[Ads-l] QOTY 1958

[Andy Bach]

> 1949   R. A. Heinlein Red Planet iii. 26   Now what is this gismo? When
you brought it aboard I thought it was a volley ball.

Just to note - here, the "gismo" is a living (albeit Martian so ...)
creature, not a "manufactured" (even if it's just bent coat hangers)
thingamabob or dohickie.


On Wed, Jul 11, 2018 at 2:06 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> Antedated in OED under “gismo” but with a couple of cites brandishing the
> standard U.S. spelling:
>
> U.S. slang.
>
> A gadget, gimmick, ‘thingumajig’ (see quots.).
>
> 1943   Time 19 July 69/1   Gizmo—a term of universal significance, capable
> of meaning ‘gadget’, ‘stuff’, ‘thing’, ‘whozis’ or almost anything else the
> speaker wants it to.
> 1949   R. A. Heinlein Red Planet iii. 26   Now what is this gismo? When
> you brought it aboard I thought it was a volley ball.
> 1954   C. Williams Touch of Death (1955) i. 7   She was working the strap
> of the halter gizmo up between her arm and her side.
> 1967   Observer 21 May 21/2   To help him ‘shoot’ [photographs], he
> used..a ‘gismo’—a small cardboard tube which he presses against the camera
> lens.
> 1970   New Yorker 1 Aug. 26/3   Every gismo that made use of a clothes
> hanger will be demonstrated by its inventor.
>
> Not to be confused with gitmo.
>
> LH
>
> > On Jul 11, 2018, at 2:47 PM, Mark Mandel <mark.a.mandel at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> > (Hand to forehead) Gro-o-oan! But, yeah, back then. Yuch.
> >
> > Mark, who remembers, though barely
> >
> > On Wed, Jul 11, 2018, 12:54 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> 1958 Charles Beaumont & Ben Hecht _Queen of Outer Space_ (film):
> >>
> >> "The ray that destroyed the space station and knocked us off our course
> may
> >> have originated right here." "Oh, come off it! How could a bunch of
> women
> >> invent a gizmo like that?"
> >>
> >>
> >> JL
> >>
> >> --
> >> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 

a

Andy Bach,
afbach at gmail.com
608 658-1890 cell
608 261-5738 wk

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