[Ads-l] "Who was Kilroy?" June 26, 1945 (in-print antedating?)

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Fri Mar 26 20:27:23 UTC 2021


Whenever I say "shnozz" with a stuffed shnozz, I say "shdozz," not "shmoz."

JL

On Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 3:17 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> > On Mar 26, 2021, at 11:40 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> > Not sure why someone would produce fake Kilroy buttons for War Bonds and
> > subtly backdating them to 1943.  To fool us perhaps? Of course, nothing
> is
> > impossible.
> >
> > I don't see why the restorers would create a fake "Kilroy IS here" name
> for
> > the C-47. Maybe the Museum possesses a 1944 photo.
> >
> > As for the frequency of KIlroy's appearance during the war, I will add
> that
> > I cannot recall many (or perhaps any) refs. to it in published wartime
> > letters or memoirs.
> >
> > It would probably take only two sightings in distant places to convince a
> > person that Kilroy signs were "everywhere" in WW2.
> >
> > Just as a data point: I checked with my wife about Gene Ahern's "Nov
> shmoz
> > ka pop," and - without prompting from me - she immediately associated it
> > with a cartoon of "a little man with a big nose looking over a fence."  I
> > associate the phrase only with the "little hitch-hiker" in Ahern's
> > "Squirrel Cage" strip.
> >
> >
>
> The big nose makes it seem as though “shmoz” somehow derives from
> “shnoz”—maybe someone trying to say “shnoz” with a stuffed nose, or perhaps
> “Nov shnoz” dissimilated to “Nov shmoz”.
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
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