In Europe, where the phenomenon is less striking than with us, it had long been known as St. Martin’s Summer.… To Englishmen, unlike other Europeans, the name St. Martin suggested something false, a sham or imitation, for the dealers in cheap jewelry were gathered in the parish of St. Martin-de-Grand in London.… For English-speaking folk, though clearly this was not the reason the name was given to it,2 the gentle hazy weather of late Autumn was indeed a St. Martin’s Summer, an imitation and a sham.
The first of our American forefathers, then, whoever he or quite possibly she was, that may have said, “ ’Tis but an Indian kind of Summer after all, as false and fickle as they,”3 was only following the early habit among them of characterising by the term Indian whatever in the New World looked something like the real thing was but not. Indian-corn is not wheat. An Indian-barn is a hole in the ground.4 There were Indian-beans, Indian-cucumbers, Indian-hemp, Indian-paintbrushes, Indian-pipes, Indian-tea,… Indian this and Indian that, and so most appropriately, by a happy and enduring stroke of creative language, Indian Summer.
The brief Indian Summer of England usually begins at Martinmas, November 11, hence its name. Sometimes it is called St. Luke’s Summer, because St. Luke’s day falls on October 18, or All Hallow’s Summer, because All Saints’ day (preceded by Hallowe’en) falls on November 1.5 It is certainly possible, as Ayres surmises, that the concept of fraudulence attaching to St. Martin’s in the minds of English immigrants of the Eighteenth Century may have suggested the substitution of Indian. On the exact duration and nature of Indian Summer there seems to be no agreement among meteorologists. John R. Weeks, then the weather man at Baltimore, proposed in 1938 that it be defined as “a mild period of five or more days with no daily mean temperature below 40 degrees and with no rain on any day,”1 but it would be quite as rational to define it as a period of ten, or fifteen or thirty or even more days during which the average daily temperature is above 40, regardless of an occasional drop below or an occasional rain. Mr. Weeks called attention to the fact that in the Baltimore-Washington area Indian Summer often runs on until beyond Christmas; he showed, indeed, that it had included Christmas nine times during the 66 years from 1872 to 1938. The Gazetteer of the State of New York for 1813 described Indian Summer as beginning “about the last of October” and extending “into December, with occasional interruptions by Eastern storms.” “Warm periods in January,” said Weeks in the paper just cited, “when snow and ice melt and ice gorges sometimes cause floods in Northern rivers, were, in the early days, called by many Indian Summer, but now they are universally called the January thaw.” False Spring is a premature burst of balmy weather in March or April: it may be followed by onion snow — “one that falls after the onions are planted.” In Missouri a belated touch of Winter is called Blackberry or Snowball Winter, in North Carolina Dogwood Winter, in Canada Squaw Winter, and in Nebraska Indian Winter.2
The use of real or supposed Indian terms by Tammany and by various fraternal organizations, sometimes as translations, is familiar to most Americans. The DAE’s first example of sachem in the Tammany sense is dated 1786. The Improved Order of Red Men, which is claimed to be an offshoot of the colonial Sons of Liberty from which Tammany is also alleged to be sprung,3 carries on all its mysterious business in an argot largely made up of Indian and pseudo-Indian terms. Its chief national dignitary is the great incohonee, and he is supported by two great sagamores, a great keeper of wampum (treasurer), and a great tocakon and a great minewa (guards). The head of a State-wide jurisdiction is a great sachem, and in his suite are two great sagamores, a great sannap and a great mishinewa. Of these terms, only sachem, sagamore, wampum and sannap (or sannup) are listed by the DAE; the last-named is defined, rather curiously, as “an Indian brave who is married.” A lodge is called a tribe and its head is a sachem. Tribal jurisdictions are hunting-grounds, a meeting-place is a wigwam or tepee, a member is a warrior, and a non-member is a pale-face. The brethren reckon time in terms of their own. Their calendar runs back to the year 1 G.S.D. (great sun of discovery), i.e., to 1492, the year of the discovery of America. A minute is a breath, an hour is a run, a day is a sun, a night is a sleep, a month is a moon, and a year is a great sun. All the months have names supposed to be of Indian origin, e.g., Cold Moon for January, Plant Moon for April, Corn Moon for September and Beaver Moon for December. The funds of a tribe are wampum: they are reckoned in fathoms (dollars), feet (ten cents) and inches (cents). A speech or report is a talk or long talk, to organize a meeting is to kindle the council fire, the gavel is a tomahawk, to adjourn is to quench the fire to carry on business is to follow the hunt, to take a vote is to twig, and to wrong a brother is to cross the path.1 The Red Men have a female auxiliary called the Degree of Pocahontas, but the word squaw is frowned upon.
