The topic is slang: the phrases, their meanings, and their origins.
Let's run it in a challenge format with the slang in <    >
being the challenge. The winner is the person who correctly
states the origin. The winner can enter a new phrase or pass
the buck....

57 responses total.

<in a pig's whistle>

I've heard <in a pig's eye>. Don't know the origin at the moment, but
believe me, I've looked in more than a few pig's eyes and if they could
whistle, it would be the tune of "swing low, sweet chariot".

Fucking-A, errrr, I absitively, posolutely agree...

Maybe! I mean I actually work in a slaughter house (er, I mean *fresh pork
facility*)  and just today I wandered over to the hog pens and looked an
actual *pig* in the actual *eye*.  They'll have your ham sandwich ready in
about 8 hours and if those critters could sing...

Does it mean "In a short amout of time," i.e. "I'll be back in a
pig's whistle"?

Correct, like in "in nothing flat". The slaughter house is said to use
everything except the pig's whistle, which hence amounts to nothing.

I ran this on a different network, but I don't think any of you
partake of that one. Where does the phrase <...high muckety-muck..>
comre from?

According to Wentworth & Flexner (1975) in _Dictionary of American
Slang_ the phrases "high muck-a-muck", "high-muckety-muck", "high-
muckie-muck", "high-mucky-muck", and "high-monkey-monk" refer to
an "important, pompous person; a socially prominent person" and this
meaning has been in use "Since c1865; used disparagingly and jocularly".
(quotes are from p. 347 of the Second Supplemented Edition (New York:
Thomas Y. Crowell Co.)).

Looks like another Civil War era slang phrase...

Sigh...now we have to get a copy of DAS to play this game, to avoid
slang therein. Things are going to get a little thin....

I wasn't aware that it was a "game" or that owning a copy of a book
and sharing its contents to answer someone's interesting question
was a crime around here...

Well, this was set up as a competition (see #0). I don't mind discussing
slang, and I'm glad you have the book - we can ask you what slang we hear
means - but as long as it was a competition, my response applies. I'd be
glad to drop that part of the item. 

So the item has swayed from a competition to something else. Its just natural,
it is what the users of the item wanted so they made it that way. You could 
try to switch the item back to a game if you are so offended.

I'm not the least bit offended. I thought kentn was offended. *Somebody*
has got to be offended, or this is not a proper item. Any volunteers?

#0 is kind of ambiguous in that it talks of a topic being slang
phrases, meanings and origins.  Anyway.......I did respond to a
challenge about the origin of a slang phrase.  Izzat okay?

Sort of. *My* source AMERICAN SLANG by R.L. Chapman (Piled higher
and Deeper) reads "fr middle 1800s Western; a very important
person,especially a pompous one.....[example of usage]....
from Chinook jargon *hui muckamuck* 'plenty to eat', transferred
to the important individual who has plenty to eat; monkey-monk
variant is a case of folk etymology."
There, Kent and Rane. Did that bend your noses out of shape?

I have checked, and there is no change in my nasal morphology.

Look, I find this information on slang and origins interesting.
It certainly doesn't bother me to hear from a different source,
and it looks like your source basically agrees with mine, greenops.
It's always nice to see a bit of convergence on origins and
meanings.
 
What I don't understand here about the "challenge" format is
how our responses are judged in relation to the challenge.

To try to drift back to the original....anybody know the meaning og
...of,even..."in a coon's age"?

"an unspecified long time"  as in Haven't seen you in a coon's age.

Why? What's special about a coon's age? Their lifespan is normal for
mammals of similar size and lifestyle.

This one came up today: "In like Flinn." Who was Finn, and what was
he or she into?

I suspect that coons live a fair number of years, so using their
age in that expression means a damn long time (or maybe the
person using the expression is exaggerating for effect).
 
Flynn or Flinn rhymes with "in" to make an interesting slang
expression.  Doesn't necessarily mean that Flynn was a real person, but
if so, it would be interesting to know why Flynn was in.  There is an
Irish(?) connotation in Flynn, so I wonder if that has anything to do
with the expression's original meaning (e.g. was it derogatory toward
something a particular ethnic group was stereotyped as doing?).  As
near as I can tell, today "in like Flynn" means just "in" though that
extra "like Flynn" adds a bit of punch...or a slightly "shady" cast.

I *think* Flynn refers to an Irish (perhaps mythological ) character
who is similar to Loki, Norse god of mischief (oversimplification of
Loki,sorry).  I have no references on this...just something I think I
heard once.

This is really weird. Everyone knows the expression, but one can't
look it up! (I presume those dictionaries of American slang haven't
helped either.) What would this kind of knowledge be called? I mean,
the knowledge-theoretic term (not "folklore").

