American Language Supplement 1

by H. L. Mencken

  Hunk and hunkie (or hunky or hunkey), I suppose, are properly applicable to Hungarians only, but they have been extended in meaning to include all Europeans coming from the region east of the German lands and west of Russia, save only the Greeks. In Canada, so I am informed by a correspondent,5 hunkie is used to designate Poles, Ukrainians and miscellaneous Slavs, maybe because actual Hungarians are scarce. Berrey and Van den Bark report extensions, in the United States, signifying a country bumpkin, a numskull, a common laborer, and a foreign-born miner of any nationality. There are also other meanings of hunky, but they derive from the American hunky-dory, signifying all right, safe, first-rate. It is possible that bohunk (sometimes abbreviated to boho or bo) is a blend of Bohemian and Hungarian, and may thus be applied with plausibility to both races. In 1938 a writer in American Speech1 recorded it in use to designate any unskilled laborer, “more specifically a Bohemian, Magyar, Slovak or Croatian.” In 1926 Helen L. Moore reported that it was used in the mining-camps of the Northwest for any foreign miner save a Cornishman, who was called Cousin Jack.2 In 1937 a book reviewer in the Manchester Guardian Weekly3 made a characteristically English error by extending it to a Jew, the hero of the American book of sketches, “Hyman Kaplan.” In 1937 one Anak Singapura, of Singapore, writing in the Straits Times of Penang, made the even more egregious blunder of using it to designate a German.4 In regions where Czech immigrants are numerous cheskey is frequently heard. Monsignor Dudek says that it is “an attempted transliteration of the Bohemian adjective český (Czech).”5 He adds: “This spelling, in view of the Czech value of ch, is rather inconsistent. If the word ever gets into the written American language I would suggest czesky.” Bootchkey is also sometimes applied to a Czech. It comes from the Czech word počkej, meaning wait, hold, which is often used by Czech boys in playing games.

  Mick, harp and Turk are listed in AL4, p. 295, as achthronyms for Irishman. To these flannel-mouth, shamrock, spud and terrier may be added, and biddy for an Irishwoman, though they are no longer in wide use. The DAE omits all save biddy, which it traces to 1858, though it lists flannel-mouth as the name of various fishes, and spud in two senses, neither relating to Irishmen. Flannel-mouth, in England, designates any well-spoken person, and spud means not only a potato but also a baby’s hand. A discussion of Mick, harp and Turk, by W. A. McLaughlin, was printed in Dialect Notes in 1914.6 Of the latter two the author said:

  The use of harp is not unreasonable when we recall that this instrument appears on the Irish standard as its one great feature. Turk is a trifle harder to explain. Though wild may appear synonymous with terrible, it would take more than that to establish the identity of the expressions, the wild Irish1 and the terrible Turk. It seems more than likely that all attempts to connect the word with Turk, a native of Turkey, must be abandoned. May not Turk, Irish, be simply the Gaelic word torc in disguise? The pejorative pig has been long in many tongues the supreme but inadequate expression of absolute disgust, anger and disdain, and torc signifies, among other things, boar, pig.2 Its Welsh equivalent, twrch, is equally depreciatory.3

  May it not be that this word, often in the mouth of the Irish-speaking person, came to be used by his English-speaking neighbors, at first with some notion of its original force and with certain knowledge that the speaker of Irish would grasp the meaning as he himself had? Later, addressed, perhaps, by the English-speaking Irish to the Gaelic-speaking members of the community, may it not have come to be looked upon as a mere tag meaning simply Irish, the more restricted became the use of Gaelic? In any case its use today, without malice, with no touch of contempt as a mere substitute for Irish, is attested by the following sentence from the speech of an Irish candidate for office addressing a meeting of Irish and Italian voters: “You Italians have the votes, but it takes us Turks to run the government.”

