Of all the slang words for money, one of the oddest to me is geetus. The word appears here in an article from 2013, although the word is much older than that.
Let’s make no mistake about it. The reason this Killeen landmark is going away is not complaints, it’s about greenbacks, geetus, Benjamins, whatever you call that stuff we need to get through life. This money man made the landowners an offer they couldn’t refuse.
Green's Dictionary of Slang defines it as US slang meaning "money" and attests the range of use from 1926 to at least 2004.
The etymology is listed as unknown, possibly from "get us." Green offers a surprisingly large number and vast range of spelling forms for such a recent word:
- geetus
- geetas
- geeters
- geets
- ghedis
- gietus
Dictionary.com, citing The Dictionary of American Slang, offers a somewhat different definition (though this citation is likely inaccurate. See Sven Yarg's answer):
A person who tends to reverse or alter traditional Money
Pitchman must give the store a 40 percent cut on the "geedus"/ I'm spendin' my hard-earned geets (1930s+ Underworld & hawkers)
- Dictionary.com citing The Dictionary of American Slang, Fourth Edition by Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD. and Robert L. Chapman, Ph.D.
The earliest uses I can find are all from California, which makes me wonder if the term originated on the U.S. west coast. One example:
Ernie Nevers followed the illustrious Wheaton iceman and made $35,000 in Florida without even looking at the liquid real estate. George Wilson followed the example of the other pair of famous All Americans but is still short three collars and a cuff of having enough "geetus" to start the haberdashy house he plans for Los Angeles.
Questions
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Is there any evidence beyond speculation that "geetus" possibly derived from "get us?" Is there any other etymological explanation?
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Did the term come from California, and is it associated with any other cultural context more specific than US?
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(Optional bonus): How does The Dictionary of American Slang definition fit in? What is meant by "A person who tends to reverse or alter traditional money?" Every sense of the word in use that I can find seems to refer to money itself.
Best Answer
Early sources cited in the RHHDAS
J.E. Lighter, Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1994) has a succinct entry for geetus:
Finerty is James Finerty, Criminalese: Slang Talk of the Criminal (1926), which is essentially a 72-page pamphlet, published in Washington, D.C. by the author. Julie Coleman, A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries: Volume III: 1859-1936 (2009) says of the author:
To judge from this smattering of details, Finerty had no strong connection to California. He took many of the entries for his glossary from Joseph Sullivan Criminal Slang (1908)—I don't know whether geetus was among them—but Sullivan was (again according to Coleman) a bail commissioner in Suffolk County Massachusetts and a member of the Boston Bar.
Pollock is Albin Jay Pollock, a veteran of the Spanish American War. The Underworld Speaks (1935) The Find a Grave website reports that Pollock was born in New York City in 1876 and died in Yountville, California. An included obituary excerpt from the Arizona Republic offers this information:
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Pollock's use of gheetus is the spelling—the point of starting it with the letters gh seems to be to indicate that it is pronounced as a hard g rather than with a j.
Duncan is Lee Duncan, Over the Wall (1936). He is identified on the cover of his book as "Ex-Convict No. 9256, Oregon State Prison," and Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of the Underworld: British and American, third edition (1968) says that "Duncan himself spent many years" in the Oregon State Prison. A fuller version of the quotation from Duncan's memoir runs as follows [combined snippets]:
So there Duncan is—in San Francisco, pulling armed robberies for geetus.
***Coverage of 'geetus' in 'Dictionary of American Slang' and elsewhere
Harold Wentworth & Stuart Flexner, Dictionary of American Slang, first edition (1960) is the predecessor of Barbara Kipfer & Robert Chapman, Dictionary of American Slang, fourth edition (2007), whose definition is rather misleadingly rendered by Dictionary.com, as cited in the posted question. Wentworth & Flexner offers this entry for the term:
Zolotow is Maurice Zolotow, Never Whistle in a Dressing Room; Or, Breakfast in Bedlam (1944), although the quoted language first appears in an article in the Saturday Evening Post, volume 216 (1943). Here is the SEP's version:
Zolotow's book then reintroduces the term geedus eight pages later:
Clearly geedus here means simply money—there is no sense that the pitchman is "reversing or altering traditional money." And the entry in Kipfer & Chapman, Dictionary of American Slang, fourth edition (2007) says nothing about money reversal or alteration either:
Hyman Goldin, Dictionary of American Underworld Lingo (1950) has this brief but suggestive entry:
Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of the Underworld: British and American, third edition (1968) has this entry for the term:
None of the other dictionaries I consulted second Partridge's etymological suggestion. However, An interview with writer S.J. Perelman reprinted in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, volume 2 (1964) [combined snippets] contains this intriguing juxtaposition:
The Yiddish dictionaries I consulted include entries for gelt but none of them even mentions geetus, which leads me to think that Partridge is simply speculating about its possible etymological roots.
As noted in the posted question, Jonathon Green, Slang Dictionary (2008) suggests a different etymology, but without much conviction:
Clarence Major, Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-American Slang (1994) has this entry:
The late date of claimed origin in usage suggests, however, that the term migrated into African-American slang, rather than originating there.
Other early matches for 'geetus'
Google Books and Elephind searches for geetus and its variants turn up several matches from the 1920s and early to middle 1930s.
The earliest match that a Google Books search for geetus turns up is from Herman Schnitzel, Unt Comes It Now (1928) [combined snippets]:
This ludicrous exercise in ethnic humor is not to be believed on any level, but it does have a somewhat surprising close link to California. An Amazon listing for an LP recording of The Best of Professor Schnitzel (1964) offers this background on the ersatz professor:
From Gus Vignolle, "Sports Vignettes," in the [Santa Monica, California] SaMoJaC (September 28, 1932):
From a glossary of underworld terms in The Editor: The Journal of Information for Literary Workers (1932[?]):
The Editor was published in Highland Falls, New York.
From a piece of fiction in Collier's, volume 91 (1933):
From "The Letters of Bill Hailey," in the Sausalito [California] News (June 25, 1937), a letter directed to "Hon. A.H. Samish, Kingpin Lobbyist, Kohl Bldg., S.F.":
Conclusions
The foregoing research suggests provisional answers to the first two posted questions and a fairly definitive answer to the third.
Speculation that geetus derives from get us (Green) or gelt (Partridge) seems to have come from the thin air. None of the sources I checked offers any support for either hypothesis.
Early published instances skew heavily toward California as the term's geographical place of origin. Including the Oakland Tribune article cited in the posted question, we have nine instances of geetus from the period 1926–1937; of those, six (from 1926, 1928, 1932, 1935, 1936, and 1937) have definite connections to California (and many of them more specifically to San Francisco), one (from 1926) is most closely tied to Washington, D.C., one (from 1932) comes from upstate New York, and one (from 1933) appears in a national magazine without more specific geographical clues. The circumstantial case for California origin is strong but (owing to that very early 1926 instance from Washington, D.C.) not overwhelming.
The Dictionary.com citation of Kipfer & Chapman, Dictionary of American Slang, fourth edition (2007) is erroneous. I own the book in question, I have checked the entry for geetus, and the definition "A person who tends to reverse or alter traditional Money" appears nowhere in it. I have no idea where Dictionary.com obtained its definition. Google Books returns no matches for the wording it gives, and a general Google Internet search returns only the Dictionary.com entry for geetus and three copies of that entry posted on another dictionary site. In any case, attributing the quoted language to Kipfer & Chapman is incorrect.