The strange vocabulary of the American newspaper headline is discussed in AL4, pp. 181–85. Its distinguishing mark is its excessive use of very short words — a necessity forced on it by the fact that newspaper columns are narrow. That necessity was not felt as pressing down to 1885 or thereabout, for it was then the custom to arrange headlines in a free-and-easy manner, with each section (or bank) thereof consisting of two lines, the second line of each bank centered under the first, and sentences running on from one bank to the next. The choice of type was left to the printer, and he was esteemed in proportion to the number of different faces and sizes he got into a given head. Not infrequently one filling half a column was a single sentence. When the custom arose of setting headlines in more or less uniform type, according to a relatively few fixed patterns, and with each bank self-contained, the copy-reader took over the job of making them fit, and he soon found that he was greatly incommoded by long words, for if one of them filled a whole line it looked somewhat awkward, and if it was too long for a line it could not be used at all. Thus the search for shorter synonyms began, and whenever an effective one was unearthed it was quickly endowed with extended and sometimes very strained meanings. Today probe is used to signify any sort of quest or inquiry, however little it may suggest a surgeon’s probing of a wound,1 and hint is a synonym-of-all-work that may mean anything from rumor to accusation. Other favorite nouns of the headline writers are ace, aid, balm, ban, blast, bloc, blow, bout, chief, cleric, crash, deal, drive, edict, fete, gain, grip, head, hop, job, try, meet, net, pact, plea, quiz, slate, snag, span, talk and toll. Many of
these are converted freely into verbs,1 and in addition there is a large repertoire of midget verbs proper, e.g., to back, balk, ban, bar, bare, best, cite, comb, cry, curb, cut, face, flay, hit, ire, lure, map, nab, name, net, oust, quash, quit, rap, raze, rule, score, see,2 slate, slay, speed, spike, stage, vie and void. Clipped forms are naturally much used, e.g., ad, auto, confab, gas, isle, mart, photo and quake. Even the compounds in use are commonly made up of very short words, e.g., clean-up, come-back and pre-Yule.3 A constant search goes on for short forms of proper names frequently in the news, e.g., F. D. R. for Roosevelt, Bruno for Richard Hauptmann, and Wally for Wallis Warfield.4 It was probably not moral indignation so much as the effort to conserve space that made the Germans Huns in World War I; in World War II they escaped with the inoffensive but happily short appellation of Nazis. Norse, Dons (Spaniards), Japs, Reds and the like are godsends to copy-readers, and I have encountered Liths for Lithuanians.5
Nor is it only in vocabulary that liberties are taken with the language. There is also a strong tendency to juggle the parts of speech, and to indulge in syntactical devices that dismay orthodox grammarians. A few examples: Galento Has $10,000 He’ll Stop Louis,6 Gob Crabs Gal’s F. D. R. Love Plea,1 Woman Critical After Nightgown Is Set Afire,2 Smock Day All Over, Girls Say,3 Byrd Shushes “Why” of White House Trip,4 “In the process of doing things to formal English,” said the St. Louis Star-Times in 1937, “the press has been helping to develop a homegrown grammar.”5 In this revolution there is some ingenuity and also some daring, but another of its principal constituents is simply Philistinism. The average American copy-reader shows his disdain of verbal niceties in many other ways, e.g., by his disregard for the correct forms of foreign words, and especially of foreign titles. He makes no distinction between résumé and to resume, and it is one of his fondest beliefs that an English knight is a peer.6 Similarly, his columnist colleague frequently insists on using the editorial we under or over his signature, or, as the brethren choose to call it, by-line.7
But the writing of American newspaper columnists, at its most advanced, is as the writing of Walter Pater compared to that of the two weeklies, Variety and Time, Each has developed a dialect that is all its own, and both are heavily imitated, the former by newspaper writers on the theatre, the movies and the radio, and the latter by a large following of young reporters, and not only by young reporters, but also by editorial writers and other such more austere varieties of journalists, and even by authors of presumably elegant kidney. The vocabulary and syntax of both are so bizarre that they have attracted much attention from students of the national language, and the literature of the subject is already formidable.1 Variety bangs away at the language in an innocent, hearty and insatiable manner. It invents and uses a great variety of back-formations, e.g., pix for moving pictures, vaude for vaudeville, nahe for neighborhood, intro for introduction, preem for