  Turk is used among Roman Catholic priests in the United States to designate a colleague of Irish birth: it is assumed that every such immigrant has a special talent for ecclesiastical politics, and hence gets on in the church. Irish has been an element in many English compounds, chiefly of a derogatory or satirical significance. Irish-evidence, perjury, and Irish-apricots, potatoes, and Irish-legs, thick ones, were listed by Grose in the first edition of his “Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue,” 1785, and Irish-beauty, a woman with two black eyes, was added in his third edition of 1796. The NED traces Irish-diamond, a rock crystal, to 1796; Irish-blunder, defined by Swift as “to take the noise of brass for thunder,” to 1725; and Irish-bull to 1802. The DAE adds Irish-dividend, an assessment on stock, 1881; Irish spoon, a spade, 1862, and Irish-pennant, a loose end of rope, 1840. Berrey and Van den Bark add many others, e.g., Irish-apple, a potato; Irish-cherry, a carrot; Irish-clubhouse, a police station; Irish confetti, bricks; Irish-fan, a shovel; Irish-turkey, corned beef; Irish-nightingale, a bullfrog; Irish-promotion, a demotion, and Irishman’s dinner, a fast. In the United States, in the days of the great Irish immigration, the designation of almost anything unpleasant was hung with the adjective, and it was converted into a noun to signify quick temper. A wheelbarrow was an Irish chariot or buggy, and there was a stock witticism to the effect that it was the greatest of human inventions, since it had taught the Irish to walk on their hind legs. Also, No Irish Need Apply was a sign as common as Juden sind nicht erwünscht was to become in Nazi Germany.1 Farmer and Henley list Irish arms, thick legs; Irish apricot, a potato; Irish beauty, a woman with her eyes blacked; Irish dinner, a fast; Irish evidence, perjury; Irish hurricane, a dead calm; Irish rifle, a fine-toothed comb; Irish promotion, a reduction in pay; and Irish theatre, a military lock-up; and the NED adds Irish trick and Irish bull. “References to Ireland,” says Joesten in the article lately cited, “appear in no other language than English, and hardly favorably there.” Among the Jews of New York an Irishman is sometimes called a baytzimer, from the Hebrew baytzim, egg.2 Why this designation is used I do not know. It has been suggested that it is because the first Jewish immigrants found the sale of eggs monopolized by Irishmen, but this seems far-fetched and incredible. In Yiddish the word for egg is the German ei.

  The etymology of wop has been heavily debated, but there seems to be an increasing agreement to derive it from guappo, a term in the Neapolitan dialect signifying a showy, pretentious fellow. Says an Italian authority:3

  The origin of wop … takes us back to the Latin vappa, which, in its figurative sense, means a spoiled fellow, a good for nothing. From the analogously formed masculine vappus there developed … the Neapolitan guappo, with the added meaning of blusterer, and then, by natural extension, a fop.… This word, which is also familiarly used adjectively in Spanish with like meaning, later became current as a term of greeting among Neapolitans. Overhearing the word so frequently in cities where the Italian population is large, those with linguistic background other than Latin naturally applied to the Italians the epithet wop. “Naturally” because the gu in Romance words of Latin or Germanic derivation is generally written and pronounced w in English, e.g., guerra, war; guastere, waste; Guillaume, William. Wop from guappo thus represents a regular phonological development.

  Webster 1934 suggests that guappo may have got into the Neapolitan dialect by way of the Spanish adjective guapo, meaning bold, elegant, gay, but for this the evidence seems to be meagre. Guapo has produced a number of derivatives in Spanish, e.g., guapazo, truculent; guapear, to boast; guapeton, a braggart; and guapeza, meaning both courage and showy dress.1 The early immigrants from Southern Italy, c. 1885, brought guappo with them, and used it frequently in referring to one another, usually in a sportive sense and without offence.2 It was picked up by the Americans among whom they labored in ditch and tunnel, and by 1895 or thereabout had come to signify any Italian.

  Wop has produced a number of derivatives in the United States, e.g., wop-house, an Italian restaurant; wop-special, spaghetti; and Wopland, Italy. In wop-jawed it has been assimilated with wap-jawed, a dialect term meaning askew.3 Partridge says that it got into En
glish use by way of the talkies, c. 1931. During the first years of World War II it appeared often in the English newspapers, always in a derogatory significance, but after the surrender of Italy it was used less. Incidentally, and rather curiously, it was adopted by the Royal Air Force to signify a wireless operator, and also seems to have been applied occasionally to an air gunner.4 Its derivation and meaning were often discussed in the English press before and during the war.5 Various extensions of meaning are listed by Berrey and Van den Bark. Wop is sometimes used to designate any European of dark complexion,1 and like hunky may even be applied to any man of uncertain nationality. In railroad slang it is sometimes used for a section hand, and among criminals it means a sentence of less than a month. It has also appeared as a slang word for a motor knock. During the discussion of the term in England the curious fact turned up that the students who gave aid to Sir Wilfred Grenfell, the arctic missionary, in vacation time “were known affectionately as wops.”2 Woppage appeared in England as a designation for the retreating Italian Army in North Africa,3 but it was only a nonce-word and did not survive.

