2 A dispatch to the Detroit Free Press from Ponca City, Okla., dated Jan. 4, 1936, reported that at a Bible-readathon in Tabernacle Baptist Church there 359 volunteers read both Testaments in 69 hours, 4 minutes and 10 seconds. M. E. Powell, an advertising man, won “a de luxe edition of the Bible for guessing within an hour and 39 minutes when the reading would end.” I am indebted here to Mr. Vernon Arthur Lucas of Detroit.
3 The Neo-Pseudo-Suffix -eroo, American Speech, Feb., 1942, pp. 10–15.
4 Wentworth calls my attention to the fact that jackaroo, perhaps also a corruption of vaquero, has been in use in Australia for a long while, and may have worked its way to the United States. It is listed in Sidney J. Baker’s Popular Dictionary of Australian Slang; second ed.; Melbourne, 1943, and defined as “a station hand.” There is also, says Baker, an Australian verb, to jackeroo, meaning to work on a sheep station.
5 Dwight L. Bolinger, in American Speech, Dec., 1941, p. 306, adds that “much of the success of the suffix is undoubtedly due to the coincidental support of kangaroo, the image of the animal’s antics contributing to the festive tone of the -aroo words.”
1 Vol. V, Part II, p. 41.
2 The Jargon of the Underworld, by Elisha K. Kane, Dialect Notes, Vol. V, Part X, 1927, p. 452.
3 Newfoundland Dialect Items, by George Allan England, Dialect Notes, Vol. V, Part VIII, 1925, pp. 332 and 333. England’s observations were made in 1920 and 1922.
4 Among the New Words, American Speech, Dec., 1942, p. 269.
5 More Notes on Neo-Suffixes, American Speech, Feb., 1943, p. 71.
6 Melvin M. Desser advertised for sale, in the Baltimore Sun, May 29, 1941, a beerador of “23-case capacity.”
7 An advertisement in the Los Angeles Times, Oct. 19, 1937, ran: “For quality heating use Williams Warmolator. For large or small spaces. Standard for motion picture industry.” I am indebted here to Mrs. Emma Sarepta Yule of Los Angeles.
1 Among the New Words, by Dwight L. Bolinger, American Speech, Feb., 1943, p. 63, and Dec., 1943, p. 303.
2 Yes! We All Talk, by Marcus H. Boulware, Pittsburgh Courier, July 11, 1942.
3 The NED Supplement traces it to 1922. On Nov. 30 of that year the London Daily Mail reported that the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII and still later Duke of Windsor, “made a great hit as a ‘broadcaster’ when he delivered a message by wireless to the Boy Scouts.” The word was quoted, indicating that it was then still a novelty.
4 Guild Reporter, Aug. 15, 1944, p. 16.
5 Among the New Words, by Dwight L. Bolinger, American Speech, April, 1943, pp. 147 and 148.
6 Some Word-Products of Technocracy, by Harold Wentworth, American Speech, April, 1933, pp. 68–70. Said American Speech, Dec., 1933, p. 47: “The combining form -ocracy, which showed such life less than a year ago, has now returned to a state of suspended animation.”
7 I am indebted here to Mr. Arthur D. Jacobs, of Manchester, England. He says that chronatocracy, to designate the government of British Southwest Africa, was launched by Lancelot Hogben in the London New Statesman and Nation in 1939. Poshocrat made its debut in Lions and Shadows, a novel by Christopher Isherwood. Demoplutocracy, according to Mr. Jacobs, was borrowed by the English from Mussolini.
1 June 22, 1940, p. 746. I am indebted here to Bolinger, before cited.
2 During the 90s Kansas and a few other advanced-thinking States passed statutes forbidding the sale of cigarettes on the ground that they were poisonous. It was widely taught by the moralists of the period that they contained opium. These statutes were repealed on the return of the soldiers from World War I. They had seen even the Y.M.C.A. selling cigarettes, and had ceased to believe that smoking them was either dangerous or sinful.
3 In The Argot of the Underworld Narcotic Addict, Part II, American Speech, Oct., 1938, p. 189, D. W. Maurer says that dope-fiend “is practically taboo among underworld addicts.” Two analogues, pipe-fiend and needle-fiend, have been likewise displaced by “more modern synonyms.”
4 I am indebted here to Mr. Carl Zeisberg, of Glenside, Pa.
5 American Speech, Feb., 1937, p. 30, and Feb., 1944, p. 78.
6 In 1934, at the time of the Russian and German purges, Simeon Strunsky launched purgeoisie in the New York Times (Topics of the Times), and it was noted in Word Study, Feb., 1935, p. 2, but it did not flourish.
