[Ads-l] "wop" = "without papers/passport" (1971)

[George Thompson]

I recall seeing a witty (store-bought) sign in a garage in the mid or late
1960s, celebrating Italian tires: "Dago through rain, dago through snow,
but when dago flat, dago wop, wop, wop.
As I recall, the garage owner had an Italian surname.
A repressed memory is teasing me about this sign -- I'm thinking that it
opened with words alluding to the song These Boots Are Made for Walking,
which would make it post 1966.  But I don't think that that memory is going
to clarify for me.

GAT

On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 10:56 AM, paul johnson <paulzjoh at mtnhome.com> wrote:

> In the fifty's my Italian classmates claimed it came from the sound
> spaghetti made when it hit the wall.
>
>
>
> On 5/23/2017 9:05 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>
>> The bogus acronymic etymology deriving "wop" from "without papers" came up
>> recently in Jonah Goldberg's National Review column:
>>
>> http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/447848/wop-without-pape
>> rs-etymology-incorrect
>>
>> I see that's attested back to 1971, though there are suggestions of
>> earlier
>> oral transmission.
>>
>> ---
>> Alan Dundes, "A Study of Ethnic Slurs," Journal of American Folklore, Vol.
>> 84, No. 332 (Apr.-Jun. 1971), p. 192
>> http://www.jstor.org/stable/538989
>> One folk etymology for the word "wop," a common term of disparagement for
>> Americans of Italian descent, is that in the early 1920s many Italians
>> tried to enter the United States illegally. These would-be immigrants were
>> rounded up by U.S. officials and sent back to Italy with documents
>> labelled
>> W.O.P. which supposedly stood for "Without Papers" referring to the papers
>> needed for legal immigration.
>> ---
>> Tucson Daily Citizen, Dec. 7, 1971, p. 30, col. 1
>> https://www.newspapers.com/image/23550083/
>> "If anyone called me a 'wop' I was furious and wanted to slug the guy
>> right
>> then and there," [Cleveland Indians manager Ken] Aspromonte said, "but
>> then
>> one day my grandfather explained the origin of the word. He told me that
>> in
>> the early 1900's so many Italians were coming into the United States that
>> many of them didn't bother to get visas. When they'd arrive on Ellis
>> Island
>> and didn't have papers with them the inspector would holler out, 'Here's
>> another one, without papers.' So somebody took the letters 'W-O-P' for
>> 'without papers' and that's how it got started," Aspromonte said.
>> ---
>>
>> Also from 1971 is the related derivation "without passport."
>>
>> ---
>> Monroe (La.) News-Star, July 30, 1971, p. 6, col. 1
>> https://www.newspapers.com/image/32327198/
>> "Glad You Asked That!" (syndicated column by Hy Gardner)
>> "Wop" reverts to the turn of the century when millions of Calabrians and
>> Sicilians came off their ships holding a slip of paper with the name of
>> the
>> foreman they had been assigned to. U.S. immigration officials
>> rubberstamped
>> the papers "W.O.P." -- meaning without passport.
>> ---
>>
>> --bgz
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>>
> --
> "there can be nothing more equivocal and ambiguous than words". William
> Blackstone
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
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 Trump of Doom -- affectionately (of course) also known as The Dunghill
Toadstool.  (Here's a picture of one.)
http://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/james-gillray/an-excrescence---a-fungus-alias-a-toadstool-upon-a-dunghill/3851

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