American Language Supplement 2 (134 page)
Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
Slang tends to multiply terms for the same concept: its chief aim seems to be to say something new, not necessarily something good. Thus there is a constant succession of novel synonyms for
girl, head, money, drunk, yes, good, bad
and other such words of everyday. Between 1860 and 1900 the American vocabulary swarmed with picturesque terms for
beard
in general and for the various varieties, but in this age of almost universal shaving they retain only a historical interest,
e.g., galways, burnsides
, and
chinners
. Slang terms relating to the head always have a derogatory significance, and many of them hint at idiocy. In 1928 Mamie Meredith listed some of those then current,
e.g., bean, coco
and
nut
, along with the fashionable derivatives,
e.g., bonehead, pinhead
and
mutt
(from
muttonhead
), but all of these are now obsolete. The vast vogue of
sheik
(pronounced
sheek
, not
shike
) for a predatory male will be recalled by the middle-aged: it is now as extinct as
masher
.
2
The late George Ade, in 1935, attempted a list of substitutes
for such words as
girl, married, idiot, begone
and
drunk
, arranging them in categories of “old,” “later” and “latest.”
1
Most of the terms he entered under the last heading are now almost forgotten,
e.g., cutie, babe, eyeful, pip
and
wow
for a pretty girl,
loud noise
and
main stem
for a “chief executive or person of importance,” and
dumbbell, goof
and
total loss
for “an unsophisticated person.” William Feather, searching “The American Thesaurus of Slang,” by Lester V. Berrey and Melvin Van den Bark,
2
found that it listed 52 synonyms for
wife
, and that there was “not an affectionate reference in the lot.”
3
I have mentioned the fact that the same thing is true of neologisms for
head
. Indeed, it is characteristic of all slang, which commonly represents no more than the effort of some smartie to voice his derision, not infrequently for some person, object or idea obviously above his own lowly thought and station. The folk, as such, invent nothing, but their spokesmen share their inferiority complex, and many of the most successful contrivances of those spokesmen are but little removed from pejorative. The wit of Broadway, now the chief source of American slang, is thus essentially opprobrious, and many of its brighter words and sayings may be readily reduced to “Oh, you son-of-a-bitch.”
Nevertheless, it is from this quarter that most American slang comes, a large part of it invented by gag-writers, newspaper columnists and press-agents, and the rest borrowed from the vocabularies of criminals, prostitutes and the lower orders of showfolk. There was a time when it was chiefly propagated by vaudeville performers, but now that vaudeville is in eclipse the torch has been taken over by the harlequins of movie and radio. A good deal of this slang comes close to being obscene,
e.g
., the
hot mamma
of a few years ago, the
jerk
of yesterday, and the Yiddish loans that come and go,
4
but their literal meanings are soon lost, and they are presently on the tongues of multitudes of college students and even
school-children.
1
It would certainly be absurd, however, to argue that slang is wholly, or even predominantly vulgar and debased, or to dismiss its inventions, like the English prig, Allen Monkhouse,
2
as no more than “the ghosts of old facetiousness.” It is, in fact, the most powerful of all the stimulants that keep language alive and growing, and some of the most pungent and valuable words and phrases in English, and especially in American English, have arisen out of its bilge. J. Y. P. Greig, the Scots professor just quoted, was quite right when he described
rubberneck
as “one of the best words ever coined.”
3
It may be homely, but it is nevertheless superb, and whoever invented it, if he could be discovered, would be worthy not only of a Harvard LL.D., but also of the thanks of both Rotary and Congress, half a bushel of medals, and thirty days as the husband of Miss America.
Blah
is another masterpiece, and, like
rubberneck
, seems destined to live much longer than the normal term.
4
Stooge
is yet another,
5
though it has many competitors, and
yes-man
is a fourth. Others are
fan, piker
,
6
stag-party
,
7
stunt
,
8
to
debunk, to hike
,
1
O.K
.,
2
racketeer
,
3
nut
,
4
boom
,
5
boost
,
6
phony
,
7
highbrow
,
8
tight-wad
,
strong-arm, loan-shark, hard-boiled, he-man, soap-boxer, get-away, square-shooter, fifty-fifty, double-cross, kicker
and the almost innumerable verb-phrases,
e.g., to get together, to stop over, to eat crow, to saw wood, to bawl out
and
to play possum
.
9
Americans seem to be vastly more adept at making new slang than Englishmen, just as they are more adept at making more seemly neologisms.
10
There was a time when this was not true, and most of the slang that American purists frowned upon was of English origin,
11
but after the War of 1812 and the beginning of the
great movement into the West Americans began to roll their own, and for years past the flow has been in the other direction.