premier, admish for admission, biog for biography, to collab for to collaborate, orch or ork for orchestra, concesh for concession, juve for juvenile, crick for critic, fave for favorite, mat for matinee, situash for situation and sked for schedule; and it launches many new and tortured blends, e.g., filmusical (a movie with music), newscaster and thespsmitten, and bold compounds, e.g., chin-fest (a conference), bell-ringer (a success), pic-parlor, show-shop, hand-patter, spine-chiller, straw-hat and cow-shed (a Summer theatre), cliff-hanger (a serial melodrama), splinter-bug (a shoeless dancer) and oats-opera (a Western film). It puts old and new suffixes to use in a free and spacious manner, e.g., hoofologist (a dancer), flopperoo (a failure), socko and clicko (a success), nitery (a night-club), twinner (a double-feature bill), vox-popper, ball-roomology, pianology, legmania, peelery (a burlesque show), 10%ery (the office of an actor’s agent), payola (bribery), ghostitis, invitee, pixite, Coastie, oldie, cinamaestro, microphonist, blurbist and lack-age; it makes verbs of nouns, e.g., to author, to ink (to sign), to lens, to emcee (to act as master of ceremonies), to preem and to terp, and it converts all the other parts of speech into nouns, e.g., rave (an enthusiastic review), de luxer, personating (making personal appearances), tie-in, pink (a sexy picture), clicky (a picture making money), cheapie, biggie, brush-off and vocal (a song). It also borrows freely from the argots of sports, of the circus, of hobos and of criminals, e.g., to beef (to complain), eight-ball (a failure), G ($1,000), to gander (to go sightseeing), handle (a title), spieler (an announcer) and on the lam. Variety’s headlines are done in such a jargon that only the initiated can fathom them. One of the most famous, Hicks Nix Sticks Fix, attracted so much attention that it was discussed solemnly in far-away Egypt.1 Its meaning, it turned out, was that bucolic movie audiences did not like pictures with rustic settings. Once, challenged for reporting that the Minneapolis Star, by promoting a boxing carnival with Joe Louis as its principal figure, was diverting patronage from the local movie parlors, it refused to recant but explained sententiously: “Story recounted show biz squawks against opposish from newspaper ballyhoo showmanship stunts.”2 Soon after this Variety was moved to poke fun at its own style by calling attention to a news item sent in by its Philadelphia correspondent, whom it described as “an otherwise lucid newspaper man.” This item was headed “Contagious” and was as follows:
Philly Orch on Thursday (II) night will preem composition of 23-year-old Omaha college soph. Cleffer, titled “Mystic Pool,” is by John S. Hefti, who is studying theory at Municipal University of Omaha. Kid’s b.r.ing his higher educash by playing in collegiate dance band. “Pool” originally composed for his terp orch.3
The jargon of Time has been imitated by American newspaper men much more extensively than that of Variety, but it is measurably less interesting, mainly because most of its neologisms are more or less obvious blends, e.g., shamateur, cinemactress, franchiseler, boxofficially, bookritic, charitarian and powerphobe, but also because its assaults upon orthodox syntax are not carried on, like those of Variety, in an atmosphere frankly raffish, but under cover of a pretension to information and even learning. Among its gifts to American English are the heavy use of attributive nouns, sometimes in the possessive case, e.g., Hearsteditor Jones, Harvardman Brown and Columbia’s Nicholas Murray Butler, and the suppression of the definite article, e.g., “Report was circulated today,” etc. It also likes to begin sentences with adjectives, and it deals heavily in compounds of the Homeric variety, e.g., hot-eyed, kinky-bearded, smudge-mou
stached, Maine-born, moon-placid, plush-plum, legacy-stalking, strike-badgered and Yankee-shrewd.1 Some of these idiosyncrasies have had a powerful influence upon current newspaper writing, both in the United States and in England. Conservative journalists in both countries have denounced them bitterly,2 but they are still widely imitated. These have also made some inroads on presumably higher levels, to the consternation of purists.3 For several years the Reader’s Digest gave space every month to imitations of the Time neologisms by various hopeful apes, but it was seldom that they showed any ingenuity or humor, or any sign of entering the common stock.1 Indeed, I have seen the statement somewhere that the only invention of Time itself to lodge in the language is socialite. In 1930 or thereabouts there appeared a magazine called Ken which undertook to carry out the Time formula to half a dozen more places of decimals, with borrowings from Variety, the comic strip and the Cossacks of the Don, but it blew up before it could work its wicked will upon the style of American journalism.