The names of two American Indian groups, the Mohawks and the Apaches, have acquired special meanings in British English and French, respectively. Mohawk (or mohock) is traced by the NED to 1711 and defined as “one of a class of aristocratic ruffians who infested the streets of London at night in the early years of the Eighteenth Century.” The Gentleman’s Magazine, in 1768, said that they had been so called because they mauled passersby “in the same cruel manner which the Mohawks, one of the Six Nations of Indians, might be supposed to do.” Apache, of similar origin, was introduced to the French vocabulary in the early years of the Twentieth Century by Émile Darsy, then a reporter on Le Figaro. Paris was beset at the time by great gangs of rowdies and sometimes they staged sanguinary battles. M. Darsy, an ardent reader of the Western fiction of the time, tried the experiment of giving these gangs the names of Indian groups, and after failing to make Sioux, Pawnee, Comanche and various others stick, scored a ten-strike with Apache, which was adopted at once by M. Lepine, then prefect of police, and soon became a generic name for all the gangs. On the outbreak of World War I they were rounded up by the Army and put into the forefront of the fray, and not many of their members survived to the armistice. But apache remained in use to designate any ruffian, and in 1924 it was formally admitted to the language by the French Academy.1 During the war or soon afterward apache-dancers began to appear in the United States. They always came in pairs, a man and a woman, and were dressed in costumes supposed to be those of the Paris apaches and their doxies. In the dance they performed the man always handled the woman in a violent manner, sometimes swinging her about him by her hair. They were displaced eventually by the less febrile adagio-dancers.
108. [The contributions of the New Amsterdam Dutch during the half century of their conflicts with the English included cruller, coleslaw, cookey, stoop, sleigh, span (of horses), dope, spook, to snoop, pit (as in peach-pit), waffle, hook (a point of land), scow, boss and Santa Claus.] The NED says that Santa Claus comes from Sante Klaas, a dialect form of Sint Klaas, meaning St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children; the DAE gives its source as Sinterklaas, “a corruption of Sant Nikolaas.” All authorities agree that both the name and the gift-bearing old fellow it designates were introduced to America by the Dutch of the New York region. The Puritans knew nothing of either, and neither did the more genial English settlers of the Southern colonies. All the NED’s examples of Santa Claus are either American or relate to America; the usual English name for the saint is Father Christmas, which is traced by the NED to c. 1800,2 but even Father Christmas did not attain to any general popularity in England until Queen Victoria, married in 1840, had children on her knee, and her German husband introduced them to the Christmas delights of his native land. The DAE’s first example of Santa Claus comes from J. Fenimore Cooper’s “The Pioneers,” 1823.1 The Dutch did not bring in the Christmas tree, which had to wait for the Germans. There is a legend that the first one in America was set up at Wooster, Ohio, in 1847, by August Imgard, a recent immigrant from Wetzler in Hesse,2 but that legend has been challenged by claimants for other pioneers and places, e.g., Rochester, N. Y., 1840 and Philadelphia, 1834.3 On January 6, 1842 the Rev. Theodore Ledyard Cuyler4 wrote
from Philadelphia:
On Thursday evening we had our annual soiree at the school. The parents were invited … and altogether we mustered about 160 or 170. Everything was genteel.… We had a large Christmas-tree, which was a great attraction and novelty — it was decorated with the coats of arms of the boys, fanciful designs, and ribands, and looked beautiful.5
The most famous of American Christmas verses, beginning “ ’Twas the night before Christmas,” were written by Clement C. Moore in 1822, but they do not mention either Santa Claus or a Christmas-tree, though a tree is always shown in the modern illustrated editions for children. The title of the poem is “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” which is the way the saint seems to have been designated before Santa Claus became general. It was first printed in the Troy Sentinel, Dec. 23, 1823, but did not become generally known until Moore reprinted it in his “Poems” in 1844.
