A Tallahassee, Florida, listener heard an interview in which actor William H. Macy referred to old cockers, apparetly meaning “old fellows.” Although one meaning of cocker is “pal,” Macy was probably alluding to the Yiddish alte kacker, or alter kacker, meaning “old man.” It’s sometimes abbreviated AK, and literally translates as “old person who defecates.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Alte Kacker, Old Cocker”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, I’m Kelly Davis, and I’m calling from Tallahassee.
Hi, Kelly. How are you doing?
Hello, Kelly.
What can we help you with?
A couple of weeks ago, I was watching CBS Good Morning, and the actor William Macy was on there, and he used the phrase, us old cockers. And he used it in the same sense as us old guys, as old codgers or whatever, something like that. When I looked it up online, I didn’t find that sense. The sense that I found it in was the phrase me old cocker, as in buddy, pal, friend, my old friend, my old buddy, whatever. It sounded interesting, so I thought I’d call you up and see what you guys have to say about it.
So when William Macy was talking about his buddies, it sounds like the emphasis was on them being old, right?
Yes. It was like us old farts. And you’re right that in English the word cocker has meant friend or buddy in the past, but I’m betting that he was actually referring to a Yiddish term. And that term is alter cocker, which means old pooper, you might say.
Oh, okay.
It’s related to kaka, for example. And it’s spelled lots of different ways, like alter cocker, K-O-C-K-E-R. But it basically means a crotchety, fussy old man. So I’m betting that’s what he was talking about, those old cockers.
That’s interesting. And I saw the spelling K-O-K-E-R, and I also saw the word alter in some of those articles, but it never explained it. It never said that those were Yiddish, and it just went on and went with the English. And so I had no idea, but that’s really interesting.
Yeah, the altar is cognate with the English word old. And cocker, as I said, basically means pooper, so the old poopers.
Okay. So now you have a new term from Yiddish, altar cocker. And it’s a term of affection and endearment, really. But it’s just, it’s kind of joking, and it sounds to me like that was the same spirit in which William Macy was talking.
Yes, that could very well be. In fact, it probably was. So, there.
Well, Kelly, glad to help.
Thanks, Kelly.
Okay, thanks.
Bye.
All right, bye-bye.
So, Alter Cocker, a lot of people might know it as AK, which is frequently abbreviated. It’s a little old-fashioned now, particularly as the Yiddish speakers haven’t passed the language on to their kids and grandkids, but AK.
I love it.
Yeah. Sometimes you hear it reduplicated where they say the old AK, so it’s the old, old, old Cocker. And just to kind of wrap this up, there is a Cocker that means a fighter, which has various connections to cockfighting and just somebody being like a real kind of bantam of a man, which goes back in English dialect and slang well into the 1800s.
Oh, cool.
Yeah.
