American Language Supplement 2 (145 page)

Jitney
and
tin-Lizzie
have also engaged the etymologists, but with no more plausible result. The DAE passes over both, but Gilbert Tucker, in his “American English,”
⁵
traces
jitney
to 1912. On February 4, 1915, the
Nation
defined it as “the Jewish slang term for a nickel,” but Webster 1934 suggests that it may come from the French
jeton
, “a counter, token or metal disk,” and the New Practical Standard marks it “etymology obscure.” It must be older than 1912, but it did not come into general use until
c
. 1915, when it began to be applied to Fords operating as five-cent busses. By 1916 the Legislature of New Jersey and the City Council of Atlantic City were defining
jitney
in this sense: at the start it meant always a five-cent bus, but by 1922 it was applied also to busses charging ten cents.
⁶
In
American Speech
, in 1933, p. 73, I noted that the term was already obsolescent,
⁷
but this was presently denied by Miles L. Hanley,
⁸
W. L. Werner
⁹
and Harold Wentworth.
¹⁰
It is, however, seldom heard today, for high taxes and franchise fees have driven
jitneys
from the streets of most American cities, and the term is but little used for a five-cent piece, though it retains some vitality in the general sense of paltry.
Flivver
, in many situations, is synonymous. It
seems to have originated in college slang, and at the start meant a failure. In this sense it was used by Harry Leon Wilson in “Ruggles of Red Gap,” 1915. During the same year it was listed by Robert Bolwell as in use on the campus of Western Reserve University
¹
and four years later it was reported as high-school slang in the Southwest.
²
It seems to have been applied to a Model T Ford, then the cheapest car on the market, before 1920; later it was also applied to various other inferior contrivances, including destroyers of 750 tons or less. In 1918 Arthur (Bugs) Baer used
flivveritis
in the sense of deterioration or ruin, but apparently without any reference to the Ford.
³
Lizzie
and its daughter,
tin-Lizzie
, may be derived from
lizard
, which the DAE traces to 1870 as the name of “a sled-like contrivance for hauling logs or other heavy objects.”
⁴
The cowboys of the West also applied it to the metal horn of a saddle.
⁵
Miss Warnock, lately cited, reported
Lizzie
and
tin-can
as Southwestern campus names for a Ford in 1919.
Tin-Lizzie
followed naturally.

The argot of aviators has been compiled in a workmanlike manner by Fred Hamann.
⁶
“Aviation,” he says, “is less than half a century old, yet no other industry has originated a language as rich in slang, argot, colloquialisms and colorful terms.” Many of them are already familiar to everyone,
e.g., to zoom, to bail out, on the beam, to fly blind, air-pocket, blimp, low
(or
high
)
ceiling, to hedge hop, to nose-dive
and
tail-spin
. The airmen, like the railroad men, use many derisory terms in speaking of themselves and their apparatus,
e.g., truck-driver, chauffeur
or
throttle-jockey
for a pilot;
paddlefoot, blisterfoot, ground-gripper
or
dust-eater
for a member of the ground crew;
clerk
or
pencil-pusher
for a navigator;
stooge
or
kid
for a co-pilot;
barrel
or
can
for an engine cylinder;
pants-slapper, blower, wind-mill, butter-paddle, club
or
fan
for a propeller, and
hut, greenhouse
or
pulpit
for a cockpit. Not a few of these terms show
Galgenhumor, e.g., meat-wagon
for an ambulance,
first
man down
for a flyer in trouble whose parachute doesn’t open, and
funeral glide
for a landing out of control. Some are also more or less indecent,
e.g., joy-stick
for the pilot’s control stick,
¹
and
condom
for a wind-cone. The airmen have borrowed heavily from the argot of sailors,
e.g., to trim ship, log-book, tail-wind
and
rigger
(applied to a parachute repairer), and also from that of railroad men,
e.g., hoghead
(the manager of an airport); that of lumbermen,
e.g., haywire;
that of actors,
e.g., barnstormer;
that of automobile-drivers,
e.g., crate, flivver
and
hot
(fast), and that of hoboes,
e.g., hump
(a mountain). The workers in airplane plants use many of these terms also, and their vocabulary is otherwise full of the terms in common use in all metal-working plants, but they also have some that I have not found elsewhere,
e.g., blue ox
, a bombsight;
bones
, the skeleton of an airplane fuselage (body);
Buck Rogers
, a rivet gun;
bug-chaser
, an inspector;
knuckle-buster
, a wrench;
roof-rider
, a crane operator;
sewing-machine
, an automatic riveter or welder;
squawk
, an inspection;
tin-knocker
, a riveter or sheet-metal worker, and
fisterris
and
kajody
, any indefinite object.
²

Radio is even younger than the airplane, but its impact upon American life has been terrific, and so long ago as 1937 a writer on its vocabulary was calling it the
fifth estate
.
³
That vocabulary is now large, but much of it is of very recent date. The word
radio
itself did not come into general use in the United States until
c
. 1920,
⁴
and the English still seem to prefer
wireless
. Until the death of the Hon. Alfred E. Smith on October 4, 1944, there lingered some doubt among American fans as to whether the word should be pronounced
ray-dio
or
rad-dio
, and the learned still disagree about the conjugation of
to broadcast
. The brothers Fowler, in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, give
broadcasted
for the past tense and
broadcast
for the perfect participle; Webster 1934 allows
broadcasted
in the past “in radio senses”; the New Practical Standard
ordains
broadcast
for both past and perfect participle. Many of the terms in use in the studios are loans from the stage,
e.g., to ad lib, bit
(a small part),
blue
(indecent),
cast, character, cue, to double, dress rehearsal, flack
(a press-agent),
gag, grip
(a stage carpenter),
lead, emcee, props, show
and
turkey
, and others come from the argot of the movie-lots or the jazz-bands,
e.g., canary, cliff-hanger, continuity, corny, 88, flesh-pedlar
(a talent agent),
groan-box, long-hair, schmalz, script
and
whodunit
.
¹
The following, however, seem to be indigenous:

The meaning of many radio terms is now familiar to every American,
e.g., web, sponsor, sustaining programme, soap-opera
,
¹
to dial, plug, platter, on the air, commercial, network, canned music
and
static
. Television, usually called
video
, is introducing its own,
e.g., blizzard-head
, a blonde;
flag
or
gobo
, a screen to shade the camera;
ghost
, an unwanted secondary image;
gismo
or
gizmo
, any contrivance which yet lacks a name;
hot light
, a concentrated light;
inky
, an incandescent light; gilding, performers’ make-up;
²
womp
, a sudden flare-up of light on the receiving screen;
³
noise
, spots or a pattern on the picture;
model
, to move gracefully before the camera, as in a fashion-show;
roll it
, the cue to start work, and
stretch
, to stall for time.
⁴

Every other trade, profession, sport and hobby has its argot, and it would be impossible to give specimens of all of them. Even such strange folk as aquarium attendants, apple-pickers, dog-breeders, philatelists and social workers talk among themselves in terms unintelligible to the outsider. The best I can do here is to sample those of some scattered groups, taking them in alphabetical order: