[DL] More (and earlier) Gook (Now sort of OT)

["Sandor" <sandor@nycap.rr.com>]

>
> A lot of electronic "ink" has been spilled over possible derivations of
> "gook" and where and when it originated.  In case you haven't followed the
> tread (or have forgotten it), what was at issue was whether gook was
> historically accurate in Deadlands (I'll leave it to wiser heads to figure
> out what that might mean....)
>

According to "War Slang : American Fighting Words and Phrases from the Civil
War to the Gulf War" by Paul Dickson (ISBN 0671750224), in reference to the
Spanish-American War (1898) and the occupation afterwards, "[the] Army was
in the Philippines, from which it brought back terms in both Spanish and
Tagalog, such as 'bolo squad', 'padre', 'boondocks', and that nasty and
longtime term of degradation, 'gook' [which he further defines as:]

Gook. A derogatory name for certain foreigners encountered by American
troops. It was first used in reference to Filipinos, but it has survived to
show up in other wars, especially those in Korea and Vietnam. In the "The
American Language, Supplement 1" (New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1945) H.L.
Mencken reports: "The Marines who occupied Nicaragua in 1912 took to calling
the natives gooks, one of their names for Filipinos." In "Encyclopedia of
Word and Phrase Origin" (New York: Facts on File, 1987), Robert Hendrickson
holds that the evolution of the term was aided by the Korean 'kuk'
("nationality"; pronounced "kook") and by the slang term "gook" (rhymes with
"book"), meaning "slime" or "dirt", which, Hendrickson points out, is a
blend term ("goo" + "muck")."

So... no.
The term "gook" would not be historically accurate in Deadlands as it won't
come into existence for another 20+ years down the timeline, and that
assumes that there will be a Spanish-American War, which seems unlikely
given the cold war state between the USA and CSA that persists into the 20th
century.

Sandor