Unusual application of "kike"

[Jonathan Lighter]

As a name for a young woman's sailboat, I suggest that "Kite" was intended.

I am unaware of any exx. other than those posted that strongly suggest a
"kike" is anything other than a Jew. One or two of the earliest in HDAS
may, in retrospect, conceivably be ambiguous.

JL

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 8:27 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Unusual application of "kike"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Dec 10, 2012, at 8:09 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>
> > I see a humorous article from 1906, on-line at the Fulton site --
> >
> > http://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html
> >
> > -- showing the word "kike" applied to a miserly northerner in the south
> > for the winter.
> >
> > ----------
> >
> > _The Morning Telegraph_ (New York NY), 21 January 1906: p. 4:
> >
> > <<[title] Doings at Dope Springs / by CHARLES DRYDEN / Sad Story Wherein
> > the Life and Angling Habits of the Kike Are Exposed. / .... Such fellows
> > are kikes, and I have long ached to turn the calcium on them. A kike is
> > one degree below the piker in general picayune propositions, such as
> > skinning a gnat for its hide and tallow. ....>>
> >
> > ----------
> >
> > It's a pretty long piece. The "kike" in this article is not assigned a
> > religion or ethnic group. He typically has a beard and a celluloid
> > collar. He typically is a merchant from a country town in the Midwest.
> > He carries his own basic foodstuffs (hams, potatoes, beans, dried
> > pumpkin, molasses, flour, butter, salt, pepper) for his southern stay to
> > avoid grocery expenses.
> >
> > -- Doug Wilson
> >
> So "the Kike" is a cheap Midwesterner especially fond of ham (inter alia).
>  Not one's stereotypical picture of Jews, except perhaps for the cheap part
> (although that could apply to Scots as well), and the beard.   Verrrry
> interesting, as Arte Johnson would say.
>
> LH
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org