Holy Cow!

by Boze Hadleigh

  Cocktails?

  The origin of cocktail, the mixed drink, is vigorously disputed and varied. One theory: in the 1600s and 1700s beer was mixed with minced meat of boiled cock and other ingredients and named cock ale, which became cocktail. Another: trainers readying a rooster for a cock fight would feed their bird a combination of stale beer, white wine, gin, flour, seeds, and herbs. This was called cock-bread ale, later cock ale, later yet cocktail (and probably left the rooster cockeyed).

  A third theory, from colonial America, involved tavern keepers, who stored alcohol in barrels. When almost empty, their dregs or tailings were combined in a single cask and sold at a lower price. That mixed alcohol, delivered through the cask’s spigot or cock (now usually a stopcock), was cock tailings.

  The first printed use of the word was in Britain in 1798 in The Morning Post and Gazeteer: “cock-tail (vulgarly called ginger).”

  Cocktail can now mean a potent or dangerous mixture of things, as in a cocktail of prescription or illegal drugs.

  (Cock-a-leekie is a traditional Scottish soup of chicken and leeks.)

  Bird Mascots

  Birds, all kinds of birds, have been used to advertise myriad products, including nightclubs (The Stork Club) and whiskey (Old Crow). In Mexico, the biggest tequila company is Cuervo (Crow), which this writer toured during one birthday in Tequila, a small town near Guadalajara.

  Unusually, birds have been associated with shoe products, perhaps most famously Kiwi Shoe Polish (the small flightless New Zealand bird is its trademark), also Red Goose Shoes and Weatherbird Shoes (a rooster logo). Kiwi was the new name of the Chinese gooseberry, adopted in an advertising campaign that saw sales of the small green fruit soar.

  Owls have been associated with wisdom since ancient Greece, where an owl was the mascot of the goddess Athena, after whom Athens was named. Thus they’re often associated with “smart” products or nighttime ones. Montgomery Ward used the Wise-Buy Owl to sell its Riverside tires—the owl sported a service station attendant’s cap and carried a tire beneath one wing, but also wore glasses. Owl Drugs was a major drugstore chain and Sanborn’s, the Mexican gift shop/restaurant chain (owned by reportedly the richest man in the world), uses three owls perched on a branch with a crescent moon behind them as its logo.

  Penguins seem to wear tuxedoes, and many tux-rental shops use them as mascots. Munsingwear Clothing uses a penguin to advertise its sharp clothing line. In 1935, an English publisher launched Penguin Books, intended as the first paperback line of quality books, as opposed to pulp fiction. (There was already an Albatross Book Company.) Willie the penguin was the cute front for Brown & Williamson Tobacco’s heavily mentholated Kool cigarettes. When the corporation brought out salt and pepper shakers, they introduced Willie’s mate Millie. Early on, Swanson, who developed frozen TV dinners, used a penguin logo.

  During the late 1950s and into the ’60s, the best known chicken mascot was that which sat atop Chicken Delight eateries. He wore a chef’s toque and with one wing held aloft a plate of biscuits. The nationally famous slogan was “Don’t cook tonight, call Chicken Delight!” The company eventually went under due to management problems and competition from what’s now called KFC. (Whenever chickens are used to advertise fried chicken, they’re alive and smiling or laughing, before the fact.)

  Varig the Brazilian airline boasted a big-billed toucan-like bird in sunglasses and hat, ready for the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. Two of the better-known cereal mascots were the multicolored Fruit Loops toucan and Sonny the Cuckoo Bird who’s manically “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!”

  A briefly successful mascot of the late ’50s was Fresh-Up Freddie, an energetic rooster created to sell Seven-Up. He ran around singing, “Nothing does it like Seven-Up, Seven-Up! Ooo-oo! Ooo-oo! Nothing does it like Seven-Up!” However, in each ad Freddie wore a different hat and seemed to display a different personality. The only consistency was his mania for that particular soft drink. Much longer-lasting is the green and red rooster on packages of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. Cornelius, a.k.a. Corny, likewise bowed in the late ’50s. He was chosen because a rooster reportedly signified getting the morning off to a good start—as would a bowl of Corny’s cereal.

