Things I didn’t know, continued: ‘Gooks’; doubleheaders; Churchill sailing on the Queen Mary with 5,000 German PoWs
I’ve been reading dictionaries again.
— I’ve been reading dictionaries again. According to Kipfer and Chapman’s American Slang, the word “gook” dates back to the U.S. war in the Philippines at the end of the 19th century. To quote: “Originally a Filipino insurrectionary… fr gugu, a term of Filipino origin… adopted by US armed forces during the Filipino insurrection of 1899 as a contemptuous term for Filipinos.” Kind of the history of American wars in Asia in the 20th century, captured in one word.
— Less relevantly, and much less contentiously, the same book says that the baseball word “doubleheader” comes from the “railroad use for a train drawn by two engines.”
— When Churchill travelled to America in May 1943, he went aboard the Queen Mary, which also was carrying 5,000 German prisoners of war.
— And something I still don’t know: Why did the commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment get his knuckles rapped the other day?
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