American Language Supplement 2

by H. L. Mencken

  2 Zoot-suit was especially short-lived. The garment was worn in the East mainly by Negroes and in the West by Mexicans. Its history is set forth in Zoot Lore, New Yorker, June 19, 1943. See also American Notes & Queries, July, 1943, p. 54; Negro Digest, Aug., 1945, p. 64, and What’s in a Zoot?, by David Wray, True Detective, March, 1943, p. 99.

  3 Words From Names, by Jerome C. Hixson, Words, Nov., 1934, p. 10; Where is Jazz Leading America?, by Vincent Lopez, Étude, July, 1924.

  4 Jazzbo, Washed Up, and Gravy, by Walter J. Kingsley, New York World, Oct. 25, 1925.

  5 Jazz Jargon, by James D. Hart, American Speech, April, 1932, p.245.

  6 Jazz, by Peter Tamony, San Francisco News Letter & Wasp, March 17, 1938, and Hart, just cited. See also Jazz, by Robert Goffin, before cited, pp. 62–64.

  1 Origin of Jazz, Negro Digest, April, 1947, p. 53.

  2 American Tramp and Underworld Slang; before cited, p. 109.

  3 Lexical Evidence From Folk Epigraphy in Western North America; Paris, 1935, p. 62.

  4 p. 342.

  5 p. 22.

  6 America Sexualis; Chicago, 1939.

  7 Where is Jazz Leading America?, Étude, Sept., 1924, p. 595.

  8 Jazz, by Tamony, before cited. Slattery, according to Tamony, borrowed it from the vocabulary of crap-shooters and used it “as a synonym for ginger and pep,” but it was soon used to designate Hickman’s music, much to his disgust.

  9 I am indebted here to Mr. J. E. Keith, of Ann Arbor, Mich. He says that it was originally applied derisively to the music of a colored band from New Orleans, playing at a night-spot called Lamb’s Cafe, and that it was spread maliciously by union musicians who resented this intrusion. But the Chicago antinomians, knowing the original meaning of “one of the most commonplace of American obscenities,” flocked with high expectations to hear the music. Soon there were many imitators.

  10 Variety, Oct. 27, 1916: “Chicago has added another innovation to its list of discoveries in the so-called jazz-bands. The jazz-band is composed of three or four instruments and seldom plays regulated music. The College Inn and practically all the other high-class places of entertainment have a jazz-band featured.”

  11 Slonimsky, before cited.

  1 The obscene significance of many words commonly found in blues texts, e.g., jelly-roll, short’nin-bread and easy rider was noted by Guy B. Johnson in Double Meaning in the Popular Negro Blues, Journal of Abnormal & Social Psychology, April-June, 1927, pp. 12–20.

  2 West African Survivals in the Vocabulary of Gullah, a paper read at the Dec., 1938, meeting of the American Dialect Society in New York. See Dzug, Dzog, Dzuga, Jook, Juke, by Will McGuire, Time, Jan. 29, 1940, p. 8.

  3 In Arnold vs. State, 1939, Justice Glenn Terrell, of the Florida Supreme Court, decided that jukes were “not retreats which moralists dared to frequent, but rather the arch incubators of vice, immorality and low impulses.” I am indebted here to Mr. J. Kenneth Ballinger, of the Tallahassee bar, and to Mr. Arthur T. Young of New York. In Dec., 1945, the grand jury of Tift county, Georgia, brought in a presentment charging that “the roadside houses generally referred to as jouk-joints have become a menace to society and the welfare of the people.” I am indebted for this to Mr. Lester Hargrett, of Washington.

  4 Story in Harlem Slang, American Mercury, July, 1942, p. 84.

  5 Jitterbug, San Francisco News Letter & Wasp, March 3, 1939. He says that it came into currency “late in 1935.” How its meaning was misunderstood in England is told in Supplement I, p. 509.

  6 “The association of marihuana with hot jazz,” says Time, July 19, 1943, p. 56, “is no accident. The drug’s power to slow the sense of time gives an improvisor the illusion that he has all the time in the world to conceive his next phrases.… Among hot jazz players there are few (except the confirmed lushes) who do not occasionally smoke.” “Most addicts,” adds Maurer in Marihuana Addicts and Their Lingo, American Mercury, Nov., 1946, p. 573, “want swing music while they are on a jag.… [Certain popular songs] reflect, in a very thinly disguised manner, the close relation of drug-aroused sexual desire to swing music.”

