Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: The penny dropped

No sooner did I comment to a friend that the penny dropped than I knew what this week's Slang-o-rama was going to be about...

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An informal British idiom, the penny drops is used to say that someone finally understands something after not understanding it for a time. (Thank you, Merriam-Webster, for that definition!)  As for the what and when of its origin, The Phrase Finder points to the Oxford Dictionary for an explanation:

...The Oxford English Dictionary states that this phrase originated by way of allusion to the mechanism of penny-in-the-slot machines. The OED's earliest citation of a use of the phrase with the 'now I understand' meaning, is from The Daily Mirror August 1939:

And then the penny dropped, and I saw his meaning!

The image of someone waiting for a penny-in-the-slot mechanism (which often jammed) to operate does sound plausible and, if that isn't the origin, it is difficult to imagine what is...

Ah, but Word Histories finds an earlier date for first figurative use of this phrase—April 10, 1931—in "On getting educated," published in The Ripley and Heanor News and Ilkeston Division Free Press of Ripley in Derbyshire. The post also offers several other instances cropping up in 1932, including the following from the Skegness Standard of Skegness in Lincolnshire, on April 20, 1932:

THINGS WE WANT TO KNOW.
The identity of the gentleman who was allowed to go for a drink after assisting the missus on Sunday?
And how long it took him to fathom the problem as to why the hostelry was closed at 1.15 p.m.
And if the penny dropped on suggestion of his spouse that he had forgotten to advance his watch an hour?
And if he has made a mental resolve to guard against a similar happening in future years?

Check out the Word Histories post and scroll down to see other early-use figurative quotes.

It took me a few minutes, but then the (figurative) penny dropped.
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay  

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Haywire

 Ever had those times when you've had life go haywire, as in "become wildly confused, out of control, or crazy" (definition courtesy of The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer)?

Well, I'm here to tell you all about it....

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... or at least, about the etymology of this bit o' slang!

Ammer offers that go haywire "alludes to the wire used for bundling hay, which is hard to handle and readily tangled." She also places its first appearance in the first half of the 1900s, which is a pretty wide swath of time. For historical fiction writers, there is a big difference as to whether this phrase entered common use in 1901 vs 1950.

Let's see what other references have to say about going haywire...

The Online Etymology Dictionary has this nice entry, starting with its more prosaic definition:

haywire (n) "soft wire for binding bales of hay," by 1891, from hay + wire (n.). Adjective meaning "poorly equipped, makeshift" is 1905, American English, from the sense of something held together only with haywire, particularly said to be from use of the stuff in New England lumber camps for jury-rigging and makeshift purposes, so that hay wire outfit became the "contemptuous term for loggers with poor logging equipment" [Bryant, "Logging," 1913]. Its springy, uncontrollable quality led to the sense in go haywire (by 1915).

So, 1915, eh? Could I then have a character go haywire in a story set during in the early days of Prohibition, for instance?

Not so fast, says The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology by Robert K. Barnhart, which places the first recording of go haywire in 1929. The Guardian has folks chiming in, offering various dates from "early 1900" to a more recent use in 1940s. 

Enough of this wishy-washy waving of hands. Time to bring out the big guns: Google Ngram. Running down the list of  references, I found a 1916 utterance of this problematic phrase in Nick of the Woods by "Alaska Blacklock" (a pseudonym of George Edward Lewis). In his tale of the still-wild Northwest frontier, the idiomatic term gone haywire is used in dialogue as a bit of wordplay-with-a-wink with the noun haywire:

Hey! (or should I make that "Hay!" 🤣 )... 1916 (or so) works for me! 

Hay wire in a lovely green field or haywire in a crazy day? Depends on how you're feeling!
Left image by Mikhail Timofeev from Pixabay; Right image by David Bruyland from Pixabay

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Bronx cheer

 New York City is much in the news these days, so is there any wonder that the phrase Bronx cheer popped into my mind?

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Here's the definition from American Slang, 2nd Edition by Robert L. Chapman  (which is one of the first reference books I pulled out, given that Bronx cheer clearly originated in the U.S.): "(1) A loud, rude, flatulating noise made with the tongue and lips ... (2) Any outright and precise expression of derision." Chapman dates Bronx cheer to the 1920s.

The Phrase Finder, a nifty online resource based in the UK, has a nice discussion of this saying, and even includes a little map of Manhattan that pinpoints the location of the Bronx. After delving into the origin of the word Bronx (a bit of interesting NY history there), Phrase Finder notes that Bronx cheer began showing up in newspapers in the 1920s, with this earliest sighting in a newspaper article in the Bridgeport Telegram, October 1921: "...if Chicago lose the east will grin and give western football the jolly old Bronx cheer."

The Phrase Finder then makes the point that the use of this bit o'slang in print without any accompanying explanation implies that the author expected his readers to be familiar with it, and that the use of "old" as a description also suggests an origin prior to 1921. More musings about the precise origin—in sports? in theater?—follow, as well as a quick notation on the expression blowing a raspberry, which is essentially the UK equivalent of Bronx cheer. There is also a cute little photo of a small girl enthusiastically blowing a raspberry. The Phrase Finder never disappoints, so I invite you to click on over and read the entire entry.

Yeah, I can almost hear it now...
Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Shooting the breeze

 Confession: I am *stillI* unpacking from the Left Coast Crime conference (these things take time!), and reliving pleasant memories of catching up with folks in person, and just shooting the breeze. 

This phrase, meaning to chat idly or informally, sounds very "Old West" to me. I can imagine a couple of Silver Rush characters, hanging out at a street corner in San Francisco's Barbary Coast or in the fictional Silver Queen Saloon in Leadville, just shooting the breeze. However...

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...according to The Idioms (which claims to be the "largest idiom dictionary... hmmmm), shooting the breeze is of more recent vintage, originating in the U.S. in the early 1900s. As to why "breeze," the entry notes:

A breeze is a light wind, and that’s why the word is used in this phrase to denote a light talk, idle talk, unimportant conversation, or a rumor. ... Sometimes, you can find that “bull” is used instead of “breeze,” but the meaning remains the same. “Shoot the bull” developed from the American institution known as a “bull session,” a gathering of men and it was first recorded in 1908 in prints.

The Online Etymology Dictionary places shoot the breeze even later, at 1938, suggesting it may have originated as military slang. Wiktionary pegs it at 1919, adding that the word breeze alludes to "talking into the wind." Turning to Google Ngram, I tracked down the earliest use of this slang-ish phrase in the 1917 Syllabus of Northwestern University and in the Coopers International Journal of 1918 (which has some awesome photos, if you scroll around through this publication). Of course, it could easily have shown up earlier in newspapers and in speech. Still, I guess I can't have Inez Stannert shooting the breeze in 1879 Leadville or even in 1882 San Francisco...

No, we cannot "shoot the breeze." Come back in 1917 and ask me then.
Image by Prawny from Pixabay.

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Done in

 Just came back from Left Coast Crime "Trouble in Tucson" conference, where I had a wonderful time. Kudos to the conference organizers and volunteers and a special whoop and holler to all the "Lefty" winners and finalists!  👏 👍  It was great to catch up with people I know from the mystery world, and to meet and chat with new readers and writers. (My TBR pile underwent a major expansion due to this trip!) I'm back home now and whew! I'm all done in.

Which leads to the Slang-o-rama post of the week...

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Done in, meaning "exhausted, very tired," dates from early 1900s, according to my hardcover copy of The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer (copyright 1997... yeah, I've had this a while!). Turning to the internet, I found an entry on Green's Dictionary of Slang (which is quite an awesome reference for all things slang, btw), which included the following definitions for done in, and different dates for their first appearance.

• very tired, exhausted (also done out): 1900
• beyond further effort: 1912
• dead: 1916
• intoxicated by a drug: 2013

Well, I'm definitely not dead yet and not intoxicated by a drug (unless caffeine counts?)... but the other two definitions apply. I think I'll cut this entry short, rest a bit, and contemplate what to do with the rest of the day.

Feeling done in: Shall I do the laundry or make a bowl of popcorn and binge on Netflix?
John Singer Sargent, Nonchaloir (Repose), 1911, National Gallery of Art

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: On cloud nine

I recently learned that THE SECRET IN THE WALL won the 2023 Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Traditional Novel** and is a Foreword INDIES Award finalist in the Mystery category***, and I am (yes, you guessed it from this post's title) ...

