[Ads-l] instance of "gook" 1907
Amy West
medievalist at W-STS.COM
Thu Nov 14 13:08:24 UTC 2019
This is probably a distractor/nonce usage, but today's Upside Down World
of Gustave Verbeek on Go Comics shows a strip of his from 1907 where
there's an imaginary creature called a "gook" and limerick describing it:
https://www.gocomics.com/upside-down-world-of-gustave-verbeek/2019/11/14
Don't know if this is already in someone's files somewhere.
MW gives 1901 as the date for the ethnic slur, and OED gives 1935
(citing American Speech), so while it may not be an interdating because
of the different referent, it may still be of interest, showing that the
referent wasn't as fixed yet, still susceptible of taking other
referents? I dunno . . .
---Amy West
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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