American Language Supplement 2 (131 page)
Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
South Dakota, which was joined to North Dakota until 1889, is the
Coyote State
. In its first days it was known variously as the
Blizzard State
, the
Artesian State
, the
Sunshine State
and the
Land of Plenty
, but
Sunshine State
has been taken over by New Mexico, and the others have passed out. In 1898 the
Monthly South Dakotan
of Mitchell was predicting that
Coyote
as a designation for a citizen
for the State would “probably last,” and this prophecy has been fulfilled. The name comes, of course, from that of the prairie wolf (
Canis latrans
), borrowed by the Spaniards from a Nahuatl Indian word,
coyotl
. It has been sound American since the 30s of the last century, though for a long while there seems to have been some uncertainty about its spelling, and such odd forms as
cayote, collote, cayeute, chiota, koyott, ciote, cayotah, kiote
and
kiota
are listed by Thornton and the DAE.
Tennessee prefers to be the
Volunteer State
,
1
but since the Scopes trial at Dayton in 1925 it has been called the
Monkey State
with painful frequency, and will probably be a long time living down that derisive designation. The effort to repeal natural selection by law made the State ridiculous throughout the world, and its civilized minority has suffered severely from its ensuing ill fame. The DAE traces
Volunteer State
to 1853, but it really goes back to 1847, when Governor Aaron V. Brown issued a call for three regiments to serve in the Mexican War – and 30,000 men responded. At various times Tennessee has also been known as the
Big Bend State
, the
Hog and Hominy State
and the
Lion’s Den
. The last-named was listed by
Brother Jonathan
in 1843, but its origin is mysterious. Perhaps it arose from the fact that the border ruffians of the early days were sometimes called
lions of the West
, or simply
lions. Hog and Hominy State
, of course, refers to the favorite diet of the Tennessee yeomanry – a diet popular throughout the Bible and Bilbo country.
Hog and hominy
means, colloquially, fatback and any preparation of corn-meal: the term is traced by the DAE to 1792. This combination is deficient in vitamins, and those who feed upon it often suffer from pellagra. There was a time when certain patriotic Tennesseans began calling the State the
Mother of Southwestern Statesmen
, but the nickname did not last, for the Southwest was soon moving beyond the Mississippi, and the researches of historians revealed that all three of the Presidents claimed by the State – Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk and Andrew Johnson – were born outside its boundaries. Another of its nicknames is
Big Bend State
, which refers to the various big bends in the Tennessee river, especially the one at Chattanooga.
Texas, as everyone knows, is the
Lone Star State
. This was the device on the flag of the Texas Republic (1836–45), and it remains the device on the State flag and seal today. Attempts have been made at various times to substitute
Banner State, Jumbo State, Blizzard State
and
Beef State
, but in vain. An important part of Texas is the
Panhandle
, which runs up between Oklahoma and New Mexico in the northwest. West Virginia has another such panhandle, projecting in a thin strip between Pennsylvania and Ohio, and has been called the
Panhandle State
because of it. Idaho has yet another. The term, which was apparently suggested by the handle of a frying-pan, is traced by the DAE to 1861, and was applied to the Texas
Panhandle
so long ago as 1873. At the time of the Texas Centennial Exposition of 1936, the Hon. William C. McCraw, then attorney-general of Texas and soon afterward an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, launched a campaign to put down “the insidious use of the terms
panhandle
and
panhandling
for beggars and the act of begging.” For a while this holy war got some attention in the newspapers, but it then subsided, and
panhandler
is still in wide use. Its origin was thus described by the Chicago
Tribune
at the time:
The expression grew up among hoboes, or casual laborers, to describe their plight after they had spent all their wages and found themselves jobless and broke in a city. They call street begging
panhandling
because it is descriptive of the mendicant who sits on the sidewalk holding out his hand or a cup.
1
Utah calls itself the
Beehive State
, and sports on its seal “a conical beehive with a swarm of bees round it, emblematical of the industry of the people,”
2
but the designation
Mormon State
is far more popular, and seems likely to stick. The State, which did not enter the Union until 1896, delayed by the long battle over the polygamy issue, has also been called the
Deseret State
, the
Salt Lake State
, the
Land of the Mormons
and the
Land of the Saints. Deseret
is borrowed from a word in the Book of Mormon
3
signifying a honeybee and appearing in a passage describing the wanderings of the
prophet Jared and his brother and their families in search of the Promised Land. Reaching the valley of Nimrod, they pastured their flocks, turned loose edible fowl, stocked the streams with fish, liberated swarms of bees, and planted “seeds of every kind.” The cantonment in which Brigham Young quartered his nineteen wives and fifty-seven children was commonly called the
Beehive
by infidels. In 1922 the
World
Almanac listed
Desert State
as a nickname for Utah, but this was probably only a typographical error. Washington is both the
Evergreen State
and the
Chinook State
, with the latter apparently the more in use.
