pocketa-queep
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Imitative, from a James Thurber short story.
Interjection
[edit]pocketa-queep
- A sound from a machine, usually when in need of a tune-up.
- 1939 March 18, James Thurber, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, in The New Yorker:
- He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep.
- 2007, Dan Greenburg, Secrets of Dripping Fang, Book 7: Please Don't Eat the Children, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, page 93:
- TA-POCKETA-POCKETA-QUEEP! TA-POCKETA-POCKETA-QUEEP! TA-POCKETA-POCKETA-QUEEP! went the Odor Extractors.
- 2010, David Booth, Every Pointed Star, iUniverse, page 53:
- At the instant Mr. Smitty saw the woman, smoke ballooned out from the dual tailpipes of his hurtling car, and the engine's sound changed to an unsettling pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep.
- 2012, Lewis A. Coser, editor, The Idea of Social Structure: Papers in Honor of Robert K. Merton, Transaction Publishers, page 340:
- It is like the old joke about the man who is called in to repair a gigantic but malfunctioning piece of machinery that is emitting a Thurberian pocketa-queep instead of its normal pocketa-pocketa.