923: cootie Jun 19, 2017

In the U.S., it's common for young children to get lice-checks in school periodically, or when one student gets head-lice. Those same kids, however, would not get cootie-checks, partly because children already know that half the population have them anyway, so the thought is: "why bother?" but also—and more importantly—because they are a fictional germ. The term 'cootie' however can be used in more serious circumstances to mean 'body-lice', though people tend to opt for that term rather than 'cooties'. The word itself derives from the Malay 'kutu' which was the name for a parasitic insect, and was adopted into English during the first world war.