~~ on cloud nine! ~~

This being Slang-o-rama day and all, I started wondering: Why does this phrase, which means blissfully happy, reference the ninth cloud, and not the first or second or hundredth or...? And could my protagonist, Inez Stannert, say she was on cloud nine in the 1880s? 

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The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer notes this colloquial term appeared in the mid-1900s. As for why nine, it's pretty much a shrug: "The exact allusion of nine in this term is unclear, and different figures, especially seven (perhaps alluding to seventh heaven), are sometimes substituted."

The Times (UK) has an article from 2016 about the phrase's origin, but gosh darn it, the story is mostly behind a paywall, except for this opening paragraph:

An unlikely combination of a Victorian aristocrat and an international meteorology meeting 120 years ago led to a well known phrase describing a state of euphoria. In September, 1896, cumulonimbus, the greatest cloud in the world, was listed as Cloud 9 in a new cloud classification, and so to be on cloud nine became like floating on the tallest cloud on Earth.

Thank goodness The Phrase Finder comes to the rescue with an abundance of information about cloud nine, cloud seven, cloud ten, cloud thirty-nine (!!), and more. All in all, it looks like Inez won't ever be on cloud "pick-a-number", unless she manages to reach at least 80-years-plus in age:

...The early references all come from mid 20th century USA and the earliest ... is in Albin Pollock's directory of slang, The Underworld Speaks, 1935: "Cloud eight, befuddled on account of drinking too much liquor."

The Phrase Finder adds that on cloud nine only became popular much later, noting, "George Harrison adopted the term as the title of his 1987 album and, more notably, The Temptations' 'psychedelic soul' album of the same name, in 1969."

And with that, I shall blissfully float away for now...

Image by Ana_J from Pixabay

** Read about the 2023 Spur Award winners and finalists in this WWA news release.

*** See the list of all INDIES Award finalists here. Winners will be announced June 15.

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Eighty-six

Sure, eighty-six comes up when counting to one hundred, but in the world of slang, eighty-six takes on a whole host of meanings.

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Green's Dictionary of Slang provides two general definitions: unwelcome (from 1933) or dead (from 1986). Digging around a little more, I happened on a nifty article in the St. Louis Magazine column "Ask George" in which a reader asks how the term eighty-sixed in the restaurant biz came to mean that an item was unavailable. George responded:

When I first asked that same question, I was told this: that the standard height of a door frame was 8 feet 6 inches, and when an obnoxious guest was shown the door, he was “86’d.” That pacified me until I later heard that it took 86 ladles to empty a pot of soup on an Army mess line. After that number of ladles, the soup was 86’d. Then I did some research and realized the genesis of the term isn’t clear at all...

The article dives into a dizzying number of possible origins for this short bit o' slang. I encourage you to click on the link above and check them all out. I'll list some of my favorites here:

• The term originated in the soup kitchens of the Great Depression, where the standard pot held 85 cups of soup, so the 86th person was out of luck.
• The United States also has a Uniform Code of Military Justice that has an Article 86: Absence Without Leave, a.k.a. AWOL. 
•  Rotary phones had T on the 8 key and O on the 6 key, so to throw out (TO) something was to 86 it.
• Alcohol in the Old West was 100 proof. When a patron would get too drunk, the barkeep would serve him a less potent, 86 proof liquor, thereby 86’ing him. 
• There was a speakeasy bar in New York City's Greenwich Village at 86 Bedford Street called Chumley's, with no address on the door and several hidden exits. When the heat showed up, guests were known to 86 it, or remove themselves from the premises immediately.
• Others say it originated at Delmonico's Restaurant in NYC. Number 86 on their menu was a steak, the most popular item on the menu and one that often sold out. The term morphed into shorthand for being out of any item. 
•  The term originated with the number codes used by soda jerks: 86 was the code indicating they were out of an item. 
• There are those who claim the term refers to 86 inches, the standard depth of a grave in the U.S. So to 86 something is to bury it.

In the list, the timeframe of first use of eighty-six as slang seems to vary all over the place. For instance, the reference to the "Old West" would probably push it to 19th century.

