[Ads-l] hockey puck (Don Rickles insult)

[Ben Zimmer]

Several obituaries for Don Rickles today mentioned one of his favorite
insults, "hockey puck." The Bloomberg obit notes the HDAS entry:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-06/don-rickles-comedian-who-turned-insults-into-art-dies-at-90
"The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang credits Rickles,
circa 1963, with repurposing 'hockey puck' to mean 'a stupid or useless
person.'”

HDAS has as its first cite a line by Rickles ("You hockey puck!") from "The
Dick Van Dyke Show." I see Rickles guest-starred in two back-to-back
episodes in 1964: "4 1/2" (Nov. 4) and "The Alan Brady Show Goes to Jail"
(Nov. 11).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0559727/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0559811/

Here are links to stream the episodes online:

https://goo.gl/XYdKPz
https://goo.gl/1cDiI8

I streamed both episodes but didn't notice the "hockey puck" line (it's
possible I missed it). JL, do you have any specific memories to back up the
cite?

It might be possible to find something earlier, since some obits say
Rickles started using the "hockey puck" insult in the '50s. I don't know if
there's much audio/video evidence of his early standup, though (his
earliest comedy album was "Hello Dummy!" from 1968).

--bgz

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