Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: When push comes to shove

 Now here's a phrase for the ages: When push comes to shove. I can so easily imagine/hear my Silver Rush protagonist Inez Stannert thinking/saying this.

But... could she/would she, in the 1880s? 

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The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer defines this phrase as meaning "when matters must be confronted, when a crucial point is reached." (Goodness knows Inez has many such moments.)

This is what that dictionary has to say about the origin of when (or if) push comes to shove:

This term comes from rugby, where, after an infraction of rules, forwards from each team face off and push against one another until one player can kick the ball to a teammate and resume the game. Its figurative use dates from the 1950s.

1950s?? Uh-oh. Let's check some other references, because 1950s sounds way too recent.

American Slang 2nd Edition by Robert L. Chapman defines the phrase a little differently—a touchy situation becomes actively hostile; a quarrel becomes a fight—and places its use by 1958. (Yikes!) Ah, but The Grammarphobia blog comes to my rescue with a post that points to its use in the 19th century:

The expression “when (or if) push comes to shove” originated in 19th-century African-American usage, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED labels it colloquial—more likely to be found in speech than in formal writing—and says it means “when action must back up words” or “if or when one must commit oneself to an action or decision.” 

People generally talk about a problem before finally doing something about it. So think of talking as the “push” and acting as the “shove.”

The expression wasn’t recorded until the 1890s, according to OED citations, but no doubt it was used conversationally for years before it ever showed up in print.

Oxford gives a hint of the reasoning behind the saying in this 1873 citation from Thomas De Witt Talmage, writing in the United Methodist Free Churches’ Magazine: “The proposed improvement is about to fail, when Push comes up behind it and gives it a shove, and Pull goes in front and lays into the traces; and, lo! the enterprise advances, the goal is reached!”

Ooooh, I think I'll go with the OED as the final say in this, and trust that perhaps at some point my fictional characters would have bandied that phrase amongst themselves in the 1880s. Because, yes, the phrase shows up in my eight books. I'm not going to tell you where, though. I'll leave that as an exercise for you, dear reader. (If you figure out where this phrase appears in my Silver Rush series, feel free to contact me... I might have a "little something special" for you when you do!)

When an argument devolves to "push comes to shove," don't push it!
A literary argument on the second tier, from 'Theater sketches,' published in Le Charivari, February 27, 1864
Artist: Honoré Daumier (French, Marseilles 1808–1879 Valmondois) 

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: Derring-do

Antonia Gizzi, the young ward of my Silver Rush protagonist Inez Stannert, dreams of living a life full of derring-do.

But wait.

Can she? In 1882? When did derring-do first come into use and what's its origin, anyway?

Slang-o-rama shall save the day, galloping to the rescue of derring-do (which, according to Merriam-Webster, means "daring action").

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According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, Antonia certainly could think of derring-do, since the term made its first appearance in the 1570s, long before the 19th century! OED adds some interesting background, which shows its roots go back way before that:

...[O]riginally (late 14c.) dorrying don, literally "daring (to) do," from durring "daring," present participle of Middle English durren "to dare" .... Chaucer used it in passages where the sense was "daring to do" (what is proper to a brave knight). Misspelled derrynge do in 1500s and mistaken for a noun by Spenser, who took it to mean "manhood and chevalrie;" picked up from him and passed on to Romantic poets as a pseudo-archaism by Sir Walter Scott.

The Phrase Finder has a nice post following the disintegration of the original phrase to the one we know so well, saying in part: 

The earliest form of 'derring-do' in print is found in Geoffrey Chaucer's Troylus And Criseyde, circa 1374: "In durring don that longeth to a knight." Chaucer was using the two words 'durring' and 'don' with their usual 14th century meanings of 'daring' and 'do'. This line in his work translates into 20th century language as 'in daring to do what is proper for a knight'. The poet John Lydgate, paraphrased Chaucer in The Chronicle of Troy, 1430, and his 'dorryng do' was misprinted in later versions of the work as 'derrynge do'.

