Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 December 20

= December 20 =

Put a mockers on it
What is meaning of phrase "put the mockers on it". Also origin. Is it Jewish. And phrase "he will have a shoo in". I have heard this in soccer football crowd - he's going to get a right shoo in. But not always with shoes. Thanking you. 217.38.72.227 (talk) 14:32, 20 December 2015 (UTC)


 * According to wiktionary:
 * "the mockers" is a jinx - and that the word comes from an archaic form of "mocker" meaning: A deceiver; an impostor. There is no indication that it's jewish.
 * Shoo-in comes from racehorse racing - where a "shoo-in" is the winner of a fixed race in which the other riders drop back and "shoo" the lead horse across the finish line...from schuwen - a Dutch/German word originally. Nothing to do with shoes.
 * SteveBaker (talk) 16:38, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
 * That makes a change - a word whose meaning has improved over time.  In sport today a "shoo - in" is simply an entrant who/which is bound to win because his/her/its form is so much better than that of the others in the race. 90.213.250.115 (talk) 18:08, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The things you learn here. I always assumed that "shoo" was a corruption of "sure".  --Trovatore (talk) 19:57, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * You're thinking of a shoorah. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:14, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Possibly macher, not mocker. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/macher —Nelson Ricardo (talk) 02:51, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * This looks plausible to me, as Yiddish vocabulary has been used in English in contexts of shady dealings. A macher has connections and can accomplish tasks by calling in favors, etc. The name of the language Yiddish means "Jewish" and is sometimes called the latter by non-native speakers of English. -- Deborahjay (talk) 16:06, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: if that soccer football crowd is Millwall, it's likely to be this kind of shoeing. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:25, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * The Phrase Finder says "the weight of evidence is that it mockers an early 20th century Australian slang term... appears to derive from an earlier Australian variant put a mock on" which is first found in print in 1911. Although "mocker" in that sense first appears in Australia in 1922, the exact phrase is "in the writing of the English author Berkeley Mather (the pseudonym of John Evans Weston Davies), in The break in the Line, 1970." I remember hearing it in London at around that time. The same article also says "There are also suggestions that mocker may have either Yiddish or Romany origins". Alansplodge (talk) 13:34, 23 December 2015 (UTC)