American Language Supplement 2 (153 page)

1
Herbert Asbury says in Gem of the Prairie; New York, 1940, p. 327, that this lovely euphemism was coined by Hymie Weiss, one of the four ranking dignitaries of Chicago gangdom, the others being Johnny Torrio, Al Capone and Dion O’Banion.

2
Like
big shot
, this one was probably invented by some smart newspaper reporter and imposed upon the racket. Mr. Fred Hamann tells me that on the revival of bootlegging during World War II it became
blitz-water, bang-water
or
ceiling-buster
.

3
Said H. K. Croessman in the
American Mercury
, June, 1926, pp. 241–42: “The first time I heard
hijacker
was from the lips of an Oklahoman. He explained it as coming from the command customary in hold-ups: ‘Stick ’em up high, Jack,’ or, more simply, ‘Up high, Jack,’ Jack being the common generic name for any male person of unknown or uncertain identity. Thus, the Oklahoman explained, both
stick-up
and
hijack
originate from the same command. The change from
high
to
hi
is a corruption typical of a tendency in America.”

4
Terms prevailing during Prohibition among boozers, though not among bootleggers,
e.g., homebrew
, are listed in Wet Words in Kansas, by Vance Randolph,
American Speech
, June, 1929, pp. 385–89 See also Volstead English, by Achsah Hardin, the same, Dec., 1931, pp. 81–88.

5
The first appearance of
to scram
in print seems to have been in Walter Winchell’s column, Your Broadway and Mine, Oct. 4, 1928. See
Scram
– a Swell Five-Letter Word, by V. Royce West,
American Speech
, Oct., 1937, pp. 195–202. Partridge says that it reached England in the movies by 1930. Its etymology remains mysterious. For speculations on the subject see Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, the West paper just mentioned, and notes by G. Kirchner in
American Speech
, April, 1938, pp. 152–53 and April, 1940, p. 219.

6
In A Couple of Cops,
Commonweal
, Jan. 31, 1936, p. 373, Roger Shaw says that the celebrated Machine-Gun Kelly complained of the deadly efficiency of the
G-men
when he was captured at Memphis, Tenn., Sept. 26, 1933, and that “newspapers, fictioneers and the movies took it up.” It is from
government-man
.

1
One who
sings, i.e
., confesses to the police.

2
Apparently from
Gatling-gun
. But Booth, before cited, derives it from
catting up
, meaning to rob itinerant workers at pistol point. Those so engaged, he says, “were known as
cat-up men
. Soon
cat
was corrupted to
gat
.” This is confirmed by Godfrey Irwin in American Tramp and Underworld Slang, but it seems improbable.

3
Says Peter Tamony in Origin of Words:
Lam
, San Francisco
News Letter & Wasp
, April 9, 1939, p. 5: “Its origin should be apparent to anyone who runs over several colloquial phrases for leave-taking, such as
to beat it, to hit the trail
.… The allusion in
lam
is to
beat
.
Beat it
is old English, meaning to leave. During the period of George Ade’s Fables in Slang cabaret society delighted in talking slang, and
lam
was current. Like many other terms, it went under in the flood of new usages of those days, but was preserved in criminal slang. A quarter of a century later it reappeared.” An article in the New York
Herald Tribune
in 1938 said that “one of the oldest police officers in New York” reported that he had heard
on the lam
“about thirty years ago.”
To lam
in the sense of
to beat
is traced by the NED to 1595.

4
This phrase, so often used by virtuosi of
muscling in
, is neither new nor American. In A History of Our Own Times; London, 1879, Vol. II, p. 275, Justin McCarthy told of a threat sent by one Irish chieftain to another: “Pay me my tribute –
or else
.” I am indebted here to Mr. Alexander Kadison.

5
In
American Speech
, Oct., 1936, p. 278, V. Royce West recorded the appearance of
gangster
in England, France, Germany and Holland. The DAE traces it in American use only to the same year, but it must be considerably older.

6
Racket
, in the current sense of an anti-social enterprise, appeared in A New and Comprehensive Vocabulary of the Flash Language; London, 1812. But
racketeer
is American.

7
Public enemy
, usually followed by a numeral, is said to have been coined by the Hon. Homer S. Cummings, LL.D., Attorney-General of the United States, 1933–39. The original
Public Enemy No. 1
was John Dillinger, killed by F.B.I. men in Chicago, July 22, 1934.