 In reading the above, the celebrated Tudor poet Edmund Spenser appears not to have realised that derrynge was a misprint of durring, the meaning of which he would have been familiar with, and interpreted 'derrynge do' as meaning 'brave actions'. That was the way he used it in several of his late 16th poems, including his best-known work, The Faerie Queene, 1596: "A man of mickle name, Renowned much in armes and derring doe."

Last, but not least, make way for that inveterate plunderer of historic language, Sir Walter Scott. His use of 'derring-do' as a single word in the hugely popular novel Ivanhoe, 1820, cemented it into the language...

So, Antonia is allowed a little swashbuckle and derring-do, etymologically speaking. Although, since she is a girl, late-19th-century society would no doubt frown upon her doing so.

Yo-ho-ho and a touch of derring-do!
By Edward Mason Eggleston (1882-1941) - artmight.com Treasure Princess, Public Domain
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89375904

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Cold shoulder

 The protagonist of my Silver Rush series, Inez Stannert, has been known to give the cold shoulder to those who deserve it (and even to a few who do not!). So, was she acting in her timeframe (1880s) when exhibiting this display of contempt?

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Well, of course she was! According to American Slang, 2nd Edition by Robert L. Chapman and Barbara Ann Kipfer, cold shoulder as a noun phrase was in use by 1816, well before Inez was born. Defined as "a deliberate snub; display of chilly contempt," cold shoulder also became a verb form by 1845. 

The Phrase Finder has a few words to say about this phrase:

The origin of this expression which is often repeated is that visitors to a house who were welcome were given a hot meal but those who weren't were offered only "cold shoulder of mutton." This is repeated in several etymological texts, including Hendrickson's usually reliable Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins. There's no evidence to support this view though and it appears to be an example of folk etymology. 

The post goes on to note that the first printed reference appears in Sir Walter Scott's 1816 The Antiquary, a "novel of manners," as follows: 

The Countess’s dislike didna gang farther at first than just showing o’ the cauld shouther.

And hey, hey! You can download The Antiquary in an ebook format of your choice from Project Gutenberg. You can even listen to an audiobook version, courtesy of LibriVox.

What else can I say besides... (here it comes).... Great Scott! 

(Thanks goes to Susan Knilans for suggesting cold shoulder as a Slang-o-rama topic.)

An elegant "cold shoulder." (I love this portrait!)
 Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau) By John Singer Sargent
This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See the Image and Data Resources Open Access Policy, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56723870

THE SECRET IN THE WALL - Cover and copy (and a sea shanty, just because )

 Interrupting the usual slinging of slang to offer a preview of the cover and back-cover copy for the eighth book in my historical mystery series, THE SECRET IN THE WALL. And so, without further ado...

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(... well, maybe a little ado...)

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(...think of this as a stage curtain slowly drawing open...)
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... TA-DA!! 

Does this whet your curiosity? Look mysterious? Well, when you flip the book over, this is what you'll read:

Sometimes you can’t keep your gown out of the gutter… 

Inez Stannert has reinvented herself—again. Fleeing the comfort and wealth of her East Coast upbringing, she became a saloon owner and card sharp in the rough silver boomtown of Leadville, Colorado, always favoring the unconventional path—a difficult road for a woman in the late 1800s. 

Then the teenaged daughter of a local fortune teller is orphaned by her mother’s murder, and Inez steps up to raise the troubled girl as her own. Inez works hard to keep a respectable, loving home for Antonia, carefully crafting their new life in San Francisco. But risk is a seductive friend, difficult to resist. When a skeleton tumbles from the wall of her latest business investment, the police only seem interested in the bag of Civil War-era gold coins that fell out with it. With her trusty derringer tucked in the folds of her gown, Inez uses her street smarts and sheer will to unearth a secret that someone has already killed to keep buried. The more she digs, the muddier and more dangerous things become.

She enlists the help of Walter de Brujin, a local private investigator with whom she shares some history. Though she wants to trust him, she fears that his knowledge of her past, along with her growing attraction to him, may well blow her veneer of respectability to bits—that is, if her dogged pursuit of the truth doesn’t kill her first.

--------------------------------------------------------------- 

Hats off and three cheers to the crew at Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks for their tremendous job creating the lovely cover and back-cover text!

