DIBS

[mjldba]

Seems like everyone knows the meaning of "dibs" but where did it originate and is the meaning truly universal?

I tried googling it but WebSense blocks most websites that are fun so I thought I'd run it past the lauguage gurus.

Is it an acronym?

 

[SantaMufasa]

"Dibs" was an abbreviation for dibstones, an ancient game with pebbles, sheep knuckles and, later, jacks.

Just how it became a rule of ownership is hazy, but from 1932 "dibs" was valid currency in claiming coveted objects like that last piece of cake. In the early 1800s, the term was used to reference cash and at one point even came to mean "dollar"—as in "here's a million dibs." Now, who wouldn't have called dibs on that?

Good question, mjl...I enjoyed finding out for myself.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[

http://www.dasages.com:

Providing low-cost remote Database Admin services]
Click here to join Utah Oracle Users Group on Tek-Tips if you use Oracle in Utah USA.

 

[sleipnir214]

You might try World Wide Words:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-dib1.htm

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions! TANSTAAFL!

 

[mjldba]

SantaMufasa: Thank you

sleipnir214: can't get to that site from work, our web admin employs a product called WebSense that blocks, among the many types of sites that need blocking, entertainment. I will, however, check it out when I get home ... thanks.

 

[sleipnir214]

mjldba:
That certainly sucks. I manage my network's content filter, and I made sure worldwidewords.org was in the "reference" category here. You might suggest the same to your admins.

Anyway, here's the meat of the page:

[Q] From Scott: “I am interested in learning the origin of the word dibs, as used in the expression: I have dibs on that, meaning ‘to claim a share of something’.”

[A] I’ve read half a dozen explanations of where this one came from, and in every one there’s a howling great gap where we might expect historical continuity. What we do know is that this expression is first recorded in print, in American Speech, as late as 1932. It comes into existence seemingly fully formed, with no obvious links to any previous meaning of the word. That’s hardly likely, of course.

Most writers seize on what seems to be the most relevant older use of dib as a word connected with childhood. This refers to an ancient and very common game known by dozens of other names (jacks, fivestones, knucklebones, hucklebones; pentalithia in classical Rome), though the name dibs is recorded only from the early part of the eighteenth century. Here’s a late reference from Thomas Hardy’s Jude The Obscure of 1895: “Why when I and my poor man were married we thought no more o’t than of a game o’ dibs!”. It seems to be an abbreviation of an even older term, dibstones, a name whose origin is obscure to the point of terminal murkiness. The problem is that we have no idea how a word for a game in Britain turned into an American expression claiming priority (British children would often use bags in this situation, a term derived from public school slang).

Another sense of the word which is sometimes put in evidence is the slang one meaning money. Here’s H G Wells, in The War in the Air: “He thought the whole duty of man was to be smarter than his fellows, get his hands, as he put it, ‘on the dibs,’ and have a good time”.

There are various other meanings of dib, as both noun and verb, which has had a muddled history in which dab and dap feature strongly as variant forms. But none of these have any obvious link to the word in the sense you’re asking about. As an example, in older northern English dialects it meant a depression in the ground, possibly a variant of dip, as here in John Galt’s The Annals of the Parish of 1821: “The spring was slow of coming, and cold and wet when it did come; the dibs were full, the roads foul, and the ground that should have been dry at the seed-time, was as claggy as clay, and clung to the harrow”.

Yet another suggestion is that the word is a modified abbreviation of division or divide. This neatly circumvents the problems with provenance, and fits the model of many children’s slang terms of this and earlier periods. But I’ve not come across any evidence for it.

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions! TANSTAAFL!

 

[mjldba]

Thanks for the info.

I'm sure it all boils down how WebSense is configured and how sites are catagorized at the source. About six years ago we were migrating to PeopleSoft (that's another story) and we had a good laugh when access to their website was blocked because it was catagorized as "religion".

I catagorize it as "a virus" that we willfully & knowingly let in through the front door.

 

[sleipnir214]

when access to their website was blocked because it was catagorized as "religion".

With some PeopleSoft folk, that's actually true.



When we went online with our current content-filter vendor, there was a database error in which millions of domain names were miscategorized under "porn". Among them was the website of the U.S. Department of Commerce.


Want the best answers? Ask the best questions! TANSTAAFL!

 

[CajunCenturion]

Well, porn is big business.

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[IknowMe]

Very clever reply CC.

Wow, I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
I think I've forgotten this before.

 

[j0ckser]

..domain names were miscategorized under "porn". Among them was the website of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

the irony of this is really quit funny!

per ardua ad astra

 

[CRilliterate]

I just went to

http://www.commerce.gov/

and it was fine.
Was it a joke?

________________________________________
I am using Windows XP, Crystal Reports 9.0 with SQL Server

 

[sleipnir214]

CRilliterate:
It was the content filter at my organization's network that said, several months ago, that the USDoC's website was porn.

It does so no longer. The problem has been corrected.
Even when the content filter was wrong, it would not have affected you unless you were trying to get to the USDoC website from within my network, as my content filter only filters for my network.


Want the best answers? Ask the best questions! TANSTAAFL!

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
One of the hardest to get through some Web Filters is the
Microsoft Exchange server site:

http://www.msexchange.org/

Apparently filters have something against transsexuals..









To Paraphrase:"The Help you get is proportional to the Help you give.."

 

[flapeyre]

Turkbear:

We have websense over here. too, and

http://www.msexchange.org

works fine. But that could be because we're going to upgrade soon to 2003 from 5.5, and the NetOps people would roast the security guys over an open flame if it were blocked.

Feles mala! Cur cista non uteris? Stramentum novum in ea posui!

 

[tsdragon]

Thank goodness I work for a very small company owned by a man who does not believe in blocking his employees access to anything they want to access. If he were going to block ANY site, it would be this one - I used to spend way too much at-work time here.

Tracy Dryden

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard.

 

[mjldba]

A bit off topic but my last employer must have been a decendant of Bob Cratchett. The owner was touring the shipping area of the plant & he observed an employee looking out a window.

Next day the employee arrived at work to find his window had been painted black.

 

[sleipnir214]

mjldba:
To stay of the topic of the thread but to remain with the topic of the forum...

You mean your last employer was a descendant of Ebenezer Scrooge, don't you? Scrooge was the penny-pinching money-lender; Bob Cratchit was Scrooge's put-upon clerk.


Want the best answers? Ask the best questions! TANSTAAFL!

 

[mjldba]

Thank you. Yes, I meant Ebenezer Scrooge so early to bed & no gruel tomorrow for me.