I am morally certain that probes would not be so important a part of the activities of our government if the headline writers had not discovered that word. People generally do not become excited about a thing called an investigation, an inquiry, a hearing, or whatever other name such an interrogatory affair might be called by. But a probe is an interesting thing. The newspapers, which seek what is interesting, play up the probe, and the prober spends his time thinking up new probes, so that he can get into the headlines.55
“The headline,” said the late E. P. Mitchell, for many years editor of the New York Sun, “is more influential than a hundred chairs of rhetoric in the shaping of future English56 speech. There is no livelier perception than in the newspaper offices of the incalculable havoc being wreaked upon the language by the absurd circumstance that only so many millimeters of type can go into so many millimeters’ width of column. Try it yourself and you will understand why the fraudulent use of so many compact but misused verbs, nouns and adjectives is being imposed on the coming generation. In its worst aspect, headline English is the yellow peril of the language.”57 “This,” says G. K. Chesterton, “is one of the evils produced by that passion for compression and compact information which possesses so many ingenious minds in America. Everybody can see how an entirely new system of grammar, syntax, and even language has been invented to fit the brevity of headlines. Such brevity, so far from being the soul of wit, is even the death of meaning; and certainly the death of logic.”58
The old American faculty for making picturesque compounds shows no sign of abating today. Many of them come in on the latitude of slang, e.g., road-louse, glad-hand, hop-head, rahrah-boy, coffin-nail (cigarette), hot-spot, bug-house, hang-out and pin-head, and never attain to polite usage, but others gradually make their way, e.g., chair-warmer, canned-music, sob-sister, bell-hop, comeback, white-wings and rabble-rouser, and yet others are taken into the language almost as soon as they appear, e.g., college-widow (1887), sky-scraper59 and rubber-neck (c. 1890),60 loan-shark (c. 1900), high-brow and low-brow (c. 1905),61 hot-dog (c. 1905),62 joy-ride (c. 1908), love-nest and jay-walker (c. 1920), and brain-trust (1932).63 Steam-roller, in the political sense, was first used by Oswald F. Schuette, then Washington correspondent of the Chicago Inter-Ocean, to describe the rough methods used to procure the nomination of W. H. Taft as the Republican presidential candidate in 1908. Spell-binder, which came in during the 80’s, is simply a derivative of an old English verb, to spellbind. Fat-cat, signifying a rich man willing to make a heavy contribution to a party campaign fund, appeared in 1920 or thereabout, and is still struggling for recognition. Many of the most popular of American compounds are terms of disparagement, e.g., bone-head, clock-watcher, hash-slinger, four-flusher, rough-neck (which goes back to David Crockett’s time, and was used by him in “Colonel Crockett in Texas,” 1836, but did not come into popularity until the beginning of the present century), leather-neck, gospel-shark, back-number, cheap-skate, cow-college, stand-patter, lounge-lizard, do-gooder, kill-joy, lame-duck and chin-music. Most of these linger below the salt, but now and then one of them edges its way into more or less decorous usage.64
The etymology and history of many common American nouns remain undetermined. Phoney, which is both a noun and an adjective, offers an example. Some of the earlier editions of Webster sought to relate it to funny, but in “Webster’s New International” (1934) it is simply put down as “slang,” without any attempt to guess at its origin. Again, its sources have been sought in telephone,65 but this seems very far-fetched. The most probable etymology derives it from Forney, the name of a manufacturer of cheap jewelry. He made a specialty of supplying brass rings, in barrel lots, to street peddlers, and such rings, among the fraternity, came to be known as Forney rings. The extension of the designation to all cheap jewelry and its modification to phoney followed. Today, anything not genuine is phoney in the common American speech, and a person suspected of false pretenses is a phoney. The first example of movie in the Supplement to the Oxford Dictionary is dated 1913, but the word was already six or seven years old by that time. Who invented it no one knows. In those days, as now, the magnates of the movie industry disliked the word, and sought to find some more dignified substitute for it. In 1912 the Essanay Company offered a prize of $25 for such a substitute, and it was won by Edgar Strakosch with photoplay. But though photoplay became the title of a very successful fan magazine, it never displaced movie.66 When the talking-pictures came in, in 1924, they were first called speakies, but talkies quickly displaced it.67 The early movie houses were usually called parlors, but in a little while theatres was substituted, and about 1920 the larger ones began to be designated cathedrals, or, by scoffers, mosques, synagogues or filling-stations.