THE SECRET IN THE WALL is scheduled for release in February 2022, so there is a while yet before you can dive into Inez's next adventure. Meanwhile, if you haven't already, please consider signing up for my newsletter. To do so, click here and scroll to the bottom of the page. The newsletter comes out occasionally and at random intervals, so shouldn't overwhelm your inbox. I will say this: one is in the works right now, so do sign up soon! I'll be offering fun tidbits from my research and a random drawing for books from authors I admire.

Now, your reward, for reading all the way to the end of this lengthy post, is this delightful sea shanty, "Leave Her, Johnny." Enjoy!

Here is another rendition of "Leave Her, Johnny," WITH LYRICS, because one just can't have too many sea shanties:

News Flash: Silver Rush book #8 has a title!

 Taking a break from Slang-o-rama to announce some bookish news: the eighth book in my Silver Rush historical mystery series has a title!

THE SECRET IN THE WALL

Photo by Ann Parker
Location: Bodie, California

It's early 1882 in San Francisco, and Inez Stannert has forged a partnership to purchase an abandoned house that needs work, but has "good bones." Renovations begin, and, uh-oh, what do they find lurking in the darkness and the shadows, behind the weathered planks? I'm not telling, because...

... it's a secret. 😉

Look for THE SECRET IN THE WALL to come your way in February 2022, courtesy of the good folks at Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks. 

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Snookered!

Yes, I know I promised an arm and a leg for this week, but I've been snookered by a virus (not THIS virus, thank goodness. Just some run-of-the-mill seasonal virus). As a result, I had to bow out of attending one of my favorite mystery conventions, Left Coast Crime. And I am saaaaaad. 😢

So, while the ibuprofen is at maximum strength, let's take a look at the word snookered. Could my 19th century protagonist Inez cry out in anger that she'd been snookered and stomp around in a fury? I'd like to think so—at least, I can certainly envision it—but I've been wrong before... 
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My copy of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition,  notes that the noun snooker (dating from 1889 and of unknown origin) is a variation of pool played with 15 red balls and 6 variously colored balls. It took until 1925, apparently, for it to gain traction as a verb meaning to make a dupe of or hoodwink.

Huh!

I'm not seeing how the noun and verb are even related. But then, I've never played snooker! Let's dig a little deeper.

The Online Etymological Dictionary offers a possible explanation of how the game came to be called such, and then gets right down to it, defining snooker as "to cheat" and providing this connection, straight from the rules of the game:

One of the great amusements of this game is, by accuracy in strength, to place the white ball so close behind a pool ball that the next player cannot hit a pyramid ball, he being "snookered" from all of them. If he fail to strike a pyramid ball, this failure counts one to the adversary. If, however, in attempting to strike a pyramid ball off a cushion, he strike a pool ball, his adversary is credited with as many points as the pool ball that is struck would count if pocketed by rule. [Maj.-Gen. A.W. Drayson, The Art of Practical Billiards for Amateurs, 1889]

Still, this sneaky setup isn't "cheating," per se. It just sounds like very skilled playing. So, I'm still not seeing the connection. Luckily, there's a very nice discussion on Stack Exchange about this very thing, and I invite you to check it out... you'll learn a lot more about snooker—the game and the possible connection to "cheating," than I can tell you here. 

My takeaway: I can be snookered, but Inez can't (at least, not in 1882!).

And just when you least expect it, snookered! (I could definitely see Inez doing this...)
From The Galaxy, An Illustrated Magazine of Entertaining Reading, Vol. VI), July 1868
Wood engraving, Winslow Homer

Addendum: In her comment below, Liz V mentioned the movie "The Hustler" starring Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason. I found a clip and just have to share. Thank you, Liz!

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: From fiddle-faddle to fiddlesticks

Now here is an interjection that sounds like something my protagonist Inez Stannert might say (when she's trying to avoid saying something profane): Fiddle-faddle!

The term also has a bit of a musical air about it, and the "fiddle" has me thinking of old-time fiddle playing. So, just how old is this expression, and how did it evolve?

