Coffeehouse?!

[Laurence Horn]

On Jan 10, 2012, at 10:56 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:

> I checked my Mac dictionary, and it says that kibitzing refers to someone who is not playing giving advice. That's what I recall from my childhood, too.

Right, a kibitzer (in chess too) is looking over your shoulder, not telling you how he's going to move or bet or what he has in his hand.  I suppose you can coffeehouse in chess as well, if you're playing; seems like something Bobby Fischer would have done.

LH
>
> Benjamin Barrett
> Seattle, WA
>
> On Jan 10, 2012, at 7:53 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>
>> "We" called it kibitzing, but we were doing a lot more of it in bridge
>> than in poker. Priorities, priorities... Poker was a much more serious
>> game. (But don't tell the guys I played with who ended up on national
>> teams for bridge--they took it quite seriously.)
>>
>>    VS-)
>>
>> On 1/10/2012 10:40 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>> There's also the verb "to coffeehouse" (and the gerund "coffeehousing") =
>>> used in poker to refer to the practice of chatting during play, =
>>> typically with the intention of misrepresenting the strength of one's =
>>> hand.  Not in the OED, but it may be a spinoff of a compound verb that =
>>> is, with fox-hunting related cites going back to 1861:
>>>
>>> coffee-house, v.
>>>
>>> To indulge in gossip (orig. while waiting for the hounds to draw a =
>>> covert, etc., during a fox-hunt)
>>>
>>> LH
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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