  Flamingo

  The name of this unique pink or scarlet bird goes back to the 16th century and flamengo in Spanish, an earlier form of flamenco, Spain’s unique style of guitar music and dance whose female performers often wore red. The word also meant Fleming, a Flemish-speaking native of Belgium, once part of the Netherlands, which Spain ruled for a time, and is related to the Latin flamma, flame, as in flame-red.

  Flamenco was first applied to Gypsy dancing in southern Spain’s Andalusia. A peacock seems more apt for describing the proud, chest-forward (for both genders), self-consciously showy style of flamenco dance than a flamingo, which, when not simply standing on one leg, often has its head in the water, feeding. (Although flamingos’ knees look like they bend backwards, they don’t—those are their ankles; the knees are higher up, hidden by plumage. Penguins also have hidden knees.)

  A gypsy moth is a woodland moth the male of which is brown and the female of which is white and larger but cannot fly. For short distances she can latch on to a traveler. For longer ones, she crawls up a tree and lets the wind carry her.

  (Gypsies were misnamed in English, for they didn’t originate in Egypt, but in India.)

  To Sing Like a Canary

  Although to “sing like a canary” is a compliment, non-musically it means betrayal, though betrayal of a (usually fellow) criminal or criminal activity. Since the 1920s canary has been slang for a police informer, while singing has signified betrayal since the 1500s or before. In his 1815 novel Guy Mannering Sir Walter Scott wrote, “To sing out or whistle in the cage, is when a rogue, being apprehended, peaches against his comrades.” The latter verb meant to tattle. “Tattle” in the UK was idle talk or gossip, but in North America it came to mean reporting wrongdoing.

  Gangster movies of the 1930s popularized both “singing” and “canary” in reference to crooks selling each other out for preferential treatment from the law or a reduced sentence. A 1984 New York Post headline blared, “Mob Canary Sings Again for the Feds.”

  An avian canary is a melodious, bright yellow finch—often kept in a cage.

  A canary creeper is a South American climbing plant that produces bright yellow flowers, while canary grass is grown for its seeds, which are fed to cage birds.

  P.S. The Canary Islands weren’t named after the bird. The name derives from dogs the Romans saw on what they called the Canariae Insulae, islands of the dogs. Most sources say they weren’t dogs, but seals, which doesn’t say much for the Romans’ eyesight. The birds from the islands were then named canaries—after the alleged dogs. Woof!

  Stool Pigeon

  North America once numbered billions of passenger pigeons, which the British colonists extensively hunted for food. They became extinct in the early 20th century. Passenger pigeons were often attached by string to “stools”—perches—as hunters’ decoys (stool is related to the obsolete stall, meaning a decoy).

  The first use of stool pigeon relating to humans involved decoys employed to entice passersby into a betting game. By the mid 1800s the phrase took on its current meaning of police informer, as in an 1849 issue of Banker’s Magazine which reported that a senior Philadelphia constable had used a particular individual “as a ‘stool pigeon’ or secret informer.” In the next century, stool pigeon and canary became practically synonymous.

  An alternate meaning of “stool-pigeoning” was provided in Bartlett’s 1848 Dictionary of Americanisms, stating that police “of olden times” would often arrest someone they deemed a shady character, then demand money or jewelry in exchange for his freedom. In other words, blackmail. Sometimes the character was indeed shady and had no money or valuables but instead traded information for his release.

  Urban pigeons are often missing toes. The reasons include land-based predators (meow. . .) which
attack roosting pigeons, fungal infections from the dirty locales pigeons often frequent, and avian pox that can shrivel their toes until they fall off. Also, accidents occur when pigeons’ feet get caught in cracks or crevices or while flying they collide with TV antennae and utility wires.

  Ugly Duckling

  Ugly duckling is a misnomer—baby ducks are beautiful as well as adorable. That a duckling can grow up to be a swan is an impossibility. The concept of plainness eventually blossoming into beauty is plausible, but its most famous version, Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, relies on mistaken identity. A swan’s egg is mistakenly hatched among a duck’s eggs. Mama duck tries to protect her presumed boy-chick from criticism and abuse, but the misfit cygnet is made to feel unattractive and ashamed, and hides himself away. Come springtime, he turns into a swan, more beautiful—and far taller—than his former fellow ducks.

