Not trolling for a big racist thing here, but just curious. Does anyone know where the term “gook” came from? We were thing maybe soldiers couldn’t understand the enemies speach?
“In this life you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.” -Elwood P. Dowd in “Harvey”
Here’s what I’ve found on “gobbledygook”:
Maury Maverick, a Congressman from Texas, made up this word to mean “that terrible, involved, polysyllabic language those government people use down in Washington.” Richard Lanham calls the same thing “official prose.”
Gobbledygook is another word for overly wordy writing which is filled with passive voice constructions, weak noun forms instead of strong verbs, and deadwood which gets in the way of clear communication.
And here’s something else that may shed light on the last syllable:
The OED tells us that the word ‘gobbledygook’ was invented by Maury Maverick of Texas and means ‘official verbiage or jargon’; the gobble part is, of course, talking turkey, and the gook, we learn elsewhere, may come from the Scottish gowk, a simpleton, or the Middle English gowhe, a cuckoo.
From Newsgroups: soc.culture.korean
"The most authoritative source that I’ve read of the etymology of “gook” is American Slang by Robert L. Chapman. Apparently its sordid history goes way back to the early 1900s when GI’s called a Filipino insurrectionary a gook, then a Nicaraguan, then any Pacific Islander during WWII, embraced (sic) Koreans after 1950, Vietnamese and any Asian from 1960s. Originated from “gugu,” a Filipino term, perhaps from Vicol “gururang,” “familiar spirit, personal demon,” adopted by US troops during the Filipino Insurrection in 1899, and spread among US troops in other places, invasions, etc. Probably revived after 1950 by the Korean term, “kuk,” which is a suffix of nationality, as in “Chungkuk,” “China”, etc. (Even better, “Mi-kuk”, “America.”)
Just to clarify, EnochF and funneefarmer are both correct. Gook and gobbledegook are not related to each other.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes. (Oscar Wilde)
thanks guys
“In this life you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.” -Elwood P. Dowd in “Harvey”
For the record, both my SO and I have never heard the term “gook” used routinely by any member of the US military in Korea - she not once during a full year’s tour of duty there. As for me, I recall one sailor using it on a bus during a WESTPAC deployment, at which everyone else on the bus looked at him quizzically as if to say “does this guy think we’re in an episode of MASH?” The most common slang name for a Korean was “zipperhead.”
Yeah, in the movie “Platoon,” zipperheads was big. But they also used gook.
Gazoo, please don’t take offense, but I hope that was just an observation fom a movie, not a documented argument. Gooks and Zipperheads and Dinks and Japs and Chinks and Flips are all specific, insulting designations. American servicemen have different names for each nationality of the Pacific Rim. The smart ones who want to make a career use “___-national”
BTW: Sure, you can learn about things from the movies. Just like you can learn about music by going to the circus and listening to a seal bite away at a row of horns.