Schreiber, lately cited, says that even in Germany the Christmas tree is not really ancient. The first on record was set up in Strass-burg in 1604. It had reached Berlin by 1780, and in 1841 Queen Victoria and the Prince Concort had a tree in Windsor Castle. The first trees offered for sale at Christmas were on display in New York in 1851. By 1941 the trade in them, and in the associated Christmas greens, amounted to $25,000,000 for the country as a whole. President Franklin D. Roosevelt began growing trees for the Christmas market at Hyde Park during his time as Governor of New York, and continued in the business after he entered the White House. The Germans, of course, know nothing of Santa Claus: their name for the saint who brings presents at Christmas is Belsnickel, and that name is retained by the Pennsylvania Germans.1 The American Kriss-kring’l or Kriss-Kingle, now obsolete, arose from a misunderstanding of the German Christkindlein or Christkind’l, which means, not St. Nicholas, but the Child in the Manger.2 Christmas-garden, like Christmas-tree, is borrowed from the German. The DAE does not list it. Krisskring’l, in the form of Kriss Kringle, is traced to 1830 and marked an Americanism.3 Santa Claus is always pronounced Santy Claws in the United States, with the a in Santy that of pants. To many American children the saint is not Santa Claus at all, but simply Santy, and they think of his wife as Mrs. Santy.
Boss has been discussed in Chapter 1, Section 6. It must have come into American English from the Dutch of the New York area much before 1806, the date of the DAE’s first example, which is from Washington Irving. The verb to boss is not traced beyond 1856, but it also must be older. Neither term, however, is listed by Wither-spoon or Pickering. The original Dutch form, baas,4 is used in South African English precisely as we use boss. Coleslaw comes from the Dutch koolsla, which is made up of kool, meaning cabbage, and sla, a shortened form of salade, meaning salad. It is traced by the DAE to 1794. Folk etymology frequently converts it into cold slaw. Cookey (or cookie or cooky) comes from the Dutch koekje, a small cake, and seems to have been borrowed independently in the Scotch Lowlands. The DAE’s first example of its American use is dated 1786. Cruller is apparently related to the Dutch verb krullen, to curl or crisp. The DAE traces it to 1805, but it is probably older. Dope is derived by the DAE from a Dutch word, doop, signifying a sauce, but no such meaning for doop is recorded in any of the Dutch dictionaries at hand. The true meaning of the word is a baptism or christening. Weekley believes that dope really comes from the corresponding verb, doopen, which has the sense of to dip, and Webster agrees. The history of the term in the United States remains to be worked out. The DAE traces it, in the meaning of “a preparation, mixture or drug, especially one that is harmful,” to 1872, in that of opium to 1895, in that of a thick lubricant or other substance to 1876, and in that of inside knowledge to 1901, but these dates are hardly to be accepted as final. The word, as everyone knows, has acquired an enormous currency in the United States, and has picked up various other significances, e.g., a fool. It is also in wide use in England; in Australia, according to Partridge, it has acquired the meaning of a heavy drinker.1 In the argots of American industry it is used to indicate any liquid or semi-liquid material of a composition unknown to the workman, and thus has hundreds of significances. Its derivatives, dope-fiend, dope-peddler, dope-sheet, dopester, to dope and to dope out are also in frequent use.
Pit, in the sense of the hard seed of a fruit, as in peach-pit and cherry-pit, is not recorded before Bartlett listed it in 1848, but it is no doubt older. The DAE derives it from an identical Dutch word of the same meaning; perhaps it was helped into American by its resemblance to pip, traced by the NED to the late Eighteenth Century. Scow was borrowed from the Dutch, as the DAE shows, so early as 1669: the original form was schouw. Sleigh, from the Dutch slee, is traced by the DAE to 1703; in the early days it was spelled slay, slae and sley. To snoop, from the Dutch verb snoepen, meaning to eat sweets on the sly, is traced by the DAE, in its American sense of to pry or spy, to 1832. Bartlett, so late as his 1877 edition, records the earlier sense of “to clandestinely eat dainties or other victuals which have been put aside.” “A servant who goes slyly into a dairy-room and drinks milk from a pan,” he says, “or a child who makes free with the preserves in the cupboard is said to be snooping.” He added that the term was then “peculiar to New York.” It is now in general use, and indicates any sort of surreptitious prowling. Thus Mark Twain in “A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court,” 1889: “They always put in the long absence snooping around,… though none of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was.” Span, in the sense of a harnessed pair of horses, came from an identical Dutch word, with cognates in other Germanic languages, which apparently meant, originally, a yoke of oxen. Its verb, spannen, meant to stretch. To South African English it has given a number of derivative loans, e.g., to outspan, to unharness. Webster 1852 said:
A span of horses consists of two, usually of about the same color, and otherwise nearly alike, which are usually harnessed side by side. The word signifies properly the same as yoke, when applied to horned cattle, from buckling or fastening together. But in American span always implies resemblance in color at least, it being an object of ambition with gentlemen and with teamsters to unite two horses abreast that are alike.