  Dago, which preceded wop in American favor, is traced by the DAE to 1832. It comes from the Spanish Diego, James, and was first used to designate a Spaniard. When it began to be transferred to Italians it is not clear, but it was probably during the 80s. In 1891 it appeared in the form of Daigos as the name of a secret organization,4 and in 1900 E. H. Babbitt listed it in his “College Words and Phrases”5 as signifying (a) the Italian language, (b) a professor of Italian, (c) a student studying Italian, and (d) any uncouth person, and reported it as in use in one or more of these senses in twenty American colleges, including Harvard, Princeton and Smith. Its derivative, dago red, meaning a cheap red wine, is in wide use. Guinea is probably another term of changed meaning. In the sense of a Negro from Guinea the DAE traces it to 1823; when it came to signify an Italian I do not know. Ginzo, which is seldom heard, is probably a derivative. Berrey and Van den Bark also list dino, duke, gin, macaroni and various proper names, but most of the former are heard but rarely, and of the latter only Tony seems to be in general use. The DAE shows that in the middle 90s, at least in the Pennsylvania mining region, Italians were called hikes.1 Among the Eastern Jews in New York and Chicago, and perhaps elsewhere, they are called lukschen, from a Yiddish word meaning a noodle.2 There is here, I presume, a reference to spaghetti. In Louisiana gi-gi has been recorded; it is also a contemptuous term there for a creole, “especially from the country.”3 The NED Supplement’s first example of the use of wop in England is from a story by P. G. Wodehouse, published in 1915. The term does not seem to be known in Australia, and neither is dago. Nor is it recorded for New Zealand. Baker reports that the Australians call Italians eyetos or skies. In Chicago, during the era of Al Capone, the high-toned Italians of the town set up a clamour against the constant use of Italian by the newspapers to designate a gunman. The newspapers thereupon switched to Sicilian, which was more accurate, for nine-tenths of the gunmen were actually either Sicilians or Neapolitans. The terms mafia (or maffia), black-hand (from the Spanish mano Negra) and camorra, which had come into frequent use in the early days of the great Italian immigration, began to die out before the butcheries of Prohibition got under way. All three designated Italian secret organizations which preyed, in the main, not on Americans but on Italian immigrants. In 1890, when the New Orleans mafia was accused of having a hand in the murder of a chief of police, a mob took eleven Italian suspects out of jail and lynched them. There was a violent protest from the Italian government, but nothing came of it, and thirty-two years later the unfortunate Benito Mussolini began the extermination of all such organizations in Southern Italy. Black-hand had a derivative, black-hander, and camorra produced camorrist. None of these terms is listed in the DAE.

  Skibby, which is used to designate Japanese on the Pacific Coast, is extremely offensive to them, for it was applied originally to a loose woman, though it now means, at least in California, any Japanese, male or female. It seems to have been borrowed from a Japanese word, though what that word was is uncertain. In the British Navy skivvy is an interjection of greeting, and is commonly believed to have come from the Japanese: perhaps it was encountered as a salutation of Japanese prostitutes. Since 1905 or thereabout, according to Partridge, it has been used in English slang to designate an English maidservant of the rougher sort, and a correspondent in Canada informs me that it is used in the same sense there, and carries a suggestion of defective virtue. In 1942 Damon Runyon printed a treatise on the word in the New York Mirror,1 from which I take the following:

  The fact that the Japanese consider skibby particularly odious naturally-increased the popularity of the word among the Jap-hating Californians. The kids in the street used to yell it at the Japs as an invitation to a chase. As the years wore on, common usage brought skibby into the local language as a handy term without reference to its origin.… [It] is what the Jap is called to this day by most Californians, even in polite circles, and it is unlikely that the California soldiers will dismiss it for the more polite Charlie and Tojo that the dispatches from the Far East would have us believe are now terms for the enemy.

