Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: RARA-AVIS Digest V2 #328

James Rogers (jetan@ionet.net)
Mon, 15 Jun 1998 12:55:38 -0500 (CDT) At 12:29 PM 6/15/98 -0400, you wrote:
>The other day, someone gave as the origin of the word "dick" as in
>detective as coming from Dick Tracy. Not close and no cigar. "dick" in
>the sense of detective, comes from the word 'detective' itself,
>shortened and altered.
>
>Tracy wasn't a detective anyway, he was a cop.
>
>--
> Tartow
>

Huh? a plainclothes cop isn't a detective? This is, I believe, the
earliest class of investigators to use the word detective. They damn well
like to be called "detective" nowadays, let me tell you ("sir" also works).
The distinction between uniform cop and planclothes detective is a pretty
big deal. In the real world, police detectives are likely to refer to PIs as
"detective" in quotes. In Tracy, a whole early continuity was devoted to him
getting busted down to uniform beat.

James

James Michael Rogers
jetan@ionet.net

#
# To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.