more on early "jeeps"

[Wilson Gray]

On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 12:48 AM, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: more on early "jeeps"
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>
> On 12/7/2011 7:53 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>> .... Since I've been able to understand English, I've known _yardbird_
>> as a BE word for "chicken" - cf. Charlie "Yardbird" Parker, renowned
>> as a connoisseur of fried chicken - and, since I've been able to read,
>> I've known it as G.I. jargon, like _goldbrick_, used During The War,
>> but extinct by the time of my own career in the military ....
>
> (1) Was the military yardbird basically likened to a domestic bird
> (policing the camp for butts etc. like a pecking chicken), or what?
>

Could be. I have no idea, though I'm well-acquainted with "post
police." ["Start bendin' 'n' pickin'! I don' wanna to see nothin' but
assholes 'n' elbows!"] I'm also confused by "goldbrick." From
somewhere or other, I have the impression that selling gold-plated or
merely gold-painted lead or clay bricks to suckers was once a
lucrative confidence game, but that's all. I don't see the connection.
Professional NCO's aren't likely to overestimate the value of a
recruit.

> (2) Cf. Japanese "niwatori" = "chicken", < "niwa" (= "yard"/"garden") +
> "tori" (= "bird").
>

Interesting!

> (3) Among those who call a chicken a "yardbird", would other (similar)
> poultry (e.g., guinea-fowl) qualify as "yardbirds" also?
>

Only chickens. Black people in the South, including my grandparents,
ordinarily kept guinea-hens [sic] in addition to chickens, but, IME,
they were referred to only by that term.

My grandfather would always get a turkey-cock for Thanksgiving. It
looked like the ones that, nowadays, you see only in pictures: a big -
well, maybe not so big; I was far smaller then than I am, now - fat
fowl with the varicolored plumage of a wild turkey, not like today's
white ones that are said to be literally too dumb to come in out of
the rain. Instead, they'll stare up at the clouds and breathe in
raindrops till they drown. So, no free range for them!

-Wilson

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