Dictionary of American Regional English and “Chinook”
The legendary Dictionary of American Regional English, which you ought to go look at in a library if you can’t afford it, also has online pages that are mighty interesting.
I found one that lists every keyword, including “Chinook“.
Here are all the words to be found there. Do you agree…
- …that they’re all Jargon?
- …with the forms given?
- …with the part-of-speech analysis (verb, noun, etc.)?
- …with the etymologies?
Chinook
cha-muck-a-muck n • [Cf Chinook jargon muck-a-muck food]
cheechako n • [Chinook jargon]
chinook n B1 • compounded from..Chinook
chuck n4 • [Chinook jargon..]
chum salmon n • [?Chinook jargon tsum, tzum spots, writing]
cuitan n • [Chinook Jargon]
cultus adj • [Chinook Jargon]
eulachon n • [Chinook Jargon ulâkân]
geoduck n • [Chinook Jargon]
high-muck-a-muck n 1 • [Chinook Jargon hiu plenty + muckamuck food]
hiyu adj • [Chinook Jargon hiu plenty]
hump puss n • [Chinook humm opoots stinking tail]
icta n • [Chinook Jargon..]
killapie adj, n • [Chinook Jargon]
klootchman n • [Chinook Jargon “woman, female”]
memaloose adj, n • [Chinook Jargon memaloost < Chinook memalust to die, dead]
mowitch n • [Chinook Jargon]
muck-a-muck n • [Chinook Jargon]
potlatch n • [Chinook Jargon..]
potlatch v • [Chinook Jargon..]
salal n • [Chinook Jargon]
saltchuck n • [salt + Chinook Jargon chuck n4]
shallon n • [Of Chinook origin..]
Siwash n • [Chinook Jargon < CanFr sauvage an American Indian]
skeezicks n • [Cf 1863 Gibbs Chinook Jargon 23..]
skookum adj • [Chinook Jargon]
skookum chuck n • [Chinook Jargon < skookum adj + chuck n4]
soopolallie n • [Chinook Jargon]
tillicum n • [Chinook Jargon tilikum people < Chinook tilxam]
tolo n • [Cf..Chinook Jargon tolo to earn, win]
tyee n • [Chinook Jargon tyee a chief]
wapato n • [Chinook Jargon wappatoo..]
From Leland Bryant Ross on Facebook —
(https://www.facebook.com/groups/42062011536/)
One obvious missing item (in my experience) is the Seattle (and perhaps elsewhere in the region) use of “Alki” by taxicab drivers. This is now obsolescent if not obsolete, computers having replaced human dispatchers for most if not all dispatched cab companies, but in the decades when first telephone call boxes at cab stands and then walkie-talkie-like radios in the cabs were used to receive “bells”, i.e. service orders, in Seattle’s Yellow Cab (and I believe at other Seattle cab companies) the standard affirmative response on receiving a bell was “Alki”, pronounced in the Seattle English manner not the Jargon way. But etymologically this was Jargon; it had nothing to do with West Seattle geography, but rather was a simple future tense marker, glossable as “I’ll [get to it]”. Although it is now out of use to my knowledge, it was very much a live (and constant, normative) usage in the early 1990s when I was driving for Yellow.
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