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stranger
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stranger
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The first use of "druthers" that I can recall is by cartoonist Al Capp in his "L'il Abner" comic strip. I began "reading" the strip on my father's lap about 1950. Druthers was one of my father's favourite words, and I know he attributed it to L'il Abner. Capp may not have coined the word, but he certainly did much to popularize it. One of the songs in the 1956 Broadway musical "L'il Abner" was entitled "If I Had My Druthers".
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Aug 2002
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My Mom used that expression as well but I didn't think about where it came from.
PS welcome and I love the name
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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M-W dates it from 1870; and Mark Twain used it in Tom Sawyer.
-joe (there ain't any druthers about it) friday
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stranger
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stranger
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My wife grew up in London and her younger sister once asked her 'How do you spell "narf" as in "I don' narf fancy him"?'
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old hand
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old hand
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My wife grew up in London and her younger sister once asked her 'How do you spell "narf" as in "I don' narf fancy him"?' Shouldn't that be "'im" wivou' the haitch? I also remember druthers from Lil Abner.
Last edited by The Pook; 03/31/08 10:25 AM.
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stranger
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stranger
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I learned the word from Lil Abner. As I recall, at the time the series had introduced a breakfast cereal called "Druthers." Its advertising slogan was "I 'druther have Druthers."
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2005
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1870
The etymological process: a reanalysis of I'd rather as I druther, and then a nominalization and subsequent pluralization of druthers.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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old hand
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old hand
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It is entirely possible that it has more than one source. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that more than one person independently thought of compounding "I'd" and "rather" and then (as the lettered one put it) nominalizing and pluralising (and possessivising and subjunctivising!) it as "If I had my druthers."
Last edited by The Pook; 03/31/08 11:03 PM.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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It is entirely possible that it has more than one source.
Sure it's possible. It's also possible that Al Capp was familiar with the work of Mark Twain. It's also possible that both Twain and Capp heard it from ordinary folks talking (folks who never got around to writing it down), and that neither of them coined it. There are other possibilities.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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And the big step is not the vowel shift of rather to ruther or the shift of the d from I'd to druther but the nouning of the adverb. Dunno so much about Capp, but Twain was an excellent recorder of dialects.
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