The vocabulary of the jazz addict is largely identical with that of the jazz performer. He himself is a hep-cat, alligator or rug-cutter. To him those who dislike swing music are tin-ears, and are said to be icky. A dance is a rat-race or cement-mixer; anything excellent is killer-diller, murder or Dracula; a girl is a chick, witch, drape, mouse, spook or bree; face powder is dazzle-dust; a shot of Coca-cola is a fizz; a blind date is a grab-bag; a hamburger is ground horse; a kiss is a honey-cooler; money is moula; a sandwich is a slab; to sit down is to swoon; to dance wildly is to get whacky; an aggressive girl is a vulture or wolverine; a fat girl is a five-by-five, and a person disliked is a specimen, herkle, prune, corpse, droop, fumb, gleep, cold cut, apple or sloop.2 When he encounters swing that really lifts him he says that he has been sent down to the very bricks, an experience comparable to suffering demoniacal possession or dying in the electric chair. This slang of the adolescent changes quickly, as is shown by the rapid fading out of to neck, to pet, to pitch woo, boy-friend and red-hot mama.1 During the middle 1940s there was a rage for abbreviations, e.g., natch (naturally) and def (definitely), but the Circle and Monogram, the trade journal of the publishers of Webster 1934, was reporting by March, 1947, that they were already “as passé as a yearling egg.”2
In view of the background of latter-day jive it is not surprising to find that some of its principal terms were originally of indecent significance. Jazz itself is one of them. Efforts have been made to derive it from the names of various Negro performers of years ago, e.g., Charles (Chas) Alexander or Washington, of Vicksburg, Miss.,3 a dancing slave named Jasper, alias Jass or Jazz,4 and a musician of Chicago named Jasbo (Jas) Brown,5 and certain etymologists have also sought to relate it to a Louisiana-French verb, jaser, meaning (varying with the authority) to speed up6 or to chatter and make fun,1 but the plain fact is that to jazz has long had the meaning in American folk-speech of to engage in sexual intercourse, and is so defined by many lexicographers, e.g., Godfrey Irwin,2 Allen Walker Read,3 Berrey and Van den Bark,4 Maurice H. Weseen5 and “Justinian.”6 According to Clay Smith, an old-time traveling performer and song-writer,7 the transfer of the accompanying noun to the orgiastic music it now denominates occurred in the bawdy honky-tonks of the Western mining-towns, c. 1890. “If the truth were known about the origin of the word,” he says, “it would never be mentioned in polite society.” Tamony says that it was introduced to San Francisco in 1913 by William (Spike) Slattery, sports editor of the Call, and propagated by a band-leader named Art Hickman.8 It reached Chicago by 19159 but was not heard of in New York until a year later.10 The first New York jazz-band appeared in February, 1917,11 and by August 20 of the same year one was billed at the Holborn Empire in London. Three months later there was one playing at the Casino de Paris.
The decorous DAE does not list jazz, but the NED Supplement, while avoiding the original meaning of the term, shows that the musical meaning was well understood in England by 1918, and that to jazz up in the sense of to liven or brighten, was in vogue by 1920. The DAE traces ragtime, the predecessor of jazz, to 1897, but it must be considerably older. The first blues were written by W. C. Handy, of Memphis, in 1911. Some of the other terms of jazz addicts come from sources almost as blushful as that of jazz itself, e.g., jitterbug, cat, jerk, hot, to blow one’s top, I ain’t coming, and juke.1 Dr. Lorenzo D. Turner, the chief American authority on African loan-words in Negro American, says that juke is a corruption of a Wolof term, dzug or dzog, meaning to lead a disorderly life, to misconduct oneself,2 and that juke-house, among the Negroes of the Southeast, means a house of ill repute.3 Cat, according to the NED, has been in use as a synonym for harlot since c. 1400. Boogie-woogie, according to Zora Neal Hurston, had the original significance, in the South, of secondary syphilis.4 Jitterbug, according to Tamony, is a fan “whose reaction to swing is always physical.”5 The rest scarcely need glosses.6
