apple-knocker (plus apache)

[prettygoodword]

Theme week -- the first of a series based on Green’s Dictionary of Slang, which I'm going to walk through by the alphabet, taking a word that catches my fancy that starts with each letter. A several week project, starting with:


apple-knocker - (U.S., Can.) n., a rustic person, a yokel; a rube, a fool.


Origin is upstate New York around 1900, which has a lot of apple orchards. The original sense is someone so hick they're good for nothing better than knocking apples out of trees with a stick. The unsophisticated sense is a common extended sense for people not from a city, at least per the opinion of city-slickers.

As part of this theme, I'm going link to a bonus word but not give it a full entry, and today's bonus is apache (yes, as a common noun and so not capitalized).

---L.

Comments

[full_metal_ox]

As part of this theme, I'm going link to a bonus word but not give it a full entry, and today's bonus is apache (yes, as a common noun and so not capitalized).

Thanks to your Lagniappe of the Day, Today I Learned about the English vernacular meaning of the word (which I suspect ties into the storied Fort Apache of cop-movie fame); I’d already known about Parisian underworld lowlifes and the school of Sadomasochism Tango they inspired.

(Which further illustrates how two different and often mutually hostile Euro(-diasporic) culture bases both agreed to use Native Americans as a metaphor for unruliness and savagery.)

[prettygoodword]

I'd only known the Parisian underworld sense myself, and was surprised to not see it in that entry.

[med_cat]

fun word ;)