Let's find out!
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According to my copy of American Slang, 2nd Edition, edited by Robert L. Chapman, Ph.D., fiddle-faddle, which means nonsense or foolishness appeared as a noun by 1577 (!!) and by 1671 was being used as an exclamation of irritation, disapproval, or dismissal.

The Online Etymological Dictionary goes along with the 1570s origin date, adding that it is apparently a reduplication of the obsolete word faddle, which means "to trifle," or of fiddle in its contemptuous sense.

In a post titled 10 Interjections Your Vocabulary Has Been Missing, Merriam-Webster suggests the term evolved from fiddlesticks:

The word fiddle-faddle comes from a long tradition of words playfully coined by the process of reduplication: in this case, the word fiddlesticks got cut down and doubled with a vowel change.

Well, I couldn't leave it at that, so onward to fiddle, faddle, and fiddlesticks. The Online Etymological Dictionary has a fairly lengthy exploration of the origins of the word fiddle, noting that it seems to have morphed over time to the point where it carries a slightly contemptuous "air." For faddle, the Online Etymological Dictionary simply states:

faddle (v.) "to make much of a child," 1680s.

As for how/why fiddlesticks came to mean nonsense, World Wide Words comes to the rescue with this explanation:

At some point in Shakespeare’s lifetime, it seems fiddlestick began to be used for something insignificant or trivial. This may have been because a violin bow was regarded as inconsequential or perhaps simply because the word sounds intrinsically silly. It took on a humorous slant as a word one could use to replace another in a contemptuous response to a remark. George Farquhar used it in this way in his play Sir Henry Wildair of 1701: “Golden pleasures! golden fiddlesticks!”. From here it was a short step to using the word as a disparaging comment to mean that something just said was nonsense.

Whew. You are probably now thinking (as I am) "Fiddlesticks! Enough of this fiddle-faddle!"

Don't mind me, I'm just fiddling around with words...
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Addendum: Liz V. mentioned in her comment below the expression fiddle-de-dee, which certainly belongs to this lineup! According to The Online Etymology Dictionary, the contemptuous nonsense word fiddle-de-dee dates from 1784. However, it will always make me think of Gone With the Wind and Scarlett O'Hara (see snippet below, at about 12 seconds):

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Flibbertigibbet

My protagonist Inez Stannert would surely bristle if someone called her a flibbertigibbet, and rightly so! The term might more aptly be applied to one of my secondary San Francisco characters, Carmella Donato. The definition according to Merriam-Webster is "a silly flighty person."

Hmmm.

Now I'm wondering... have I ever heard a man called a flibbertigibbet? Can't say that I have. So is it a gender-neutral appellation? And when did it first come into use?

Time for some research!
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Merriam-Webster says this about the word's background:

Flibbertigibbet is one of many incarnations of the Middle English word flepergebet, meaning "gossip" or "chatterer." (Others include "flybbergybe," "flibber de' Jibb," and "flipperty-gibbet.") It is a word of onomatopoeic origin, created from sounds that were intended to represent meaningless chatter. Shakespeare apparently saw a devilish aspect to a gossipy chatterer; he used "flibbertigibbet" in King Lear as the name of a devil. This use never caught on, but the devilish connotation of the word reappeared over 200 years later when Sir Walter Scott used "Flibbertigibbet" as the nickname of an impish urchin in the novel Kenilworth. The impish meaning derived from Scott's character was short-lived and was laid to rest by the 19th-century's end, leaving us with only the "silly flighty person" meaning.

World Wide Words provides a time frame for the early incarnation (1450 for fleper-gebet), adding "It started out to mean a gossip or chattering person, but quickly seems to have taken on the idea of a flighty or frivolous woman."

The Online Etymological Dictionary also pins this word on the fairer sex, providing as a definition: "chattering gossip, flighty woman."

The Word Detective also dives into the word's use and background, noting that flibbertigibbet first appeared in print in 1549, and going on to say, that, while it is, strictly speaking, a gender-neutral word, "in practice it is, and long has been, usually applied to women." The post concludes, somewhat snidely:

The air-brained motormouths among us have given us more than just “flibbertigibbet,” of course.  The words “babble,” “prattle” and “chatter” all also originated as onomatopoeic attempts to replicate the sound of someone who has nothing to say but simply will not shut up.