7 American Speech, Oct., 1939, p. 237.
8 American Speech, Dec., 1940, p. 371.
9 Defined by Reinzi B. Lemus in the Washington Tribune, Dec. 26, 1925, as “that type which will write and print anything for money, particularly if it be detrimental to the black man.” Most of these enemies to the Negro, I gather, are themselves black.
1 American Speech, Oct., 1941, p. 239; Words, May, 1940, p. 73.
2 Bookvertising, said the Publisher’s Weekly, Feb. 7, 1942, “was coined by H. J. Stoeckel to apply to the use of hardbound or flexible bound books for commercial and institutional advertising.”
3 The last three are reported in Among the New Words, by Dwight L. Bolinger, American Speech, Dec., 1943, pp. 301–02.
4 The NED traces bear-baiting to c. 1475, but it has been obsolete since the disappearance of the sport. Jew-baiter’s first recorded appearance was in the New York Evening Post, April 21, 1883. Six months later it appeared in England. The NED suggests that it may have been borrowed from the German Judenhetzer.
5 Used by Bruce Rogers in the preface to Fra Lucca Pacioli, 1935. I am indebted here to Mr. Philip C. Duschnes of New York.
6 Notes and Queries, May 24, 1941, p. 370. I am indebted here to Mr. Lincoln S. Ferris of Portland, Ore.
7 Used at the Army Parachute School in World War II. See Typical Parachute Injuries, by C. Donald Lord and James W. Coutts, Journal of the American Medical Association, Aug. 26, 1944, p. 1182.
8 Bagology is the name of the house-organ of the Chase Bag Company of Chicago.
9 On the Suffix -ana, by Joseph Jones, American Speech, April, 1933, p. 71.
10 Advertisement of the Louisville Courier-Journal and Times in the Editor and Publisher, July 4, 1936, p. 1: “They alone give complete coverage, not only of Greater Louisville, but also of practically every important trading center in kentuckiana,… which includes practically all of Kentucky and a score of Southern Indiana counties.”
11 Obsolete Words, Philological Quarterly, April, 1933, p. 214.
1 A floating newspaper paragraph says that near-accident was used by the Federal Gazette, Baltimore, in May, 1803. The precise date is not given.
2 American Speech, Oct., 1939, p. 237.
3 See Boom, by Rex Forrest, American Speech, Oct., 1941, p. 237.
4 See Boost, by Klara H. Collitz, American Speech, Sept., 1926, pp. 661–72.
5 Blends: Their Relation to English Word Formation, Anglistische Forschungen, Vol. XLII; Heidelberg, 1914.
6 Blend Words in English: an Abstract of a Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy; Ithaca, 1933.
7 Newly-Wedded Words, American Speech, Feb., 1939, pp. 3–10.
8 Some New Portmanteau Words, Philological Quarterly, April, 1930; More Portmanteau Coinages, American Speech, Feb., 1932; Dickensian and Other Blends, the same, Oct., 1933; Verbal Pungencies, the same, Dec., 1939; Coinage, the same, April, 1940; and various shorter notes.
1 July 4. Quoted by the DAE, from which I take it.
2 Movie Jargon, American Speech, April, 1926, p. 357.
1 I am informed by Miss Jane D. Shenton of Philadelphia that a family legend credits the invention of bike to her mother’s brother, W. I. Wilhelm, who was a bicycle racer in the early 80s and later became a bicycle manufacturer.
2 Private communication, June 8, 1936. Mr. Peabody is a mechanical engineer, and president of the Peabody Engineering Corporation, New York.
3 Clipped Words: A Study of Back-Formations and Curtailments in Present-Day English, Vol. IV, part II, 1914, pp. 115–45.
1 Cornell Scor
es Use of Word Ad, Associated Advertising, Jan., 1925.
2 Zoo, from zoölogical (garden), is traced by the NED to c. 1847. A writer in the London Times Literary Supplement, March 28, 1936, p. 273, said that it was invented by “the great Vance in the 60s,” but this was an error.
3 Words, by Clifford Howard, Your Life, Aug., 1939, p. 99.
1 For this I am indebted to Mr. Valdemar Viking of Red Bank, N. J.
2 Two Rivers the Birthplace of Ice-Cream Sundae, by Mary Seidl, Two Rivers Reporter, May 28, 1941. In this article the essential parts were reprinted from an article in the centennial edition of the Reporter, July 25, 1936. I am indebted here to the courtesy of Mr. Seymour S. Althen, managing editor of the paper; of Miss Sarah Corcoran, of Mitchell, S. D.; and of Mrs. A. Pilon, of Fond du Lac, Wis., a sister to Berners. He died at Mrs. Pilon’s home July 1, 1939. See also Man Who Made the First Ice-Cream Sundae Is Dead, Chicago Tribune, July 2, 1939, p. 1.
