[Ads-l] _Hawaiian disease_

[Wilson Gray]

In Green's, the primary [= straight] definition is "the lack of female
company." In '50's St. Louis, it was part of the set-up to the following
pun:

a. Do you know what the "Hawaiian disease" is?
b. No. What?
a. Lack o' nookie.

At one time, the Hawaiian lovesong, Kāua I Ka Huahuaʻi, mistranslated into
English as "Hawaiian War Chant," was sufficiently popular that everybody
knew enough about what Hawaiian sounded like to understand the point of the
punning answer to the question.

Googling reveals an alternative answer: "Lack o' moolah." HDAS dates
_moolah_ "money" from at least 1939. So, who knows which version is older?

Oddly, the home of St. Louis's Shriners is the Moolah Temple of the Mystic
Shrine. Whether this name has anything to do with the slang term I have no
idea, though I've been wondering about it since '40's..

Another "oddly" is that the "lack o'" version seems not to show up in print
till 2010 or so and neither HDAS nor GDS has it, seemingly.


-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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