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Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origins 86. The word origin today is
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cockamamie. All right. It's a very funny sounding word. Let's take a look at the
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note here. If someone says a person or thing is cockamamie, it means someone or
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something is ridiculous, silly, unreasonable, unbelievable, etc. So
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anything kind of along that line. All right. Let's continue. The origin of cockamamie
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derived from a French decorating term and I think in French it was a decalcomanie
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Maybe. It started out as a term to describe a craze in the second half
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of the 1800s which transferred ink images. Images means pictures better
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known, today as decals. So it's pretty much what today we would call decals. This
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term was Anglicized. Meaning you know, It was made into like an English version.
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it was Anglicized in English as decalcomania. Okay. It became popular in
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the 1920s and 1930s. So it took a while to get to the US. You know, centuries ago
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it took longer. Many manufacturers of candy and gum gave out these ink
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transfers free with purchases. They could be applied to the skin as a temporary
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tattoo. Yeah. I kind of remember this a little bit around when I was a kid.
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Sometimes you still had seen things like this. It was a temporary tattoo that could later
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be washed off. So, so it's good for kids they liked it for a while, especially for
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children. They say children from Brooklyn, New York butchered the pronunciation. So
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if you butcher the pronunciation, it means you pronounce it very badly and the
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incorrect bad pronunciation is what ended up catching on. So and butchered
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the pronunciation and turned it into cockamamie. The way we pronounce it today.
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Eventually the term came to refer to anything that was ridiculous or silly.
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like this craze of temporary tattoos. Okay. The former mayor of New York , Ed
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Koch ... he was mayor I think like in the late 1970s early 1980s. He had two or
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three terms I think. Yeah used to use this word often in his vocabulary. So he
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was one of the main , main mayors in the whole country and he was always on
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talking about oh that's just cockamamie. Yeah.
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That's nonsense that cockamamie idea . He used to say it all the time. So this term
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is still very popular in the Northeast, especially around the New York area.
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All right. Let's continue. All right. We got three examples to show you exactly how
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it will be used. Example number one. What kind of cockamamie idea is that ? Like you
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know what kind of crazy, ridiculous, foolish idea is that ? What are you
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talking about. Or number two. He gave us some cockamamie excuse. I don't believe a
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word he says. So it is like a ridiculous excuse. All right. And number
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three here. He made up some cockamamie story that no one believes. Okay. Anyway,
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that's just the way you would hear it used. Anyway, I hope you got it . I hope you
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found it informative. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.