The DAE traces span to 1769. Webster 1828 recorded a verb, to span, meaning to agree in color and size, but it seems to have dropped out. Neither noun nor verb was ever taken into British English. Spook, in the sense of a spectre, is from an identical Dutch word of the same meaning. The NED runs it back to 1801 in American use, but it is probably older. By the middle of the century it had been adopted by the English, who produced a number of derivatives, e.g., spookery, spookiness, spookish, spookism, spookology and spooky, of which only the last is listed by the DAE.1 Stoop, from the Dutch stoep, is traced to 1735 in American use. It means, ordinarily, the front steps of a house, but once had the additional meaning of a small porch with benches. Waffle, from the Dutch wafel, is not recorded by the DAE before 1817, but it is obviously much older, for waffle-party is recorded for 1808, waffle-iron for 1794, and waffle-frolic for 1744. Waffle-iron is a direct translation of the Dutch wafelijzer. Scheie de Vere, in his “Americanisms,” directs attention to a number of Dutch geographical terms that survive in the vicinity of New York, sometimes anglicized out of recognition, e.g., kil, a channel, as in Kill van Kull, Catskill, Schuylkill and Fishkill; hoek, a bend or corner, as in Kinderhook and Sandy Hook; and gat, a pass in a channel, as in Barnegat and Hell-Gate (Helle-Gat);1 to which may be added fly, a swamp, traced by the DAE to 1675. Scheie de Vere also lists many Dutch terms still surviving in his time (1871) in the New York area only, e.g., overslaugh, a sand bar; noodleje, a noodle; fetticus, a salad; rolliche, a sort of sausage; and hoople, a child’s rolling hoop.2 A very large number of Dutch words were taken into English before the migration to America began, e.g., pickle, sled, spool, deck, hoist, bulwark, to loiter, freebooter, wagon, isinglass, luck, spatter and frolic. Many of these were nautical or military.3 The American use of dominie to indicate a clergyman (it exists in Scots English but only in the sense of a schoolmaster) and of bush to
indicate wild land was probably influenced by the Dutch dominee and bosch. How filibuster, a Dutch loan, has been changed in meaning in the United States is discussed in Chapter IV, Section 2. Hunky-dory, an Americanism that has puzzled etymologists, is probably derived from the Dutch honk, signifying a goal in a game. Said an anonymous writer in Putnam’s Magazine in 1870:4
The incipient manhood of New Amsterdam used this word in its plays, saying of one who had reached base that he was honk. Their American successors adopted it.… It found its way into the slang dialect, and through the medium of the daily papers was widely disseminated.… With the anomalous affix dory (probably coined by some euphoniously-inspired member of the genus “Mose”) it now holds a high position in the public favor.… From the same Dutch roots come the word hunker, meaning, in political parlance, one who clings to the homestead, or to old principles.
Efforts have been made to find a Japanese source for hunky-dory, but they are far from persuasive. They were probably suggested by the fact that one of the first Japanese to visit the United States, an acrobat, was reputed to have an American vocabulary of but two words — olrite (all right) and hunky-dory. Today one term, O.K., would suffice. The elegant euphemism cuspidor is commonly ascribed by lexicographers to the Portuguese cuspidiera, but it may actually come from the Dutch kwispedoor or kwispeldoor, of the same meaning.1 It is not, unhappily, an Americanism, though it had a much greater vogue in this country than in Britain. In 1875 Mark Twain, in one of the chapters of “Old Times on the Mississippi” (later to become “Life on the Mississippi”), contributed to the Atlantic Monthly, told of “a cuspidor with the motto ‘In God We Trust,’ ” and in 1892, in “The Quality of Mercy,” William Dean Howells spoke with quite natural pride of “a nickel-plated cuspidor.” In those innocent days the word was sometimes spelled cuspidore or cuspadore, but cuspidor was approved by the spellingbooks in use at Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
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