[Ads-l] Fugazi

[Jonathan Lighter]

I think we may as well delete "said to be."

JL

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 10:52 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Fugazi
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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:
>
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Christopher Philippo <toff at MAC.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: Fugazi
> >
> >
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> >
> > 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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>
>
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