[PW] Plut

[S M Colowick]

Someone posted a question about this word to a RootsWeb discussion
about 10 years ago. Here's an excerpt:

The word is "Plut" or can also be said "Plutz/Pluts". Used as an
expression of exasperation or disgust. Granny was born 1872 in NC in
Blue Ridge area - one of her favorite words - my mom
used it to. Have said it myself and been looked at strangely! Not that
they didn't know other descriptive negative words. Have looked in old,
revised, concise, unabridged dict. - to no avail.

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GEN-NEWBIE/1998-08/0903324518

Doesn't look like she ever got a definitive answer, but it looks like
the term predates WWII.

Susie

On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 9:43 AM, Meredith Dixon <dixonm at pobox.com> wrote:
> This is just for me, for that history of Randolph-Macon Woman's College
>  that I'm writing.  In 1944 and 1945, the plot of my school's Sophomore
>  Play, which was written each year by the Sophomores themselves, turned
>  upon the use of the "magic word 'plut'".  I've asked alumnae of the
>  period about this, and they've all told me that the word was much in
>  vogue on campus during World War II as a mild expletive, but that none
>  of them attached any actual meaning to it.  As far as they knew it was
>  just a satisfyingly emphatic monosyllable which could serve as an
>  euphemism for stronger terms.
>
>  Two of them have told me more.  One says that she thinks the term was
>  invented by one of her hallmates in 1942, and was only used on our
>  campus.  The other says that when she came home for Christmas and used
>  the word in front of her mother, her mother made her stop using it until
>  she had checked to see whether either her father or her brother in the
>  Army knew an obscene meaning for it.  Neither of them had ever heard of
>  it.
>
>  A check of the Urban Dictionary online shows several crude and/or
>  scatological meanings for it.  However, it seems to me quite likely that
>  the word could have been independently re-invented in the course of 68
>  years.  I'd like to find out whether it had any such meanings in the
>  1940's.
>
>  The Compact Oxford doesn't have it, and I don't have access to a slang
>  dictionary.  Could someone who does please check?  Again, I'm not so
>  much interested in its meanings (which I can't include in my G-rated
>  college history anyhow) as in whether the word was used in any of those
>  senses during World War II.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  --
>  Meredith Dixon <dixonm at pobox.com>
>  Check out Raven Days <http://www.ravendays.org>
>  For victims and survivors of bullying at school.
>  And for those who want to help.
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  Project Wombat
>  list at project-wombat.org
>  http://www.project-wombat.org/
>