Etymology
Found in print as early as 1923, the word "palooka" was widely used to mean a lout or an inept fighter. The word is heard in early Popeye cartoons, and in the film Pulp Fiction, Vincent Vega (John Travolta) sarcastically refers to Butch the boxer (Bruce Willis) as "Palooka". Of uncertain origins, the word may originally have derived from the expletive "Polack". Fisher's use of "Palooka" for his gentle hero lifted the word from the muck, while accentuating its boxing connection.
Groucho Marx uses "palooka" in the barn scene at the end of Monkey Business (1931). In the 1954 film On the Waterfront (1954), Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) accuses his brother Charlie (Rod Steiger) of landing him "a one-way ticket to Palookaville" (i.e., ended up a failure) after arranging for him to lose a fight ("take a dive") that propelled his opponent to a heavyweight championship.
Read more about this topic: Joe Palooka
Famous quotes containing the word etymology:
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)
“The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”
—Giambattista Vico (1688–1744)