[Ads-l] Katy Bar and her kitty corner

Sat Aug 18 10:16:50 UTC 2018

Background: Back in 2016 Bonnie shared citations for "Katie, Bar The
Door" beginning with October 2, 1872. List members Garson O'Toole,
Peter Morris, Peter Reitan, and Laurence Horn replied.

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2016-February/140769.html

Michael Quinion wrote an analysis that was informed by the results
posted to the ADS list: Katy bar the door
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kat1.htm

Here is a citation for "Kitty bar the door!" in 1874.

Date: October 10, 1874
Newspaper: The Weekly Louisianian
Newspaper Location: New Orleans, Louisiana
Article: The Sixth Ward Radical Republican Central Club
Quote Page 2, Column 5
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
I take it every citizen has registered. If they have not they should
at once do so. They must not be in the condition of him who cried:
"Kitty bar the door!" (Laughter.)
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Sat, Aug 18, 2018 at 4:30 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu> wrote:
> 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 ...
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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