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

 I'm baaaack from the Malice Domestic mystery convention and, whew, I have to say I am all in, as in "tired, exhausted" (Merriam-Webster, Entry 2 of 2, Definition 1). All in also means "fully committed or involved in something," which I get. But how/when did it come to mean just. plain. beat...?

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I'm not the only one wondering, and The Grammarist addresses this very question, saying:

According to [Eric] Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, the term “all in” is a colloquial expression that originated on the floors of stock exchanges in the mid-19th century. If the market was “all in,” it was down or depressed; if it was “all out,” it was rising or inflated. By extension, the term “all in” was borrowed in the early 20th century to mean “exhausted” or “used up” in reference to people or animals who were verging on collapse.

Okay, that origin story makes sense to me. However, The Grammarist then says (essentially) "not so fast": 

... The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang has a somewhat different explanation: “all in” originated at the card table. If you were “all in,” you were broke (that is, out of money), because you had already put all of your money in the pot. So you couldn’t play anymore.

The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer says this expression for exhaustion appeared in the last half of the 19th century, with the gambling reference first recorded in  1907.

The New Yorker did a deep dive into all in and its relation to politics in the 2015 article Going All In on "All In," noting:

In American usage, the phrase “all in” began as a colloquial expression meaning to be in a bad spot—exhausted, worn out, and spent. In the game of poker, it refers to the moment when a player—whether out of bravado, recklessness, or desperation—bets all of his or her chips on a single hand... Whereas “all in” once referred to a scenario in which someone either wins a hand or loses everything in a flash, now it means that a person is simply generally enthusiastic or fully committed. It’s everywhere these days—business jargon, marketing catch phrases, sports mantras, and the idioms of religion and self-help. The all-in moment in poker is a thrilling win-or-lose-everything crisis of dramatic clarity: you’ve wagered all you’ve got, giving your fate over to the cards, and you can’t go back out again. Going all in is often a spectacularly bad idea. But in life, it seems, it is all good—the only way to live boldly is to be all in on many different things at once. ... 

Whereas “all in” once referred to a scenario in which someone either wins a hand or loses everything in a flash, now it means that a person is simply generally enthusiastic or fully committed. It’s everywhere these days—business jargon, marketing catch phrases, sports mantras, and the idioms of religion and self-help.

The all-in moment in poker is a thrilling win-or-lose-everything crisis of dramatic clarity: you’ve wagered all you’ve got, giving your fate over to the cards, and you can’t go back out again. Going all in is often a spectacularly bad idea. But in life, it seems, it is all good—the only way to live boldly is to be all in on many different things at once.

And with that... I'm definitely all in. 

Naptime!
Repose by John White Alexander, 1895

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Hat trick

When I hear the phrase hat trick I think of the "Rocky and Bullwinkle" cartoon series and what happens when Bullwinkle tries the old magic "pull a rabbit out of my hat" trick. Summary: He attempts many times, without success. (See video below for that particular bit from the early 1960s series.)

So, what about hat trick? Old? New(ish)?

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According to Mental Floss and a few other places, hat trick is closely tied to the sport of cricket, from 1858, where it was used when a team won three consecutive wickets. From there, the term meandered over to other sports, particularly ice hockey, to mean scoring three goals in one game. 

Well, shoot, what about the "pull a rabbit from a hat" hat trick? When did that definition come into being? The Online Etymology Dictionary has a pretty thorough entry, part of which I will cheerfully copy/paste here:

hat trick: ...the term probably has been influenced by the image of a conjurer pulling objects from his hat (an act attested by 1876). The term was used earlier for a different sort of magic trick:

Place a glass of liquor on the table, put a hat over it, and say, "I will engage to drink every drop of that liquor, and yet I'll not touch the hat." You then get under the table; and after giving three knocks, you make a noise with your mouth, as if you were swallowing the liquor. Then, getting from under the table, say "Now, gentlemen, be pleased to look." Some one, eager to see if you have drunk the liquor, will raise the hat; when you instantly take the glass and swallow the contents, saying, "Gentlemen I have fulfilled my promise: you are all witnesses that I did not touch the hat." ["Wit and Wisdom," London, 1860]

So this drinking hat trick dates to 1860, eh? I'll have to find somewhere I can use this in a book! 