1
Not only the movies and talkies but also American comic strips have flooded England with the latest confections of the Broadway and Hollywood neologists, and the fecund American key-hole columnists have been widely imitated. Now and then, to be sure, some hunkerous patriot, in D. W. Brogan’s phrase, “sounds the clarion and fills the fife ” against the invasion,
2
but meanwhile the wholesale adoption of American slang words and phrases goes on, and, as the London correspondent of the Baltimore
Sun
reported in 1937, “Britons are gradually growing reconciled to the Americanization of their language.”
3
Many of them, indeed, go further: they declare that they like it. “American slang,” wrote Horace Annesley Vachell, in 1935 or thereabout, “is not a tyranny, but a beneficent autocracy,” and then he proceeded to argue for the superiority of the American
lounge-lizard
and
to be tickled pink
to the English
top-hole
and
putrid
. “English slang at its best,” he went on, “has to curtsey to American slang, and at its worst it is
toppingly
the worst in the world.” Even the Manchester
Guardian
and the London
Times
have praised the neologisms that the invasion brings in. The
Guardian
, in 1932, spoke editorially of “its Elizabethan
vigor and its sometimes more than Elizabethan capacity for uncouth inventiveness”
1
and in 1937 of its “rich wit and expressive metaphor,”
2
and the
Times
, so long ago as 1931, granted “the variety of the sources, the ingenuity of the adaptation, and the lively vigor of these hard-hitting words.”
3
When, in 1937, an English schoolma’am named Miss Gwatkin set off a bomb at a convention of the Association of Head Mistresses at Brighton by employing
to debunk
in a speech and by boldly arguing that English school children were tiring of lessons in “correct” English and that “slick Americanisms meet their need and are far more effective,” she was supported heartily by the press, including the ultra-conservative
Morning Post
and the
Daily Telegraph
. “To complain,” said the
Telegraph
, “that girls and boys use these phrases before they are naturalized is to beg the question; it is they who give them their naturalization papers.”
4
The
Morning Post
went further. “Not only the English language,” it said, “but we ourselves have grown richer by the importation of such words [as
O.K., to debunk
and
highbrow
]. What substitute can we offer for
highbrow? Intellectual snob
is our best, and that is both longer and inexact.”
5
A contributor to
Answers
, signing himself Philemon, thus summed up in 1941: “Let the purists be shocked! Let the precisions be offended! Let us drop a bomb among schoolmarmy talkers!”
6
Maurice H. Weseen’s “Dictionary of American Slang,”
7
which I was constrained to describe in AL4, p. 570, as “extremely slipshod and even ridiculous,” has been supplanted since by “The American Thesaurus of Slang,” by Lester V. Berrey and Melvin Van den Bark,
8
and there has appeared an excellent bibliography of slang, cant and argot by W. J. Burke.
9
In England the indefatigable Eric Partridge has followed his “Slang Today and Yesterday”
10
and his annotated edition of Francis Grose’s “Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue”
1
with a large “Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English”
2
and William Matthews has published “Cockney Past and Present,”
3
and in Australia Sidney J. Baker has brought out “A Popular Dictionary of Australian Slang”
4
(which has many resemblances to American) and a large and valuable work on Australian English in general.
5
The Berrey-Van den Bark thesaurus, in its revised form, is a huge volume of 1231 pages. Its chief virtue is its comprehensiveness: it includes virtually every word of slang, cant or argot that had got into print at the time its forms closed. Moreover, its contents are arranged in such a way that looking up the vocabulary of any given trade, profession or graft is made easy. Its principal defect is that the inquirer who starts from a word instead of a category finds himself confronted with a 341-page, four-column index that is based on a complicated and sometimes maddening scheme of reference. Unhappily, no effort is made to date its entries, nor are there any etymologies – two valuable features of Partridge’s “Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English.” Various other dictionaries of American slang seem to be under way as I write; in fact, I hear of a new one every few months. But it is not likely that the work of Berrey and Van den Bark will be supplanted in the near future, for scholars of their extraordinary diligence are very rare. Meanwhile,
American Speech
occasionally publishes useful papers on this or that aspect of American slang, and there is frequent (if seldom illuminating) discussion of the theme in the newspapers.
6
1
See AL4, p. 555.
2
The DAE traces
to stump
to Peter Pilgrim; Philadelphia, 1838. The author of this tale of Western adventure was Robert Montgomery Bird, famous in his day for Nick of the Woods.
1
I take these from Modern Slang, by J. Louis Kuethe,
American Speech
, Dec., 1936, pp. 293–97.