I guess I'd better conclude this post or stand accused of running on at the mouth, which would make me a...

... well, you know.

Equal opportunity for flibbertigibbets!
Gossip, by Eugene de Blaas (1903) - Christie's, Public Domain, Link

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: In a tizzy

Whoa... sometimes (especially when I go overboard on coffee), I get in a tizzy and can't even think straight.

In a tizzy.

Now, where did that come from? It sounds very 19th century.... but is it?

Time to look around and find out!

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The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer directs me to check out "in a dither." So, I do.

in a dither. Also, all of a dither; in a flutter or tizzy. In a state of tremulous agitation. The noun dither dates from the early 1800s and goes back to the Middle English verb didderen, "to tremble"; in a flutter dates from the mid-1700s; in a tizzy dates from about 1930 and is of uncertain origin.

So, if I want any of my Silver Rush characters to be "in a state of tremulous agitation," I guess they had better be in a dither or in a flutter... forget the tizzy!

Too. Much. Caffeine... puts me in a tizzy. (Edvard Munch, 1893, The Scream, oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard, 91 x 73 cm, National Gallery of Norway)

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama (with an update!): Paint the town red

Hey hey! Get ready to have some fun, because we're gonna paint the town red! (Why? See my update at the bottom of this post.)

But... why red? Why not a nice shade of blue? And the whole town? Really?

Time to dig into this expression and see if we can identify what's going on behind the words...

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The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer has been mighty handy lately. Here's what it says for this bit of slang:

paint the town red. Go on a spree... The precise allusion of this term is disputed. Some believe it refers to setting something on fire; others point to a vague association of the color red with violence. [late 1800s]

A disputed allusion? Late 1800s? (Yikes! Have I used that phrase in my books? And if I did, was I being anachronistic?) Well, let's dig a little more...

The Online Etymological Dictionary has a brief notation under the "paint" entry as follows:

To paint the town (red) "go on a spree" first recorded 1884

Uh oh. 
1884? 
Am I in trouble here? 
I turned to Ngram next (if you haven't come across Ngram before, it's a wonderful way to track the frequency of words and phrases in print over time). 

Eureka!... I found the following reference for "paint the town red" in a July 1882 publication: Historic Magazine and Notes and Queries for Teachers, Pupils, and Practical and Professional Men (N.B. Webster, editor).

What a relief! Finding this reference reassures me that this expression was in use before 1882—and in the West, at that. I am in the clear, and Inez is free to paint the town red, should she so desire!

...Where are they hiding the paintbrushes?
[Zogbaum, R. F. (illus).
New York. Harper's Weekly. 10-16- 1886.]

------------------UPDATE--------------------------------------------------

I'm leaving this post up for an extra week, because I definitely have reason to "paint the town red!"

Specifically, A DYING NOTE won two EVVY awards from the Colorado Independent Publishers Association:

• First place (gold) award in the Mystery/Crime/Detective Fiction category
• Second place (silver) award in the Historical Fiction category.

Mystery and history. Gold and silver. Definitely worth celebrating!

To view all the CIPA EVVY award winners, go here and scroll.

Win a copy of the first in the Silver Rush mysteries or the most recent—your choice!

I tried something new with the guest post "A Rude Awakening to a Day in the Life of Inez Stannert," now live at Dru's Book Musings—writing Inez from first-person point of view (I, mine, etc.). My "comfort zone" in writing Inez is to use close third-person point of view (i.e., looking at the world through Inez's eyes, but still in third person (she, her, etc.).
Experimenting is a good thing, right?
If curiosity is not enough to make you click the link, there's also this:
I am giving away a copy of SILVER LIES (the first in the Silver Rush series) or WHAT GOLD BUYS (the newest, just-released fifth book)... All you have to do to enter the drawing is leave a comment with the post at Dru's by September 15.

So, what are you waiting for? Check it out and see what yanked Inez out of a deep slumber... a rude awakening indeed!

... a few minutes later: "What's that noise??"