"soft baked"; and "no great kicks"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Like "no great shakes."

I guess "soft-baked cookies" might have been a poor marketing term back
then.

JL

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 2:14 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>wrote:

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> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      "soft baked"; and "no great kicks"
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>
> From a transcript of testimony in a bigamy case:
> Mr. Wilson. -- Did you not consider him to be crazy when you married him.
> Witness. -- No I did not.  I think it now a proof of being crazy for him to
> run after so many women.
> Mr. Wilson. -- And so do I.  He was a boss baker when you married him,
> Phoebe, was he not?
> Witness. -- Yes he was, and was doing very well at Williamsburgh.
> ***
> Mr. Wilson __ And you really mean to say when he took you for a wife, that
> you did not believe his own dough to be soft baked?
> The witness made no reply, and the second wife (who instituted the
> prosecution) was called upon the stand.
> [She admits that she knew when she married him that he was already married,
> and that she herself had a husband who might or might not be still alive.]
> Mr. Wilson. -- And so you wanted another husband, and got married to this
> poor fellow, and now you want to get him into difficulty among you.  You
> need not be quarrelling in this way about him, for he's no great kicks that
> I can see.
> [the Judge: why are we bothering with this?  Acquitted.]
> New York Transcript, April 13, 1836, p. 2, col. 3
>
> I'm familiar with "half-baked", but would apply it to an idea or a plan,
> not a person.  "Soft-baked" seems not to be in the OED.
>
> "no great kicks" relates to the OED's II,4: "the fashion, the newest
> style", HDAS's 1a, "fashion, style mode", from the very late 17th C, but
> neither has this expression, and they have only
> 1787 G. COLMAN Inkle & Yarico III. i, I march'd the lobby, twirled my
> stick..The girls all cry'd ‘He's quite the kick’.
> as an example of "kick" applied to a person.
>
> 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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