1 Private communication, Jan. 7, 1938.
2 Private communication, Sept. 7, 1937.
3 New York, 1921, p. 306. Mr. Tucker, editor of the Country Gentleman from 1867 to 1911, was a pioneer writer on American speechways. He died in 1932.
4 The case of the first is set forth briefly in AL4, p. 190, that of the second in Washington Wayside Tales, Washington Evening Star, Dec. 1, 1936; and that of the third in the Autobiography of William Lyon Phelps; New York, 1939, p. 920.
5 Private communication, June 18, 1937. Sunday was a Y.M.C.A. secretary in Chicago from 1891 to 1895, He died in 1935.
6 The ice-cream soda, the forerunner of the sundae, made its first appearance in Philadelphia in 1874. See The Story of the Franklin Institute, by Sydney L. Wright; Philadelphia, 1938, p. 49.
1 i.e., the Training School for Feeble Minded Children at Vineland, N. J., where Dr. Goddard served as director of research from 1906 to 1918. In the latter year he became director of the State Bureau of Juvenile Research at Columbus, O. In 1922 he became professor of abnormal and clinical psychology at Ohio State University, retiring as professor emeritus in 1938. He is best known, perhaps, as the author of The Kallikak Family, 1912, but he has also written other important books in his field. Dr. Walter E. Fernald (1859–1924) was superintendent of the Massachusetts School for Feeble Minded.
2 The report of the committee on classification of the feebleminded was printed in the Journal of Fsycho-Asthenics, 1910, p. 61.
1 See Miscellaneous Notes, American Speech, Dec., 1925, p. 188; Moron — A Misconception, by Eston Everett Ericson, American Speech, Dec., 1937, p. 323; and The Natural History of a Delinquent Career, by Clifford R. Shaw, Chicago, 1931, p. 4.
2 I am indebted here to Mr. Francis M. Currier of Winchester, Mass. He says: “This was the last appearance of the fool or jester upon the French stage until the romantic outburst of Hugo et al.”
3 Brightness and Dullness in Children, by Herbert Woodrow, second ed.; Philadelphia, 1923, p. 45.
4 Americanity, by F. M. Kercheville American Speech, Feb., 1939, pp. 71–73, reprinted in the Congressional Record, March 31, 1939, pp. 5091–92. Dr. Kercheville proposes that the Spanish equivalent be americanidad. See his Dialogues of Don Placido, New Mexico (Albuquerque), Nov., 1938, p. 5.
5 Congressional Record, Dec. 15, 1943, p. 10835, and Dec. 18, 1943, p. A5999; American Notes and Queries, Jan. 1944. p. 149.
1 Some Neologisms From Recent Magazines, by Robert Withington, American Speech, April, 1931, p. 284.
2 It appears in an advertisement of S. F. Bowser & Company, of Fort Wayne, Ind., Chemical Equipment Review, July-Aug., 1942, p. 25. I am indebted here to Mr. Fred Hamann.
3 This invention is said to have been made in Boston, but I get news of it from The Non-Slip Lapkin, London Daily Express, April 29, 1944.
4 Both launched by the First Federal 5 Savings and Loan Association of Lima, O., in 1938, along with an explanatory poem by C. L. Mumaugh.
5 The New American Language, Forum, Feb., 1927, p. 265 ff.
6 In the New York World, Oct. 6, 1930, Richard Connell proposed the revival of gomeral (a fool), nugacity (frivolity), appetent (eagerly desirous), docity (quick comprehension), and gestion (management), but there were no seconds.
1 General Hugh S. Johnson launched fire-putter-outer in his newspaper column, Dec. 13, 1939.
2 On Adding the Suffix of Agency, -er, to Adverbs, Dec., 1936, pp. 369 and 370.
3 News, American Speech, April, 1940, p. 213.
4 Notes dating many of the forms listed are in American Speech, April, 1936, pp. 179 and 182; Oct., 1936, pp. 274 and 280; Feb., 1937, pp. 18 and 82; Oct., 1937, p. 243; and April, 1940, p. 213.
5 All three were reported in American Speech, Oct., 1937, p. 242.
6 American Speech, April, 1940, p. 131.
1 New ed.; London, 1879.
1 Now it is Contacting, Reno (Nev.) Gazette, (editorial page), July 7, 1931. This was apparently a syndicated editorial. It noted that to intrigue, which had been borrowed, c. 1915, from the English, who had borrowed it, c. 1890, from the French, was beginning to lose popularity as a counter-word.
2 Jill the Ripper?, April 15, 1939.
3 Anthony Eden Will Not Contact Adolf Hitler, April 30, 1936, p. 8.
4 Verbs and Verbiage, July 20, 1940.
1 Contact as Noun or Verb?, April 19, 1941.
2 p. 195, n. 1.
