[Ads-l] klutz before 1959?

Sat Apr 29 15:47:05 UTC 2017

Excellent discovery, Stephen. The character Percy Klutz in the novel
"Mr. Adam" is a bureaucrat who writes memoranda. In the passage below
Mr. Smith is saying that he is not like Percy Klutz, and he will not
write memoranda. Klutz is capitalized throughout.

Yet, the passage does suggest that a dual meaning for "Klutz/klutz"
may have been known to some readers.

[Begin excerpt]
I could see she was genuinely serious, and so I decided to be serious
too because I didn’t want my secretary to have any delusions that I
was a Klutz, or even a half-Klutz. “Look, Miss Zitter,” I said,
pushing myself up in bed, “under no circumstances—not ever—will I
write a memorandum to anyone about anything. That is a pledge. May God
strike me dead if I do!”

“Oh, but Mr. Smith—”

“Never, so help me Christ!”

“But you don’t understand, Mr. Smith. If you don’t answer the
memoranda, or at least initial them, the files would never get
cleared! You see, here’s the way it works. Suppose Mr. Klutz sent you
a memo.”

“God forbid!”
[End excerpt]

A theatrical production based on "Mr. Adam" by Pat Frank was reviewed
in "The Detroit Free Press". The passage below also suggests a
possible dual meaning for "Klutz/klutz".

Date: April 1, 1949
Newspaper: Detroit Free Press
Newspaper Location: Detroit, Michigan
Article: 'Mr. Adam,' Atomic-Age Farce, Has Sex and Laughs Aplenty
Author: Helen Bower (Free Press Drama Critic)
Quote Page 33
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
Howard Freeman, as the Army colonel, is pricelessly and really funny.
He shakes like jelly at the sound of a general's voice. He is stuffy
with oddments of information, one of which rings the bell.

As the project chief, Emory Parnell is a kindly, dumb Klutz, hamstrung
by "policy" and a runaway imagination. Ted Thorpe scurries around as
his public relations idea man.
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 8:50 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu> wrote:
> FWIW, a 1946 novel, Mr. Adam, by Pat Frank (concerning an atom bomb that made men infertile) includes a character Mr. (Percy) Klutz. According to HathiTrust "a klutz" appears on p. 90. In the reedition at Amazon ("look inside!" p. 71 "I didn't want my secretary to have any delusions that I was a Klutz or even a half-Klutz."
>
> The book is available here:
>
> http://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20160921
>
> Mr. Adam - fadedpage.com<http://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20160921>
> www.fadedpage.com
> Title: Mr. Adam: Author: Frank, Harry Hart Writing under the pseudonym: Frank, Pat: Published: 1946: Publisher: J. B. Lippincott Company: Tags: fiction, dystopia ...
>
>
>
> Stephen
>
> http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/
>
> Stephen Goranson's Home Page - Duke University<http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/>
> people.duke.edu
> Stephen Goranson. goranson "at" duke "dot" edu _____ Jannaeus.pdf. My paper on the history of Alexander Jannaeus as the Qumran- and Essene-view "Wicked Priest" and ...
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society <...> on behalf of Robin Hamilton <...>
> Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2017 3:44 AM
> To:...
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] klutz before 1959?
>
> Under, "klutz n./ also clutz / [synon. Yid.; ult. Ger. klotz, a log, a lump of
> wood] / (orig. US) a stupid, clumsy, socially inept person," GDoS cites:
>
>        1925 [US] H. Leverage ‘Dict. Und.’ in _Flynn’s_ mag. cited in Partridge
> _DU_ (1949).
>        1956 [US] Gerald Green _Last Angry Man_ 411: He sits there with his
> stupid wife, and the big klutz of a son.
>
> The full entry in DU (3rd. ed., 1968) reads:
>
>        *KLOTZ.  A stick, a club : 1925. Leverage; extant.--Hence (?), a stupid
> or very foolish person: 1925, Leverage; extant. (Ex German).
>
> Partridge's bibliography (p xii) has:
>
>        Henry Leverage, 'Dictionary of the Underworld' in _Flynn's_, early 1925.
>
> Julie Coleman, _The Life of Slang_ (2012), p. 204, provides the following
> details for Leverage:
>
>        Henry Leverage’s ‘Flynn’s Dictionary of the Underworld’, _Flynn’s_ 3-6 (3
> Jan.-2 May 1925), Vol. 3: 690-3, 874-7, 1056-7; Vol. 4: 118-19, 488-9, 664-5,
> 868-9, 1150-1; Vol. 5: 191-2, 280-1, 511-12, 660-1, 818-19, 968-9; Vol. 6:
> 116-17, 211-12, 426-7.
>
> [Drawing on the Bibliography in Coleman4 (2010), p 438, which provides the same
> details.]
>
> Coleman3, pp. 330-332, discusses Leverage.
>
> Also relevant is an item in the same volume, p. 130, citing L.W.Merryweather,
> 'The Argot of the Orphan's Home' (1932) -- in _American Speech_ 7 (1932),
> 398-407:
>
>        [1932]   _kluck_, n.  A stupid person.  "You big kluck!"
>
> On _Flynn's_:
>
>        Flynn's (Weekly) (Detective) (Fiction) (Magazine)
>
>        Under a variety of titles Flynn's (Weekly) (Detective) (Fiction)
> (Magazine) was one of the most popular, and longest running, of all the
> detective pulps – notching up an impressive 929 issues over a period of 28
> years, maintaining a rigid publication schedule for 17 of those years.
>
>        It was launched in September 1924 by Frank A. Munsey under the name
> Flynn's and continued, on a weekly basis, with variations of that name for four
> years. The "Flynn's" part of the name was dropped with effect from the 2nd June
> 1928 issue and it became just Detective Fiction Weekly, the name under which it
> is best known and with which it ran for 14 years.
>
>           -- https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.philsp.com_mags_flynns.html&d=DwIFaQ&c=imBPVzF25OnBgGmVOlcsiEgHoG1i6YHLR0Sj_gZ4adc&r=uUVa-8oDL2EzfbuMuowoUadHHcJ7pjul6iFkS5Pd--8&m=jzOD2gwOiNqZOg7QWufi4KoWrljTj7eV8jzuY2gVICU&s=1pdibTD4GLciF9-_8IfsWtfa9eBpvEZw87lFsunMNT8&e=
>
> So it looks as if there's a solid 1956 dating, a highly dubious 1925 example,
> and a possibly relevant 1932 interdating.
>
> Further Affiant Sayeth Naught
>
> RH.
>
>>
>>     On 29 April 2017 at 06:19 Mark Mandel <...> wrote:
>>
>>
>>     The Oxford dictionary online
>>     <... > gives the etymology
>> of
>>     "klutz" ("North American, informal: A clumsy, awkward, or foolish person.
>>     ") as
>>
>>     1960s: from Yiddish klots ‘wooden block’.
>>
>>     Most of the other online dictionaries I've checked agree with this dating,
>>     but Merriam-Webster <... >
>> says
>>     "First Known Use: 1959".
>>
>>     Is it really that new in English? Can anyone antedate it?
>>
>>     Mark
>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.americandialect.org&d=DwIFaQ&c=imBPVzF25OnBgGmVOlcsiEgHoG1i6YHLR0Sj_gZ4adc&r=uUVa-8oDL2EzfbuMuowoUadHHcJ7pjul6iFkS5Pd--8&m=jzOD2gwOiNqZOg7QWufi4KoWrljTj7eV8jzuY2gVICU&s=Xe-O1CNSsj_g2L-x-YraIaV3C-65-XHdYMXedcRBsUk&e=>
>
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