It's in my DoAS.  It just doesn't have any origin information.
Refers reader to section on rhyming slang, so those authors seem
(by implication) to think that the phrase was created for its sound
and not necessarily for its reference to any particular character.

Some one person had to have said/written the phrase *first*, and he
or she would have drawn Flynn from some prior knowledge. If it is just
a rhyme, why don't we have independent origins, so that someplaces its
In like Flynn, and other places its In like Quinn? (I can understand
why it isn't In like Sin.)

Some things are lost in the mists of time...the world may never know.

Re;  Finns in mythology.  The only reference I can find in maybe half
a dozen major works on my shelf is in R. J. Stewart's Celtic Gods,
Celtic goddess, p. 80:  "Finn MacCumhaill destroyed serpents throughout
the land of Ireland, each having various attributes of fire and water."
Given that serpents are regularly identified with Druidic and Celtic
culture ('twas Druids, not snakes, that Patrick ran out of Ireland),
this might suggest that Finn had a mischievous Loki-like reputation.
On the other hand, what it has to do with getting into places easily,
I'm not sure.  My own inclination would be to suggest that Finn/Flynn,
being a stereotypical Irish name, is used to suggest that the Irish
are being stereotypically labelled as connivers and lockbreakers
(i.e., in like Flynn = in like an Irishman).  Given the traditional
relationship between the Irish and the AngloSaxons, such a stereotyping
is hardly surprising.  (Ethnic slurs are hardly rare in slang, especially
when it comes to skinflinting:  going Dutch, welshing, jewing, gypping,
French letters (condoms), etc.).  This seems reasonable to me, but it
is just a guess.

Re: Kent's question about what constitutes a win, I would
opt for origin (where one can be obtained). If two or more
submit different origins, the winners can play Chip 'n' Dale
to decide who gets to challenge. Sound reasonable?

Sure...if we can ever find an origin with acceptable documentation.
So many slang expressions are of unknown origin, or the best we can
do is say when the earliest known *published* use of the slang
term took place (which is most likely not the earliest spoken usage).
In any event, it's fun to speculate about slang...

I just saw an article in the FreeP about "Volume I of the Random House
Historical Dictionary of American Slang" ($50)


1,006 pages covering letters A-G.  It was based on research by J.J.
Lighter, who teaches linguistics, English and American studies at the
University of Tennessee...

  "Carl Sandburg called slang "a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits
on its hands and goes to work,", while Ambrose Bierce disdained it as
"the grunt of the human hog (Pignoramus intolerabilis)."     "

  I understand Ambrose Bierce was quite a writer.  I like that slangy
scientific term he uses.

Thank you for putting that in here!  I will have to adopt it and use it.
I wish $50 didn't look like $5000 to me.  That sounds like a great
reference.

Note that it is only for letters A-G!  The other 2 volumes are due in
future years, the next being 1996 I believe.  The main reason for this is
that it appears that one person is doing most of the work.

One note of caution:  slang dictionaries become woefully outofdate very
quickly, so by the time vol. 3 is published, vol. 1 will already be passe.

True, sort of...for the 3 vol set in question the big problem will
be that the vols will be "out of sync".  My "old" Dict. of Amer. Slang
still fills the bill quite handily as most of the words and expressions
in it are still used and the out-of-date ones still cropup in older
books.  You'd be surprised how long some of the old standbys have been
around (the Civil War seemed to generate quite a few slang expressions,
as did World Wars I and II, for example).

I dig.  That's 23 skidoo, so I'm down on it.

The current issue of _Smithsonian_, in their back-page semi-humor thing,
has a discussion of some slang items I'd never heard of.  The one at the
center is that, for some years, "Ameche" was common (in some quarters) as
a term for telephone, & why.  But it also touches on Marilyn Monroe,
Mae West, and the verb "to Bogart".  Cute article ...

This Item, Slang, has been linked here from the books conference.

Thanks, Rane, since I think I have an answer to the "in like Flynn"
question of several responses ago...

As I heard it, and sadly I have noe reference to cite, the Flynn
in question is none other than Errol Flynn, film star of the early
20th century.  He was accused of some sexual naughtiness - sorry,
don't know the details - and the phrase "I was in like Flynn" came to
mean "I has sex with her."  Or something like that.

That strikes me as a wonderfully clever folk etymology, albeit certainly
possible (improbable, but possible).  I'd be more inclined to believe the
reference was to Flynn's swashbuckling screen persona.  Problems with the
etymology:  (a) there is (on my reading) no implication of sexual prowess
in the current usage and (b) it would not explain why some speakers use
"Finn".  A similar etymology might involve Huck Finn's notorious 
cleverness, and perhaps this confusion led to the two phrases.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss