The Story of English in 100 Words (25 page)

Why did
hello
catch on? The word was around in the early 1800s, but used very informally, often as a part of street slang. The more formal usage seems to have emerged when the telephone was invented. People had to have a way of starting a conversation or letting the other person know they were there, especially if they were using a line where the connection was always open. Various forms were suggested, such as
Ahoy!
,
Are you there?
and
Are you ready?
, but Thomas Edison, the inventor of the telephone, evidently preferred
Hello
. This was the word he shouted into the mouthpiece of his device when he discovered a way of recording sound in 1877. And there is a famous letter which he wrote to a colleague about the telephone saying, ‘I do not think we shall need a call bell as Hello! can be heard 10 to 20 feet away.’ Within a decade, the women who were employed as the first telephone operators were being called
hello girls
.

Hello
illustrates how technology can influence vocabulary, pushing a word in a new direction. Other uses continue to emerge, of course. In particular, since the 1980s
hello
has developed an ironic attention-getting use, implying that someone has failed to understand or has missed the point in some way: ‘I mean, hello! How crazy was that?’ But its future as an informal greeting is being seriously challenged by
Hi
, which emerged in the USA in the 19th century.
Hi
is now heard globally across the age range – though it’s rather less widespread among older people, where
hello
is still the norm – and has become frequent in written English too. It’s the commonest way of beginning an email to someone we know. Two letters are quicker to type than five, no matter how old you are. Technology rules, once again.

Dragsman

thieves’ cant (19th century)

Dictionaries chiefly deal in the words used by the great and the good. Dr Johnson started a trend when he paid special attention in his
Dictionary
entries to the cultured usage of the best authors, ‘the wells of English undefiled’. There’s little sign in his pages of the everyday slang of ordinary people – and certainly no coverage of the secretive usage (often called
cant
, or
argot
) of criminals. But villains have vocabulary too.

It’s not easy to study, though. If we wanted to collect the words used by criminals and establish their senses, we would have to enter their world and
stay for quite some time. A risky business. But some intrepid lexicographers have done precisely that.

One of the first was George Andrewes, who compiled
A Dictionary of the Slang and Cant Languages
in 1809. He had a highly practical aim in mind. Thieves have a language of their own, he says, so that when they get together in the streets passers-by won’t understand what they’re plotting. His
Dictionary
, he hopes, will make it easier to detect their crimes: ‘by the perusal of this Work, the Public will become acquainted with their mysterious Phrases; and be better able to frustrate their designs.’

Dragsmen were one of the types of villain he had in mind. In the 18th century, a
drag
was a private horse-drawn vehicle similar to a stage coach, with seats inside and on the top. A
dragsman
was its driver. But the term was also used for someone who stole (‘dragged’) goods or luggage from vehicles. They were also called
draggers
, for obvious reasons.
Drag
went out of use for the name of a vehicle once the motor car was invented; but it surfaced again in the 1950s when the American sport of
drag racing
developed (initially along the
drag
, or main street, of a town).

Andrewes provides a long list of names for the different kinds of criminal activity. Some, such as
footpads
and
coiners
(‘counterfeiters’), are still used today.
Fencer
is close to what we now say for a receiver of stolen goods (a
fence
). And we might guess what a
water-pad
is, on analogy with
footpad
. Someone who robs ships.

Several of the unfamiliar names are highly descriptive. A
cloak-twitcher
, as its form suggests, was someone who would lurk in a dark place and snatch a cloak from the shoulders of its wearer. A
beau-trap
was a well-dressed confidence trickster. A
diver
was a pickpocket. Others are less transparent, and their origins aren’t known. Housebreakers were
kencrackers
, from an old slang term for a house,
ken
, but where that word comes from nobody knows. A
prigger
was a thief. A
lully-prigger
was a linen-thief. Nobody knows where these words come from either.

Two of the most puzzling terms listed by Andrewes are
clapperdogeons
and
gammoners
. A
clap-perdogeon
– also spelled
clapperdudgeon
– was a beggar. It seems to be a combination of
clapper
(‘lid of a begging dish’) and
dudgeon
(‘hilt of a dagger’). Maybe beggars knocked the lid of their dish with it. A
gammoner
was a pickpocket’s accomplice – someone who held the attention of the target while a pocket was picked.
Give me gammon
, the pickpocket might say to the accomplice. Maybe
gammon
comes from
game
, in its sense of a ‘scheme’ or ‘intrigue’ – we still say such things as
so that’s your little game
and
two can play at that game
. Or could there be an obscure link with the game of backgammon (‘back-game’)? Again, nobody knows.