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Hokey pokey

 Do any of you remember the song-and-dance "The Hokey Pokey" from your childhood? I do! And for some reason, it's been stuck in my mind for a while now. So, of course, I started to wonder: did the phrase hokey pokey originate from the song that I remember from the 1950s?

Time to do a little research!

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First, a little background on the song, starting with Wikipedia:

The Hokey Cokey (United Kingdom, and the Caribbean) also known as Hokey Pokey (South Africa, United States, Canada, Australia, and Israel) is a campfire song and participation dance with a distinctive accompanying tune and lyric structure. It is well known in English-speaking countries. It originates in a British folk dance, with variants attested as early as 1826. The song and accompanying dance peaked in popularity as a music hall song and novelty dance in the mid-1940s in the UK. The song became a chart hit twice in the 1980s.

Wow... hokey pokey was rumbling around in the early 19th century?? Really, Wikipedia?? I searched some more, and found this from Etymology Online:

hokey-pokey (n). 1847, "false cheap material," perhaps an alteration of hocus-pocus, or from the nonsense chorus and title of a comic song (Hokey Pokey Whankey Fong) that was popular c. 1830. Applied especially to cheap ice cream sold by street vendors (1884). In Philadelphia, and perhaps other places, it meant shaved ice with artificial flavoring. The words also were the title of a Weber-Fields musical revue from 1912. The modern dance song of that name hit the U.S. in 1950 ("Life" described it Nov. 27, 1950, as "a tuneless stomp that is now sweeping the U.C.L.A. campus"). But a dance of that name, to a similar refrain, is mentioned in a 1943 magazine article (wherein the "correct" title is said to be Cokey Cokey), and the dance is sometimes said to have originated in Britain in World War II, perhaps from a Canadian source.

On a different Wikipedia page, I discovered that, in New Zealand, hokey pokey is a term for a very specific flavor of ice cream—vanilla with bits of honeycomb toffee. The entry continues:

...hokey pokey was a slang term for ice cream in general in the 19th and early 20th centuries in several areas — including New York City and parts of Great Britain—specifically for the ice cream sold by street vendors, or "hokey pokey men". The vendors, said to be mostly of Italian descent, supposedly used a sales pitch or song involving the phrase hokey pokey, for which several origins have been suggested. One such song in use in 1930s Liverpool was "Hokey pokey penny a lump, that's the stuff to make ye jump."

I don't know about you, but I find all this fascinating. From its early-19th-century emergence as a folk dance, to a dismissive term for ratty-tatty material, to an ice cream flavor, and finally to a "modern" 1950s dance, this simple little phrase has had quite the linguistic journey!

Now, doesn't that just make you want to jump up and do the hokey-pokey?? (And maybe have some ice cream afterwards!)

The Hokey Pokey, 1953 ... This is the version *I* remember!

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Piker

Just recently, I was bemoaning what a piker I was, and then I paused. Did piker mean what I thought it meant?

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In a word, nope.

Merriam Webster has two definitions for this noun: 

1. One who gambles or speculates with small amounts of money
2. One who does things in a small way.

M-W lists first use (in the sense of the first definition) in 1859 and notes that the root word pike means to play cautiously and is of unknown origin.

Well, if you know anything about me and Slang-o-rama, you know that "unknown origin" words and phrases kick me into a research frenzy. So let's see what I can find...

World Wide Words is always a good place for etymological discussions, and in this case they have a nice post on piker, which I quote at length below, because it's so fascinating:

...If somebody piked himself in late medieval times he had furnished himself with a pilgrim’s staff — yet another sort of pike. Figuratively to pike oneself meant to travel on foot, go away or run away.

 It may be, though the evidence is sparse, that through the idea of running away the verb came to suggest withdrawing from a situation through excessive caution. In the US in the 1850s it began to be attached to small-time gambling and a piker was a man who made very small bets, often hedging them. This is the first example on record: "Piker is a man who plays very small amounts. Plays a quarter, wins, pockets the winnings, and keeps at quarters; and never, if he can help it, bets on his winnings. Vocabulum; or, The Rogue’s Lexicon, by George W Matsell, 1859."

Are those quarters on the table? (From the 1921 western, "The Beautiful Gambler")
By Universal Film Manufacturing Company - Exhibitors Herald (Jul. - Sep. 1921) on the Internet Archive, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60007022 

World Wide Words (WWW) continues, offering another possible origin story:

 Some reference books suggest a completely different source. A piker in the US was also a poor white migrant from the southern states. The first pikers were migrants to California, around the time of the 1849 Gold Rush, from Pike County, Missouri. (The county was named after Zebulon Pike, the soldier and explorer who also gave his name to Pikes Peak in Colorado.) This version of the term came to mean a worthless, lazy, good-for-nothing person.

