• bluewing
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    3 months ago

    I kind of lean towards the Arabic root. In US English, every time I have heard the word or the few times I’ve used it myself, it gets modified by the word “big”. Like the phrase “Get out of the way you big galoot!” And it’s aimed at someone who is bigger than most others and often portrayed as someone not very bright and also a bit clumsy - the “dumb muscle” in the movie. And Mr. True is definitely a big galoot.

    I enjoy 1920/1930s detective and western films. And it’s a word and phrase you can hear a lot. But by the 1940s it seems to fade away from common usage.