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The boy’s eyes ran over Spade’s body from shoulders to knees “Another thing,” Spade repeated, glaring at the boy: “Keep that gunsel away from me while you’re making up your mind. I’ll kill him ”
By misunderstanding of the 1929 Maltese Falcon quotation above (which survived in a popular 1941 film adaptation). The novel was originally serialized in a magazine, Black Mask, whose editor refused to allow vulgarities. Hammett used the word gunsel knowing that the editor would likely misunderstand it as relating to gun, and therefore allow it.
1992, Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses, →ISBN:
There's somebody comin. I think it's that gunsel.
1944, Brett Halliday, Murder and the Married Virgin, →ISBN:
The two gunsels waited for him on each side of the doorway, gun-hands bulging in their coat pockets.
References
^ William Safire, “Dirigiste” (On Language column, 2000 April 30), in The New York Times; relevant portion also in The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time, Simon and Schuster (2004), →ISBN, page 35.
^ Michael Quinion, “Gunsel” (World Wide Words piece, 2006 August 12).