4 Associated Press dispatch from Albany, June 28, 1933.
5 Letter to American Speech, Dec., 1939, p. 247. The Hunter College Kieran died in 1936.
1 The English still use the plural. Cf. The Brains Trust, headline in the London Times Literary Supplement, April 22, 1944, p. 203.
2 Letter to American Speech, Feb., 1940, p. 79. The general’s own chief contribution to the terminology of the era was to crack down. This was launched upon the country in 1933, when he was administrator of the N.R.A.
3 La Luce has coined or launched a number of other terms that have caught the public fancy, e.g., snit, meaning a fit of temper, which she introduced in her play, Kiss the Boys Good-bye, 1939. See Playwright Boothe Adds New Terms to her Mother Tongue, Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, Nov. 13, 1939. In 1944 she used to ramsquaddle, and a few days later explained that it meant “confused, muddled, or mixed up.” She applied it to the bureaucrats of the New Deal, and said that it was “an old American word, used by the Missourians in particular.” See Associated Press dispatch from Greenwich, Conn., Aug. 10, 1944.
4 See, for example, New Epithets Helped Put Skids Under Officials, by George W. Healy, Jr., Editor and Publisher, March 30, 1940, p. 7, dealing with pejoratives used in Louisiana in the war against the last survivors of the Huey Long machine.
5 For many years the ranking souses in both Senate and House were officially Prohibitionists. I hope to print a list of them in my confidential memoirs, to be published post mortem.
1 Max Lerner, in Mr. Roosevelt and His Fellow-travelers, Nation, Oct. 24, 1936: “The term has a Russian background and means someone who does not accept all your aims but has enough in common with you to accompany you in a comradely fashion part of the way.”
2 The NED Supplement traces cell in English use, in the sense of “a center or nucleus of propaganda,” to 1930. It is probably a borrowing from the Russian.
3 See Right and Left Words, by George P. Wilson, Words, May, 1937, pp. 102–05. Left, in the sense of a radical faction, was introduced by Carlyle in his French Revolution in 1837. It comes from the French côté gauche (left side). In the French Assembly of 1789 the conservative nobles sat to the presiding officer’s right, the radicals of the Third Estate to his left, and the moderates directly before him, in the center. The NED traces left-wing (of an army) to 1707. Centrist first appeared in English use in 1872.
4 To indoctrinate, in the sense of to teach, has been used in England since the early Seventeenth Century, but in the sense of to fill with a chosen doctrine it is not traced beyond 1832.
5 In the sense of secret, surreptitious, underground is traced in English use by the NED to 1632. Underground-railroad was used in the United States, from c. 1840 to the Civil War, to designate a chain of hiding-places for the use of slaves escaping from the South.
6 A borrowing from the early Socialist writers, listed by neither the NED nor the DAE. Class was used in England to designate one of the levels of human society so early as 1656, but the current compounds all came much later and show Socialist influence. Dickens used class-grievance in 1852, Emerson used class-legislation in 1856, the London Times spoke of class-prejudice in 1861, and Buckle wrote of the war of the classes a year or so later. But the NED Supplement’s first example of class-consciousness is dated 1887, its first of class-conflict 1919, and its first of class-hatred 1928. The whole class-vocabulary was adopted by advocates of the New Deal after 1933.
7 In the current sense of a political conservative reactionary was used by Froude in 1858. It is now used to designate any opponent of a new device to save humanity.
8 Gouverneur Morris used counter-revolutionary in 1791 and counter-revolution in 1793, and may have invented them, for the NED offers no earlier examples.
9 Proletarian comes from the Latin proletarius, a member of the lowest class in Roman society. The NED traces it in English use as a noun to 1658 and as an adjective to 1663. The derivatives are all later. Proletariat is traced to 1853, proletarianism to 1851, proletarianization to 1918 and proletarianized to 1921.
10 From the large wooden horse built by Epeus for Ulysses, in which the Greeks gained entrance to Troy, and then emerged to take the town. It was applied to Wendell L. Willkie during the campaign of 1940. Willkie himself popularized American way of life in that campaign, but did not invent it. It had been used by Roosevelt II in his second speech of acceptance at Philadelphia, June 27, 1936, and by others before him. See The American Way, American Notes and Queries, May, 1941, p. 23.
