'without papers....or passport) Is an example of folk etymology (a likely story)
Please google Ernst Klein, who wrote Klein's Comphrensive Etymological Dictionary of
the English Language.....he made right many mistakes in most dictionaries.
As an author, Freddy, you'll be glad you did.
Regards
pt
Old Ernst may be right, but you and he are the only two people who view that word as complimentary. It has been thought by the super majority to have been a negative slur for over 100 years, even if it doesnt
really mean, without papers,or without passport.
However, I still argue against his version because I believe it really was a term that was initiated at the port cities like New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco in reference to immigration status. I say this because I come from, and was born in, an all-Italian neighborhood in Chicago, and the first time I ever heard the word used was in the movie, From Here to Eternity (by Sgt Fatso Judson). Nobody in my neighborhood had ever heard it before.
The standard derogatory term used against us (from a distance, to be sure) was, "dago." "Guinea" was another term from the Coasts. I didnt know about that word either until I went into the army.
One more bit of Italian trivia: The nickname "Vinny" is a common one, used often in movies and TV. In my whole neighborhood, and it was a large one, there was not one guy, and we had a lot of Vincents, who had Vinny as a nickname! As an aside, somebody once opened up an Italian restaurant in Chicago and called it, inappropiately, "Vinnie's." I warned the owner, he was from New York of course, that he had made a boo boo with that name, because all Chicagoans would know that it was a New York operation and they would
not attend accordingly. Six months later it closed down.
God bless you anyway, PT.
Beard