The American underworld is much less given than that of England to the banalities of what is called rhyming slang, e.g., twist and twirl for girl; bowl of chalk for talk; bang and biff for syphilis (syph); by the peck for neck, and fleas and ants for pants. Maurer, from whom I take these examples,1 says that such forms are vastly more prevalent on the Pacific Coast than in the East, but that the common belief that they are introduced there from Australia is erroneous. The Australians use them to some extent, but mainly only as loans from England. “There is a tendency,” says Maurer, “to clip one term and allow it to carry the meaning, even though it no longer rhymes, as twist, a girl, from twist and twirl.” Not a few such words and phrases were picked up in England by American soldiers during World War II, but they seem unlikely to survive.2 In 1943 many of them were used in a movie called “Mr. Lucky,” but they apparently puzzled and displeased the American fans.3 They are most used today by the lower varieties of underworld denizens, and seem to be more prevalent in prison than outside, though a few, e.g., twist, have some currency and have been adopted by the hep-cats. Campus slang, once a chief source of popular neologisms, has been swamped in recent years by those welling up from the underworld, and the grove of Academe borrows more from the barbarians than it offers them.4 What passed for collegiate speech formerly had a considerable vogue in the movies, but in 1943 a war correspondent at Hollywood was reporting that it had “suddenly and unaccountably gone into a slump.”1 I should add that he said in the same dispatch that the slang of the jitterbugs was also beginning to lose ground.2 This last may have been a bit premature, but there is every indication that jive is not long for this life.3
In the days of the Federal Writers’ Project in New York it planned a “Lexicon of Trade Jargon” that promised to be very useful, but when the project blew up the manuscript was still incomplete, and since then it has reposed, unpublished, in the Library of Congress.4 One must regret that it was never finished, for the argots of the trades contain many picturesque terms,1 and the orthodox dictionaries of slang give them only the most cursory notice. Inasmuch as an adequate account of them would fill a volume twice as large as the present one it will be impossible to do much better here, but we can at least glance at some characteristic specimens. The argot of railroad men may well come first, for it is extraordinarily extensive, has provided the common vocabulary with many familiar phrases, e.g., to jump the track and asleep at the switch, and in part descends from the much older argots of coaching and the sailing ships.
In its terms for various functionaries and objects it is largely derisory. A locomotive engineer is a hogger, hoghead, hog-jockey, hog-mauler,2 grunt or eagle-eye; a fireman is an ash-cat, ash-eater, blackie, diamond-cracker, bake-head, tallow-pot, fire-boy, bell-ringer, dust-raiser, soda-jerker, coal-heaver or smoke; a conductor is a big ox, big O, skipper, brains, boss, captain, drum, grabber (passenger service) or king (freight); a brakeman is a shack, hind-hook, club-winder or ground-hog (freight) or a thin-skin, baby-lifter or dude-wrangler (passenger); a section-hand is a donkey, gandy-dancer, jerry, snipe or terrier; the foreman of a section gang is a king snipe; a flagman is a bookkeeper; a switchman is a yard goose; a yardmaster is a ringmaster, dinger or bull goose; a station-master is an ornament; a trainmaster is a master mind; a master mechanic is a master maniac; a train dispatcher is a detainer or delayer; a car-repairer is a cherry-picker, tonk or car-knocker; an engine-wiper is a dishwasher; a round-house machinist is a chambermaid, nut-splitter, -buster or -cracker, or kettle-mender; a boiler-maker is an iron skull; a repairer of air-brakes is an air-monkey; a railroad policeman is an egg; a clerk is a paperweight or shiny pants; a Pullman porter is a bed-bug; an official is a brass collar or main pin; a new employee is a Casey; one who is unpopular is a scissorbill or scissor; and one who is solicitous for the company’s interest is a stockholder. A locomotive is a hog, pig, mill, calliope, smoker, jack or pot, or (if small) a coffee-pot, kettle, peanut-roaster or dinky; a caboose is a bouncer, shack, chariot, bedhouse, crib, cage, cracker-box, crumb-box, crummy, louse-cage, dog-house, glory-wagon, go-cart, monkey-wagon, palace, pavil
ion, shelter-house, buggy, hack, van, parlor, way-car, shanty, hearse, library, saloon, cook-shack, clown-wagon or zoo;1 a refrigerator-car is a reefer, reef or freezer; a tank-car is a can or oiler; a cattle-car is a cow-cage or -crate; a sleeping-car is a snoozer; a locomotive tender is a tank; passenger-cars are cushions, and a private car is a drone-cage.2 A few miscellaneous examples:
Asbestos, cobs, slack, real estate, or Pennsylvania. Coal.
