Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Squirrel can, wreck pan, and biscuit-shooter

Shortly after referring to the Dictionary of the American West  last week, I was shocked and saddened to read that the dictionary's author, Win Blevins, had passed. An award-winning writer known for his "mastery of western lore," Win will be missed. May his memory and his works live on. 

Once the Fourth of July feasting is done, it's time for the merrymakers to pick up their plates and stagger from the table to the squirrel can and from thence to the wreck pan.

Squirrel can and wreck pan are two cowboy slang terms that might come in handy for those in charge of the modern-day kitchen.

According to Win Blevins' Dictionary of the American West, a squirrel can is "a big can used by the camp cook for scraps." The same dictionary defines the wreck pan as "the tub for dirty dishes at the chuck wagon. Also called the wreck tub."

So, give your resident biscuit-shooter (aka "cook") a break, and do your bit to clean up after chowing down.

Please clean up after yourselves when you're done eating, boys.
Cowboys eating out on the range, chuck wagon in background 
Date 1880 (Library of Congress)

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama (July 4th edition): Homerkin

Heeeere comes the Fourth of July! Time to raise a homerkin, perhaps?

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According to Joe Gillard's The Little Book of Lost Words, homerkin is a 17th century English noun meaning "a measure of beer." A measure of beer sounds like a good way to toast a holiday in the middle of a (blazing) hot summer.

But not so fast...

In a Gigglewater411.com post titled "A homerkin, anyone?" one commenter offers the following elucidation:

A homer is an old Hebrew word for a unit of measurement for liquids, equal to 10 “baths,” or approximately 55 gallons. The suffix kin is an old English addition to denote diminutive. So a homerkin is likely a unit of liquid measure equal to half of a homer; or, approximately 27 gallons.

Twenty-seven gallons of beer?? That is a lot of beer.

Let's dive a little deeper and see what else we can find.

A homerkin's worth, perhaps?
Image by Digital Photo and Design DigiPD.com from Pixabay

Homerkin shows up again in The Creature's Cookbook's "Cool Beer Glasses Perfect for Wordsmiths," Book Polygamist's "Save the Words Saturday," and The Guardian's "Move to rescue obscure words." However, it doesn't even register on the Google Ngram viewer or appear in the usual online dictionaries.

My seven-pound Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (Fully revised and updated) did list homer as "a Hebrew unit of capacity equal to ten baths in liquid measure," with a first use date 1525–35. (I also found that definition of homer in Wikipedia, here.)

-kin is defined in my Webster's as "a diminutive suffice of nouns." Well, I knew that. I'm still not certain how we get -kin equating to half, but so be it. In any case, I gather a homerkin is a lot of beer, probably more than fits your average glass or stein.

Okay, I'm thirsty now. Time for some iced tea.

Wishing you all a safe and pleasant Fourth of July!

Fourth of July, Seattle WA, 1888
By Theodore E. Peiser - Asahel Curtis Photo Company Photographs, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72641975

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Kick up your heels at a shindig

How many of you plan to go to a shindig on July 4th and kick up your heels?

There's a lot of unintentional legwork in that question. Let's tackle both the word shindig and the phrase kick up your heels, and see if we can't wrestle them to the ground, slang-o-rama style.
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Shindig, meaning "dance, party, lively gathering," gets a nod from the Online Etymological Dictionary, which notes it first appeared in 1871. According to OED, this word probably evolved from shindy "a spree, merrymaking" (1821)—which also refers to "a game like hockey"—or perhaps from shinty, which is the name of a Scottish game akin to hockey (1771). Merriam-Webster says shindig first danced onto the scene in 1842.

Hmmmm. I sense some uncertainty as to when shindig first arrived on the scene.

I checked Google Ngram Viewer for early appearances, did a little digging, and found it in Across the Atlantic: Letters from France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and England by Charles H. Haeseler, dated 1868. The following passage appears in a passage describing a snowball fight in the Alps:

As for kick up one's heels, nowadays we pretty much use it in the sense defined by Merriam-Webster: to show sudden delight or have a lively time. However, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer, its original meaning was much less... ah... lively:

kick up one's heels: Enjoy oneself... This expression originated about 1600 with a totally different meaning, "to be killed."

Ee-ow!! Although, perhaps in these days (and nights) of COVID-19, kicking up one's heels at a big ol' shindig where folks are all jammed together might result in a condition that is closer to the original meaning of the phrase.

So, whatever you do to celebrate the 4th, please stay safe and err on the side of caution. As for me, I'm going to see if I have a red-white-and-blue mask to wear that day if I should venture out in public.... 

If you attend a shindig on the 4th, please add a little distance while you kick up your heels...
WikiArt - 4th of July 1819 in Philadelphia by John Lewis Krimmel

The Voice of the People by Guest Author Camille Minichino

Please welcome my guest this week: author and long-time friend, Camille Minichino.

Camille received her Ph.D. in physics from Fordham University, New York City. She is currently on the faculty of Golden Gate University, San Francisco and teaches writing throughout the Bay Area. Camille is Past President and a member of NorCal Mystery Writers of America, NorCal Sisters in Crime, and the California Writers Club. Camille has published over 20 novels and many short stories and nonfiction articles. For more about her and her works, please visit her website: http://www.minichino.com/index.html

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt lived down the street from us in Revere, Massachusetts. He was the best friend our family had. Or so I thought growing up in the early 1940s.

"Roosevelt gave me this job," my father would say, tapping a small brown envelope of cash, his week's wages.

"If it weren't for Roosevelt and the WPA, you wouldn't be getting new shoes for school," my mother would remind me.

I pictured a benevolent Mr. Roosevelt driving the old truck that picked up my father and his cronies, day laborers, from the corner of our street, taking them to the construction site of the day. I imagined the WPA, whoever they were, helping my mother shop for my school clothes.

My parents, as well as our neighbors and friends, were acutely aware of House Speaker Tip O'Neill's All politics is local. My father's (metal) social security card was a prized possession.

It seemed to me that every year was an election year, every election important to us. My mother especially was always campaigning, urging people to sign this or that petition, to vote, vote, vote. Our front window was never without a sign, RUSSO FOR MAYOR, AVALLONE FOR COUNCIL, SIEGEL FOR SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT.

And it all came together on the Fourth of July. Independence Day and Voting Day were the biggest holidays in our lives, competing with Thanksgiving and Christmas, but better because there was no back-breaking food prep or lugging a tree up the stairs. My father died on July 4, 1981—I've always felt that he timed it that way, going up with the glorious fireworks on Revere Beach.

Following politics, debating issues, voting, are still a priority for me. Being invited to contribute a story to LOW DOWN DIRTY VOTE has been a highlight of my year. Thanks to Mysti Berry and the grand array of colleagues in this anthology! And thanks, Ann Parker, for giving the Independence Day slot to me!

I'm thinking of making a poster of the LOW DOWN DIRTY VOTE cover, and propping it on my lawn.