Lunch

U or non-U (19th century)

What do you call the meal you have in the middle of the day? For many readers, there is no question:
lunch
. For many readers, there is no question:
dinner
. Clearly, there’s an issue here, and it’s one that has been a feature of English vocabulary for a long time.

In Britain, the issue was highlighted in the 1950s, when considerable media attention was paid to the vocabulary differences between upper-class (or ‘U’) speakers and those belonging to other classes (‘non-U’). It was claimed that U speakers said
lunch
or
luncheon
; everyone else said
dinner
. And similarly, U-speakers were supposed to say
vegetables
,
lavatory paper
and
bike
; non-U speakers
greens
,
toilet paper
and
cycle
. Long lists were compiled to illustrate the supposed linguistic ‘class war’.

The situation was never as neat and tidy as the distinction suggested. U-speakers certainly called their midday meal
lunch(eon)
, but if they had a dog they would give it its
dinner
at that time of day. One didn’t invite one’s dog to take lunch. Similarly, U-children would also be summoned to
dinner
, especially in school, where the meal in the middle of the day would be served by
dinner ladies
. Most
Christmas dinners
were eaten in the early afternoon. So were
Thanksgiving dinners
. And the words sometimes went in the opposite direction. Businessmen having an
evening meal in a restaurant might nonetheless pay for it with
luncheon vouchers
.

The words have gone backwards and forwards in recent centuries. Originally, there was only
dinner
– a word that arrived from French in the 13th century to describe the chief meal of the day. This was usually eaten around midday – as is clear from many observations. In Shakespeare’s
As You Like It
(IV.i.166), Orlando tells Rosalind he has to leave her for two hours: ‘I must attend the Duke at dinner. By two o’clock I will be with thee again.’ It was the same in the 18th century. James Boswell, in his
Life of Johnson
, writes of being invited to ‘dinner at two’.

The words
luncheon
and
lunch
both arrived in the late 16th century, though not in their modern sense. A
lunch(eon)
was a thick piece of food – a hunk of something. People would talk about ‘a luncheon of cheese’ or ‘a lunch of bacon’. Then
luncheon
began to move in the direction of its modern meaning. In the 17th century, it was a light repast taken between the main meals. There would be breakfast, then luncheon, then (midday) dinner; or, dinner, then luncheon, then supper. In the 1820s Thomas Carlyle writes about an
evening luncheon
. And in the USA there are instances of luncheons being served as late as midnight.

The modern usage of
lunch
isn’t recorded until 1829, and not everyone liked it. Some considered it a vulgar abbreviation; others, a ridiculous affectation. At the same time,
luncheon
was attracting criticism as
a word unsuitable for use in high society. But
dinner
was also being frowned upon, because of its growing lower-class associations. So what should people say? There were some strange coinages as they searched for a solution.
Lunch-dinner
is recorded a few times during the century, as are
luncheon-dinner
and
dinner-supper
. It must all have been very confusing.

Eventually, as we now know, the present-day use of
lunch
and
dinner
became established among the fashionable classes. As the 20th century dawned, the pages of
Punch
magazine are full of references to business
lunches
and evening
dinner
parties. Meanwhile, the lower orders of society continued to use
dinner
for their midday meal, and so the U/non-U distinction was born. But the story of
lunch
and
dinner
is not over yet. Expressions such as
lunch-box
and
packed lunch
have reinforced a change of usage among many non-U children, so that they now happily talk about
school lunches
(though still served by dinner ladies). However, when chef Jamie Oliver started his campaign on British television in 2005 for more nutritious food in school lunches, he called it
Jamie’s School Dinners.

Dude

a cool usage (19th century)

Dude
is another word whose origin is unknown. All we know is that it suddenly appeared in 1883 in New York. The London newspaper
The Graphic
reported its arrival in March of that year as ‘American slang for a new kind of American young man’. A couple of months later, the
North Adams Transcript
of Massachusetts confirmed its spread: ‘The new coined word “dude” … has travelled over the country with a great deal of rapidity since but two months ago it grew into general use in New York.’ Rarely do we find such a precise dating of a word (
§83
). But who coined it, and why, remains a mystery.

Dudes were aesthetes and dandies – any man who was extremely fastidious about his clothes, speech and general behaviour. They often dressed in a British way and affected a British tone of voice. If you were clothed like a dude, you were
duded up
. But soon the word began to extend its meaning. Any city-dweller who went ‘out West’ as a tourist would be called a dude.
Dude ranches
developed to cater for the demand from city dudes. And it wasn’t long before the female dude was identified – and given a name:
dudess
or
dudine
, though neither of these words has survived.