Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun nautical a
merchant ship of ancientRome
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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As I recall from a book I don't have to hand, so I can't check the details, a Japanese-English pidgin did exist at this time - corbito might be an example of this.
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I suspect the Japanese word got passed around among Westerners, some of who may not even have known it was Japanese it sounds vaguely Spanish, and a lot of the Occupation people had been with Macarthur in the Philippines and were presumably used to hearing Spanish loanwords, and at some point it got standardized, however shakily and temporarily and locally, as "corbito."
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The obvious source of corbito would be koibito 恋人, "lover", though those more proficient in the language than myself may have other ideas.
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144 I ran across a word that has stumped me: "The only death to date of an Occupationer at the hands of our former bitter enemy is that of an Air Force lieutenant who, about to return to his fiancée in the States, was poisoned in a geisha house by his corbito, who then took her own life."
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