American Language Supplement 2

by H. L. Mencken

  3 The text of Liber Vagatorum, with Luther’s prefaces, is in the Weimarisches Jahrbuch für deutsche Sprache, Litteratur und Kunst for 1856, Vol. IV, pp. 65–101. This Jahrbuch, which lasted only a few years, was edited by Hoffmann von Fallersleben, the author of Deutschland über Alles. Hotten (1832–73) was an English bookseller and bibliographer who was in America from 1848 to 1856. In the latter year he set up as a publisher in London, and in 1859 issued his Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant and Vulgar Words, several times reprinted, with additions, during the years following. In 1866, when Moxon suppressed Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads in response to an uproar from Puritans, Hotten took it over. He was the first English publisher to publish Lowell, Artemus Ward, Charles Godfrey Leland, Bret Harte and Ambrose Bierce. He wrote biographies of Dickens and Thackeray, and also a History of Signboards, 1867.

  1 In England the monasteries were dissolved in 1539.

  2 Taschenbuch für Geschichte und Alterthum, before mentioned.

  3 Hotten suggests that this may be a corruption of Ger. predigen, to preach.

  1 New York, 1909, p. 60.

  1 The best edition is that of T. H. Jamieson in two vols.; Edinburgh, 1874. It contains a good account of Barclay, pp. xxv ff.

  2 London, 1899; Vol. III.

  1 The first English poor law was passed in 1601.

  2 Now used in the sense of a confidence man.

  3 Here is a use of homely in the American sense, to indicate lacking in beauty. In current English usage the word means simple, unpretending, and is not applied opprobriously. But it was good English in the American sense down to the Eighteenth Century, and was so used by Shakespeare in The Comedy of Errors, II, 1590.

  4 It seems to be likely that this was the original meaning of the word. In that sense the NED traces it to 1611, whereas in the sense of nonsensical words its goes only to 1674. Its origin is unknown. Ernest Weekley suggests in his Etymological Dictionary of Modern English; London, 1921, that it may have some connection with the Dutch pladder, meaning both a weak tipple and foolish talk, but this is only a guess.

  5 Dollar was used in England to designate the German thaler from the middle of the Sixteenth Century. Toward the end of that century it came also to designate the Spanish peso or piece-of-eight. It was adopted as the name of the unit of American currency by an act of the Continental Congress on July 6, 1785.

  1 This, conceivably, may have been the original form of cocktail. See Supplement I, pp. 256–60.

  2 Originally, a young rabbit. It began to be applied to dupes toward the end of the Sixteenth Century, and for many years thereafter swindling was called cony-catching.

  3 It is possible that the origin of crap, the American dice game, may be found here. Crap is always listed in dictionaries as craps – a curious pedantry, for it is called crap by the players, and appears in the singular in crap-shooter and to shoot crap. It is traced by the DAE to 1843. Crap in the sense of excrement, and often used in the United States as a derogatory term for foolish talk, is also always singular.

  4 Curmudgeon retained this narrow meaning until the Nineteenth Century. It now connotes churlishness rather than miserliness. Cf. Autobiography of a Curmudgeon, by Harold L. Ickes; New York, 1943.

  5 Filibuster, in the American sense of one fomenting insurrection, came in in 1850. It was given wide currency by William Walker’s expedition to Nicaragua in 1855. The offspring verb, signifying an attempt to delay the action of a legislative body, is traced by the DAE to 1853.

  1 Now gewgaws.

  2 Probably from the German römer, meaning the same. It had degenerated into rummer even before B. E.’s time.

  3 Asbestos. Salamander-stone, at a somewhat earlier period, was applied to a stone that, “once set on fire, can never be quenched.” (NED, 1583).

  4 P. T. Barnum’s Tom Thumb was Charles Sherwood Stratton, born at Bridgeport, Conn., in 1838. He died in 1883.

  5 “The merit of Captain Grose’s Dictionary,” said the preface, “has been long and universally acknowledged. But its circulation was confined almost exclusively to the lower orders of society: he was not aware, at the time of its compilation, that our young men of fashion would at no very distant period be as distinguished for the vulgarity of their jargon as the inhabitants of Newgate; and he therefore conceived it superfluous to incorporate with his work the few examples of fashionable slang that might occur to his observation.” The additions, as a matter of fact, were not numerous, but some of them have survived, e.g., bangup.

  1 Egan (1772–1849) is chiefly remembered (and collected) today because George and Robert Cruikshank illustrated his Life in London, 1821. In 1824 he began publication of a weekly, Pierce Egan’s Life in London and Sporting Guide, which later became Bell’s Life in London, and was merged, in 1859, in Sporting Life. Life in London was a great success in its day, and so was a series of pamphlets called Boxiana, or Sketches of Antient and Modern Pugilism, which he began in 1818 and continued until 1829. There are interesting notes on him in the London Times Literary Supplement, Aug. 7 and 21, 1943.