The concocters of trade names have contributed many familiar terms to the American vocabulary, and some of them have circled the world, e.g., kodak, vaseline, coca-cola and linotype. Many others are so well known at home that it surprises most persons to hear that they are, or ever were, registered or claimed as private trademarks, e.g., linoleum, tabasco-sauce, celluloid, radiogram, caterpillar-tractor, carborundum, dictaphone, neutrodyne, thermos, menthol and Waterbury (watch).1 Dr. Louise Pound published a study of such names so long ago as 1913,2 but since then the subject has been neglected by students of American speech, and in consequence its later literature is meagre. The laws lay down conditions which make the choice of a really effective trade-name far from easy. To become one, legally speaking, it must be a word that does not really name or describe the article to which it is affixed, and it must be sufficiently unlike the trade-names of other articles of the same general type to prevent the buyer mistaking one for the other. If it is applied to an entirely new article, having no other name, it may become that article’s common name, and so lose its validity in law by becoming descriptive. The inventor of a new article, to be sure, may patent it, and so acquire a monopoly of its manufacture and sale under whatever name, but a patent is good for but seventeen years, whereas a trade-mark may go on so long as the article is offered for general sale. The Swiss inventor of cellophane, Brandenberger, or rather his American assignee, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, lost the exclusive right to the name when the courts decided, on the expiration of his patent, that the article had no other general name, and that cellophane was thus descriptive. Much the same thing happened in the cases of aspirin, linoleum, kerosene and featherbone. In the case of dry ice the name was clearly descriptive from the start.3 Even nylon is not, in the eye of the law, a trade-mark, for the du Pont chemists coined it to designate a whole group of synthetic polyamides that they had developed, and today it is applied to dozens of different substances.4 But most of the more familiar American trade-names are not common designations for a new article, but special designations for some special brand of a new or old article, and in consequence they are protected by the laws. In the early days of a new article its manufacturers are usually eager to get its name entered in the dictionaries, but when they discover that so entering it tends to give it the significance of a common word, and thus imperils their trade-mark, they are just as eager to have it expunged. The late Frank H. Vizetelly, in the Atlantic Monthly paper lately cited, complained bitterly that this shift of interest and desire produces one of the commonest and most racking headaches of a lexicographer’s life. The wise inventor, if he has something really new in the world, first patents it and then devises two names for it — one a common and more or less descriptive name, and the other a name so wholly undescriptive that it qualifies as a trade-mark. If he is lucky the trademark will have become so firmly established by the time his patent runs out that other persons essaying to market the article will have hard going.