  Psychologist Dr. Betty Berzon cites “Two points. The unwarranted labeling of a given animal as ‘ugly,’ plus unrealistic expectations. Not all so-called ugly ducklings grow into swans. Some become attractive ducks, some merely become less plain. The most valid conclusions here are focusing less on looks, more on self-worth, and treating everybody well.”

  Swan. . .

  A swansong is the final creation, performance, or activity of a person’s career, especially an artist’s. According to legend, a swan sings but once, when about to die. The 19th-century term is from the German Schwanengesang, a mythical song sung by a dying swan. (The most famous ballet is Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.)

  The expression “all your swans are geese” means all one’s hopes have been disappointed—the concept being swans’ superiority to geese. By contrast, all your geese are swans implies that someone overvalues their possessions just because they belong to them.

  To swan is British slang for moving or walking in an ostentatious or a casual or irresponsible way.

  A swan dive is US slang for a shallow dive.

  A swan mussel is a big mussel whose larvae parasitize fish.

  A swan neck is a curved structure with the shape of a swan’s neck (similar to gooseneck).

  Swansdown is used for trimmings and powder puffs. It’s also a thick cotton fabric with a soft nap on one side or a soft, thick woolen fabric containing some silk or cotton.

  Swan-upping is the annual catching of swans on the River Thames in England to mark them to show ownership by a corporation or the Crown.

  A Lame Duck and a Quack

  A lame duck is someone unable to fend for themselves—like, literally, a lame duck—but is most often used in the phrase a lame-duck president, one whose term of office is nearly at an end, likewise his influence, and/or a second-term president whose patronage has diminished and who is less effective legislatively.

  The first people called lame ducks were 17th-century members of the London Stock Exchange who couldn’t pay their debts and so lost their seats and reputations. By the early 1860s, American officeholders were also lame ducks, especially holdover congressmen, possibly thanks to the hunter’s maxim “Never waste powder on a dead duck.”

  Quack, the derogatory word for doctor, has nothing to do with ducks. This word is short for quacksalver, a 16th-century sobriquet for one who sold fraudulent medicines. (As did the second wave of snake-oil salesmen in the 19th century—see an upcoming entry.) Quack meant to peddle; salver is from a salve or ointment. Today a quack is a real doctor, but an inept and/or unethical one.

  Duck. . .

  The word duck evolved from a Germanic root meaning a diving bird. As with goose, the basic word also denotes the female of the species, with drake (like gander) signifying the male. As a favorite game bird, ducks were much on humans’ minds, as mirrored in the myriad of duck words, names, and phrases.

  A duck is also a white thin-shelled bivalve mollusk found on the American Atlantic coast. In cricket a duck is a batsman’s score of zero, short for duck’s egg, meaning the figure 0.

  Duck, the strong fabric used for work clothes and sails, isn’t from the bird, but a Dutch word for linen. Likewise, ducks—trousers made from duck.

  Ducks is an informal British term of endearment: “‘allo, ducks,” sometimes ducky. (In the US ducky means delightful, often sarcastically: “Isn’t that just ducky.”)

  To duck is to quickly lower the head or body, usually for defensive purposes.

  To duck something is to evade or avoid it. The verb also means to avoid playing a winning card on a particular trick for tactical reasons in bridge. Or to push someone under water.

  A ducking stool was used in olden times to punish someone, plunging them into a river or pond in a chair attached to the end of a pole (an example of “cruel and unusual punishment” obviated by the US Constitution).

  Duckboards are wooden planks joined together to make a path over muddy ground.

  Duck mussels are found in rivers with sandy or gravelly beds, while duckweed is a minute flowering plant found in profusion upon still water.

  Ducks and drakes is a game of throwing a flat stone along the water’s surface and counting how many times it bounces on the water.

  To play ducks and drakes is to not take something very seriously.

  A duckpin is a short, squat bowling pin. To duckwalk is to walk while squatting.

