Quote:
Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
You think nfh here would be seen in public with a Hebrew? do you want her kicked out of her clubs?
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I was going to make a joke about Wonk giving her the heebie-jeebies, and then I wondered whether that term actually was some derogatory word derived from Hebe. It is not:
"It seems pretty certain that it was invented about 1923 by the American cartoonist Billy De Beck. Its first appearance was in one of his Barney Google cartoons in the New York American on 26 October 1923, though there it was spelled heeby-jeeby. Where it came from, apart from his fevered imagination, is open to question. There was a dance at about the same time, and a song in 1926, both said to have originated from Native American witch-doctor chants before human sacrifices. But the dance and the song both seem to be later than the first appearance of the phrase. Mr De Beck, by the way, is also known for other bits of now obsolescent or obsolete slang, such as hotsy-totsy and horsefeathers. But heebie-jeebies has survived to become part of the standard language."
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-hee1.htm
I've got too much (clap, clap) time on my hands.
