For some time now, some of my on-line friends have advised me to provide a version of CassidySlangScam without the invective aimed at Cassidy and his supporters. In response to that advice, I am working on providing a glossary of the terms in Cassidy’s ludicrous book How The Irish Invented Slang with a short, simple and business-like explanation of why Cassidy’s version is wrong.
This is a word that occurs in one or two texts about a hundred years ago but disappears soon after its appearance. Because it is associated with jazz and pep and linked to the term fizz, it is probably a jocular mispronunciation of the word ginger.
Cassidy claims that it is from the Irish for a fireball, tine caor. (This is an odd and ungrammatical version of the more usual caor thine, only found in Dinneen’s dictionary. It may be a misprint.) As usual, there is no evidence at all for this claim.
cassidyslangscam 