Post by pcdad on Aug 29, 2014 10:47:42 GMT -5
Clarification needed.... Nutsey Fagan indeed!
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!
www.nytimes.com/1995/08/13/magazine/on-language-of-nutsiness-and-madness.html
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posted June 29, 2011 10:40 Hide Post
Here's a nice discussion about it from 2004 on Wordwizard. Link They had a lot about it, though the spelling was a little different.
Apparently there is a popular song from 1923 named, "Nutsey Fagan."
Someone there posted that his late father (born in 1888 in NYC) used it as a mild expletive to mean "Rats!" The person posting this said clearly it didn't have an anti-Semitic quality (as suggested by Fagin in "Oliver Twist") or his dad wouldn't have used it.
Then there was an entertainer in NYC named Nutsey Fagan, who was Tarzan in movies and was famous for daredevil swimming acts.
There was a Nutsy Fagan comic strip in the 50s.
Also from the 50s-60s, Jackie Gleason used to do a bartender skit on his TV show where hed talk about Nutsey Fagan, but you never saw the character.
In "The Producers" Zero Mostel calls someone a "Nutsey Fagan."
Wow, they did better than we did
Here's a nice discussion about it from 2004 on Wordwizard. Link They had a lot about it, though the spelling was a little different.
Apparently there is a popular song from 1923 named, "Nutsey Fagan."
Someone there posted that his late father (born in 1888 in NYC) used it as a mild expletive to mean "Rats!" The person posting this said clearly it didn't have an anti-Semitic quality (as suggested by Fagin in "Oliver Twist") or his dad wouldn't have used it.
Then there was an entertainer in NYC named Nutsey Fagan, who was Tarzan in movies and was famous for daredevil swimming acts.
There was a Nutsy Fagan comic strip in the 50s.
Also from the 50s-60s, Jackie Gleason used to do a bartender skit on his TV show where hed talk about Nutsey Fagan, but you never saw the character.
In "The Producers" Zero Mostel calls someone a "Nutsey Fagan."
Wow, they did better than we did
www.nytimes.com/1995/08/13/magazine/on-language-of-nutsiness-and-madness.html
ON LANGUAGE; Of Nutsiness and Madness
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: August 13, 1995
AN OFFENSIVE NUTSY STREAK" was attributed to a House historian by Barney Frank, a Representative from Massachusetts. A few days later, Speaker Newt Gingrich, taking back a proposal he had made for a laptop computer tax break, derogated his own brainchild as "a nutsy idea."
Mark Migotti, a lecturer in philosophy at Texas A & M University, notes, "Representative Frank's use makes nutsiness something sinister and troubling, while Speaker Gingrich's is clearly meant to render his self-criticism innocuous rather than harsh." The philosopher seeks current usage, etymology and relative popularity of nutsy and nutty.
One of the many meanings of nut is "head," of similar shape; to be "off one's nut" was used in 1891 to mean "to be out of one's mind." Nutty first appeared in an 1898 Cosmopolitan short story by Stephen Crane; nutsy made its debut in 1923, in a song lyric by Billy Rose and Mort Dixon, "Nutsey Fagan"; the e was soon dropped and now nutsy, the variant, is making a bid to replace nutty, at least among members of Congress.
How harsh is it? Note that Representative Frank needed a modifier, "offensive," to give nutsy a mean streak. In the 1930's, an associate of Al Capone visited the mentally deteriorating gangster in a Federal prison and reported, "Al's as nutty as a fruitcake"; a certain breeziness or sassiness attaches to the word, making it less severe than insane or deranged.
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: August 13, 1995
AN OFFENSIVE NUTSY STREAK" was attributed to a House historian by Barney Frank, a Representative from Massachusetts. A few days later, Speaker Newt Gingrich, taking back a proposal he had made for a laptop computer tax break, derogated his own brainchild as "a nutsy idea."
Mark Migotti, a lecturer in philosophy at Texas A & M University, notes, "Representative Frank's use makes nutsiness something sinister and troubling, while Speaker Gingrich's is clearly meant to render his self-criticism innocuous rather than harsh." The philosopher seeks current usage, etymology and relative popularity of nutsy and nutty.
One of the many meanings of nut is "head," of similar shape; to be "off one's nut" was used in 1891 to mean "to be out of one's mind." Nutty first appeared in an 1898 Cosmopolitan short story by Stephen Crane; nutsy made its debut in 1923, in a song lyric by Billy Rose and Mort Dixon, "Nutsey Fagan"; the e was soon dropped and now nutsy, the variant, is making a bid to replace nutty, at least among members of Congress.
How harsh is it? Note that Representative Frank needed a modifier, "offensive," to give nutsy a mean streak. In the 1930's, an associate of Al Capone visited the mentally deteriorating gangster in a Federal prison and reported, "Al's as nutty as a fruitcake"; a certain breeziness or sassiness attaches to the word, making it less severe than insane or deranged.