  1 “Australian” Rhyming Argot in the American Underworld (with Sidney J. Baker), American Speech, Oct., 1944, pp. 183–95; Rhyming Underworld Slang, American Mercury, Oct., 1946, pp. 473–79.

  2 A Dictionary of Rhyming Slang, listing about 500 terms, was published in London in 1941, apparently for the instruction of Americans.

  3 Some of those more or less in use in American prisons are in Underworld Slang, by Convict 12627, Jackson, Tenn., 1936. See also English Underworld Slang, Variety, April 8, 1931, reprinted in American Speech, June, 1931, pp. 391–93; Rhyming Slang, by Alan Tomkins, London Sunday Dispatch, Feb. 16, 1941; Adventures in Rhyming Slang, by Alan Dent, Strand Magazine, April, 1943, pp. 86–88; and Some Notes on Rhyming Argot, by Sir St. Vincent Troubridge, American Speech, Feb., 1946, pp. 45–47.

  4 I point, as examples, to to get in the groove, icky, jailbait (an adolescent girl, i.e., one whom it would be a penal offense to seduce), to blow one’s top, hep-cat, slick chick, skin-beater (a drummer) and pad (an apartment) in College Slang, by Dorothy M. Schullian, School & Society, Sept. 4, 1943, pp. 169–70; and Jive and Slang of Students in Negro Colleges, by Marcus H. Boulware; Hampton (Va.), 1947. In Johns Hopkins Jargon, American Speech, June, 1932, pp. 327–38, J. Louis Kuethe reported that “such expressions as big shot, hot spot, to muscle in, to pay off and to scram” had already “made the journey from the rackets to the classrooms,” and in Agricultural College Slang in South Dakota, American Speech, Oct., 1936, pp. 279–80, Hugh Sebastian reported several jazz-band terms as prevailing there.

  1 Hollywood, by Robbin Coons, in various papers of Oct. 16.

  2 Many reports on the campus vocabulary, new and old, are listed by Burke, pp. 130–35. Others are noted in AL4, p. 569. Among yet others that I have encountered are Current College Slang (University of Virginia), by Gilmore Spencer, Virginia Magazine, Oct., 1926, pp. 16–17; Keeping Up With Joe Gish (Princeton), Princeton Alumni Weekly, May 24, 1929; Handed-Down Campus Expressions, by K. L. Daughrity, American Speech, Dec., 1939, pp. 129–30; Current Undergraduate Slang, by H. H. Rightor, Princeton Alumni Weekly, May 22, 1931, p. 798; Short Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, Cant (University of Virginia), by John Wyllie, University of Virginia Alumni News, Jan., 1936, pp. 80–81; College Slang (University of Denver), Clarionette, March 18, 1937; Cadet Slang at the Citadel (Charleston, S.C.), by R. I. McDavid, Jr., South Atlantic Bulletin, Dec., 1937, pp. 3–4; A Citadel Glossary, by the same, American Speech, Feb., 1939, pp. 23–32; A Dictionary of Exeter Slang, by A. Fisher and Harvey Williams, Phillips Exeter Bulletin, April, 1938, pp. 15–20; Slanguage, Lobo (University of New Mexico), Oct. 13, 1937; Latest Lingo – Campus, by Joyce Thresher, Mademoiselle, Aug., 1943, pp. 62–63; Odd Colloquialisms (University of Nebraska), by M. C. McPhee, American Speech, Oct., 1940, pp. 334–35; Missouri University Colloquialisms, by Lelah Allison, the same, Feb., 1941, p. 75; Whitman College Slang, by William White, the same, April, 1943, pp. 153–55; American Schoolboy Slang, by F. V. L., Jr., American Notes & Queries, Jan., 1945, pp. 151–52; Campus Slang at Minnesota, by Nancy Calkin and William Randel, American Speech, Oct., 1945, pp. 233–34; An Aggie Vocabulary of Slang (Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas), by Fred Eikel, Jr., the same, Feb., 1946, pp. 29–36; Chapel Hill Chaff (University of North Carolina), by Louis Graves, Chapel Hill Weekly, April 4, 1937, p. 1. The best recent work on campus slang in England is Public School Slang, by Morris Marples; London, 1940. The German authority is Deutsche Studentensprache, by F. Klug; Strassburg, 1895 For Scandinavia there is Skolpojks ock Studentslang, by R. Berg, Svenska Låndmalen, No. 8, 1900.

