• doozy •
Printable Version Pronunciation: du-zee • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: A pip, a beaut, a lulu, a humdinger, a lollapalooza, in other words, an epitome, prime example, something truly extraordinary in its class.
Notes: Although I've equated lulu, beaut, humdinger, and lollapalooza in today's definition, this characterization is at odds with George Carlin's. 
According to Carlin, "There are two pips in a beaut, four beauts in a lulu, eight lulus in a doozy, and sixteen doozies in a humdinger. No one knows how many humdingers there are in a lollapalooza." I wouldn't argue with him; I don't think I have ever seen a lollapalooza. The plural of this word is doozies, which leads some speakers to assume that the singular is spelled doozie. It isn't.
In Play: Our original choice for a Good Word for today was lulu, but the origin of this word turned out to be a doozy of a mystery, so we settled for doozy itself—a lulu of a word, if I do say so myself. If we follow Carlin's formula, we could say things like, "I wouldn't say his new car is a doozy but she sure is a lulu." But would we want to?
Word History: The question of the origin of this good if slangy word has bred two schools of thought. Some think it a corruption of daisy which referred to anything first-rate in the 19th and early 20th centuries. However, the slippage from the vowel in daisy to that in doozy is unlikely. Others think this word is a variant of Duesy, a clipping of Duesenberg, the expensive and exquisite car of the 20s and 30s. The problem here is that the word doozy first appeared in print in 1903. However, prior to building their superb cars, the Duesenberg brothers built superb racing bicycles (raced them, too), and they began that business in 1895. The best speculation, then, is that our Good Word for today began as a clipping of the bicycle name, which was reinforced in the 20s and 30s by the reputation of the car.
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