[Ads-l] Katy Bar and her kitty corner

Stephen Goranson goranson at DUKE.EDU
Sat Aug 18 08:30:31 UTC 2018


My Mom used to say "It'll be Katy bar the door." My brother Ted recently wondered whether it was originally "katy bar the door," diagonally. Many agree that "kitty corner" came from "cater corner." (Thoroughly discussed by Anatoly Liberman in An Analytic Dictionary of the English Language: An Introduction [2008], pages 133-5.) And there is no consensus on a real or fictional Ur-Katy who barred. Might Kitty and Katy be, in a way, catering sisters? Or at least the choice of the name Katy have been so influenced?

Stephen Goranson
http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/
Stephen Goranson's Home Page - Duke University<http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/>
people.duke.edu
"Celsus of Pergamum: Locating a Critic of Early Christianity," Ch. 30 in The Archaeology of Difference: Gender, Ethnicity, Class and the "Other" in Antiquity: Studies in Honor of Eric M. Meyers (AASOR 60/61, 2007 ...



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