11 Bourgeois is French, but has been in English use since the latter part of the Seventeenth Century. Said a writer in the London Observer, Dec. 11, 1938: “How did the word bourgeois come to be a term of abuse? No one ever laughed at ‘Les Bourgeois de Calais’ either in history or art. Yet when, at the time of the French Revolution, the question arose of finding a name for the ordinary man, the word chosen was citoyen, not bourgeois. It was the rise of Continental Socialism, with its glossary of regrettable words like proletariat, that gave bourgeois its Aunt Sally reputation. Perhaps it has become too tainted ever to be fit for non-controversial use again.” Bourgeois simply means citizen, but is commonly used in France to designate the middle class. The bourgeois of Calais were six citizens who risked their lives against the English during the siege of the town by Edward III in 1347, and were saved from his vengeance by the pleas of his queen, Philippa of Hainaut. Aunt Sally, traced by the NED to 1861, is the name of a game played at English fairs, analogous to the American hit-the-nigger-baby-and-get-a-cigar. Aunt Sally, a grotesque figure smoking a pipe, has become the symbol of dowdy unpleasantness. Partridge says that the term is used jocularly to designate a wicket-keeper in cricket.
12 There is a bibliography of books and papers on American political terminology in Burke, pp. 104 and 105. To it may be added More Political Lingo, by Charles Lindsay, American Speech, July, 1927, p. 443; A Dictionary of American Politics, by Everit Brown and Albert Strauss; New York, 1888 (revised and enlarged under the same title by Edward Conrad Smith; New York, 1924); Twisting the Dictionary to Pad Political Vocabulary, New York Times, Dec. 16, 1923; and A Political Dictionary, by Eugene Whit-more; Chicago, 1940. See also American Variations, by H. W. Horwill, S.P.E. Tract No. XLV, 1936, p. 187.
1 He was also called the Ape, probably influenced by Abe. The members of the White House secretariat called him the Tycoon.
1 A reference to the fact that, as sheriff of Erie county, N. Y., he hanged a murderer.
2 Suggested by a cartoon of that title by Bernhard Gillam, in which he was depicted as clad in a robe inscribed with the names of the numerous scandals with which his name had been connected. It appeared in Fuck, April 16, 1884.
3 Many other such nicknames are listed in American Nicknames by George Earle Shankle; New York, 1937, a very useful book, carefully documented.
4 Many amusing examples are assembled in Insults: A Practical Anthology of Scathing Remarks and Acid Portraits, by Max J. Herzberg; New York, 1941.
5 Political Name Calling, American Speech, Dec., 1940, pp. 353–56.
6 From the name of John Dillinger, an eminent bandit of the early 30s, butchered by FBI agents on July 22, 1934. He was the first Public Enemy No 1, a phrase apparently invented by Homer S. Cummings, then Attorney-General.
1 I Samuel XXII, 1 and 2.
2 See also Electionisms, by Robert T. Oliver, American Speech, Feb., 1933, pp. 20–22.
3 New York, 1932, p. 129.
4 Pike is not to be confused with Zebulon M. Pike (1779–1813), the explorer after whom Pike’s Peak was named. Zebulon was an Army officer who became a brigadier-general and was killed during the assault on York, Canada, in the War of 1812. Albert Pike was a Bostonian who went West in 1832, explored the headwaters of the Red and Brazos rivers, settled in Arkansas, was a cavalry commander in the Mexican War, rose to be a brigadier-general in the Confederate Army, and devoted most of the rest of his life to writing about Freemasonry. He was born in 1809 and died in 1891.
2 Chinook arose in the late Eighteenth Century, on the appearance of American fur-traders on the Oregon coast. Its original basis seems to have been the language of the Nootka, but the neighboring Chi-nooks soon learned enough of it for trading purposes. It is a jargon of very limited vocabulary, with no inflections. It includes French and English words, and also a few formed by onomatopoeia. There have been many dictionaries of it, but most of them are of small value. Among the latest are The Chinook Jargon and How To Use It, by George C. Shaw; Seattle, 1909 (with a bibliography); Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, by Frederic J. Long; Seattle, 1909; and Gill’s Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon; 15th ed.: Portland, Ore., 1909. Useful discussions of the jargon are in The Chinook Jargon, by Douglas Leech-man; American Speech, July, 1926, pp. 531–34; The Chinook Jargon, by Edward Harper Thomas, American Speech, June, 1927, pp. 377–84; Chinook Dictionaries, by Edward Harper Thomas, American Speech, Feb., 1928, pp. 182–85; and Note on the Chinook Jargon, by Franz Boas, Language, June, 1933, pp. 208–13. There are three additional titles in Burke, p. 150. Two other Indian jargons arose in the Eighteenth Century — in New Jersey and along the Gulf coast. The former, based on Lenape, is discussed in The Pequots’ Language, by J. Dyneley Prince, American Anthropologist, April-June 1902, and the latter, called the Mobilian trade language, in Reminiscences of the Creek or Muscogee Indians, by Thomas S. Woodward, 1859. Both are now extinct.
