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The Mysterious Origin of Palooka
The origin of palooka is unknown, though various theories have been put forth. (Some sources credit the baseball player and sportswriter Jack Conway with the coinage, for example.) Palooka first appeared in print in 1920 and may have been popularized by a comic strip titled "Joe Palooka" (by Ham Fisher), which debuted in newspapers a decade later. The probable connection between Fisher's comic and palooka only adds to the mystery surrounding this term, however. Joe Palooka was a boxer who was neither incompetent nor clumsy and oafish, and yet the word palooka came to have those negative meanings. In addition, palooka has been used as a general synonym for rookie and also as a term describing horses with very little chance of winning.
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Examples of palooka in a Sentence
A.a. Dowd, Vulture, 10 Mar. 2024
Sylvester Stallone's underdog tale about a struggling palooka given one shot at the heavyweight championship is a stirring sports movie with a level of charm and sweetness that dissipated in the rounds (and rounds) of sequels that followed.
—Brian Lowry, CNN, 25 July 2019
All this real guts and glory in Philadelphia, yet one of the big tourist attractions is to run up the Art Museum steps the way a palooka named Rocky Balboa did on the silver screen.
—Bill Livingston, cleveland.com, 1 Jan. 2018
The jokes (by screenwriters Van Robichaux and Evan Susser) have all the wit of a punch-drunk palooka.
—Michael O'Sullivan, The Denver Post, 17 Feb. 2017
Without it, director Phillipe Falardeau's film would be a fairly unremarkable, fairly familiar ride, telling the tale of a big-hearted but undisciplined palooka whose biggest hurdle in life is his own bad judgment.
—Mike Scott, NOLA.com, 17 May 2017
Dictionary Entries Near palooka
Cite this Entry
“Palooka.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/palooka. Accessed 21 Dec. 2024.
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