Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Witches and geezers....

Those canucks know everything!



Vocab Rehab

David K. Barnhart
National Post


Monday, June 21, 2004


geezer Old folks have been called geezers since the 19th century. Quite often the expression is "old geezer" even though most people consider geezers old to begin with. Early geezers were usually women, and it was synonymous with witch. Nowadays, geezers come in both sexes, although the appellation usually seems to refer to men. The word comes ultimately from a English dialect word, guizer, meaning "queer character." Geezer in the 20th century began to apply to cowardice among boxers, to an alcoholic drink and then, as geezer or geeze, to small dose of narcotic drug. Geeze arose about the same time as a verb meaning "to inject heroin or the like."

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