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can be found Chogie
Filed Under January 2007, columns | Leave a Comment
Tell them it’s called the Garden State because
so many wiseguys are pushing up daisies there.
Dear Word Detective: Being from New Jersey and growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s, it seems like the only people who have heard the term “cutting a chogie” are also from N.J. I now live in Georgia and am often ridiculed when using the term to mean “moving fast.” Sometimes it is used facetiously to refer to someone with an unusual gait while walking. I have found a few references from the Vietnam war and some go back to the Korean war and both seem to refer to “moving out fast” but I am unsure of the origin. Can you shed any light on this? — Gordon.
Making fun of people from New Jersey, eh? Haven’t those clowns seen The Sopranos? I was born in New Jersey, as it happens, and I have a foolproof non-violent revenge for such disrespect of the Garden State as you describe. I just quietly meditate on the fact that residents of Podunk (or Georgia, whatever) will never, ever, know what real pizza tastes like.
Although I grew up during the same period as you did, my adolescence was spent in Connecticut, and I never, as far as I can recall, encountered “Cutting a chogie.” Of course, even if I had, that wouldn’t guarantee success on the question of its origin. I’ve been searching for the story behind “pediddle” (or “perdiddle” or “padiddle”), slang for a car with only one working headlight, since I was about 15 years old. No one, as yet, has come up with an even vaguely plausible source for that one.
In the case of “chogie,” fortunately, we have a fairly clear source, the Korean War. Apparently the Korean word rendered in English as “chogie” meant a Korean laborer in the service of the US or UN armed forces, either utilized as part of the supply chain (to carry food and ammunition, etc.) or as a personal attendant (”chogie boys”) to US troops. I don’t speak Korean, but apparently the term was drawn from a phrase, something along the lines of “kara chogi,” meaning “go there,” making “chogie” the rough equivalent of the English “gofer” (an assistant who fetches, “goes for,” various things). The wars in Korea and Vietnam were close enough chronologically that some personnel served in both, so “chogie” also turns up in glossaries of Vietnam-era services slang. According to my son, who served with the U.S. Army in Korea in the early 1990s, the term is still used among US troops in that country to mean “over there” when pointing.
With the root meaning “go there,” it was logical that GIs would also use “chogie” to mean “leave” or “move quickly,” which apparently came home, at least to New Jersey, in the form “cut a chogie.”
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Cookie
Filed Under January 2007, columns | 3 Comments
Dear Word Detective: I have often visited your website in response to the stupid questions that wander through my mind. Today’s question is: Why is it called a “cookie”? How did that happen? I mean, we came from England where they were “biscuits,” and now we’re in America and it’s a “cookie.” But why “cookies”? You cook lots of things. Like stir-fried rice. But stir-fried rice isn’t “cookies,” and neither is a cake. Do you have the answer? — Rachael.
Yes, but first I have a stupid question of my own. If “cookies” over there are called “biscuits,” what do you call biscuits? It can’t be “scones,” because scones are different from biscuits. Incidentally, it is apparently impossible to get decent scones where we live in Ohio. The “natural foods” supermarkets sell little cakes of sour clay they call “scones,” but I wouldn’t feed them to a dog. Scones are supposed to have butter, eggs and sugar in them, all of which are apparently verboten in the Peoples Republic of Foodonia. You should see the brownies these neo-puritans produce — like little brown sponges soaked in motor oil. Anyway, if you call both cookies and biscuits “biscuits,” doesn’t that get confusing, especially for the kiddies?
The gulf between British English and American English is famously colorful, of course, and entire dictionaries have been devoted to translating common terms in one language into the other. What we call the “hood” on a car, you call a “bonnet,” our “trunk” is your “boot,” your “chips” are our “Freedom fries,” your “Prime Minister” is our “poodle,” and so on. Just kidding. Anyway, it’s rare that one term in the UK lacks an equivalent in the US, although you can certainly keep “eel pie” all to yourselves.
In the case of “cookie,” the questions you raise are valid. Most food we eat (at least outside of Foodonia) is cooked, so what’s so special about “cookies”? Some of them (known, perplexingly, as “no-bake cookies”) aren’t even cooked.
So let’s blame the Dutch. The American term “cookie” actually has nothing directly to do with the English verb “to cook.” It’s derived from the Dutch “koekje,” meaning “little cake,” a diminutive of “koek” (cake). “Cookie” first appeared in American English in the early 18th century, when the Dutch colonial presence in the New World was still a fairly recent memory.
So there you go. Just don’t ask where “Oreo” came from. Even the people who make them don’t know.
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