1
Private communication, April 7, 1940.

2
A survey of all the male inmates of the State prisons of New York showed that 80.2% of them were of less than normal intelligence. My authority here is Dr. H. Curtis Wood, Jr. Dr. James Asa Shield, psychiatrist to the Virginia State Penitentiary at Richmond, reports that among 749 white prisoners examined there in 1935 only 21 showed a mental age of 14 years or over, and that among 1,043 colored prisoners there were but two.

3
The Psychology of Prison Language,
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
, Oct.-Dec., 1935, pp. 359–65.

4
Table Talk,
San Quentin Bulletin
, Jan., 1931, p. 11.

1
Traced to 1860 by the NED, and said by Partridge to be “the inevitable nickname of any male Murphy.”
Murphy
for a potato has been traced to
c
. 1810.

2
Sawbones
is in The Pickwick Papers, 1837.

1
I am indebted here to Messrs. Clinton A. Sanders, Joseph W. Blackwell, Jr., Samuel Meyer and the editors of the
San Quentin News
. I have also made use of My San Quentin Years, by James B. Holohan, published serially in the Los Angeles
Times
, in 1936; Prison Slang, by Clinton T. Duffy; San Quentin, n. d.; Can Cant, by J. Louis Kuethe, Baltimore
Evening Sun
, Dec. 9, 1932 (republished as Prison Parlance,
American Mercury
, Feb., 1934, pp. 25–28); English Behind the Walls, by William H. Hine,
Better Speech
, Dec., 1939, pp. 19–20 (sent to me by Mr. Fred Hamann); Convicts’ Jargon, by George Milburn,
American Speech
, Aug., 1931, pp. 436–42; Prison Phraseology, by Bruce Airey; Montgomery (Ala.), 1943; A Prison Dictionary (Expurgated), by Hi Simons,
American Speech
, Oct., 1933, pp. 22–23; Underworld and Prison Slang, by Noel Ersine; Upland (Ind.), 1935; Prison Lingo, by Herbert Yenne,
American Speech
, March, 1927, pp. 280–82; More Crook Words, by Paul Robert Beath,
American Speech
, Dec., 1930, pp. 131–34; Hipped to the Tip, by Jack Schuyler,
Current History
, Nov. 7, 1940, pp. 21–22; An Analysis of Prison Jargon, by V. Erle Leichty,
Papers of the Michigan Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters
, Vol. XXX, 1945, pp. 589–600, and the glossaries in Almanac For New Yorkers, 1939, p. 125; Farewell, Mr. Gangster, by Herbert Corey; New York, 1936; The Professional Thief, edited by Edwin H. Sutherland; Chicago, 1937, and Crime as a Business, by J. C. R. MacDonald; Palo Alto (Calif.), 1939.

1
Many titles are listed in Burke’s bibliography. For what follows I have resorted mainly to Hobo Cant, by F. H. Sidney,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. V, Part II, 1919, pp. 41–42; Hobo Lingo, by Nicholas Klein,
American Speech
, Sept. 1926, pp. 650–53; The Argot of the Vagabond, by Charlie Samolar, the same, June, 1927, pp. 385–92; More Hobo Lingo, by Howard F. Barker, the same, Sept., 1927, p. 506; The Vocabulary of Bums, by Vernon W. Saul, alias K. C. Slim, the same, June, 1929, pp. 337–46; Junglese, by Robert T. Oliver, the same, June, 1932, p. 41; Bowery Terms, by H. E. Baronian,
Hobo News
, various dates from 1941 onward; A Dictionary of American Tramp and Underworld Slang, by Godfrey Irwin; London, 1931; Boy and Girl Tramps of America, by Thomas Minehan; New York, 1934; The Hobo, by Nels Anderson; Chicago, 1923; various articles by John Chapman in the New York
Daily News
, 1937–38; Sister of the Road, by Ben L. Reitman; New York, 1937, and the well-known books about tramps by Josiah Flynt (Willard).

1
Apparently of English origin.

2
An ancient word of varied meaning. It once meant to play truant, then to peddle things obtained free (
e.g
., blackberries or wild salads), then to slink along, and finally to beg.

3
Now extended in common usage to mean anything obtained free,
e.g
., a release by a press-agent. Partridge calls it American, and says that it reached England
c
. 1920.

4
i.e
., the steel framework under a freight-car.