3 Contact as a Verb, June 1, 1938, p. 87.
4 Philologically Fastidious, by Arthur Loesser, New Republic, June 22, 1938.
5 In Oct., 1938, p. 205, the editors of American Speech rebuked the editor of Macmillan’s Modern Dictionary; New York, 1938, for omitting it. “Any smart, forward-looking, modern dictionary-maker,” they said, “would call attention to the word as a verb. He might wish to label it as colloquial or slang but he would be sure to list it, knowing that shortly it will be respectable.”
1 Here the only alternative would be something on the order of to give a hearing to or to grant an audition, both long and clumsy. The term seems to be picking up meanings outside the realm of the ears. On March 17, 1937 Variety printed a heading reading: Ice-Skater Auditions in Rockefeller Plaza to Agcy 14 Floors Up.
2 Neologisms, by Dwight L. Bolinger, American Speech, Feb., 1941, p. 65.
3 American Speech, Oct., 1940, p. 242.
4 Middleburg (Va.) Chronicle, quoted by the Baltimore Evening Sun (editorial page), April 23, 1940. If to valet, traced by the NED to 1840, and to doctor, traced to 1737, why not to secretary?
5 i.e., to empty a theatre (or other place) by liberating ill-smelling fumes. The only alternative I can think of is to stink up. Newburgh, N. Y., dispatch in Variety: “Cameo, Strand and Academy Theatres here were stenched Friday while shows were in progress. Houses were all being picketed by Local 45 MPOU.”
6 Apparently the English have begun to use it. Amateur Hour Is Here to Stay, London Daily Express, Sept. 10, 1936: “The BBC decided yesterday that the Amateur Hour which debuted on Tuesday is to stay put.” The Daily Express specializes in Americanisms, and its wireless correspondent is called its radio reporter.
7 Young Woman Licensed to Practise Medicine, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 5, 1934: “For the past year she has been interning at the Glendale Sanatorium.”
8 In the sense of to display garments by wearing them. Winston-Salem (N. C.) Journal and Sentinel, Sept. 23, 1934: “During the broadcast the little artists will model garments from the Anchor Company’s children’s department.”
9 Mr. Justice Owen J. Roberts, decision in N. Y., N. H. and H. R. R. Co. vs. Bezue, Jan. 25, 1932: “These facilities are used for servicing and repairing locomotives.” R. L. Stevenson used the verb (in dialect speech) in Catriona, 1893, but it did not come into general use. It was reborn in the United States, c. 1926. See Service, by B. M. Peebles, American Speech, Jan., 1927, p. 214. Webster’s New International marked it “rare” in the edition of 1927, but omitted the “rare” in that of 1934. The English sometimes use to vet(from veterinarian) where Americans would use to service. On
May 22, 1938 the London Sunday Express announced that “Miss Phyllis Haylor, Britain’s first dancing ambassadress,” had left for Australia and New Zealand to “vet the Empire’s dancing.” On July 25, 1936 John o’ London’s Weekly printed an advertisement by an author’s agent which included the following testimonial from a client: “I have spent £5 with you, and have taken over £50 now in stories sold immediately after you had vetted them.”
10 To alert is to be found in Section IX of the report of the committee appointed to investigate the Pearl Harbor incident. One of the members of the committee was Mr. Justice Owen J. Roberts. The report was submitted to the President Jan. 24, 1942. The verb was then new, and James J. Butler said in Capital Press Corps Quickly Mobilized On War News, Editor and Publisher, Dec. 13, 1941, p. 8, that it had been first used in a War Department communiqué following Pearl Harbor. The noun alert may have been borrowed from England. It was apparently new there on Oct. 12, 1940, when the London Times Literary Supplement announced magisterially that “it will pass muster.”
11 United Press dispatch from Eureka, Calif., Feb. 23, 1931: “The Standard Oil tanker El Segundo messaged today that it was standing by the distressed Muleleon, lumber schooner.”
1 Los Angeles Times, Sept. 5, 1934: “Mrs. Williams vacationed for a month at Hotel Laguna.” The DAE does not list to vacation, but traces vacationing to 1896.
2 Used by trained nurses in the sense of to go on special duty, i.e., to have the care of one or more special patients. Also used generally in the sense of to send by special delivery. See New Words for Old, Baltimore Evening Sun (editorial page), June 14, 1939.
3 Newsweek, quoted in New Words for Old, Baltimore Evening Sun (editorial page), May 16, 1938: “Influential men who enjoy John L. Lewis’s confidence have been pressuring him to agree to temporary wage cuts.”
4 A librarian’s term. We Do Odd Things to Words, by J. W. B., New York Times, March 27, 1932: “A few years ago the late Melvil Dewey wrote that a certain book had been accessioned to a library. Thereupon librarians all over the State ceased to add books to their libraries; they preferred to accession them. The use of the word as a verb was severely criticized by many editors, but it filled a technical use and it has remained.”
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