Banjo, or scoop. A fireman’s shovel.
Battleship. A large locomotive or car.
Beehive. A yard office.
Bend the iron, or the rust, v. To throw a switch.
Big hook. A wrecking crane.
Bird-cage, or rubberneck-car. An observation-car.3
Bird-cage, bug torch, or shiner. A lantern.
Black snake. A train of coal-cars.
Bootlegger. A train which runs over more than one railroad.
Bowling-alley. A hand-fired, coal-burning locomotive.
Brain-plate. A trainman’s badge.
Brownie. A demerit.
Brownie-box. A superintendent’s car.
Bull-pen. The crew room at a terminal.
Bullfighter. An empty car.
Bump, v. To displace another man by right of seniority.
Butterfly. A note thrown or handed from a train.
Candy-butcher or news-butcher. A pedlar selling candy, tobacco, magazines, etc., on a passenger train.1
Caterpillar, or sailor, or tin lizard. A streamlined train.
Company jewelry. A trainman’s cap, badge and other insignia.
Consist. The make-up and type of cars in a train.2
Cornfield meet. A head-on collision.
Crate. A box-car.
Crow’s nest, cockloft or penthouse. The cupola of a caboose.
Deadhead. An employee or other passenger riding on a pass; also, an empty passenger car; also, a locomotive being hauled by another.
Deck. The floor of an engine cab; also, the roof of a freight-car.
Die game, v. To stall on a grade.
Dope. Official order; also, a lubricant.3
Drag. A slow freight.
Drunkard. A late Saturday night passenger train.
Eye. A signal, e.g., red-eye and green-eye.
Flip, v. To board a moving train.
Flat wheel. A lame man.
Fog, or putty. Steam.
Garden, or field. A freight-yard.
Gate. A switch.
Get the rocking chair, v. To be retired on pension.
Glory. A string of empty cars.
Gone fishing. Laid off.
Goose, v. To make an emergency stop.
Gut. An air-hose.
Harness. The uniform of a passenger conductor.
Highball. A go-ahead signal; also, a fast freight running on a schedule; as a verb, to speed.4
High liner. A fast passenger train.
Hog-law. The federal statute which forbids a train-crew to work for more than 16 consecutive hours.
In the ditch. Wrecked.
In the hole. On a sidetrack.
Jerk soup, or jerk a drink, v. To pick up water from a channel between the rails while a train is under way.1
Kitchen stove. The firebox of a locomotive.
Ladder. The main track in a yard.
Latch. A locomotive throttle.
Liner. A passenger train.
Main iron, main steel, main stem, or high iron. The main track.
Manifest, red ball, hot shot, or ball of fire. A fast freight.
Mountain pay. Overtime.
Niggerhead. The steam dome atop a locomotive boiler.
Pigpen. A roundhouse.
Ping-pong. Switching duty.
Pike. A railroad.
Possum-belly. The tool-box under a caboose.
Red-cap. A station porter.2
Ringtail. A hobo.
Roof-garden, or sacred ox. A helper locomotive.
Sky-rockets. Red-hot cinders from the smoke-stack.
Tea-kettle. An old and decrepit locomotive.
Telltale. Any warning device, but especially the rods which hang over the track on the approach to a bridge, to warn freight-train crews to duck.
Varnish, or plush run. A passenger train.
Whale-belly, or sow-belly. A steel coal-car.
Whiskers, or age. Seniority.
Wildcat. A locomotive pulling no cars.
Wind. Air-brakes.
X. An empty car.
Yard goat. A switching engine.
