rara-avis@icomm.ca wrote:
(snip Chandler-trying-to-insert-pederasts story)
> boys playing football, and yank, out he would come.
Finally he had
> an inspiration and he made Marlowe call one of the
hoodlums
> a 'gunsel' and the editor let it pass. Chandler and
his pals had a
> real yuk about it in private but they never gloated
publicly. . . .
> "If you look it up in the dictionary, you'll see
that the dictionary
> folks define 'gunsel,' in their piquant way, as a
boy who's kept for
> immoral purposes. Ironically, of course, Chandler
was so popular
> that his little joke ended up making gunsel into a
synonym for
> gunman."
> Now Wilmer was referred to as a gunsel in The
Maltese Falcon. So
> isn't this story actually about Hammett, not
Chandler? Or is there
> an equivalent story about Chandler?
Quoting from the Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and
Phrase Origins:
"Gunsel, for `a cheap thief or cimrinal,' is another word
reinforced by 'gun' in the mind but which really has nothing
to do with any weapon. 'Gunsel' derives from either the
German 'ganzel' or the Yiddish 'gantzel,' both meaning a
gosling. At the beginning of this century prisoners and
hoboes called young, inexperienced boys, especially
homosexuals, gunsels. From constant underworld use, where it
later meant a sly, sneaky person, it was adopted generally as
a term for a 'run-of-the-mob,' usually second-rate
criminal."
From this entry it sounds to me like "gunsel" was in common
use as a synonym for catamite by the 1920s, so one can hardly
credit or blame Chandler or Hammett for its use or its
acquiring the gunman meaning.
jess, doesn't have a copy of Wicked Words at hand or I'd have
checked that one, too
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