[Ads-l] rookie-doo

Sat Jul 9 04:11:30 UTC 2016

Thanks, Garson! I also searched NewsBank and got 4 more citations from 
1992 to 2003, all from Texas or Oklahoma, 2 of them from Dallas:

    Human interest stories not always interesting (or human)

Tahlequah Daily Press (OK) - May 5, 2011

Callers have bought shirts that ripped at the seams (most likely when 
they tried to stuff themselves into a size too small), and been 
*rookie-doo*’ed by convenience stores peddling gasoline with water in it.

    LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Dallas Morning News, The (TX) - January 25, 2008

This bears all the marks of Texas' common practice to *rooky-do* folks 
out of their property.

    Health, cash problems confront midget sisters - Lack of wheelchair
    hampers mobility

Dallas Morning News, The (TX) (Published as The Dallas Morning News) - 
June 28, 1992

There were eight children in the Buckaloo family, four of whom were 
chondroplastic dwarfs, including Dessie, 69, and Shirley, 45, and two 
brothers. Their mother died when Shirley was 2, and Dessie raised her 
younger sister.

"I was raised by little people,' Shirley said. "I watched them 
'*rooky-do*' to get by.'

    Danny Andrews column: Some wild and crazy cab rides

Plainview Daily Herald (TX) - June 1, 2003

I told the man about the pre-arranged price. He insisted I speak with 
the dispatcher who was in on the *rooky-do*. Feeling unusually 
assertive, I firmly told the man on the other end of the two-way radio 
which end was up and that we weren't paying a dime more.

On 7/8/2016 2:13 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole wrote:
> The type is difficult to read in this citation from 1972, but I think
> it contains an instance of "rookie-dooed".
>
> Date: December 22, 1972
> Newspaper: Northwest Arkansas Times
> Newspaper Location: Fayetteville, Arkansas
> Article: Judge Dismisses Madison Election Challenge By GOP
> Quote Page 2, Column 6
>
> https://www.newspapers.com/image/18785305/?terms=%22rookie-dooed%22
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> Judge Enfield was quoted as summarizing the plaintiffs' case as
> follows: "We (the Republicans) think this thing ought to be checked
> into to determine if we got rookie-dooed out of the election."
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 12:06 AM, Neal Whitman <nwhitman at ameritech.net> wrote:
>> For years, my family has used the verb "rookie-doo" to mean cheat or
>> deceive, typically in passive-voice phrases such as "He got rookie-dooed out
>> of getting to go on the trip," or "I feel rookie-dooed". It finally occurred
>> to me to look into the origin of this word, and it seems to be associated
>> with Louisiana, which makes me wonder if my dad picked up the term when he
>> went to college at Tulane (mid-1960s). In particular, the term is associated
>> with the Louisiana legislature, as you can see in news articles like this
>> one, where I learned that "rookie-doo" is also a noun, and has a synonym in
>> another noun, "fugaboo":
>>
>> http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/05/littleknown_legislator_pulled.html
>>
>>
>>       Little-known legislator pulled 'rookie-doo' on state House
>>
>>     <http://connect.nola.com/user/rscott/index.html>By Robert Travis
>>     Scott, The Times-Picayune
>>     <http://connect.nola.com/user/rscott/posts.html>
>>
>>     BATON ROUGE -- The rookie-doo and fugaboo are still in style.
>>
>>     Those are oft-used terms learned the hard way by legislative
>>     freshmen. An incident last week was proof once again that getting
>>     fooled on a bill is common enough that it deserves its own vocabulary.
>>
>>     In a masterful rookie-doo that made national headlines, Rep. Avon
>>     Honey, D-Baton Rouge, simultaneously flummoxed the entire House of
>>     Representatives and upset one of Gov. Bobby Jindal's top agenda
>>     items for the current lawmaking session.
>>
>>     With a brief mumble and a procedural flourish, Honey slipped an
>>     audacious amendment to expand state jobless benefits into an
>>     innocent bill while an unsuspecting House was wrapping up a long
>>     session Monday evening.
>>
>>
>> I suspect that the term is derived from /rook,/ in particular these
>> definitions (taken from the OED) with the diminutive suffix /-ie/ and the
>> silly suffix /-doo/ attached:
>>
>> *rook, n.^1 *
>>
>> *2.* In extended use.
>>
>> * b. A cheat, swindler, or sharper, esp. in gambling.
>> *
>>
>> *rook, v.^2
>> *<http://www.oed.com.webproxy3.columbuslibrary.org/view/Entry/167278#eid24891815>
>>
>> *Etymology: *< rook n.^1
>> <http://www.oed.com.webproxy3.columbuslibrary.org/view/Entry/167278#eid24891815>
>> (compare rook n.^1 2b
>> <http://www.oed.com.webproxy3.columbuslibrary.org/view/Entry/167278#eid24892126>).
>>
>> *1.*
>>
>> *a. /trans./ To cheat or swindle; /esp./ to win or extract money from (a
>> person) by fraud; to charge (a person) extortionately. Chiefly in slang or
>> colloquial use.*
>>
>> *
>> *
>>
>> /Rookie-doo/ itself isn't in the OED, so I'm trying to find early
>> attestations myself. So far, not much luck in Google Books, ProQuest, COCA
>> or COHA. Tomorrow I'll see if it's in our library's copy of DARE. In the
>> meantime, is anyone here familiar with the term?
>>
>> Neal
>>
>>
>> **
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

-- 
Dr. Neal Whitman
Lecturer, ESL Composition
School of Teaching and Learning
College of Education and Human Ecology
Arps Hall
1945 North High Street
whitman.11 at osu.edu
(614) 260-1622

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