 The subsequent history of piker in the US has interwoven these two strands so they are now hard to separate. Piker became a disparaging term with several senses, describing a person as a shirker, stingy, cowardly, a cheat or insignificant.... For the sake of completeness, perhaps I ought to mention that in Australia and New Zealand piker has yet another sense, of a person who agrees with enthusiasm to take part in some social event, but who later pulls out, often at the last minute and at some inconvenience to others. It is probable that it evolved independently from the old sense of a person who runs away.

Wow... California, Colorado, Missouri, Australia. This word has done a lot of traveling in its time!

Americanisms, Old and New, by John Stephen Farmer (1889) pretty much says the same thing as WWW, adding some moral outrage along the way. (Opinions and moral judgments abound in this 19th century dictionary, just as in the newspapers of the day.) The Online Etymological Dictionary agrees with the suggestion that U.S. usage arose from folks migrating West from Missouri (Pike County), but also adds piker might originally hail from the notion of a vagrant who wanders the pike or highway (i.e., turnpike) from 1838.  

Goodness, I've wandered far afield on this one, which seems appropriate, somehow. To bring it back around to the first definition, and as a reward for your patience in reading through my musings,  here's an iconic "gambling" song for your listening pleasure. 

Enjoy!

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Mumpsimus

 

I'll bet everyone has at least one mumpsimus they must contend with, especially in these days of wide-spread discord and misinformation...

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If you know someone who is stubborn, who refuses to change their mind despite being proven wrong, then you know—yes, you guessed it—a mumpsimus. The Little Book of Lost Words by Joe Gillard provides this definition along with a "first appearance" date of the 16th century. So let's see what else we can uncover about this word that so very aptly applies to an unfortunately large portion of humanity.

World Wide Words has a fun entry on mumpsimus, including this possible origin story:

... According to the tale, there was once a medieval monk who persistently said a phrase in the Latin Eucharist wrongly, either because he was illiterate and had learned it that way or because it had been transcribed incorrectly in his copy. Instead of “quod in ore sumpsimus”, he would say "quod in ore mumpsimus". Now sumpsimus is Latin for "we have taken" (the full phrase means "which we have taken into the mouth"), but mumpsimus is just nonsense.

 What made this particular mistake memorable is what the monk was supposed to have said when he was corrected. According to the version of the incident told in 1517 by Richard Pace, later the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, the monk replied that he had said it that way for forty years and "I will not change my old mumpsimus for your new sumpsimus".

WWW adds that this story may have been an oft-told joke in medieval times, and that the word was first recorded in 1530 in a book by William Tyndale, the first translator of the Bible into English, called The Practice of Prelates. I hustled over to Google Books, and sure enough, found a digital version of an 1849 edition of this book from the 1530s (talk about hopscotching through the centuries!). I chased down the word and the story right here. 

According to WWW, Wikipedia, and Merriam-Webster, mumpsimus can also describe this wrong-headed behavior or custom. WWW notes that mumpsimus was given royal approval in 1545, when Henry VIII referred to it in a speech: "Some be too stiff in their old mumpsimus, others be too busy and curious in their sumpsimus."

So, next time you hear someone say they refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19 because, oh, the vaccine's got a microchip in it or it'll make them magnetic or some other such bunk, you know what word you can employ...

Possible treatment for mumpsimus?
By Internet Archive Book Images - https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14766331541/Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/opiereadinozarks00read/opiereadinozarks00read#page/n22/mode/1up, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44146520

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Ramfeezled

 Ramfeezled is a perfect accompaniment for last week's asleep at the switch, because one can lead to another soooo easily.

Baffled by ramfeezled? Allow me to elucidate...

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According to The Little Book of Lost Words by Joe Gillard, ramfeezled is an 18th century adjective meaning "exhausted from a hard day of work." Oh yeah. I can relate from here, in the 21st century.

Ramfeezled also shows up on the site Word of the Day, with a note that it is chiefly Scottish, with earliest use in Robert Burns' work.

