[Ads-l] Guzmo (!? = Gizmo, Gismo...) was Re: "Gizmo" 1938, ~August and October

[Stephen Goranson]

To add to the August,1938 D company USMC nom de plume Gismo and the October "Gizmo" (below):

Guzmo, author of "Dog Company Dope" September, 1938, Leatherneck, p. 51, col. 3.

(Sixth Marines, Second Marine Brigade, Fleet Marine Force, Company D, Camp Pendleton and the Pacific).


In addition to the gizmo meaning of ~gadget (a French glassmaking tool, then generalized. previously antedated to 1868),

a meaning explicitly attested in 1939 in the same publication and suggestively Pacific-related (see below),

do we have here a personified nickname somewhat like M*A*S*H's Walter "Radar" O'Reilly or Mr. Gizmo or Mr. Gadjet?


This person could be identifiable. Proquest notes Pfc, William L. Potter (possibly identical with MCSN: 251270, reportedly later a Sgt. and "captured by the Japanese after the fall of Corregidor, Philippine Islands, on 6 May 1942, and was held as a Prisoner of War until he was returned to U.S. Military Control at the end of the war."), but he may not be the author but an editor.


Stephen Goranson

http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/



________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <...> on behalf of Stephen Goranson <...>
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2017 7:34 AM
To: ...
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] "Gizmo" 1938, ~August and October

>From the August report:

"....On the last eight month [sic] we've Harbor'ed on Honolulu, Galovanted in Guam, Meandered in Manila and Sojourned on Soochow the beautiful in Shanghai, not to mention a landing at Lahina (Roads.)...."


Stephen

________________________________

And two months earlier as Gismo:

Leatherneck August 1938, p. 52 c.2


COMPANY D, FIRST BATALLION

By Gismo


SG


[....]
Leatherneck, October 1938 p.28 col.2 (via ProQuest)

"DOG" COMPANY DOPE

by "Gizmo"



Stephen Goranson

http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/





Previously reported on ads-l (May 4, 2015), from 1939:

Leatherneck, May, 1939, page 35 col. 2, Motor Transport, by Looey [[brackets added]], from image via ProQuest:


"Butch Nyden has returned to us [[to Quantico, Va.]] from Shanghai, where he found out that Gin Rickey's aint those two wheel gismos you ride in out there."


Stephen Goranson


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