THE CAT'S PAJAMAS LVIII

Tad Tuleja

A collection of the (mostly) true origins of familiar phrases

IN CAHOOTS - COOTIES

CAHOOTS, a word used almost exclusively in the phrase IN CAHOOTS, refers to being in a secret alliance or partnership that is up to no good - depending on how you look at it. You can be in cahoots with a group planning a surprise birthday party, but more often being in cahoots has a negative connotation. The Kahouti were an outlaw band in northern India that flourished in the heyday of British colonial rule. Staunchly opposed to European imperialism, they were at the same time religious pacifists. Their attacks on the hegemony of Victoria's armies took the form of civil disobedience. They would disrupt train lines, for example, by burning effigies of the queen on the tracks. But their most notorious stratagem was to volunteer as army laundry room assistants (out of love for the "Great White Mother Queen") and infest piles of clean laundry with tiny insects which they had smuggled in inside spice jars. Thus to be "in the Kahouti" was to be a member of a secret, hostile alliance; to be afflicted with "Kahouti presents" (later simply called cooties) was to have your clothing crawling with bedbugs and fleas.