  1 In all probability this influence may have been exerted through A Collection of the Canting Words and Terms Both Ancient and Modern Used by Beggars, Gypsies, Cheats, House-Breakers, Shop-Lifters, Footpads, Highwaymen, &c. appended to Nathan Bailey’s Universal Etymological Dictionary; third edition; London, 1737, for Bailey also borrowed from B. E.

  2 For example, those of Abram cove, acteon, Adam’s ale, altitudes, artistippus, armor and autem, to go no further than the a’s.

  3 For example, those of Adam-tiler, ambidexter and anglers.

  1 In the Baltimore of my boyhood, c. 1890, a loose brick was called a she-brick. She-bricks have disappeared as the old brick sidewalks of the town have yielded to cement.

  1 B. E., 1698, lists greenhead, “a very raw novice, or unexperienc’d fellow.”

  2 The NED traces sandwich to 1762, but it was still rather slangy in 1785.

  3 Harrison (1534–1593) was a Londoner and an ardent antiquary. He was a clergyman and became canon of Windsor in 1586. His Description of England is an amusing, informing and altogether excellent piece of work. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from Holinshed.

  1 Cursetor or cursitor was a polite synonym for vagabond in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. The NED’s first example is taken from Harman’s title-page.

  2 i.e., loitering loafers and lazy blackguards.

  3 I have modernized the spelling of the definitions.

  4 Bouse and bowse were early forms of booze.

  1 This suggests Gipsy influence. Romany is the Gipsies’ name for themselves.

  2 Harman’s list was reprinted in full in The Oldest Rogues’ Dictionary, Encore, Sept., 1942, pp. 343–45.

  3 In W. J. Burke’s Literature of Slang there is listed but one such work antedating Harman’s Caveat, to wit, The Hye Way to the Spittell Hous, but it is certain that many such things have been lost.

  4 Studies in Philology (Chapel Hill, N.C.), Vol. XXXVIII, 1941, pp. 462–72.

  5 It is significant that Irwin had to go to England to find a publisher. There he got aid from Eric Partridge. His material was accumulated during “more than twenty years’ experience as a tramp on the railroads and roads of the United States, Canada, Mexico and Central America, and on tramp steamers in Central American waters.”

  1 The Big Con; Indianapolis, 1940.

  2 His plans for it are set forth in Studies in Linguistics, April, 1943.

  3 For example, in the survival of rhyming slang. An account of the argot of American criminals of the 1900 era is in The Lingo of the Good People, by David W. Maurer, American Speech, Feb., 1935, pp. 10–23. A great deal of it is now obsolete.

  4 The Argot of the Underworld, American Speech, Dec., 1931, pp. 99–118.

  5 Petty swindlers who follow carnivals, fairs, etc.

  1 Short-con workers operate on a modest scale, and are usually content with whatever money the victim has on him at the time he is rooked. They seldom employ the send
– that is, they seldom send him home for more.

  2 The Big Con, before cited, pp. 270–71.

  3 Private communication, April 7, 1940. The anonymous author of The Capone I Knew, True Detective, June, 1947, p. 80, says that syndicate, used by Al to describe his mob, was “picked up from the newspaper stories about him.

  1 I take all these from Maurer.

  2 The glossary in The Big Con is also in The Argot of Confidence Men, American Speech, April, 1940, pp. 113–23, and Confidence Games, by Carlton Brown, Life, Aug. 12, 1946, pp. 45–52.

  3 The Lingo of the Iug-Heavy, Writer’s Digest, Oct., 1931, pp. 27–29.

  4 I Wonder Who’s Driving Her Now, by William G. Shepherd, Journal of American Insurance, Feb., 1929, pp. 5–8 (reprinted in American Speech, Feb., 1930, pp. 236–37); Hot Shorts, by T. J. Courtney, Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 30, 1935, pp. 12–13, 72–74.

  1 Hijacker’s Argot, Chicago Tribune, Jan. 22, 1939.

  2 Yoking Means Just That, Baltimore Evening Sun, July 16, 1946, p. 32. Ordinarily, to mugg means to photograph, especially for the Rogues’ Gallery.

  3 The Argot of Forgery, American Speech, Dec., 1941, pp. 243–50.

  1 Says Maurer in American Speech, April, 1941, p. 154: “Modern thieves call a stolen watch a super (or super and slang if the chain accompanies it),… not realizing that the word is really souper, a pun on the older form, kettle.”

  2 In Along the Main Stem, True Detective, March, 1942, p. 73, a writer signing himself The Fly Kid suggested that okus (or hokus) may have issued from poke by way of hocus-pocus. Hocus-pocus itself has long been a headache to etymologists. The NED inclines to the theory that it came from the pseudo-Latin patter and assumed name of a juggler during the reign of King James I, but Weekley believes that it may have arisen as a blasphemous perversion of the sacramental blessing, hoc est corpus (filii). It has analogues in Norwegian, Swedish and German.