  3 I am indebted for help here to Messrs. Fred Hamann, Thayer Cummings, William H. Mittler and Tom Bowman.

  4 For a while it seemed to be lost altogether, and not until after a long search did I find it in the Library, and borrow it through the courtesy of Dr. Luther H. Evans, then chief assistant librar
ian and since 1945 librarian. In this search I was given friendly aid by Mr. and Mrs. Harold Strauss and Messrs. Frederick Clayton, Walter H. Duncan can, Henry G. Alsberg, R. I. Garton and Wilmer R. Leech.

  1 “The American skilled craftsman,” said Ernest A. Dewey in Labor Today, Sept., 1941, p. 19, “speaks two languages – his native tongue and the language of his trade. Sometimes humorous, always odd to the uninitiated ear, are the strange terms, titles and phrases he applies to the tools, processes and machinery he uses in his work. Over a period of years these technical and derisive terms have developed into a craft language as distinctive to his trade as the skill in his practised hands.”

  2 From hog, one of the names for a locomotive.

  1 On the Pennsylvania Railroad a caboose is known officially as a cabin-car.

  2 I take most of the above and those following from A Glossary of Railroad Terms, by W. F. Cottrell and H. C. Montgomery, American Speech, Oct., 1943, pp. 161–70, but have also borrowed from Lingo of the Rails, by Freeman H. Hubbard, Railroad Magazine, April, 1940, pp. 32–55; Railroad Avenue, by the same; New York, 1945; Highball, by Lucius Beebe; New York, 1945; Glossary of Railroad Slang, Photography, Jan., 1946, p. 149; The Railroader; by W. F. Cottrell; Palo Alto (Calif.), 1940, pp. 118–39; The Engineer Explains It, by Frank Shippy, Saturday Evening Post, April 15, 1939, p. 26; Lingo of the Line, Tracks, June, 1945, pp. 28–31; Railroad Stuff, by Stephen J. Lynch, Writer’s Digest, April, 1942, pp. 30–32; Railroaders Have a Word For It, by Doris McFerran, American Mercury, June, 1942, pp. 739–42, and The Rails Have a Word For It, by Lyman Anson and Clifford Funkhouser, Saturday Evening Post, June 13, 1942, p. 27. Earlier sources are listed in AL4, p. 583, n. 1, and Burke, p. 110. I am also indebted to Messrs. Paul F. Laning, Phil Hamilton, James F. Rabbitt, Phil Stong, Fred Hamann, J. H. Fountain and Henry B. Brainerd.

  3 A Glossary of Pullman Service Terms, Pullman News, Sept., 1922, p. 137.

  1 See News Butcher, Railroad Magazine, June, 1940, pp. 97–99. Butcher in this sense is traced by the DAE to c. 1889, but is undoubtedly older.

  2 When table d’hôte meals appeared on diners at the beginning of World War I consist was borrowed to designate the list of dishes in a given meal.

  3 Dope appears in virtually all American craft argots as a designation for a liquid of unknown composition.

  4 Cottrell and Montgomery, before cited, say that it comes from the name of the first train signals, “which were in the form of painted metal globes hoisted to the cross-arm of a tall pole.” To this day the green, or go-ahead signal is the highest. See Highball, to Speed, by I. Willis Russell, American Speech. Feb., 1944, pp. 33–36.

  1 Origin of Jerkwater, Engineman’s Magazine, Sept., 1945, pp. 148–49: “In June, 1870, the New York Central made, at Montrose, N. Y., the first installation that permitted locomotives to pick up water on the fly. The term jerkwater came into the language to designate localities whose importance consisted almost solely of the water pans between the tracks there.” I am indebted here to Miss Esther Johnstone, of Richland, Wash.