2
This was broadcast in 1900 by Just Because She Made Dem
Googoo Eyes
, a coon-song by Hughie Cannon (words) and Johnny Queen (music). It deserved to live and in fact seems to be still alive in some parts of the country, for on March 25, 1944 the
New Yorker
reported, p. 22, that a man had been lately arrested in Houston, Texas, for violating a city ordnance prohibiting “making goo-goo eyes” on the street.
1
It might be worth while to attempt a history of such banalities, with dates. In 1869 the Boston music publishers, White, Smith & Perry, published a song called Shew, Fly, Don’t Bother Me, with music by Frank Campbell. It was sung by Cool Burgess and Rollin Howard. Many other catch-phrases have been popularized by songs,
e.g., Yes, we have no bananas
. In
American Notes & Queries
, Aug., 1946, p. 74, Peter Tamony traced
Nay, Nay, Pauline
to Yale Yarns, by J. S. Wood; New York, 1895, p. 232. In The Kilroy Story,
Esquire
, April, 1946, David Scheyer attempted to account for
Kilroy was here
. Another etymology is in
American Notes & Queries
, Feb., 1947, pp. 173–74, and yet another in Air Words, by Fred Hamann; Seattle, 1946, p. 33.
Open the door, Richard
, came in on its heels and was as quickly defunct. The English are very fond of such phrases,
e.g., How’s your poor feet?, Does your mother know you’re out?, Cut yourself a piece of cake
and
Keep your hair on
. See It Makes You Think, London
Star
, May 10, 1940, and Let Me Tell Yo-o-ou, Dundee
Telegraph and Post
, Oct. 9, 1941.
2
Sinclair Lewis, in Cass Timberlane; New York, 1945, pp. 323–24, listed some of the terms then in use for “the sort of male once described with relish as an
agreeable scoundrel,” e.g., lug, jerk, louse, stinker, twirp, rat, crumb, goon
and
wolf
. Most of them soon passed out.
1
A Check-Up on Slang in America, Baltimore
Sun
(and other papers), Sept. 8, 1935.
2
New York, 1942.
3
William Feather Magazine
, Oct., 1943, p. 19.
4
Some American Idioms From the Yiddish, by Julius G. Rothenberg,
American Speech
, Feb., 1943, pp. 43–48. The slang words for to cheat, to swindle are often identical with those for to have sexual intercourse.
1
“The commonest stimuli of slang,” said Professor J. Y. P. Greig, an esteemed Scots authority, in a university address in 1938 (Edinburgh
Evening Dispatch
, Aug. 24), “are sex, money and intoxicating liquor.”
2
A Bookman’s Notes, Manchester
Guardian
, March 8, 1935.
3
Breaking Priscian’s Head; New York, 1929, p. 83. Said Benjamin R. Bulkeley in Something Literary: Slang and Colloquialisms, Boston
Herald
, May 5, 1928: “While it should today be ruled out of a sermon or a sonnet we do not know what the next century may allow.”
4
Eric Partridge says in A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English; second edition; London, 1938, p. 61, that it arose in the United States at some time before 1925, and was adopted by the English in 1927. He seeks to derive it from the German
blech
, a slang term for nonsense, and explains that there are “millions of Germans in the United States,” but this sounds suspiciously like
blah
itself. Dr. Louise Pound lists many synonyms for it in
American Speech
, April, 1929, pp. 329–30, but not one of them comes within miles of it.
5
New Yorker
, Oct. 2, 1943: “On Sunday, September 12, the [New York]
Times
used
stooge
in the headline of a story.… It was not set off by quotation marks.”
6
The DAE’s first example is dated 1869, when
piker
meant a yokel from Pike county, Missouri, then the common symbol of everything poverty-stricken and uncouth. It began to take on its present significance in the 1890s, when it appeared in the New York stock market to designate a petty operator.
7
Traced by the DAE to 1856 and marked an Americanism. Partridge says that the English adopted it
c
. 1870.
8
The DAE’s first example comes from a word-list in
Dialect Notes
, Vol. I, Part VIII, 1895, p. 400, but I recall hearing it before that. Partridge suggests that it may be derived from the German
stunde
, an hour, but I am aware of no evidence for this.
1
In the sense of to run away
to hike
is old in the English dialects and was listed by Francis Grose in the second edition of his Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue; London, 1788. Partridge says that it sank into disuse in England, and was revived at some uncertain date in the United States and readopted in England
c
. 1926.
2
The history of this most successful of all American slang terms is given in Supplement I, pp. 269–79.
3
Racket
is old, but
racketeer
was a product of Prohibition.