Ramfeezeled?
Portrait of Juliette Courbet as a Sleeping Child
by Gustave Courbet (1841)
Wikiart.org

But where in Robert Burns' oeuvre does it appear? Let's see what we can find. 

It happens that the first ramfeelzed I bumped into was in a posthumous collection of letters, not from Burns, but from William Cowper (another poet!) in a letter dated 1787. A Medium.com post by Jim Dee tracks ramfeezled in Robert Burns' "Second Epistle to J. Lapriak" (from April 21, 1785) and even includes a link to the poem. The word appears in line 13, in which Burns seems to be talking about his lazy and, well, overworked Muse:

My awkart Muse sair pleads and begs 
I would na write.
The tapetless, ramfeezl’d hizzie, 
She’s saft at best an’ something lazy

The passage includes some other word-ly delights, including hizzie. But I'll save that for another day, because I'm frankly ramfeezled at this point.

The Diva Miss Mia demonstrates ramfeezlement. 

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Catnap (by DMcC)

Hello all... My assistant slang-o-rama-ist, the euphonious DMcC (aka Devyn McConachie), returns with another post for your edification. Enjoy! - Ann

Devyn McConachie is a designer-editor-cartoonist, currently lurking about Portland, Oregon. Were it not for her wobbly landlubber legs and love of indoor-living, she would absolutely have taken up a career as a sea-pirate. Landlocked as she is, she instead fills her days with graphic design, animation, illustration, and copy editing.

For more info and to view her visual portfolio, visit this here link

 She also has an Etsy shop (arts, hats, and cards) right here 

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As the days stretch longer and warmer, filled with buzzing of bees and rustling of leaves, I find myself more and more often nodding off in the afternoon, dazedly daydreaming of a sweet siesta... 

And I’m not alone—Ann’s office assistant, the Diva Miss Mia, is well-known for her slumbering prowess. With a snooze after every meal and regular dozes in the office, she’s always sleeping on the job. She is, undoubtedly, a master of the cat-nap.

The skilled snoozer, the Diva Miss Mia, prepares to catch her forty furry winks.

Now there’s a word! Before my eyelids droop too far, let’s see where cat-napping came from... 

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 The Online Etymology Dictionary defines the noun cat-nap (also spelled catnap or cat’s nap) as “a short, light sleep,” which was first recorded in 1823; cat-nap as a verb emerged in 1859.

As I was prowling the web for more snooze clues, I came across an interesting tidbit of research: most animals have polyphasic sleep patterns, meaning that they sleep in more than one chunk each day. And according to research by historian A. Roger Ekirch, until relatively recently, we humans were polyphasic, too.

While studying letters, legal documents, medical records, and other written miscellany from before the Industrial Revolution, Ekrich came across the terms first sleep and second sleep. From context, he concluded that these were distinct periods of nighttime slumber, each lasting three or four hours, and with an hour or so of wakefulness in between. Those wee waking hours could be used for keeping watch, telling stories, interpreting dreams, committing petty crime, and any number of other activities.

How about that—two cat-naps a day, plus time to play!

-- But is she on her first or second sleep?
The Sleeping Beauty - Edward Burn-Jones, 1870-1890

And our snoozing tendencies didn’t stop with the Industrial Revolution. Consider the classic Mediterranean siesta (from the Latin sexta, or “sixth hour”), a post-lunch doze, popular in warm climates. Or how about the Japanese inemuri, the face-planting snooze of the exhausted and overworked?

Perhaps you’ve also heard of the power nap, a 10-30 minute daylight snooze (sometimes supplemented with a strong dose of coffee) for optimized productivity and cognitive performance. Somehow, though, the term power nap doesn’t hold the same appeal to me as the luxuriously lazy-sounding cat-nap.

So although the language has changed, perhaps we’ve always been catnappers at heart. As usual, maybe those cats know something that we don’t…

Two catnapping experts, hard at work.
Sleeping Girl (Girl With a Cat) - Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1880

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Collywobbles

 I had occasion to use the word collywobbles today, and as is my wont, I began to muse over it. Colly... wobbles... 

Besides just having a nice ring to it, it sounds like a very ancient word. Medieval, even.

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However, Dictionary.com dates it to 1815-ish or so, and provides two definitions (1) intestinal cramps or other intestinal disturbances; or (2) a feeling of fear, apprehension, or nervousness.

