shoobie

shoobie
 n.— «There are almost as many boys as girls in town from Friday night through Sunday, while the “shoobies” are here. These are boys, also mostly college students, who spend the summer within driving distance of Ocean City and come here for the weekends. They get the nickname from the term “shoebox lunchers,” for people who come to the shore for a day, bringing their lunches in shoeboxes, or more losely for anyone who doesn’t stay for at least a week.» —“College Students Flock to Ocean City, N.J., Despite Its Strict Laws” by Dorman Cordell in Ocean City, New Jersey The Progress (Clearfield, Pennsylvania) Aug. 15, 1962. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

2 comments

Further reading

Cool Beans (episode #1570)

If you speak a second or third language, you may remember the first time you dreamed in that new tongue. But does this milestone mean you’re actually fluent? And a couple’s dispute over the word regret: Say you wish you’d been able...

Snaggletooth (episode #1560)

Many of us struggled with the Old English poem “Beowulf” in high school. But what if you could actually hear “Beowulf” in the English of today? There’s a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley that uses contemporary...