The history of some of the more familiar American trade-names is interesting and deserves the professional attention of etymologists. That of kodak and that of vaseline are recounted briefly in AL4, p. 172, n. 3 and n. 5. Both meet the requirements of the law precisely and are thus still protected, though kodak has been in use since 1888 and vaseline since 1870.1 Nylon, just mentioned, has no etymological significance. When the du Pont chemists began making synthetic polyamides some simple and easily remembered name for them was needed, and about 250 were proposed and considered. Nylon was finally chosen because it seemed the best of the lot. It is now applied, as I have said, to dozens of different substances, and also to the yarns, filaments and flakes made of them. It is protected, not as a trade-mark, but by the du Pont patents on the manufacturing processes. Nabisco, the name of a sugar wafer made by the National Biscuit Company, is composed, as I have noted, of the first syllables of the company’s name, and was adopted June 28, 1901 and registered as a trade-mark on November 12, 1901. It is not descriptive, and under the terms of its registration may be used on “biscuits, crackers, bread, wafers, sugar wafers, cakes, snaps, jumbles, hard and soft boiled confectionary, including grainwork, creamwork, panwork, chocolatework, lozenges, and medicated candies.” Uneeda, owned by the same company, has been in use since September 6, 1898 and was registered on December 27, 1898. It covers the same products as nabisco, but may be used by others, I gather, on anything so unlike them as to preclude fraud or confusion. The name of the kelvinator was coined by Major Nathaniel B. Wales, who began experimenting with a domestic refrigerating unit (at first a heating unit) in 1907 or 1908, and joined in the incorporation of the first company to make the present kelvinator in 1914. The name was derived from that of Lord Kelvin (1824–1907), the English physicist whose theoretical studies paved the way for the development of the appliance. Mazda, as a name distinguishing electric lamps, was suggested to the General Electric Company by the late Frederick P. Fish, a Boston lawyer and one-time president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. He thus described its genesis:
I had long been of the opinion that an ideal trade-name might well be made Up of two syllables, both long. For example, I had always regarded kodak as a most effective name. While a trade-name need not1 be descriptive it is advantageous to have it in some way remotely reflect some of the characteristics of the article to which it is applied. In this case it seemed to me that a suggestion of the light-giving property of the lamp might well be indirectly involved. I naturally thought of Apollo, Jupiter and Jove, but these names were relatively commonplace and none of them had the two long syllables that I thought desirable. But I knew, of course, of the Zoroastrian god of the ancient Persians, who stood for the firmament with its light-giving characteristics and whose name was Ahura Mazda. It seemed to me that mazda, with its two long syllables and its suggestion of the light-giving firmament, might prove an attractive tradename for the new tungsten incandescent lamps. A long list of other words was suggested, some of them based on proper names, some more or less artificial in character. The name mazda was adopted by the General Electric Company.1
Kewpie, the name of a once very popular doll, was invented by-Rose Cecil O’Neill Wilson in 1912, and was first used in the decoration accompanying some verses that she contributed to the Ladies Home Journal. Her kenjopies were almost as successful as Palmer Cox’s brownies had been in the 80s, and the first dolls bearing the name were made by George Borgfeldt & Company, of New York, in 1913.2 Zipper, as the name of a slide fastener, was coined by the B. F. Goodrich Company, the rubber manufacturers, in 1913, and was registered as a trade-mark on April 7, 1925. It was first used on an overshoe but its great success suggested the use of the slide fastener on other articles, and by 1928, as the NED Supplement shows, zipper was taking on the aspect of a common noun. The Goodrich Company thereupon appealed to the courts and its rights were sustained.3 I gather, however, from a recent statement that its claim is now directed especially to footwear.4 Ivory as the name of a soap was launched in October, 1879. The
soap itself, popular because it floats, was invented by accident. One day a workman in the plant of Procter & Gamble at Cincinnati let a machine called a crutcher run during his lunch-hour and it introduced minute bubbles of air into the batch of soap being made. No one suspected that a great revolution had been effected until the soap reached the firm’s customers and they began writing in demanding more of the same. “Few of the towns along the [Ohio] river,” said a booklet published by the company in 1944, “had filtration plants. For long periods of the year water was a tawny brown. When a bar of soap sank in a sink or bathtub it was lost to view. But floating soap …”1 Unhappily, it still lacked a name. One Sunday morning soon afterward Harley Procter, the senior partner in the company, went to church and heard a sermon on Psalms XLV, 8: “All thy garments smell of myrrh and aloes and, cassia, out of the ivory palaces whereby they have made thee glad.” The new floating soap was a dead white, so Ivory it became.
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