I had the second definition in mind, thinking nervous, apprehension = wobbly knees or some such. Diving a little deeper into the vast Internet sea, I pulled up this from the Online Etymology Dictionary:

"nauseated feeling, disordered indisposition in the bowels," 1823, probably a fanciful formation from colic and wobble. Perhaps suggested by cholera morbus.

For those who are curious, as I was, here's a definition of cholera morbus from the National Institute of Health:

An old term that is no longer used in the scientific literature. Cholera morbus refers to acute GASTROENTERITIS occurring in summer or autumn; characterized by severe cramps, diarrhea, and vomiting. 

Oh ugh! And I thought having the collywobbles just meant being kind of anxious.

You can read all kinds of fascinating collywobbles quotes in Green's Dictionary of Slang right here. My favorite is this from Albert Smith's The Medical Student in 1861:

...It is absolutely necessary to preserve his health, and keep him from getting the collywobbles in his pandenoodles. 

Pandenoodles??

Sounds like a good one for a future Slang-o-rama post...

I think I know how she feels...
The physiognomy of mental diseases, by Sir Alexander Morison, 1843
CC-BY-4.0

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Landlubber

 

Being landlocked and far away from ocean's edge, does that make me a landlubber? And what's a lubber, anyway?

Let's find out!

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According to the Online Etymology Dictionary:

landlubber (n.) also land-lubber, "A useless long-shorer; a vagrant stroller. Applied by sailors to the mass of landsmen, especially those without employment" [W.H. Smyth, "The Sailor's Word-book"], c. 1700, from land (n.) + lubber (q.v.).

Wow, circa 1700. This term goes back a ways, which I'm always happy to see. But I still have no clue as to what lubber entails. However, OED has a link for me to follow:

lubber (n.) mid-14c., "big, clumsy, stupid fellow who lives in idleness," from lobre, earlier lobi "lazy lout," probably of Scandinavian origin (compare Swedish dialectal lubber "a plump, lazy fellow"). But OED suggests a possible connection with Old French lobeor "swindler, parasite," with sense altered by association with lob (n.) in the "bumpkin" sense. Sometimes also Lubbard (1580s), with pejorative suffix -ard. Since 16c. mainly a sailors' word for those inept or inexperienced at sea (as in landlubber), but earliest attested use is of lazy monks (abbey-lubber). Compare also provincial English lubberwort, name of the mythical herb that produces laziness (1540s), Lubberland "imaginary land of plenty without work" (1590s).

As a verb, lubber, meaning "to sail clumsily; to loaf about,"  dates to the 1520s.

PhraseFinder has a bit more, if you're interested.

I guess I should be careful whom I call a landlubber from now on.

Oh those landlubbers. Can't trust 'em.
By Unknown author or not provided - U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17220889

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Gallivant

With the lifting of various pandemic restrictions, it seems that many folks are eager to gallivant—that is (according to Merriam-Webster) "to travel, roam, or move about for pleasure."  A second, older definition that might also apply: "to go about usually ostentatiously or indiscreetly with members of the opposite sex."

Older, eh? And just how old, and from what corner of the etymological realm does gallivant hail?

Let us found out...

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Merriam-Webster has this explanation:

Back in the 14th century, a young man of fashion (or a ladies' man) was called a gallant. By the late 1600s, gallant was being used as a verb to describe the process a paramour used to win a lady's heart; to gallant became a synonym of "to court." Etymologists think that the spelling of the verb gallant was altered to create gallivant, which originally meant "to act as a gallant."

World Wide Words notes that gallivant hints of galloping about in frolicsome high spirits, and offers up an early Oxford English Dictionary definition: "to gad about in a showy fashion." Gad, it turns out, originates from gadling, an obsolete German word for a vagabond.

But I digress.

Turning to the Online Etymological Dictionary, I discover to my glee that they also reference the "gad about" definition, and provide a date for gallivant: 1809.

So, if you go gallivanting or gadding about, do take care and follow the precautions set out by various health organizations. We're not out of the pandemic woods yet!

Should you a-gallivanting go, be sure to wear your mask...
Masked Party in a Courtyard by Pietro Longhi, 1755 (St. Louis Art Museum)

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Podsnappery

Now isn't podsnappery just the most delightful-sounding word you've seen in a while?

But what does it mean? Care to guess?

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According to this Mental Floss post, podsnappery is a bit o' Victorian slang describing a person who has a "willful determination to ignore the objectionable or inconvenient, at the same time assuming airs of superior virtue and noble resignation." 