4
In the sense of a half-wit. On May 8, 1946, in a speech to a Highway Safety Conference at Washington, President Harry S. Truman said: “It is perfectly absurd that a man … can go to a place and buy an automobile and get behind the wheel – whether he has ever been there before makes no difference, or if he is insane or a
nut
or a moron.” In reporting this speech the New York
Times
used
nuts
in its headline, enclosed in quotation marks. See “
Nuts
” and Morons, Boston
Herald
(editorial), May 20, 1946. As a noun meaning the head the word has been traced to 1858 in England, and in the sense of something agreeable, as in “It was
nuts
to him” it goes back to Shakespeare’s time.
5
The noun, in the sense of a barrier in a river to retain floating logs, is traced by the DAE to 1676 and marked an Americanism. The earliest example of the verb in the sense of to whoop up is dated 1873. Partridge says that it reached England
c
. 1885.
6
Boost
the noun has not been found before 1825 but the verb is in the glossary attached to David Humphreys’ The Yankey in England, 1815. It is defined therein as to raise up, lift up or exalt. Partridge says that it reached England
c
. 1860 and the noun
c
. 1865. The etymology is undetermined.
7
Robert Lynd predicted in Horrible New Words, London
News Chronicle
, March 18, 1939, that it would be as dead, “a few years hence,” as “the
tony
and
top-hole
of previous generations,” but within a year the English papers were calling the early, inactive stage of World War II the
Phony
War; on April 3, 1940, the term was used by Paul Reynaud, then premier of France, and on Aug. 24, 1945, the staid Edinburgh
Scotsman
was printing an editorial, Apt Phrases, which described it as a “typical outsider from across the Atlantic that has strengthened its position as a result of the war” and added that it “may have come to stay.”
8
See Supplement I, p. 325, n. 3.
9
Many more are listed in AL4, pp. 197–98.
10
See Supplement I, pp. 440–53.
11
Such was the case, for example, with the locutions denounced by John Witherspoon in No. VII of The Druid, May 30, 1781, and it seems to have been the case with “the empty sarcastical slang so common to all the coxcombical gang” that Washington Irving derided in
Salmagundi
, June 27, 1807. To this day, in fact, many slang terms of English origin continue in everyday American use,
e.g., horse-laugh, soft-soap, cold-shoulder
and
lady-killer
. An acute observer, Thomas Adolphus Trollope (1810–92), notes in his What I Remember; New York, 1888, pp. 34–36, that the vocabulary of slang in the early part of the century was limited, and that most of it was better described as class argot.
1
The Canadian humorist, Stephen Leacock, said in Our Living Language: a Defense, New York
Times Magazine
, Feb. 26, 1939, p. 9: “American slang contains a much greater percentage of cleverness than English. To call a professional at cricket a
pro
, or breakfast
brekker
, or political economy
pol. econ
. saves time, but that is all. To call a pair of trousers
bags
is a step up: there is a distinct intellectual glow of comparison. But it is only twilight as compared with such American effects as
lounge-lizard, rubberneck, sugar-daddy, tangle-foot
and
piece of calico
.”
2
The Conquering Tongue, London
Spectator
, Feb. 5, 1943, p. 120. James Agate summed up in the London
Express
, June 4, 1936, by headlining an article with the sombre and final judgment: “I Loathe This American Slang.” In the Carlisle
Journal
, April 5, 1946, a local Rotarian declared that it “has its roots in Negroid patter” and that “the whole influence of these clipt, shoddy and ugly terms is vulgarizing and lowering to the intelligence.”
3
English Potpourri, by Paul W. Ward, Aug. 1.
1
Still More American Language, Aug. 19.
2
American Slang, June 28.
3
American Slang, May 11.
4
Debunking the Taboo on Slang, June 14, 1937.
5
English and Slang, June 14, 1937. See also Conquest of England (editorial), New York
Times
, July 4, 1937.
6
What Slanguage!, Sept. 13.
7
New York, 1934. Weseen, who was associate professor of business English at the University of Nebraska, died April 14, 1941.
8
New York, 1942. A second edition, including a supplement on the teen-age and jive jargon and the Army, Navy and Air Corps argot of World War II, was published in 1947.
9
The Literature of Slang; New York, 1939.
10
London, second edition; 1935.
1
London, 1931.
2
New York, 1937; second edition, revised and enlarged, 1938. It includes the numerous Americanisms that have become naturalized in England.
3
London, 1938.
4
Melbourne, 1941; second edition, 1943.
5
The Australian Language; Sydney, 1945. Baker has also published Australian Pronunciation; Sydney, 1947, and New Zealand Slang; Christ-church, 1940, and Arnold Wall has done New Zealand English; Christ-church, 1938.
6
Burke’s The Literature of Slang, which ran serially in the
Bulletin of the New York Public Library
in 1936–38, is close to complete down to the latter year. Most of the later works of any value are mentioned in the footnotes to the present chapter.