Chinook
is the name of a local tribe of Indians, once numerous at the mouth of the Columbia river. They gave their name to a trade language that was in common use along the coast for more than a century, and is still spoken by a few old-timers.
1
It provided a number of words for American English,
e.g., skookum, siwash, potlatch
, and maybe also
cayuse
and
hooch
. The DAE traces
Evergreen State
to 1909. It refers, of course, to the State’s immense stretches of conifer forest.
West Virginia, as I have noted, is one of the five contending
Switzerlands of America
, but it is now more generally known as the
Mountain State
or the
Panhandle State
, the former because a large part of its area is in the Allegheny chain, and the second because of the panhandle which juts up between Pennsylvania and Ohio and is in places less than ten miles wide, though it includes the metropolitan area of Wheeling, the largest in the State, and Moundsville, the seat of the State Penitentiary. The people of the State often speak of it proudly as
West by God Virginia
. Wisconsin is the
Badger State
, and its people are
Badgers
. The latter appellation seems to have arisen, like
Sucker
for Illinoisan and
Puke
for Missourian, at the Galena, Ill., lead mines in the 20s of the last century. These mines were near the place where Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin meet, and many Wisconsin pioneers were occasionally employed in them. There were no houses for them, and they commonly lived in caves in the hillsides, resembling badger burrows. Hence they were called
Badgers
, and the nickname stuck when they returned home. Charles Fenno Hoffman, traveling in Michigan Territory in 1834, recorded that he there encountered “a keen-eyed, leather-belted
Badger
from the mines of Ouisconsin.” But Schele
de Vere, in 1872, said that
Badger State
arose from the prevalence of the
Badger
(
Taxidea taxus
) in the wilds of the State.
Badger
is not an Americanism, but was brought from England, and is first recorded in America in 1654. Finally, there is Wyoming, the
Equality
or
Suffrage State
, so called because its Territorial Legislature made the first grant of the suffrage to women voters. This was in 1869.
1
Word Study
, Oct., 1941, pp. 6 and 7.
1
Unhappily, the introduction of the dial telephone brought the telephone engineers a fresh headache. Thus Louis Azrael in the Baltimore
News-Post
, Feb. 22, 1946, p. 25: “When the
Towson
area gets dial phones something will have to be done about the name of the
Towson
exchange or the
University
exchange. Why? Because when you dial
TO
you are also dialing
UN
.” This was because not only two but three letters were grouped in each compartment,
e.g., TUV
and
MNO
.
2
Apartment-House Names,
American Speech
, Oct., 1945, pp. 165–77.
1
In Venice, Calif., there is (or was) a
Finklestein Arms
and a
Burkeshire Arms
. The
New Yorker
(March 9, 1946, p. 18) reports a
Venus Arms
, and
American Speech
(Feb., 1946, p. 75) a
Magdalene Arms
, both in Brooklyn.
1
When the custom of attaching
House
to the name of a hotel arose in the United States I do not know: the DAE does not mention it. Neither does the NED or its Supplement mention the use of
House
in the name of an office-building in England.
2
The discomforts it produces in England were once set forth as follows by William Carr in the London
Telegraph:
“On a dark night one may walk up one side of a long street in a new district looking for
Rosynook
with an electric torch, only to find it on the other side. Alternatively, darting from one side of the road to the other with danger to life and limb, one may walk up a garden path, newly planted with privet cuttings, to find ‘The
Elms
’ painted over the front door when it would have been more easily seen on the front gate. Numbers should be made compulsory.”
3
Naming the Bungalow,
American Speech
, March, 1927, p. 269.
1
No Namee,
New Yorker
, Aug. 26, 1944, pp. 55–57.
2
This device is frequently used for other purposes. Mr. B. P. Brodinsky, of Washington, tells me that the dramatic club at the University of Delaware used to be called the
Citamard
(dramatic), that a city-wide celebration in Omaha is called the
Aksarben
(Nebraska), that a patent medicine is called
Serutan
(nature’s), and that a Jewish club in Cincinnati is the
Learsi
(Israel). General Felix Agnus, for many years publisher of the Baltimore
American
, called his home in the Green Spring Valley near Baltimore
Nacirema
.
3
I am indebted here to Mr. W. R. Smith, of Rockledge, Fla.
4
I take all these save the first four from Cabin Names From Colorado, by Joseph Jones,
American Speech
, Oct., 1936, pp. 276–78.
5
Early Inns in the Philadelphia Region,
American Speech
, Dec., 1937, p. 318.
6
Rendezvous im
König von Preussen
, by Karl T. Marx,
American-German Review
, Feb., 1946, p. 28: “Das Gasthaus heisst
King of Prussia
, ja selbst die Ortschaft heisst noch so.”
