I’ve been snowed under lately, but have dug my way out. Here’s the latest installment.

"BBQ, n. This abbreviation for barbeque makes its debut. “

In Australia, barbecue has become standard (BBQ still being the abbreviation). How is it in the US?

A first nit to pick: “Messerschmidts” in the introduction should be “Messerschmitts”. (I see you’ve got it right in the list itself)

Re: baba ganoush, do most Americans know that an aubergine is an eggplant?  Come to think of it, do most Britons know that when they hear an American say “eggplant”?

Since the German phrase flieger abwehr kanone is composed entirely of nouns, all three words should be capitalized.

jtab: I doubt most Americans know what an aubergine is; I think Dave’s choice of words was influenced by the OED (or maybe that term is more common in Canada than the US).

OPT: “Barbecue” is standard in ordinary text; “BBQ” is used mostly on signs and menus.

Edit: In the second edition, the earliest citation for “double-talk” as verb (if you don’t count the participial adjective/gerund double-talking or the agent-noun double-talker) is 1961 New Left Rev. Mar.–Apr. (front cover), The Labour Party has double-talked its way around the issue.

Real life indeed presses on.  Snow will be upon us soon. 

It’s nice to see another installment in this series.  I thought “itsy-bitsy” would have been older. 

I did find “Winterize” appearing in an advertisement in Automobile Dealer and Repairer, Volume XX, No. 4, page 123, December, 1915:

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I found the magazine to be interesting, especially the advertising.  I also found it interesting that quote marks appear around “Winterize” in the Anchor ad.  In that publication series, there are three ads by “The Anchor Buggy Co. of Cincinnati, O.” Each uses the quote marks.  There are a few other ads that use quote marks this way.  I have always been curious as to when this practice began but doubted that it would be an easy task to pinpoint its origin. 

Please note: the images are hyperlinks to their relevant pages.

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Since the German phrase flieger abwehr kanone is composed entirely of nouns, all three words should be capitalized.

Actually it should be one word: Fliegerabwehrkanone. But I wonder: shouldn’t that be Flugzeugabwehrkanone?

EDIT:

Did some research. The German Wikipedia calls it a “Flugabwehrkanone aka Fliegerabwehrkanone”. FWIW

EDIT2: corrected ctrl-c/ctrl-v mistake

one word

Good point.  Also, as discussed in this old thread, I believe Flieger = “flyer” here has the sense of “flying machine, airplane” (as in “the Wright flyer"), not “pilot”.  Flak guns were cannons for defense against flyers (airplanes), not cannons for the defense of pilots.

Corrections made. Except for flug/flugzeug over flieger. I trust the OED over Wikipedia.

I speculated that “itsy-bitsy” was older than 1938. 

I discovered that “itsy bitsy” (without the hyphen) appears in the bizarre short story, “Dux Femina Facti” from the collection, Graphics, by Harris Merton Lyon, 1913:

I am curious, does the lack of a hyphen alone disqualify this as an antedate for “itsy-bitsy?”

OPT: “Barbecue” is standard in ordinary text; “BBQ” is used mostly on signs and menus.
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To be clear: my question wasn’t about barbecue versus BBQ. It was about barbecue versus barbeque, the latter spelling being used by Dave in this article.

Sorry, I totally missed that.  “Barbecue” is the more usual spelling in the US; some dictionaries list “barbeque” as a variant.

My spelling was unconscious. As Dr. T says, Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate lists barbeque as a variant, and my Microsoft Word spell checker didn’t flag it.

But the OED2 (1989) doesn’t recognize the spelling at all, not even among the forms. This makes me think that the barbeque spelling is either 1) a very recent development, or 2) an example of the OED being deficient when it comes to North American dialect.

Dave, sorry I may seem a bit picky, but I see you took Dr. T’s advice about the capitals on Fliegerabwehrkanone but ignored mine about it being one word. It is one word (even if OED would have it as three). If you were looking for emphasis, I’d suggest you use bolding.

And I don’t want to nag (I’m perfectly happy with Fliegerabwehrkanone) but Duden (quite an authority on the German language) has this under Flak: Kurzwort für Flug(zeug)abwehrkanone

Fixed.

Found an antedate (by a few years) for cheeseburger; the May 1935 issue of The Peabody Reflector (and bless Google for digitizing such a thing!) has an ad on p. 194 listing, among other things, “cheeseburger 10c” (those were the days!—and you got One Doughnut Free with Cup of Coffee).