  2 Black Metropolis, by St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, quoted in Negro Digest, Jan., 1946, p. 80: “Tradition has it that on Labor Day, 1890, a Negro porter at the Grand Central Station, New York, tied a bit of red flannel around his black uniform cap so that he could be more easily identified in the crowd. As a consequence he ‘cleaned up,’ and set a style which became the emblem of America’s red-caps.”

  1 I take these from the Lexicon of Trade Jargon, before cited.

  2 These come from the same Lexicon of Trade Jargon. The trolley-car gave us to slip one’s trolley.

  3 Said R. E. L. Russell in Twilight Falling On Men of Morse, Baltimore Sunday Sun, Aug. 22, 1943: “Little new blood is coming into the trade, for it has long been slowly dying.” I am indebted to Mr. Russell, an old newspaper colleague and a famous telegrapher in his day, for help with what follows.

  4 It was launched by Walter P. Phillips, of the Associated Press, in 1876. Every word or phrase in daily newspaper use was abbreviated, e.g., gb, Great Britain; ik, instantly killed; td, Treasury Department; ac, and company; ancm, announcement; elcud, electrocuted; fapid, filed a petition in bankruptcy; hur, House of Representatives; pips, Philippines; twm, tomorrow morning, and scotus, Supreme Court of the United States. In the 1925 edition of the Phillips Code there were 2500 such abbreviations, and a new one was added whenever a new personality or idea began to appear in the news. Mr. Carl A. Nelson, publisher of the Telegraph & Telephone Age, tells me that at the start the operators took down the code words as received, and newspaper editors had to write in their meaning, but that after the typewriter came in operators did the expanding. The code has now been adapted for use with the teletype. See Phillips Code Today, Telegraph & Telephone Age, April, 1939.

  5 Its origin is discussed in American Notes & Queries, July, 1941, p. 58, and Jan., 1942, p. 156; in the Editor & Publisher, May 4, 1940, p. 36, and in the Chicago Tribune, Jan. 13, 1940, p. 10, Jan. 15, p. 10, and Jan. 16, p. 10.

  6 73: Origin of the Symbol, Chicago Tribune, May 3, 1941, p. 12. See also Lingo of the Telegraph Operators, by Minnie Swan Mitchell, American Speech, April, 1937, pp. 154–55, and Some Telegraphers’ Terms, by Hervey Brackbill, the same, April, 1929, pp. 287–90.

  1 Lineman’s English, by Charles P. Loomis, American Speech, Sept., 1926, pp. 659–60, and The Lingo of Railroad Linemen, by D. V. Snapp, the same, Feb., 1938, pp. 70–71.

  2 Go f’r this or go f’r that.

  3 These come from The Vernacular of the Lineman, by Don Wolverton, Southern Telephone News, June, 1930, pp. 13–14; Telephone Shop Talk, by Edna L. Waldo, Writer’s Digest, May, 1927, p. 406–09; Telephone Workers’ Jargon, by Jean Dickinson, American Speech, April, 1941, p. 156, and Lexicon of Trade Jargon. I am also indebted to Messrs. Edwin R. Austin, Fred Hamann, Edward L. Bernays and J. Earle Miller.

  1 Most of these come from Truck Drivers Lingo, Commercial Car Journal, March, 1938, pp. 18–19. Additions are from the Lexicon of Trade Jargon, and from Taxi-cab Language, Christian Science Monitor, May 27, 1940, p. 14; Truck Drivers Have a Word For It, by Doris McFerran, American Mercury, April, 1941, pp. 459–62; Knights of the Line, by James H. Street, New York World-Telegram, April 8, 9 and 10, 1937, and Truck Driver Lingo, by Bernard H. Porter, American Speech, April, 1942, pp. 102–05. I am also indebted to Mr. Robert J. Icks, of Stevens Point, Wis.

