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Question of the Day
Question:
"Dr. Hal, what's the origin of the word, ‘Cahoots,’ as in, ‘in cahoots with?’”Answer:
This is another locution from the Old West, language manhandled and re-shaped by gunslingers, vaqueros, sod-busters and whiskerandos. "Cahoots" is of French origin. Just as the Purgatoire river became, in the mouths of the Cowboys, the "Picketwire," so came "cahoots" from the French cahute, a rustic cabin or hut. The word is a metaphoric expansion of the term for a shared accommodation-- it has a semantic parallel in the much more recent phrase "in bed with," which is usually used in the same sense. Though of Gallic provenance, of course "cahoots" is entirely an Americanism, first recorded in the late 1820s in the singular "cohoot." Some other forms are a verb "to cahoot," meaning to go into cahoots with, and even an adjective meaning consisting of a partnership, e.g. "a cahoot business."
Askdrhal.com by
Jascha Ephraim,
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