Turning to my hardcopy of Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Volume 1, A – G wasn't very helpful. This dictionary offers up two general definitions with a couple sub-definitions: 

1. (a) dating from 1995: to end; stop; quash; discard or get rid of; (b) from 1978: to eliminate by killing, murder
2. (a) from 1958: to eject; put out; dismiss; send packing; (b) from 1967:  to get out (used in the sense of an imperative or command)

Merriam-Webster puts on its authoritative/imperative hat and declares that eighty-six first appeared in the early 1930s as soda-jerk slang to indicate an item was sold out.  As to "why" it would have come to mean this? M-W opines (with a shrug), "There is varying anecdotal evidence about why the term eighty-six was used, but the most common theory is that it is rhyming slang for nix." The Online Etymology Dictionary more-or-less agrees, putting first use at 1936.

All I can say is that I guess no one could be eighty-sixed in my nineteenth-century-based series and that I am now craving a root beer float...

Well, it *is* the first of June and almost summer.
By Sarah Afshar - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=84665905

A tip o' the hat to author Camille Minichino, who first mentioned eighty-six in her enlightening Slang-o-rama guest post on Diner Lingo!

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Spill the beans

 I think most folks know that to spill the beans means to "disclose a secret or reveal something prematurely." (The Free Dictionary) But do you know when (and how) the phrase originated? Well, guess what. Even the experts aren't certain.

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According to a post in The Phrase Finder, some think it has to do with a voting system used in ancient Greece:

The story goes that white beans indicated positive votes and black beans negative. Votes had to be unanimous, so if the collector "spilled the beans" before the vote was complete and a black bean was seen, the vote was halted. 

However, the post goes on to note that the idiom first popped up in the early 20th century in the United States, so its origin is probably more recent as well. According to The Phrase Finder, the phrase originally meant something akin to "spoil the beans" or "upset the applecart" and appeared in a June 1908 issue of The Stevens Point Journal (which I can't access to verify, alas) as follows: 

Tawney, when he came to congress, wasn't welcomed within the big tent. He had to wait around on the outside. Then the blacksmith [Jim Tawney] got busy. He just walked off the reservation, taking enough insurgent Republicans with him to spill the beans for the big five.

In October 1911, The Phrase Finder found the idiom used to mean "upset a previously stable situation by talking out of turn" in The Van Wert Daily Bulletin (again, I can't access the archives of this paper to verify):

Finally Secretary Fisher, of the President's cabinet, who had just returned from a trip to Alaska, was called by Governor Stubbs to the front, and proceeded, as one writer says, to "spill the beans." 

So, ancient Greece or early 20th-century US of A? You choose! The Online Etymological Dictionary also places first use of this phrase in the 20th century, giving a 1910 date for use in the sense of "spoil the situation" and 1919 for meaning "reveal a secret." 

 And for those of you who are thinking, "Isn't there a game involving spilling beans and such?" Yes indeed. Don't Spill the Beans was a board game in the 1960s, with newer versions since then. Here's a link to a Board Game Archaeology video on YouTube showing the 1967 game and how it's played.

"Come come, dearie... Spill the beans, dish the dirt."
"This is the 19th century and I have no idea what you're talking about."

 "

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Crunching the numbers

 The past week I've been busy crunching the numbers for taxes. Now that I'm out of that tunnel (but barely), I have time to wonder: did people crunch the numbers before computers? Before adding machines? And why crunch? It sounds like we're eating our arithmetical efforts.

And you know what happens when I start to wonder...

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The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer has this to say:

crunch numbers. Perform numerous calculations or process a large amount of numerical data... This term originated with the computer age and indeed still applies mostly to the operations of computers. [second half of 1900s]

So, my original guess that this arrived with the computer age seems to be correct. Looking around a little more, it seems most other discussions of the slang phrase crunch the numbers point back to the dictionary entry above.

Oh well. I guess that's all I've got for you this week. If anyone finds anything more about this phrase, please let me know!

A tip o' the Slang-o-rama hat to computer science pioneer Grace Hopper, who helped make number crunching possible.
By Unknown (Smithsonian Institution) - Flickr: Grace Hopper and UNIVAC, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19763543