[Ads-l] Kazoo and Bazooka

[Jonathan Lighter]

>Gazooka

Don't you mean "gazook"?

JL

On Mon, May 1, 2017 at 3:58 PM, Peter Reitan <pjreitan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I recently mentioned kazoo and bazooka in a thread about made up words.
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2017-April/147475.html
>
>
> I believe that both words are derived, or influenced by, the slang word,
> "bazoo."
>
>
> In the late-1800s, to "toot" or "blow" one's "bazoo" was to brag.  "Bazoo"
> also referred to any wind instrument, especially when loud or poorly
> played.  A man named Warren Frost appears to have coined the word "kazoo"
> when he patented his version of what we now call a kazoo in 1882.  "Kazoo"
> went viral in 1884, when someone appears to have started manufacturing and
> marketing them in mass quantities.
>
>
> Barry Popik posted the earliest example of "kazoo" from July 1884 in 2002.
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2002-November/027189.html
>
>
> Apart from the patent, which was filed in 1882, I found one apparently
> unrelated use of "kazoo" from a book that appears to have been written in
> 1882.
>
>
> In the context of the book, the word referred to an extended binge or
> protracted party weekend:
>
> “Kazoo’s new, isn’t it?” says he. “What’s a kazoo?”
>
> “Oh, a regular bump.” Says Whopper.
>
> “A ‘reeling ripe,’ you know,” says Mixer.
>
> “A protracted bust,” murmurs Little Jake, persistently ignoring the
> renewed emptiness of the glasses, though it is emphatically his turn.
>
> O. N. Looker (pseudonym), Naughty New York, or, The Apron Strings Relaxed:
> a Novel of the Period; being a truthful narrative of a weeks jollification
> of three young benedicts, New York, American News Co., 1982, page 12.
>
> A man named Bob Burns coined "bazooka" for a home-made trombone of his own
> invention in 1918.  The hand-held Army rocket launcher of the same name was
> named for its similarity to Bob Burns' bazooka.  It was already called a
> bazooka when it was first hinted at in print, when reporters were given a
> demonstration of a number of secret weapons:
>
> "There is one weapon which, with typical Yankee impudence, already has
> been nicknamed the “Bazooka,” because of its resemblance to Comedian Bob
> Burns’ famous musical instrument."
>
> Detroit Free Press, January 1, 1943.
>
>
> But Gazooka had been a word for at least a decade before, and the word
> "Bazooka" even showed up as the name of a large fish as early as 1904, so
> Burns could have named his instrument after "bazoo" and "kazoo" or borrowed
> the word from its earlier sense, or been influenced by several things.
>
>
> I put a bunch of information - probably too much information - in a blog
> post:
>
> http://esnpc.blogspot.com/2017/05/bazoo-kazoo-bazooka-from-playful.html
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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