1
Cross Keys
was a village near Baltimore, now absorbed by the city. From time immemorial it has been mainly inhabited by colored folk.
2
It was summarized in The Names of Texas Eateries, Baltimore
Evening Sun
, editorial page, Feb. 8, 1940.
3
Probably pronounced
kaif
. See AL4, p. 347.
4
Private communication, Dec. 14, 1944.
1
The Railroads at Bay, Jan., p. 89.
1
List of Standard, Private and Tourist Cars; No. 34; Chicago, Oct. 1, 1943.
2
Supplement No. 1 to List of Cars No. 34; Chicago, Dec. 15, 1944.
1
I am indebted for the foregoing to Mr. George A. Kelly, vice-president of the Pullman Company.
2
Pullman Ode,
New Yorker
, March 27, 1937, p. 69.
3
These were names of boats on the Morris Canal. I take them from Among the Nail-Makers,
Harper’s Magazine
, July, 1860, p. 149.
4
I am indebted here to Mr. Robert W. Horton, director of the commission’s division of information.
1
There was an
El Reno Victory
, named, not after the Nevada divorce mill, but after
El Reno
, Okla.
2
The private lines, before and after the war, have usually given their ships synthetic serial names, often unlovely,
e.g., Deloreans, Delargentino
and
Delbrazil
. Cf. the names of the old Cunarders, ending in
-ania
, and those of the White Star ships, ending in
-ic
.
1
The first was defined to include ships carrying 40 guns or more, and the second to include those carrying from 20 to 39.
2
I am indebted here to Lieut. Leonard C. Hall, USNR, of the aviation and ship section of the Navy’s office of information.
3
Most of them are more commonly known by their numbers.
4
In the last two cases it is provided that “logical and euphonious words” may be substituted.
1
Born in 1854, he died in 1921. He rose to the rank of admiral. In 1917 he and all the other members of his family living in England changed their surname to
Mountbatten
, and he was created
Marquess of Milford Haven
.
2
Men-of-War Names: Their Meaning and Origin; London, 1897; second ed., 1908.
1
These names were noted during the Eighteenth Century by Francis Grose, author of A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. In a posthumous collection of essays called The Olio; London, 1792 (second ed., 1796), he called them “boastful” and warned that the hazards of war might make them ridiculous. “An unfortunate day,” he said, “may engage the
Gazette
writers in an awkward combination of words, by being obliged to inform the public that the
Victory
was beaten off, the
Invincible
overpowered, the
Inflexible
forced to yield, and that the
Dreadnaught
escaped by crowding all the sail she could carry.” Grose favored naming warships after admirals, “who may without much impropriety be spoken of as an old woman” –
i.e
., as
she
–, or, anticipating American usage, after the counties of England. “When we hear a sailor say,” he went on, “that the
Prince of Wales
has been on board
Poll Infamous
or that the
Princess Royal
has much injured her bottom, should we not tremble for the health of the royal offspring?” I am indebted here to Mr. Hugh Morrison.
2
I take these from First Snow of the Season,
New Yorker
, Jan. 17, 1942.
3
I am indebted for all these save the last to Sailor Nicknames for Fighting Ships,
U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings
, Jan., 1946, p. 83. Grose, in the paper I have lately quoted, gave some examples from the British Navy of his time. The
Eolus
, he said, was the
Alehouse
to its crew, the
Belliqueux
was the
Belly Cook
, the
Agamemnon
was the
Eggs and Bacon
, the
Bienfaisant
was the
Bonny Pheasant
, the
Boreas
was the
Bare Arse
, and the
Castor and Pollux
had “a misnomer too gross to repeat.”
1
The Battle of
South Mountain
, or
Boonsboro’, Century
, May, 1886, p. 137.
2
Hill was a philosophical fellow, and his reflections on his murderous trade are well worth reading. In the same paper he thus discussed the moral propaganda that makes wars: “The war songs of a people have always been written by non-combatants. The bards who followed the banners of the feudal lords, sang of their exploits, and stimulated them and their retainers to deeds of high emprise wore no armor and carried no swords. So, too, the impassioned orators who roused our ancestors in 1776 with the thrilling cry, ‘Liberty or Death,’ never once put themselves in the way of a death by lead or steel, by musket-ball or bayonet stab. The noisy speakers of 1861, who fired the Northern heart and who fired the Southern heart, never did any other kind of
firing
. One of the most noted of them frankly admitted that he preferred a horizontal to a vertical death.” After Appomattox, Hill took to the birch. He died in 1889 as president of the Middle Georgia Military and Agricultural College.
1
On the Dedications of American Churches: An Enquiry Into the Naming of Churches in the United States, Some Account of English Dedications, and Suggestions for Future Dedications in the American Church; Cambridge (Mass.), 1891.