Talk about specific!

Merriam-Webster Online defines it as "an attitude toward life marked by complacency and a refusal to recognize unpleasant facts." Podsnappery shows up on an Ngram plot with a peak around 1870 and appears 12 times in Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend (which also features a character named Podsnap).  In fact, according to Wiktionary, Dickens coined the word.

I guess I should make time to brush up on Dickens. Probably lots of Slang-o-rama possibilities lurking in those books...

The podsnapper-ish milieu of Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
 https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14594577827/Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/ourmutualfriend00dick/ourmutualfriend00dick#page/n146/mode/1up, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43086366

 

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Deadbeat, dead beat

 By special request of long-time-all-the-way-back-to-childhood buddy and fellow writer/author, Susan (Chernak McElroy) Knilans, I bring you deadbeat (and dead beat as well).

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The Online Etymology Dictionary provides us with the 1863 definition of deadbeat as a "worthless sponging idler." After that colorful description, OED notes that idiom might have originated in the Civil War, adding:

Earlier dead beat was used colloquially as an adjectival expression, "completely beaten, so exhausted as to be incapable of further exertion" (1821), and perhaps the base notion is of "worn out, good for nothing." It is noted in a British source from 1861 as a term for "a pensioner."

In Americanisms, Old and New by John Stephen Farmer, other colorful definitions emerge. Dead-beat could be (1) "A 'pick-me-up' compounded of ginger, soda, and whiskey" (I must remember that!), or (2) "A sponger, one who lives upon others." 

The Phrase Finder has a nice back'n forth on dead beat/deadbeat. Starting with the two-word version, James Briggs explains, "'Beat' is 'exhausted' in this context. 'Dead' is another example of the word used as an intensifier 'dead centre', 'dead certainty' 'dead on', 'dead ringer' etc, etc. It doesn't have an origin, but 'dead' in this sense is 100s of years old." Smokey Stover agrees and notes the single-word deadbeat can refer to a dead-stroke in a clock. (Not knowing what a dead-stroke is, I looked it up. Wiktionary's defines dead-stroke as "making a stroke without recoil; deadbeat." Smokey S then turns the Oxford English Dictionary for the more common defintion: "A worthless idler who sponges on his friends; a sponger, loafer; also (orig. Austral.), a man down on his luck."

Want more? Check out the entertaining (and extensive) post in The Word Detective, right here.

So, it appears my 1880s-era characters can use deadbeat (and the even earlier dead beat) with impunity in their dialogue and inner musings.

Thank you, Sue, for asking. :-)

If anyone has a request for a particular bit of slang or an idiom, just wing me an email or a comment, and I shall do my best to oblige... When I'm not dead beat, that is.

Dead beat or deadbeat?
"An Idle Afternoon" by Julius LeBlanc Stewart, 1884 from WikiArt

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Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Give a wide berth

 When I'm out walking, I'm one of those folks who masks up--never mind the distance—and gives a wide berth to all I encounter. And now, having written that, I find myself asking: Is give a wide berth an idiom borne of the seafaring life?

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Answer: Yes it is!

Merriam-Webster Online explains that to give a wide berth means "to avoid or stay away from someone or something."

According to one of my favorite references, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer, this expression, dating from the mid-1800s, alludes to the need to give a vessel enough room to swing at anchor to avoid a collision.

The Phrase Finder dives into a wide berth, noting:

We now think of a ship's berth as the place where the ship is moored. Before that though it meant 'a place where there is sea room to moor a ship'. This derives in turn from the probable derivation of the word berth, that is, 'bearing off'. When sailors were warned to keep a wide bearing off something they were being told to make sure to maintain enough sea room from it. Like many seafaring terms it dates back to the heyday of sail, the 17th century. An early use comes from the redoubtable Captain John Smith in Accidental Young Seamen, 1626: "Watch bee vigilant to keepe your berth to windward."

 By Peter Monamy - Art UK, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91972404

To give a wide berth, however, didn't appear until 1830, in the following ghostly passage of Sir Walter Scott's Letters on demonology and witchcraft: 

...He was pondering with some anxiety upon the dangers of travelling alone on a solitary road which passed the corner of a churchyard, now near at hand, when he saw before him in the moonlight a pale female form standing upon the very wall which surrounded the cemetery. The road was very narrow, with no opportunity of giving the apparent phantom what seamen call a wide berth. It was, however, the only path which led to the rider’s home, who therefore resolved, at all risks, to pass the apparition.