1 It seems much more likely that it comes from heik, an English dialect verb signifying to swing. The DAE’s first example of hiking, in the sense of tramping, is spelled heiking and dated 1868. In the same era it seems to have had the sense of to hoist, still preserved in to hike prices. The NED Supplement traces to hike in English use, in the sense of to tramp, to 1809. This first example is from a letter by Samuel Wesley (1766–1837), son of Charles and nephew of John.
2 I am indebted here to Mr. William E. Ricker, of Vancouver, B. C.
3 Nahuatl Words in American English, by George Watson, American Speech, April, 1938, pp. 108–21.
1 The analogous (and perhaps identical) wagh is said to have been used as a “greeting between Taos and Apache” in the early days of the Southwest. It is stated in The Southwestern Word Box, by T. M. P., New Mexico Quarterly, Nov., 1932, p. 344, that among the white trappers the term “substituted for most of the fill-in terms of present-day speech, such as sure, that’s right, O.K. by me, I’ll say, etc.”
2 I am indebted to Dr. J. N. Tidwell, of Ohio State University, a native of Texas, for a reminder that frijole (pronounced freeholay) is the Spanish plural. But Americans insist on regarding frijole as singular, and add an s in the plural. So with tamal(e), borrowed from the Nahuatl by way of the Spanish.
1 One of them was staked plains, now obsolete. It came from the Spanish llano estacado. The DAE’s first example is dated 1848.
2 A Contribution Towards a Vocabulary of Spanish and Mexican Words Used in Texas, Part V, 1892, pp. 185–96; Part V, 1893, pp. 243–53; Part VII, 1894, pp. 324–26. Tallichet’s death, on April 16, 1394, probably prevented a considerable extension of the list.
3 The English Language in the Southwest, by Thomas Matthews Pearce, New Mexico Historical Review, July, 1932, pp. 210–32; Geographical Terms in the Far West, by Edward E. Hales, Dialect Notes, Vol. VI, Part IV, July, 1932, pp. 217–34; Geographical Terms From the Spanish by Mary Austin, American Speech, Oct., 1933, pp. 7–10; Californese, by José Rodriguez, Words, Feb., 1936, pp. 16–17; Terms From the Spanish, by Stuart A. Northrup, American Speech, Feb., 1937, pp. 79–81; Trader Terms in Southwestern English, by Thomas M. Pearce, American Speech, Oct., 1941, pp. 170–86; Two Spanish Word-Lists From California in 1857, by George R. Stewart, American Speech, Dec., 1941, pp. 260–69. Bentley’s Dictionary of Spanish Terms in English, already cited, lists about 430 words and phrases, including a number of American derivatives from Spanish loans, e.g., doby, bronco-buster, burro-load, loco-weed, rancher and ranching. An interesting discussion of ten-gallon hat, from the Spanish sombrero galón, by A. L. Campa, is in American Speech, Oct., 1939, p. 201.
1 Gesundheit was used in Walt Disney’s Pinocchio, 1940.
2 The English apparently prefer pickled cabbage.
3 An example from the Shippensburg (Pa.) Herald was reprinted in the Baltimore Sun, in June, 1838. The spelling was sour crout (two words). There is another in Sartain’s Magazine (Philadelphia), Jan., 1852, p. 74, with the spelling sauerkraut.
4 I am indebted here to Mr. Donald Powell of Washington.
5 David P. Marvin suggested in Word Study, Sept., 1935, that the original may have been the German böhm, “a Bohemian, a foot-loose wanderer,” but for this I know no evidence.
1 The English Language in America, by Charles Astor Bristed, in Cambridge Essays, Contributed by Members of the University; London, 1855, p. 68.
2 Its first example of dumb-head (dummkopf) is dated 1887. It does not list dumbbell or dumb Dora or rum-dumb.
1 How America Got Fresh: Bits of a New Language Made in Germany, by Edward Shanks, London Evening Standard, Nov. 16, 1927: “An American, when he uses the word fresh of a person, means what in England we used to express by the word saucy. He has obviously appropriated the German word frech, which has almost exactly that meaning, but he has assimilated it to the English pronunciation.”
2 Not infrequently it is abbreviated to au. See Interjections of Pain, by Steven T. Byington, American Speech, Dec., 1942, p. 278.
3 The term appears as buck-beer in The American Language, Putnam’s Magazine, Nov., 1870, p. 523. Along with it is shenk-beer, which has passed out of the American vocabulary.
