hooch

[Liland Brajant ROS']

My church's Merriam-Webster's 8th Collegiate (I have a 10th at home, but
I'm writing this at church...) gives the etymology of "hooch" as

  [short for *hoochinoo* (a distilled liquor made by the Hoochinoo Indians,
  a Tlingit people)]

and defines it thusly:

  *slang* : alcoholic liquor esp. when inferior or illicitly made or obtained


Did hooch remain limited to the northernmost variants of CJ (and to those
dialects of English that incorporated it), or did it spread throughout
the CJ territory, and if the latter did it replace l at m or did they
coexist in harmony or tension or was hooch a *kind* of l at m ... ?

An example of the word's use in English in a wholly un-CJ-related context
is the following stanza from the song "Thais" (the whole song is on my
website at http://www.scn.org/~lilandbr/thais.html):

  Although this bold admonishment caused Thais some astonishment,
    she coyly answered, "Say, you said a heapin' mouthful, beau!
  This burg's a frost, I'm tellin' you; the brand o' hooch they're
                                                     ^^^^^        sellin' you
    ain't like the stuff we used to get, so let's pack up and go."

(an old IOCA song, date & place of origin, and author, unknown)

Liland

--
Liland Brajant Ros' * UEA-D, Seatlo Usono * FD Baptismo, AA, US-lit-ro
      204 N 39th St / Seattle WA 98103 Usono | tel 206-633-2434
    lilandbr at scn.org / lilandbr at hotmail.com / lbrnpusa at hotmail.com
        webpage "La Lilandejo" - http://www.scn.org/~lilandbr/