  Skibby is listed in Webster 1934, but there is no attempt at an etymology. It does not appear in the DAE. In “A Word-List from the Northwest,” in Dialect Notes, 1920,2 it was dealt with thus:

  A rough name for a Japanese. Common nowadays for Japanese without distinction. It is said to have been used ten years ago only for Japanese women of ill repute.

  The designation nisei (pro. ne-say) for Japanese of American birth was seldom heard, before Pearl Harbor, save on the Pacific Coast, nor was kibei, the name for those American-born Japanese who were sent to Japan for their schooling, and so presumably underwent Japanese indoctrination. Nisei is sometimes spelled nissei.3 It is simply the Japanese term for second generation.4 In the days before they lost their civil rights the American-born Japanese objected frequently and vigorously to the use of Jap to designate their people, and sometimes Americans went to their assistance.5 Their crusade made but little progress, for Jap, as a very short word, was irresistibly tempting to headline writers, and during the electric days preceding and following Pearl Harbor it appeared on almost every first page in the United States almost every day.1 The related Nip, from Nipponese, was reported in American Speech by Dwight L. Bolinger in April, 1943.2 He said that it had been used in an NBC broadcast on January 12, 1942, and by Time on February 23 of the year. After Pearl Harbor many American Jews began calling the Japanese gelber momzayrim (yellow bastards). The English use chink for a Chinese, as we do, but Partridge says that it did not come in until c. 1890, and hints that it was probably borrowed from Australia.3 The Australians, according to Baker, call a Chinese, not only a chink, but also a chow, a dink, a dingbat, a Johnnie and a pong. The DAE’s earliest example of chink in American use is dated 1901, but it is unquestionably older, and may go back to the days of the gold-rush to California. The Chinese greatly dislike the term Chinaman and Chinee, just as the Japanese dislike Jap. The DAE traces Chinaman to 1849 and marks it an Americanism. Chinee is traced to 1870 and chinawoman to 1872, when it was used by Mark Twain in “Roughing It.” Chinatown is traced to 1877.

  Bartlett defines greaser as “a term vulgarly applied to the Mexicans and other Spanish Americans” and says that “it first became common during the war with Mexico.” The DAE’s earliest example is from the Spirit of the Times, July 11, 1846. Two years later George F. Ruxton explained in his “Life in the Far West” (published in 1849) that Mexicans were so called “by the Western people” on account of “their greasy appearance.” In August, 1861, a writer in the Knickerbocker Magazine, quoted by Thornton, opined that a greaser “would not be seriously injured if held under a pump for half an hour.” The Mexicans in the Southwest resent all this, and have concocted a number of more seemly etymologies. One holds that the term was first applied to a Mexican who set up a studio for greasing the ox-carts of early settlers a
t the top of the Raton Pass, and that his designation, the Mexican greaser, was gradually extended to all his countrymen.1 Its application has been further extended to include any Latin-American, but it is still used mainly to denote a Mexican. It has had, at different times, various rivals, e.g., pepper-belly (sometimes shortened to pepper), which embodies an obvious allusion to the Mexican cuisine, as do chili-eater and frijole-eater. When Italian laborers began to appear in California, in the middle 80s, they were at first called greasers like the Mexicans whom they appeared to resemble, but after a little while their superiority was recognized and they were elevated to the estate of lubricators.2 In the Colorado sugar-beet fields the Mexican laborers are spoken of by the euphemism of Spaniards; they are also called primes. In New Mexico they are often called natives. In the same State Americans are Angles and Indians are pueblos.3 The Marines who occupied Nicaragua in 1912 took to calling the natives gooks, one of their names for Filipinos, and it and goo-goo have survived, though both are regarded as very offensive. Goo-goo is also used to designate a Costa Rican, but a more common term is tica. In Brazil many Americans call the natives Brazzies,4 probably a borrowing from the English. The use of spiggoty and spick for any Latin American, but especially for a native of Panama, is discussed in AL4, p. 296, n. 1.