It occurs to me that people may find this 1897 vaudeville song by the Barrison sisters amusing.

Unfortunately, the link is too long for inclusion here, so please do a Google search for "Barrison Nazi" if interested.

To read the text of the song, click on 'View this item' and then go to pages 2 and 3.

In 1897 the word Nazi had absolutely nothing to do with politics. It was unknown outside a few parts of southern Bavaria, where in some of the local dialects it was sometimes used as short version of Ignaz (cf. the use of Nacho in Spanish). In those Bavarian dialects it was also used in the sense of clumsy fellow, buffoon, which is the relevant meaning here.

Incidentally, it's very odd that we didn't all hear about this meaning of the word ages ago.


Edited by bloomsby (Tue Dec 12 2006 12:11 PM)