  Duck soup is US slang for an easy task, also the name of a classic Marx Brothers movie.

  Duck’s ass is the nickname of a male hairdo slicked back at the sides and tapered upwards at the end to resemble a duck’s derriere.

  An odd or queer duck (or bird) is a person adjudged as peculiar.

  To be a dead duck (or pigeon) is to have failed, sometimes ominously. A dead duck is a cause or campaign without relevance to modern life.

  To be a sitting duck is to be readily exploited or exposed (like the duck figures in a shooting gallery), from the notion that it’s easy to shoot a duck that’s sitting still.

  Like water off a duck’s back implies criticism or advice that has no effect.

  To get or have one’s ducks in a row is US slang for getting or having everything organized.

  To take to something like a duck to water is to take to something very readily.

  Two shakes of a duck’s tail means very quickly or very soon—“two seconds” on telephone-hold typically means two minutes.

  Fine day for ducks is said when it’s raining.

  Fair Game

  Today anyone or anything can be fair game according to someone else’s estimation or justification, but originally fair game referred to part of 32 hunting laws introduced in the 18th century by George III (the king who lost the American colonies and went mad). The laws were an effort to reduce poaching and protect landowners—in other words, the rich, including himself—from theft of livestock. Historian Albert Jack explained, “The idea was to keep hunting the privilege of the aristocracy, but was cloaked in the notion that without controls game stock would be severely depleted.”

  By the early 1800s it was illegal for anybody to remove game from any land except the squire and his eldest son. To steal even one pheasant could result in being transported for seven years to Australia (then a penal colony at the end of the world). The only exceptions were a few small birds and vermin—wild mammals and birds harmful to the landowners’ crops. Those were “fair game.”

  Eating Crow

  Farmers long had reason to hate crows, the bold black birds which, if not scared off from newly seeded wheat fields or spring cornfields, would rip the plants out of the ground, eat the seeds or kernels, and so slash a farmer’s yield. Thus, some farmers facing an unpleasant outcome or the humiliation of defeat would declare it was like having to eat crow.

  A popular legend about the phrase’s origin tells of a soldier who went hunting and accidentally shot a tame crow. Along came its owner, who grabbed the soldier’s gun and ordered, “Eat crow or die.” After the soldier had eaten half the bird—raw?—the owner told him he could stop. At that point the soldier regained his gun, turned it on
the other man, and ordered, “Now you eat crow or die.”

  Those who have eaten crow say it tastes like most game birds.

  “Eating boiled crow,” as the saying originally went, was most widespread in the 19th century as a reference to publicly humiliated politicians. Men running for and already in office were typically more affluent than average folk, who often had to hunt their own food. Due to its color and scavenger status, crow was considered a meal of desperation. By century’s end, the symbolic “eating crow” rarely included “boiled” and lost its political connotation, simply indicating that someone in the wrong had to apologize.

  One Fell Swoop

  Fell means terrible or ferocious and is related to the word felon. Fell also meant an animal’s skin or hide with its fur. The phrase in or at one fell swoop connotes a bird of prey scooping up one or more victims at a single go and was made famous in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (published 1623). When Macduff finds out his children and wife have all been killed, he howls, “What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam, at one fell swoop?”

  Dam is the female parent of an animal, especially a mammal. It’s related to dame, French for lady (as in madame, my lady), corrupted in American English into dame, a non-complimentary word for woman.

  Dodo

  “Dead as a dodo” used to be a more common expression than it is now, and unlike today’s “dead as a doornail” wasn’t just alliterative. Dodos, found on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, were bulky flightless birds that survived through eons because their habitat included no predators. Then came Europeans, specifically, Portuguese—who, also in the Indian Ocean, tried but failed to obliterate Buddhism from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). They named the bird doudo, Portuguese for stupid, because the running birds couldn’t escape them.

  The Europeans brought pigs to the island (and, accidentally, rats), which ran wild and destroyed the dodos’ nests, eggs, and young. By the late 1600s dodos, targeted by the three newcomer species, had become extinct, one of the first recorded species to suffer that sadly accelerating fate.