with their hair slicked back and the cuginettes, the girls with teased hair. 2003 E. DEZENHALL Jackie Disaster 13 You guys have summer internships for a cugine like me to peddle crack to black toddlers or anything?

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

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