1
See also Names of Churches,
Current Religious Thought
, Nov., 1945, p. 6, and Church Dedications of the Oxford Diocese, by K. E. Kirk; Oxford, 1946.
2
“It was not until 1170 that the Roman Church reserved to herself the right to canonize; and only about 250 years ago that the regulations were laid down for substantially the present Roman procedure.” (pp. 30 and 31.)
3
Judges XXI, 16–23.
4
A
store-church
is one set up in a vacant store or in the front room of a dwelling house. All it needs to get under way is a brother fired to preach, and a sufficiency of sisters to applaud him and feed him.
5
For the sake of the record, I add that this was in Gilmor street above Lexington, little over three blocks from my house in Hollins street.
6
The use of the names of Catholic churches by athletic teams made up of their younger members produces some startling incongruities in sports-page headlines,
e.g., All Saints vs. Corpus Christi
and
Holy Cross Beats Holy Rosary
. Combats between the colleges of the older British universities provide other examples,
e.g., Jesus Still Head of River
, a headline in the London
Daily Telegraph
, June 15, 1936. I am indebted here to the late F. H. Tyson. At a village called
Sacred Heart
in Oklahoma there is a cotton-gin known simply as the
Sacred Heart Gin
. It is listed in Oklahoma Manufactures, 1940, Publication No. 49 of the Engineering Experiment Station of the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College, fifth ed., April, 1941, p. 98. I am indebted here to Mr. Winslow Ames.
1
Churchyard
is traced by the NED to 1154. In the early days the gentry were buried under the floor of the church itself, and the common people in the consecrated ground surrounding it.
Cemetery
, which was first used to designate the subterranean Christian graves in the Roman catacombs, came into general use in the Fifteenth Century.
Graveyard
, an American invention, is traced to 1773, and
burial-ground
to 1803.
2
Cemetery Names Give State Distinction, Jackson
News
, March 5, 1939, p. 24. I am indebted here to Miss Anabel Power, of the State Department of Public Welfare. Jackson, and for other help to Mr. Carl Kastrup, of Rockford, Ill.
3
Quilt Names in the Ozarks,
American Speech
, Feb., pp. 33–36.
4
The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America; Caldwell, Idaho, 1935.
1
“What is known as the
crazy-quilt
,” say Randolph and Miss Spradley, “is simply a wild jumble of small patches, apparently put together without any particular design.” The DAE traces the term to 1886 and marks it an Americanism. It is probably much older.
2
Ch. CXXXIX. The Doctor was written between 1834 and 1847.
3
What’s in a Name?,
Country Gentleman
, Feb., 1937, p. 97.
4
The Borden Company’s
Elsie
was the first cow to be a radio crooner and the first to travel by air. She was not, in fact, one cow, but “a troupe of well-bred Jerseys,” with headquarters at East Shodack, N. Y. Her story was told in the Borden Company’s annual report for 1946, pp. 26–27.
5
O Tempora, O Nomina!,
American Speech
, July, pp. 529–60.
1
I am indebted here to Mr. Marshall Cassidy, executive secretary of the Jockey Club.
2
Care of the Dog; Chicago, 1940; second ed., 1943, p. 19. Captain Judy is also editor of the
Dog World
.
3
Rover
Gives Way to
Butch
as Dog’s Tag, Sept. 18.
4
I am indebted here to Mr. Frank E. Bechman, of Battle Creek, Mich.
1
I am indebted here to Miss Alice Rosenthal, editor of the
Dog News
.
2
American Newspaper Titles,
American Speech
, Feb., 1937, pp. 10–18.
1
Saturday Review of Literature
, Aug. 8, 1942, p. 16.
2
Mr. Valentine said that there was an almost complete bibliography in Ephemeral Bibelots, by Winthrop Faxon; Boston, 1903.
3
In a dispatch from Washington printed by newspapers of the North American Newspapers Alliance, Aug. 19.
4
For the names of American colleges see American College Names, by Harold B. Allen,
Words
, March, 1937, pp. 70–72; April, pp. 86–88, and May, pp. 110–112. For the nicknames of football elevens see
American Speech
, April, 1937, pp. 158–59.
1
I am indebted here to Mr. C. W. Y. Currie, of the New York Central. He tells me that it made a record of 112.5 miles an hour, west of Batavia, N. Y., so long ago as May 10, 1893, drawn by the famous locomotive, 999. Its first trip in streamlined, stainless-steel equipment was made on Dec. 7, 1941.
2
New York, 1937, p. 410. Dr. Shankle’s work is one of the best reference books ever published, and deserves to be in every library. It is heavily documented, and shows few omissions. I am indebted to it for much of what follows. For permission to quote it I owe thanks both to him and to his publisher, the H. W. Wilson Company.