  3 I am indebted here to Mr. Everett DeBaun, of Philadelphia. He tells me that gun and cannon have nothing to do with artillery. The former is derived from the Yiddish ganov, a thief, and cannon is simply a more elegant form. During the Golden Age of the Dillingers the newspapers took to calling a racketeer’s girl a gun-moll, but this was an error. A pickpocket who specializes in robbing women is a moll-buzzer, whether male or female. Inasmuch as most women operators confine their work to their own sex, they are usually moll-buzzers. See The Language of the Underworld, by Ernest Booth, American Mercury, May, 1928, p. 78.

  4 In The Argot of the Underworld, by James P. Burke, American Mercury, Dec., 1930, pp. 454–58, catholic is given as another name for a pickpocket, but without any attempt at an etymology.

  5 I am indebted here to Mr. Victor T. Reno, of Los Angeles. See Slick Fingers, by Ralph L. Woods, Forum, Dec., 1939, pp. 273–77.

  6 The origin of this term has been much debated and is still unsettled. Etymologies relating it to Kid McCoy, the pugilist, and to Bill McCoy, an eminent rum-runner, are given in AL4, p. 580, n. 1. Both are improbable. The late Alfred E. Smith, appealed to for light, once derived it from the name of a Bowery oracle named McCoy, whose word on any subject was accepted as the low-down (Smith Gives the Origin of Phrase the Real McCoy, New York Times, Nov. 27, 1936), but Al actually knew no more about the matter than any other Harvard LL.D. DeBaun says that the phrase first got into circulation in 1915, just after the passage of the Harrison Anti-Narcotic Act, and he believes that it was derived from the name of a British firm which sold superior drugs, but Maurer tells me that it has been in use among safecrackers since c. 1900 at the latest to designate commercial nitroglycerine in contrast to homemade soup or stew cooked out of dynamite. He says that the older safecrackers believe that it comes from the name of an old wildcatter in the Pennsylvania oilfields who diverted nitroglycerine to them. Others derive the term from an Irish ballad, c. 1870, telling of a woman named McCoy who gave her husband a beating, thus proving to him that she was the real McCoy. Yet others say that it comes from the real McKaye, a Scottish phrase of similar meaning. Mr. G. Dundas Craig, of Berkeley, Calif., tells me that he heard the rale McKay “long before 1898.” Another correspondent says that the real MacKay goes back to the Jacobite troubles of 1715–45, when doubt arose as to who was the true chief of the clan. But Partridge says that it comes from the American the real McCoy and did not reach England until c. 1929.

  1 Herbert Asbury says in Gem of the Prairie; New York, 1940, p. 327, that this lovely euphemism was coined by Hymie Weiss, one of the four ranking dignitaries of Chicago gangdom, the others being Johnny Torrio, Al Capone and Dion O’Banion.

  2 Like big shot, this one was probably invented by some smart newspaper reporter and imposed upon the racket. Mr. Fred Hamann tells me that on the revival of bootlegging during World War II it became blitz-water, bang-water or ceiling-buster.

  3 Said H. K. Croessman in the American Mercury, June, 1926, pp. 241–42: “The first time I heard hijacker was from the lips of an Oklahoman. He explained it as coming from the command customary in hold-ups: ‘Stick ’em up high, Jack,’ or, more simply, ‘Up high, Jack,’ Jack being the common generic name for any male person of unknown or uncertain identity. Thus, the Oklahoman explained, both stick-up and hijack originate from the same command. The change from high to hi is a corruption typical of a tendency in America.”

  4 Terms prevailing during Prohibition among boozers, though not among bootleggers, e.g., homebrew, are listed in Wet Words in Kansas, by Vance Randolph, American Speech, June, 1929, pp. 385–89 See also Volstead English, by Achsah Hardin, the same, Dec., 1931, pp. 81–88.

  5 The first appearance of to scram in print seems to have been in Walter Winchell’s column, Your Broadway and Mine, Oct. 4, 1928. See Scram – a Swell Five-Letter Word, by V. Royce West, American Speech, Oct., 1937, pp. 195–202. Partridge says that it reached England in the movies by 1930. Its etymology remains mysterious. For speculations on the subject see Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, the West paper just mentioned, and notes by G. Kirchner in American Speech, April, 1938, pp. 152–53 and April, 1940, p. 219.

  6 In A Couple of Cops, Commonweal, Jan. 31, 1936, p. 373, Roger Shaw says that the celebrated Machine-Gun Kelly complained of the deadly efficiency of the G-men when he was captured at Memphis, Tenn., Sept. 26, 1933, and that “newspapers, fictioneers and the movies took it up.” It is from government-man.