There have been bitter etymological battles over a number of American nouns, some of them coming into good usage, e.g., ballyhoo, hobo, hokum, jazz, jitney, maverick, sundae and wobbly. The dictionaries try to connect ballyhoo with the name of Ballyholly, a village in County Cork, Ireland, and I did the same in my last edition, but no relationship has ever been demonstrated. George Milburn, who has spent much time in an investigation of circus words, tells me that old circus men say that it is a blend of ballet and whoop, but this also sounds somehow improbable. Another correspondent, Charles Wolverton, has it from an old-time carnival man, W. O. Taylor, that ballyhoo originated on the Midway of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, and is an imitation of the cry of the dervishes in the Oriental Village, to wit, b’Allah hoo, meaning “Through God it is.” “Webster’s New International Dictionary” (1934) and Ernest Weekley in his “Etymological Dictionary of Modern English” (1921) say that the origin of hobo is unknown, and the Oxford Dictionary attempts no etymology. The Oxford’s first example of its use is from an article by Josiah Flynt in the Contemporary Review for August, 1891. In that article Flynt simply said that “the tramp’s name for himself and his fellows is hobo.” The word was hardly new at that time; a verb, to hobo, followed soon afterward. In American Speech for June, 1929, Captain H. P. Wise, apparently an Army officer, suggested that it might be from an identical Japanese word, the plural of ho (side), and meaning, in the plural, all sides or everywhere. This suggestion is given some color by the fact that the term seems to have originated on the Pacific Coast, where there are many Japanese. If it is sound, then hobo is the one and only word that the Japanese immigrants have given to the American language. “Webster’s New International” refers hokum to hocus, but without saying flatly that they are related, and the Oxford Supplement calls it “a blending of hocus-pocus and bunkum.” but with a saving question-mark. Dr. Frank H. Vizetelly reports that “theorizing devotees in etymology” have sought to derive it from the Hebrew word chakam (a wise man), the Arabic and Hindustani hakim (of the same meaning), and the American Indian words hoquiam, hokium and hoquium, all of them proper names.68 The late Walter J. Kingsley, an ardent amateur lexicographer, favored the theory that hokum originated in England. “Once upon a time,” he said, “a retired Cockney sea-captain managed the Middlesex Music-Hall in London, and whenever a comedian lacked a consecutive routine or continuity, as they say in the movies, he informed him that there was a hole in his act, and that he should plug it up with ‘a bit of oakum,’ which he pronounced hoakum.”69 But Kingsley’s etymologies were always far more ingenious than convincing. Dr. Vizetelly says that hokum came in about 1920. All the dictionaries report correctly that maverick comes from the name of Samuel A. Maverick (?–1870), a Texan who neglected to brand his calves, and so invited their bootleg branding by his neighbors. But when the word is discussed in the newspapers, which is not infrequently, it is sometimes stated that the thing ran the other way, and that Maverick himself did the stealthy branding. In November, 1889, one of his descendants, George M. Maverick of San Antonio, set the matter right in a letter to the St. Louis Republic, and some years later that letter, along with other documents in point, was reprinted as a pamphlet.70 But old libels die hard. “Webster’s New Inte
rnational” says that jitney may “possibly” come from the French jeton (a counter, or metal disk), from the verb jeter (to throw). The Oxford Supplement (1933) says that its origin is unknown, but quotes a statement in the Nation for Feb. 4, 1915, that the word “is the Jewish slang term for a nickel,” and another from the same journal for March 18, 1915, that it means “the smallest coin in circulation in Russia.” But nothing resembling jitney is to be found in any Yiddish word-book that I have access to, and I recall hearing it used to designate a five-cent piece long before there was any considerable immigration of Eastern Jews. It began to be used to designate a cheap automobile bus in 1914. “Webster’s New International” says that jazz is a Creole word, and probably of African origin, but goes no further. The Oxford says that its origin is unknown, but that it is “generally said to be Negro.” Amateur etymologists have made almost countless efforts to run it down, or, more accurately, to guess at its history. The aforesaid Kingsley tried to connect it with Jasper, the name of a dancing slave on a plantation near New Orleans, c. 1825.71 Vincent Lopez sought its origin in Chaz, the stable-name of Charles Washington, an eminent ragtime drummer of Vicksburg, Miss., c. 1895.72 Other searchers produced even more improbable etymologies.73 The effort to trace the word to Africa has failed, though it has been established that it was used by the Negroes in the Mississippi river towns long before it came into general use. But the meaning they attached to it was that of sexual intercourse. Its extension to the kind of music it now designates was perhaps not unnatural, but when, where and by whom that extension was made is not yet known.74 Sundae remains almost as mysterious. All the dictionaries connect it with Sunday, but none of them ventures to trace the steps. The first use of the word cited by the Oxford Supplement was in the New York Evening Post for May 21, 1904, and it was there spelled sundi. A popular etymology runs thus: In 1902 or thereabout there was a sudden craze for en forcing the Blue Laws in Virginia (or some other Southern State), and selling ice-cream soda on Sunday became hazardous. An ingenious druggist, seeking to baffle the police, decided to give the beverage a new appearance and a new name, and so added a few berries to it and called it a sundae, in occult reference to the day.75 I offer this for what it is worth, which is probably not much. The origin of wobbly is thus given by Mortimer Downing, a member of the I.W.W. in its heyday:
In Vancouver, in 1911, we had a number of Chinese members, and one restaurant keeper would trust any member for meals. He could not pronounce the letter w, but called it wobble, and would ask: “You I. Wobble Wobble?” and when the card was shown credit was unlimited. Thereafter the laughing term among us was I. Wobbly Wobbly.76
“Webster’s New International” gives this etymology, but without formally accepting it. To me it seems unlikely. Perhaps the truth about the origin of wobbly, and with it the truth about the origins of ballyhoo, hobo, hokum, jazz, jitney and sundae, will be unearthed by the learned brethren now at work upon the “Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles.” Maybe they will also solve some other vexing problems of American lexicography. For example, who was the first to use graft in its political sense, who was the first to make nouns of the adjectives wet and dry, and who was the first to make a noun of the verb release, signifying something to be published or otherwise made available on a given date? The latter is in wide use in movie, radio and newspaper circles, and has also spread afield. The history of baseball terms also deserves to be investigated, for many of them have entered the common speech of the country, e.g., fan, rooter, bleachers, circus-catch, home-run, homer, pinch-hitter, pennant-winner, batting-average, double-header, grandstand-play, charley-horse, gate-money, bush-leaguer or minor-leaguer, and three-strikes-and-out, not to mention the verbs, to strike out, to bunt, to knock out of the box, to put it (or one) across (or over), to root, to be shut out and to play ball, and the adjectival phrases, on the bench and on to his curves. There are, too, the nouns borrowed from poker, e.g., kitty, cold-deck, full-house, jack-pot, four-flusher, ace-high, pot, show-down, penny-ante, divvy and three-of-a-kind, along with the verbs and verb-phrases, to call (a bluff), to ante up, to stand pat, to pony up, to hold out, to cash in, to chip in, to see (a bet, or any other challenge), and it’s up to you.
