[Ads-l] "K. P. pusher"

[Jonathan Lighter]

HDAS has three cites, but beginning only in 1943.

JL

On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 8:37 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "K. P. pusher"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I had no idea that this term was already familiar to lexicography twenty
> years before the first - and only - time that I ever heard it, at the late,
> unlamented Fort Devens, Massachusetts, in 1959. A local hero was the EM,
> who having had it, grabbed the K.P. pusher by the throat and pointed out to
> him that: "Those stripes cover only a little bit of your arm and *none* of
> your ass!"
>
> Word Study - Volumes 15-29 - Page 147 G. & C. Merriam Company, 1939
> 1939 - =E2=80=8ESnippet view
> https://books.google.com/books?id=3DlJEcAQAAMAAJ
> Eventually, as he completes this detail and wonders what to do next, a _K.
> P. pusher_ (in other words, the supervisor of his activities) or some other
> similarly kind-hearted soul will tell him to _take off_ =E2=80=93
> =E2=80=9C=
> to go away," get
> out of sight before something ...
>
> IME, the phrase was "take off _like a big bird_." The above suggests that
> that was an extension of the original.
> --=20
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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