5
Cf
. AL4, p. 221, n. 1. It seems probable that the spread of
hoosegow
from the Mexican border was effected by hoboes.

6
Samolar, before cited, says that this “was coined by Boston Mary, a notorious female hobo.”

7
Traced to 1883 by the DAE and marked an Americanism.

8
In the general sense of to acquire something by putting forth effort, to collect, to get together, to forage around for
to rustle
is traced by the DAE to
c
. 1846.
To rustle cattle, i.e
., to steal them, is not found before 1893.

9
Applied derisively by members of the I. W. W. (
wobblies
) to migratory workers who refused to join their one-big-union.

10
Possibly from
cache
.

11
Samolar, before cited, says that the
buzzard
is “the lowest thing in Vagabondia” – next to the
mission-stiff
, who lives by getting converted at city missions. Says H. F. Kane in A Brief Manual of Beggary,
New Republic
, July 15, 1936: “Beggars who indulge in such hypocrisy and those who habitually frequent the Salvation Army headquarters and various missions represent the lowest and most unethical type of our profession.”

1
Said to be not from the town name, but from
purée
.

2
I take all these names of specialists from Sister of the Road, by Ben L. Reitman, before cited, pp. 300–301.

3
From
mushroom
. Partridge traces it to 1821 in England.

4
I am indebted here to The Beggars are Coming, by Meyer Berger,
New Yorker
, March 11, 1939.

5
See The Language of Homosexuality, by G. Legman, in Sex Variants, by P. W. Henry; New York, 1941, Vol. II, pp. 1149–79.

1
I take these from Underworld Place-Names, by D. W. Maurer,
American Speech
, Oct., 1940, pp. 340–42, and More Underworld Place-Names, by the same, the same. Feb., 1942, pp. 75–76. Some of the nicknames of railroads are listed in AL4, p. 582.

2
Charles J. Lovell, who has found examples earlier than the DAE’s first, suggests that the word may be from the Chinese or some Indian language. He says that it apparently originated in the Seattle-Tacoma area.

3
See AL4, p. 156 and Supplement I. pp. 314–15.

1
“Junker Lingo,” By-Product of Underworld Argot,
American Speech
, April, 1933, pp. 27–28; The Argot of the Underworld Narcotic Addict, the same, April, 1936, pp. 116–27, and Oct., 1938, pp. 179–92; Narcotic Argot, the same, Oct., 1936, p. 222; Speech of the Narcotic Underworld,
American Mercury
, Feb., 1946, pp. 225–29, and Marijuana Addicts and Their Lingo,
American Mercury
, pp. 571–75.

2
Jargon of Marihuana Addicts,
American Speech
, Oct., 1940, pp. 336–37.

3
Addenda to “Junker Lingo,”
American Speech
, Oct., 1933, pp. 3–34.

4
Really the Blues; New York, 1946.

5
Tea For a Viper,
New Yorker
, March 12, 1938, pp. 47–50.

6
See Supplement I, p. 346, for
coke
as an abbreviation of
Coca-Cola
.

1
I take some of these from The Weed,
Time
, July 19, 1943, pp. 54–56. See also Marihuana Intoxication, by Walter Bromberg,
American Journal of Psychiatry
, Sept., 1934. I am indebted here to Dr. Roger S. Cohen, of Washington.

2
Mr. Hugh Morrison calls my attention to the fact that
reefer
is probably derived from the Mexican Spanish
grifa
or
grifo
, which is defined in Francisco J. Santamaria’s Diccionario General de Americanismos; City of Mexico, 1942, as meaning “la persona intoxicada de drogas como la marihuana, la morfina o la cocaina.” It was brought to the United States, along with marihuana itself, by Mexicans, who have a tendency, says Mr. Morrison, “to elide the
g
at the beginning of a word.” The result was
reefa
, whence
reefer
, though Maurer says that among American addicts
greefo
survives as the name of the dried drug, which is also
muggles, bo-bo bush
or
potiguaya
. The cigarette is always a
reefer
. Webster 1934 and the DAE prefer the spelling
marijuana
, but Santa-maria gives
marihuana
.

3
Berger, before cited, p. 47.

1
Pharmacist Sentenced for Sale of Pentobarbital,
Journal of the American Medical Association
, June 17, 1944.

2
Prostitutes and Criminals Argots,
American Journal of Sociology
, Jan., 1939, p. 546.

3
Berrey and Van den Bark list many other terms, but most of them seem to be nonce-words or localisms.