Cooties
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Cooties is a slang word used primarily by North American children to refer to a fictitious contagious disease or condition. It usually presents along gender lines, as in "Kevin K. Ford, stay away from those girls or you might get cooties!"
Originally, the term implied body lice, but over time this became generalised first to any sort of lice, including head lice, then later to purely imaginary stand-ins for just about anything that is considered repulsive. Cootie can also be used as a verb, as in "Don't touch that book! It was cootied by a girl!"
In some areas, boys are thought to be immune to catching cooties from another boy, and likewise for girls: so as a result cooties can only be spread by contact between the sexes.
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Etymology
The term is thought to have originated in the trenches of World War I, but its origin is uncertain. The term is used rarely in the UK and Europe, generally only as a joke directed towards the Americans who coined the term. (The UK has its own version, a fictitious infectious disease called the lurgi - from "The Dreaded Lurgi" of The Goons.) It may derive from the Malay word kutu, meaning biting insect, alternatively, the word kutu describes headlice in several Pacific Island languages and may have been introduced to the USA via Polynesia, although this theory has little support.
Another plausible theory has its roots in the American occupation of the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century. U.S. soldiers, afflicted with lice that festered under the humid conditions of the tropics, referred to these insects by their Tagalog term, "kuto". Eventually, these soldiers returned to the U.S. mainland, carrying their own version of the word with them. In time, the name stuck.
The "Cootie Catcher"
Made of folded paper, the "cootie catcher" is a popular handheld toy among schoolchildren. One surface is blank, the other drawn with dots, the "cooties". The joke is to show the blank side, then run the toy through someone's hair, revealing the dotted surface. It's made so each surface looks the same apart from the "cooties". A variation of the same toy is known to British schoolchildren (and in some locations in the US) as the Fortune teller.
Cooties in the media
Cooties have been referred to in a number of episodes of The Simpsons.
One of the standard cures for the imaginary infection of cooties is performed by circling your index finger over the arm or hand twice, followed by two pokes while repeating the following saying: "Circle circle, dot dot, now you have a Cootie shot." This immunization is often followed by "Circle circle, square square, now you have it everywhere" in order to prevent the recipient from catching airborn Cooties (see Calvin and Hobbes below). A corroborating reference to this procedure can be found in the lyrics of the song Cooties from the musical Hairspray.
Another standard cure is to transmit the cooties to someone else. This etiology has found its way into games of tag, which are occasionally described in terms of spreading cooties.
Another cure for cooties is for someone to give the afflicted a "cootie shot". Cootie shots are usually a punch to a shoulder.
Cooties feature in the 1990s television series Dexter's Laboratory, as small, winged purple insects with curly snouts that inhabit the bedroom of Dexter's older sister, Dee Dee.
Calvin, of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, does not seem to worry about catching cooties from close contact with individuals. However, he fears that he will catch them when he is the only boy on a playground full of girls. Apparently he believes that they are received from airborne transmission, as he begins breathing through his shirt.
"Cooties" is a game of chance for preschoolers where the object is to be the first to construct a multicolored model of a "cootie" (a six-legged, multicolored insectoid).
Cooties are also a type of letterbox, part of an outdoor hobby known as letterboxing. These 'cooties' are passed from person to person, and usually discreetly. The 'finder' of that cootie then stamps into it and tries to pass it off on someone new.