kiddo

   This is kid with the diminutive ‘-o’ ending (see O) which has the effect of creating a true vocative, i.e. a word which it is difficult to imagine being used in third person reference. Its use is much the same as that of ‘kid’, and the two terms are usually interchangeable. In Cocksure, by Mordecai Richler, the speaker who says to a young boy ‘Remember your Uncle Ziggy, kiddo?’, uses ‘kid’ to him a moment later: You’re a swinger, kid.’ In The Late Risers, by Bernard Wolfe, a husband calls his wife ‘kiddo’. The speaker who uses ‘kiddo’ in A World of Difference, by Stanley Price, associates it with the American underworld: ‘He put on his phoney American gangster accent and leant towards her. “I jest wanna be fresh with you, kiddo.”’ The ‘kidder’ that is used between two men in When the Boat Comes In, by James Mitchell, appears to be ‘kiddo’ in a dialectal disguise, showing its unstressed pronunciation. For another example of ‘kiddo’ being used to a woman, see also the quotation from The Kennedys under Sweetie.