Pullman porters, cooks and waiters have an argot of their own, e.g., alarm-clock, a passenger who snores loudly; battleship, an old-fashioned Pullman with sixteen sections and no private rooms; to buck the bronco, to sit up all night because no berths are vacant; eye-drops, cinders; to go upstairs, to carry food from the diner to the day-coaches; nailer, a railroad detective; rubber-tired, said of a crack express-train; snake, a cheap tipper; tin-can, a buffet-car; and turtle, a dish-washer.1 Trolley crews, in the days of their glory, had their jargon, too, e.g., boat for a trolley-car, horse for a motor-man, poor-box for a fare-box, stick for a trolley-pole and Sunday for any day of light traffic,2 but it is fading out with their art and mystery. So is that of the telegraphers, and for the same reason,3 though some of it is preserved by radio operators. In the Golden Age of the craft its aristocrats were the newspaper telegraphers, who not only had to be fast and accurate at the Morse Code but also had to master the Phillips Code, which changed almost from day to day.4 The old-time operators all suffered from glass arm, a variety of writers’ cramp, but it was cured for the senders when someone invented the bug, a semi-automatic key which worked sideways instead of up and down, and for the receivers on the advent of the mill, i.e., the typewriter. An unskilled operator was a lid, ham, bum or plug. To send a message at high speed was to paste the receiving operator, who was said to be burnt up or to go under the table. A wire to a remote place was a monkey-wire. At the end of his shift or of the day’s or night’s work the sender sent 30.5 His ordinary symbol of personal greeting to a colleague was 73.6 The modern automatic sending machine is an iron horse, the receiver is a printer, and the girls who paste its tape messages on delivery forms are paperhangers. Messenger boys and linemen also have their jargons. To the former a delivery to a distant address is a breezer and they themselves are trotters, though they seldom go on foot. To the latter a pole is a stick, cross arms are toothpicks, an insulator is a bottle, digging tools are knives and forks, climbing spurs are hooks, a cant-hook is a log-wrench or mooley-cow, a safety-belt is a scared strap, a transformer is a pot, to fall from a pole is to burn the stick, and an inexperienced workman is a grunt.1
Many of these are also used by telephone and power linemen, but both of the latter have some terms of their own. To the telephone men insulation on a wire is bark, a pole dipped in creosote is a black jack or black diamond, a transformer is a kettle or stove, a service truck is a loop-wagon, a safety-belt is a crupper, a cross arm is a slat, a lineman is a stump-jumper or hiker or Joe Hooks, a foreman is a gaffer or brains, a power lineman is a hot monkey, the company is Maw Bell, to get an electric shock is to be bit or burned, and to be electrocuted is to be crossed up. A lineman’s helper or other workman who never leaves the ground is a goofer, gopher,2 groundhog, grunt, click or squeak. The cry of warning when anything drops from a pole is Headache!3 Two terms in use by all electricians, juice and live wire, long since entered the general vocabulary.
With the movement of communications toward radio and of transport toward gasoline there have appeared some new and pungent argots, e.g., those of the truckmen and taxi-drivers. Not a few terms of the former are borrowed from older crafts, e.g., bull o’ the woods, a company supervisor, from the lumbermen, and reefer, a refrigerator, and highballing, running at high speed, from the rail-road road men. Of the more original words and phrases of the truckmen I offer a few specimens:1
Balloon, or load of wind. A light, bulky cargo.
Baloney, or doughnut. A tir
e.2
Bareback, or bob-tail. A tractor without a trailer.
Barrelling, flying too low, floor-boarding, high-balling, on the bottom, or pouring it on. Running at high speed.
Boom-wagon. A truck loaded with explosives.
Boss her, or follow her around, v. To back a trailer into position.
Box, or tag-along. A trailer.
Bug juice, or push water. Gasoline.
Cackle-crate. A poultry truck.
Candy-wagon. A light truck.
Cinchers. Brakes.
Cold. Behind schedule.
Cop caller. Squeaking brakes.
Cowboy, Indian, rough-rider, or traffic-whipper. A reckless driver.
Crash-wagon. An ambulance.
Dock monkey. A loader.
Dog. A motor vehicle inspector.
Emergenson, or anchor. An emergency brake.
Eskimo. A driver who drives with open windows in Winter.
Fort, or tin-box. An armored car.
Gipsy. An independent truckman, usually with but one truck.3
Goose it, v. To feed gasoline in spurts.
Grounded, v. To have one’s license revoked.
Gunnysacked. Said of a badly used truck.
Hack-hand, juice jockey, spinner, or tooler. A driver.
Horse, or mule. A tractor.
Hot. Ahead of schedule.
Iron up. v. To put on chains.
American Language Supplement 2 Page 100