[tied] Re: Wuz

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
wrote:

> At 4:17:17 AM on Wednesday, July 14, 2004, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> > <BMScott@...> wrote:
>
> >> At 8:11:05 AM on Tuesday, July 13, 2004, tgpedersen
> >> wrote:
>
> >>> 'woozy' is known only to the American dictionaries, not
> >>> to the English ones, so (by your logic) it can't be
> >>> related to English 'ooze', but must be Arapaho, Chippewa
> >>> or Sioux.
>
> >> I'm intrigued to learn that the OED is an American
> >> dictionary.
>
> >> The <woozy> 'vochtig' noted by Verdam isn't the American
> >> <woozy> 'dazed or confused; dizzy or queasy', which
> >> actually is in the OED; it's a variant of <oozy>, from OE
> >> <wo:sig> 'juicy, moist'. The OED s.vv. <oozy>, <ooze>
> >> notes many <w-> variants.
>
> > I think it's ultimately the same word, given the same
> > sense occur elsewhere on the "Western Seaboard".
>
> That's not quite the original sense, however. The American
> word earlier had only the sense 'drunk, tipsy'. Moreover,
> it is first noted only in 1897 (OED), though Mencken thought
> that it was one of a group of synonymous slang terms dating
> to the decades preceding the U.S. Civil War.

'befuddled, intoxicated' is what I find, so 'drunk' is not the
primary sense, and I don't find that as primary in the examples
either. As for the outward manifestations of that state of mind
(eg 'woozy speech') you get a good match with
Danish 'våset' "nonsensical" or perhaps "air-headed".

>I think it likelier to be a variation of <boozy>

There is no 'woose' "liquor" afaIk.

>or simply an expressive term.

Or should we say onomatopoeic? Why is it, then, that 'woosy'
(and 'wuz' for that matter) matches similar words in other Germanic
languages? I'm afraid you can't sell that exclusive Anglo-Saxon
linguistic parthenogenesis to me.

Another thing: since Nordwestblock presumably was a language which
did not distinguish between long and short vowels, loans from it turn
up as having (or not) geminated consonants (variants: *C1VC2C2- /
*C1V:C2-). This phenomenon, which appears between the first and the
second Gemanic sound shift, is also traditionally explained away
as 'expressive' gemination; no one so far, however, has explained
what it supposedly expresses.


Torsten