4 To dunk is discussed by Atcheson L. Hench in American Speech, June, 1931, pp. 388–89.
5 So-long …, by H. Z. Kip, Philological Quarterly, Oct., 1927, pp. 400–05. Efforts have been made to connect it with the Arabic salaam and the Hebrew sholom, but without plausibility.
6 Nor of the Sag Nichts who opposed the Know Nothings before the Civil War. See Prenticeana, by George D. Prentice; New York, 1860, p. 211. Nix, in various senses, appeared in the cant of English rogues in the Eighteenth Century, though it is not recorded by Grose. It has never come into general use in England. In American Postal Laws and Regulations for 1879 nixes was defined as “misdirected second-class matter.” The term is still in use in the Postoffice to designate undeliverable mail.
1 And how and und wie, by E. E. Ericson, Beiblatt zur Anglia, June, 1937, p. 186; And how, by J. R. Schultz, American Speech, Dec., 1933, p. 80. Schultz offers the following quotation from a letter of Bayard Taylor to Edmund Clarence Stedman, June 16, 1865: “And how? as the Germans say; Americanicé — you’d better believe it.”
2 Deutscher und englischer Sprachgebrauch in gegenseitiger Erhellung, by Friedrich Thiele, German Quarterly, Nov. 1938, pp. 185–90.
3 German Influences on the American Language, by Andreas Dorpalen, American-German Review, Aug., 1941, p. 14.
4 German Influences Upon English, by Ruth M. Stone, American Speech, April, 1933, p. 77.
5 Private communication; Herbert M. Schueller, Tracy, Minn.
6 The DAE suggests that its source was more likely the Dutch bakoven. It is traced to 1777 and is marked an Americanism.
7 H. Philipps in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1832, Part II, p. 414.
8 German Influences on the American Language, by Andreas Dorpalen, before cited, p. 14. See also American Variations, by H. W. Horwill, S.P.E. Tract No. XLV, 1936, p. 176.
9 A number are listed and discussed in American Intensives in ka-, ke- and ker-, by Exha Akins Sadilek, American Speech, Dec., 1931, p. 142. The DAE traces kerslush to 1843, kawallup to 1848, kerwhop and kerflummux to c. 1849, kerchunk to 1850, kerplumpus and kerbim t
o 1851, and kasouse, kerswop and kerswollop to c. 1859. Many more have appeared during the years since.
10 The classical example of folk-etymology is in Sir John Davies’s Orchestra, 1596, quoted in Robert Southey’s Commonplace Book, Fourth Series; London, 1851, p. 431: Behold the world, how it is whirled round,
And for it is so whirled is named so
1 See Some Iowa Locations, by Katherine Buxbaum, American Speech, April, 1929, pp. 302–04; English in the Pennsylvania German Area, by Eugene R. Page, American Speech, Oct., 1937, pp. 203–06; Pennsylvania-German English, by W. L. Werner, American Speech, Dec., 1937, pp. 323–24; Linguistic Substrata in Pennsylvania and Elsewhere, by R. Whitney Tucker, Language, March, 1934, pp. 1–5; Some German-Americanisms From the Middle West, by A. W. Meyer, American Speech, Dec., 1926, p. 134; The English of the Pennsylvania Germans, by George G. Struble, American Speech, Oct., 1935, pp. 163–72. At the Dec., 1940 meeting of the Linguistic Society of America Hans Kurath and Guy S. Lowman, Jr., presented a paper on Pennsylvania English, and for the 1943 meeting of the Modern Language Association (cancelled on account of the war) Leo L. Rockwell prepared one on The Earlier German Loan-Word in American English. So far as I know, both these papers remain unpublished. Meanwhile, A. M. Aurand of Harrisburg, Pa., has been collecting an extensive vocabulary of German words and phrases current in Pennsylvania English. In Pittsburgh, which is outside the Pennsylvania German area, the official remover of animal carcasses is called the fallmaster, apparently a translation of the German fallmeister, of the same meaning. I am indebted here to Mr. Charles C. Arensberg of Pittsburgh.
2 The Man in the Rocking-Chair, Aug., p. 429.
3 It appeared in an advertisement of Weller-Lewis Kindergraphs in the rotogravure section of the Baltimore Sun, May 31, 1925.
4 For example, H. S. Skeffington, in Irishing the American Language, Irish Press (Dublin), Dec. 10, 1936.
1 See Dutch Survivals in Holland, Michigan, by Peter Veltman, American Speech, Feb., 1940, pp. 80–83, and Sloughter, by Nathan van Patten, American Speech, Aug., 1931, p. 464.
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