willy-walloo

   This interesting vocative occurs in an O.Henry short story, Ulysses and the Dogman. Two old friends meet after an absence of several years. One man says to the other: ‘You ding-basted old willywalloo, give us your hoof.’ The same speaker uses ‘you dinged old married man’ and ‘you fat old rascal’ as affectionate insults. The ‘ding-basted’ is probably euphemistic for ‘damn and blasted’. ‘Willy-walloo’ has not found its way into the dictionaries, but is presumably to be equated with ‘rascal’. The man addressed in the story is called Jim Berry, so it does not appear to play on a diminutive of ‘William’.