  2 An undersized tire is a bicycle tire or rubber band.

  3 American Notes & Queries, Sept., 1944, p. 85. Also, an out-of-town truck, with no local terminal.

  4 American Notes & Queries, Feb., 1945, p. 166.

  1 Usually addressed as Jennie or Toots.

  2 The drivers of moving vans use some of these terms, but have many others of their own, e.g., bagger, a flight of stairs (three-bagger: three flights); chowder, small miscellaneous articles; climber, a house without an elevator; doll’s house, a penthouse; fiddle, a grand piano; heel, the heavier end of a large piece of furniture; lap, a round trip from van to apartment; mountain-climber, a movingman; mouse-trap, a house or apartment with narrow doors; sweetheart or honey, an object so large that it must be taken through a window with block and tackle; Tammany Hall, a poorly furnished home, and washboard, a small piano. I take these from the Lexicon of Trade Jargon; Moving Words, New York Evening Journal, Sept. 29, 1936, and Farmer’s Market, by Fred Beck, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 5, 1946.

  3 I am indebted here to the Lexicon of Trade Jargon and to A Glossary of Taxicab Words and Phrases, by Paul Gould, New Yorker, Nov. 3, 1928, p. 94; The Slang of Taxi-cab Drivers, by Frank J. Wilstach, New York Times, Nov. 11, 1928, Sect. 5, p. 21, and The Taxi Talk, by George Milburn, in Folk Say, 1929, edited by B. A. Botkin. For the last I owe thanks to Mr. L. J. Carrel, of the University of Oklahoma Press. The argot of English taxi-drivers and busmen is listed in Slang, by A. N. Steele, London Daily Herald, Aug. 5, 1936, and This is BUSic, London Evening News, April 19, 1944. Some specimens: attic, a bus deck; ground floor, inside; jockey, a
driver; the bunk, the head office; finger, an official; mush, money; rabbit, a passenger; set, an accident, and tub, tank or wagon, a bus.

  1 Nearly all of it in English before 1939 is listed in Burke, pp. 105–08. Works overlooked by Burke or published since include A Glossary of Sea Terms, by Gershom Bradford; New York, 1942; Sea Terms Come Ashore, by George Davis Chase, Maine Bulletin, Feb. 20, 1942; Perry Scope’s Seagoing Dictionary, by Harley F. Wight; Brooklyn (N.Y.), 1933; Argot of the Sea, by Orlo Misfeldt, American Speech, Dec., 1940, pp. 450–51; Sea and Navy Story Writer’s Guide, by H. F. Wright; San Diego (Calif.), 1936; Square-Rigger Relics in American Speech, by Nathaniel S. Olds, Atlantic Monthly, Sept., 1932, pp. 383–84; Sea Lingo Passing on Modern Liners, New York Times, Jan. 31, 1932, Sect. II, p. 8; Seamen’s Lingo, by Arthur Richter, New York Times, Aug. 29, 1943; On the Lingo of the Sea, Baltimore Evening Sun (editorial page), Sept. 1, 1943; Sticktown Nocturne, by H. D. Darrach, Jr., Baltimore Sun Magazine, Aug. 12, 1945, p. 1; Nautical Lingo, by H. Phipps Hemming, Newcastle-on-Tyne Weekly Chronicle, May 25, 1940; English Sea-terms in Words and Idioms, by Logan Pearsall Smith; London, 1925, pp. 1–27; On the Sun Deck, by Robert Wilder, New York Sun, April 10, 1937, p. 24; The Yankee Whaler, by C. W. Ashley; Boston, 1926, pp. 123–46; Charley Noble, Ships, June, 1943, p. 18; Soogie, Soujge, by M. S. Beeler, American Speech, April, 1944, pp. 151–52, and Vocabulary for Lakes, Deep Sea and Inland Waters, by Otis Ferguson, the same, April, 1944, pp. 103–111.

  2 Many more are listed in Sea Language Comes Ashore, by Joanna Carver Colcord; New York, 1945.

  3 The calls of the leadsmen on the Mississippi of its palmy days were in feet up to nine feet and in fathoms after that. Mark twain was two fathoms, or 12 feet. Half twain was two fathoms and a half, or 15 feet. On May 20, 1941 Mr. Albert K. Dawson, of the American Express Company, issued an interview with Captain Tom Greene, of the Gordon C. Greene, saying that these calls were then still in use on the Mississippi and its tributaries.