John Cowan wrote:

>
> Marco Cimarosti scripsit:
>
> > BTW, although "tuttifrutti" is built with Italian elements, it is not
> > properly an Italian word: we borrowed it from American English only after
> > Elvis's famous song ("Tutti-frutti... Honnolulu...").
>
> "Honolulu"??
>
> He's saying "all rooty", a distorted form of "all right" to force
> the rhyme. The l's aren't realized, as is often the case.
>
> The author of the song, BTW, is Richard Penniman, *far* better known as
> Little Richard, and I'd say his version is better remembered now than
> Elvis's, at least in the U.S. He first wrote "Tutti-frutti, loose booty"
> and used this wording in live performance, but had to tone it down to
> get past the recording censorship of the day (1955).
>
> > Much later (60's or
> > 70's, probably), when the first Italian tourists started travelling in the
> > USA, people discovered that it had something to do with ice-creams, so all
> > ice-cream kiosk all over Italy started selling "tuttifrutti" ices, "as they
> > do in America".
>
> As far as I can determine, the word was first applied to chewing gum, rather
> than ice cream. Thomas Adams of Brooklyn (the name sounds rather Anglo, but
> I bet he had Italian neighbors) first sold it some time between 1869 and 1888,
> when it became the first gum sold in vending machines in New York City.
>
> I have also discovered (although there is only one source on Google for this)
> that the French for "tutti frutti ice cream" is "glace de Plombiï¿*res"!

I believe Chico Marx in one of the movies sold "tutsi frutsi" ice cream
or ices from a cart. But the Marxes were from Yorkville, so what did
they know?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...