[Ads-l] Root of Pook?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Ha! I'm so old I can dig it, and I think it's the most!

JL

On Fri, Sep 23, 2016 at 1:11 AM, Dave Hause <dwhause at cablemo.net> wrote:

> Possibly, if there were a custom lawn care summer business, that could
> have been "Pookie, blend me your loam."
> Dave Hause
> -----Original Message----- From: Flourish Klink
> Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2016 1:02 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Root of Pook?
>
> Query: does this have anything to do with the classic prep nickname
> "Pookie"?
>
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 10:15 PM Dave Hause <dwhause at cablemo.net> wrote:
>
> Lobeline, Lobeline
>> Meanest gal
>> That I ever seen,
>> No one else
>> Could be as mean
>> As that pure wicked
>> Lobeline.
>>
>> Dave Hause
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: George Thompson
>> Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2016 8:03 PM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject: Root of Pook?
>>
>>       Last Week Mr. Thomas Brunton, his Wife and three or four more of his
>> Family, in this City, had like to be poisoned by eating the Root of Pook,
>> for Horse Radish; but by having the immediate Assistance of a Physician,
>> they are now almost all recovered.
>>       N-Y Mercury, March 26, 1764, p. 2, col. 2
>> I don't see this elsewhere, and don't see it in the OED as such, but
>> "pukeweed", below, sounds as if it might be a bad plant to eat by mistake.
>>
>> GAT
>> pukeweed  n. *N. Amer.* (now *hist.*) Indian tobacco,  *Lobelia inflata*,
>> an erect, usually branched herb bearing racemes of bluish-violet or white
>> flowers, which yields the alkaloid lobeline and was formerly used as an
>> emetic.
>> 1830    C. S. Rafinesque *Med. Flora* 2.22   *Lobelia inflata.
>> Names..Vulgar.* Indian Tobacco, Wild Tobacco, Emetic Weed, Puke Weed.
>> 1925    *Sci. Monthly* Aug. 207   For lobelia or the puke weed Bartram
>> made
>> such remarkable claims that the passage is quoted verbatim.
>> 1994    J. S. Haller *Med. Protestants* 41   Thomson established an
>> alternative system of medical treatment. He depended most heavily on
>> lobelia (his ‘pukeweed’).
>>
>> --
>> George A. Thompson
>> The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
>> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
>> Univ. Pr., 1998.
>>
>> But when aroused at the Trump of Doom / Ye shall start, bold kings, from
>> your lowly tomb. . . .
>>
>> L. H. Sigourney, "Burial of Mazeen", *Poems*.  Boston, 1827, p. 112
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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