[Ads-l] Fugazi

[Jonathan Lighter]

The 1980 ex. in HDAS also comes from "Nam."

"Fugazy" is an Italian surname. During the 1970s - possibly earlier - WINS
radio regularly carried ads for "Fugazy Cadillac," a limousine service. It
is now "Fugazy Transportation":  http://www.fugazy.com/transportation/
That's /fiU 'gei zi/.

The ads were always spoken by the owner, Bill Fugazy:
http://www.lctmag.com/people/article/40677/lct-interview-with-new-yorks-bill-fugazy

I suspect that the slang application was suggested by the odd name, its
radio repetition, and its "fu" onset.

The available citations required HDAS II to spell the word with {i}

"Fugazy" is said to be an Americanization of the name "Fugazzi":

http://boards.ancestry.com/surnames.fugazzi/5/mb.ashx

Wiktionary offers a couple of fugazy etymological conjectures, including
the seemingly inevitable acronymic SWAG.

JL

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 9:14 AM, Christopher Philippo <toff at mac.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Christopher Philippo <toff at MAC.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Fugazi
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> There is a band by the name whose pronunciation does not rhyme with =
> crazy.  The frontman talks about the name here, though the audio is =
> poor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DJ3vCGhP0Ggo  He indicates he had =
> learned of the word in the book Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the =
> Men and Women Who Fought There, and the band liked the word as a name =
> because its meaning wasn=E2=80=99t obvious and thus did not create =
> specific expectations about what their band was like.  Most people did =
> not seem to know what it meant: is that a Chinese motorcycle? Is that an =
> Italian dessert?
>
> Chris Cuomo may have assumed that the meaning fake could be looked up, =
> though he is right with respect to at least Cassell's Dictionary of =
> Slang 2nd Ed. and Wiktionary.
>
> Wiktionary is somewhat useful in this case in that it provides three =
> citations for people using it to mean fake.  The movies Donnie Brasco =
> and The Wolf of Wall Street might be helping to popularize the (fake?) =
> fake meaning.
> http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=3Dfugazi&oldid=3D29048272  =
> There is a fair amount of speculation on the Wiktionary Talk page for =
> the entry about the derivation of the fake meaning and possible origins =
> in NYC Italian-American street slang: =
> http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=3DTalk:fugazi&oldid=3D32331408
> =
>  There is skepticism about the acronym, though if the acronyms given for =
> SNAFU and FUBAR are not backronyms it seems reasonable the same could =
> possibly be true of FUGAZI.=
>
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