  1 One who sings, i.e., confesses to the police.

  2 Apparently from Gatling-gun. But Booth, before cited, derives it from catting up, meaning to rob itinerant workers at pistol point. Those so engaged, he says, “were known as cat-up men. Soon cat was corrupted to gat.” This is confirmed by Godfrey Irwin in American Tramp and Underworld Slang, but it seems improbable.

  3 Says Peter Tamony in Origin of Words: Lam, San Francisco News Letter & Wasp, April 9, 1939, p. 5: “Its origin should be apparent to anyone who runs over several colloquial phrases for leave-taking, such as to beat it, to hit the trail.… The allusion in lam is to beat. Beat it is old English, meaning to leave. During the period of George Ade’s Fables in Slang cabaret society delighted in talking slang, and lam was current. Like many other terms, it went under in the flood of new usages of those days, but was preserved in criminal slang. A quarter of a century later it reappeared.” An article in the New York Herald Tribune in 1938 said that “one of the oldest police officers in New York” reported that he had heard on the lam “about thirty years ago.” To lam in the sense of to beat is traced by the NED to 1595.

  4 This phrase, so often used by virtuosi of muscling in, is neither new nor American. In A History of Our Own Times; London, 1879, Vol. II, p. 275, Justin McCarthy told of a threat sent by one Irish chieftain to another: “Pay me my tribute – or else.” I am indebted here to Mr. Alexander Kadison.

  5 In American Speech, Oct., 1936, p. 278, V. Royce West recorded the appearance of gangster in England, France, Germany and Holland. The DAE traces it in American use only to the same year, but it must be consid
erably older.

  6 Racket, in the current sense of an anti-social enterprise, appeared in A New and Comprehensive Vocabulary of the Flash Language; London, 1812. But racketeer is American.

  7 Public enemy, usually followed by a numeral, is said to have been coined by the Hon. Homer S. Cummings, LL.D., Attorney-General of the United States, 1933–39. The original Public Enemy No. 1 was John Dillinger, killed by F.B.I. men in Chicago, July 22, 1934.

  1 Private communication, April 7, 1940.

  2 A survey of all the male inmates of the State prisons of New York showed that 80.2% of them were of less than normal intelligence. My authority here is Dr. H. Curtis Wood, Jr. Dr. James Asa Shield, psychiatrist to the Virginia State Penitentiary at Richmond, reports that among 749 white prisoners examined there in 1935 only 21 showed a mental age of 14 years or over, and that among 1,043 colored prisoners there were but two.

  3 The Psychology of Prison Language, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Oct.-Dec., 1935, pp. 359–65.

  4 Table Talk, San Quentin Bulletin, Jan., 1931, p. 11.

  1 Traced to 1860 by the NED, and said by Partridge to be “the inevitable nickname of any male Murphy.” Murphy for a potato has been traced to c. 1810.

  2 Sawbones is in The Pickwick Papers, 1837.

  1 I am indebted here to Messrs. Clinton A. Sanders, Joseph W. Blackwell, Jr., Samuel Meyer and the editors of the San Quentin News. I have also made use of My San Quentin Years, by James B. Holohan, published serially in the Los Angeles Times, in 1936; Prison Slang, by Clinton T. Duffy; San Quentin, n. d.; Can Cant, by J. Louis Kuethe, Baltimore Evening Sun, Dec. 9, 1932 (republished as Prison Parlance, American Mercury, Feb., 1934, pp. 25–28); English Behind the Walls, by William H. Hine, Better Speech, Dec., 1939, pp. 19–20 (sent to me by Mr. Fred Hamann); Convicts’ Jargon, by George Milburn, American Speech, Aug., 1931, pp. 436–42; Prison Phraseology, by Bruce Airey; Montgomery (Ala.), 1943; A Prison Dictionary (Expurgated), by Hi Simons, American Speech, Oct., 1933, pp. 22–23; Underworld and Prison Slang, by Noel Ersine; Upland (Ind.), 1935; Prison Lingo, by Herbert Yenne, American Speech, March, 1927, pp. 280–82; More Crook Words, by Paul Robert Beath, American Speech, Dec., 1930, pp. 131–34; Hipped to the Tip, by Jack Schuyler, Current History, Nov. 7, 1940, pp. 21–22; An Analysis of Prison Jargon, by V. Erle Leichty, Papers of the Michigan Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters, Vol. XXX, 1945, pp. 589–600, and the glossaries in Almanac For New Yorkers, 1939, p. 125; Farewell, Mr. Gangster, by Herbert Corey; New York, 1936; The Professional Thief, edited by Edwin H. Sutherland; Chicago, 1937, and Crime as a Business, by J. C. R. MacDonald; Palo Alto (Calif.), 1939.