3. VERBS
The common verbs of vulgar American will be examined at length in Chapter IX, Section 2. On more decorous levels of speech they are notable chiefly for the facility with which new ones are made. Consider, for example, the process of back-formation. In Chapter III, Section 2, I have already described the appearance of such forms as to locate and to legislate in the earliest days of differentiation; in our own time many more have gradually attained to something resembling respectability, e.g., to auto, to jell, to phone, to taxi, to commute, to typewrite, to electrocute,77 and to tiptoe (for to walk tiptoe). Others are still on probation, e.g., to reminisce, to insurge, to innovate, to vamp, to razz (from raspberry), to enthuse, to combust,78 to divvy, to reune, to resolute, to housekeep, to peeve, to orate, to bach (i.e., to live in bachelor quarters), and to emote;79 and yet others remain on the level of conscious humor, e.g., to plumb (from plumber), to jan (from janitor), to barb (from barber), to chauf (from chauffeur), to crise (from crisis), to gondole (from gondola), to elocute, to burgle, to ush, to perc (to make coffee in a percolator), to sculp, to butch, to buttle and to boheme. “There is a much greater percentage of humorous shortenings among verbs,” says Miss Wittman, “than among other parts of speech. Especially is this true of verbs shortened from nouns and adjectives by subtracting what looks like a derivative suffix, e.g., -er, -or, -ing, -ent from nouns, or y from adjectives. Many clipped verbs have noun parallels, while some are simply clipped nouns used as verbs.”80 A great many new verbs are also made in the United States by other devices. Some of them are nouns unchanged, e.g., to author, to service, to auto, to demagogue, to wassermann, to interview81 and to debut; others are formed by adding -ize to nouns or adjectives, e.g., to simonize, to slenderize, to winterize, to vacationize, to hospitalize and to picturize; yet others by adding the old English suffix -en to nouns, adjectives and even other verbs, e.g., to mistaken, to thinnen, to safen and to loaden.82 Those of the last-named class, of course, belong mainly to the vulgar speech, but examples of the other classes are to be found on higher levels. Two days after the first regulations of the Food Administration were issued, in 1917, to hooverize appeared spontaneously in scores of newspapers, and it retains sufficient repute to be in “Webster’s New International Dictionary” (1934). To bryanize, to fletcherize and to oslerize came in just as promptly, the first in 1896, the second in 1904 or thereabout, and the third in 1905, following Dr. William Osier’s famous address at Baltimore.83 I reach into my collection at random and draw forth such monstrosities as to backwardize, to fordize, to belgiumize, to respectablize, to scenarioize, to moronize, to customize, to featurize, to expertize, to powerize, to sanitize, to manhattanize and to cohanize; I suppose I could dredge up at least a hundred more. Some of these, of course, are only nonce-words, but certainly not all. To expertize, apparently suggested by the French noun expertise, meaning a survey or valuation by experts, is in universal use among American art and antique dealers, but it does not appear to prevail in England (though the French noun does), and the Oxford Dictionary’s only example of it is taken from Harper’s Magazine for February, 1889. To respectablize I find in a book review in the Portland Oregonian: “The Modern Library has respectablized Casanova.” To backwardize comes from the Farm Journal, a very sedate periodical, for March, 1926; I have since encountered it frequently in Variety. To slenderize is used by nearly all the vendors of reducing-salts and other such quackeries. As for to sanitize, it was described by the Associated Press, on July 6, 1934, as the invention of Dr. Leon Henderson, one of the economic advisers to the NRA, and its meaning was given as “to put sanity and sanitation in [to] business.”84 The only prefix that seems to be commonly used for making verbs is de-, which has produced to debunk, to delouse, to dewax, to dejelly, to deba
mboozle and various other forms.
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