Hmmmm. The above pretty much describes my reaction when encountering unmasked personages on a narrow sidewalk or trail (although my perambulations take place in the light of day, and never involve passing a cemetery).

Now, let's just "sail away" for a bit, and enjoy this lovely hour-long compilation of toe-tamping sea shanties and sea-farin' folk songs. The first, a drinking song, is perfect for raising a glass or two today to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Enjoy!

Note that you can view the lyrics and sing along by clicking on CC (closed captions) icon on the YouTube video.

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Merrythought

 I was searching for something appropriate for (U.S.) Thanksgiving Day, when loyal Slang-o-rama reader Liz V pointed me toward a great blog post 11 charming old slang words you can use this Thanksgiving. So, in the spirit of the holiday, I am bringing merrythought to the table for your etymological consumption.

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Acccording to the post, merrythought, meaning wishbone, dates waaay back to 16th century England and eventually made its way to the U.S. (New England and Virginia). The term eventually died out late 19th century, replaced by the current wishbone. The post noted a this from 1708: “the Original of the Name was doubtless from the Pleasant Fancies, that commonly arise upon the Breaking of that Bone.”

World Wide Words agrees, with an aside about wishbone:

The name of wishbone comes, of course, from the folk custom in which two people hold its ends and pull, the one left with the longer piece making a wish. Merrythought refers to an older version of the custom, in which it is assumed that the one left with the longer piece will get to marry first. So the bone-pulling ceremony resulted in what were euphemistically called "merry thoughts" among those taking part.

Wishing you and yours a safe and peace-filled Thanksgiving, whether you have a merrythought to pull or not!

Thankful for family, friends, turkey, and pumpkin pie!
Image by J Lloa from Pixabay

 

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Collie shangles

I fled to the past, searching for comfort and a bit of linguistic fun, and bumped into the intriguing phrase collie shangles. Have any of you heard of this bit of Victorian slang before?

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Because it is definitely Victorian. According to a post titled A Dictionary Full of Victorian Slang, Queen Victoria herself brought this term into the light. The phrase and the definition appear in Passing English of the Victorian era: a dictionary of heterodox English, slang and phrase by James Redding Ware. Collie shangles appears in the Queen's journal More Leaves, published in 1884, as follows:

At five minutes to eleven rode off with Beatrice, good Sharp going with us, and having occasional collie shangles (a Scottish word for quarrels or rows, but taken from fights between dogs) with collies when we came near cottages. 

The perfect term to fling about the next time an exchange turns heated, don't you think? 

No collie shangles when in the presence of the Queen!
Photo of Queen Victoria with her dog "Sharp," the Border Collie, taken at Balmoral Castle
Unknown author - http://the-lothians.blogspot.com/2012/06/, Public Domain, Link

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Shilly-shally

 

If we lived in the year 1882, could we shilly-shally? Or, if we had to be historically accurate, would we have to dawdle, dally, hesitate, or vacillate instead? (All of which are perfectly good synonyms, by the way.)

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According to The Phrase Finder, we'd be good to go. The term was out and about by 1700 in the form of shill-I shall-I. For those scratching their heads, the phrase's form reflects the question: "Shall I?" Shill-I was added for effect, in a process dubbed reduplication in linguistics, in which the root of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. (Another example of reduplication in action is the phrase heebie-jeebies.)

For first appearance in written form, The Phrase Finder points to this bit of dialogue from William Congreve's 1700 play The Way of the World:

I am somewhat dainty in making a resolution, because when I make it I keep it. I don't stand shill I, shall I, then; if I say't, I'll do't. 

This is no time to shilly-shally.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Needs must when the devil drives

 

I was zipping along writing a scene when the phrase needs must when the devil drives floated into my mind. It sounded like it would fit right in with what I was fashioning on the page, but I needed to be sure that (1) I understood the meaning and (2) it was "period" enough.

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According to World Wide Words, this phrase—or rather, an early permutation—appears in 1420 in John Lydgate's Assembly of Gods, as follows: "He must nedys go that the deuell dryves." Something similar shows up in Shakespeare's All’s Well that Ends Well: "My poor body, madam, requires it: I am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go that the devil drives."

World Wide Words adds that the semi-archaic needs must is an idiom in and of itself, meaning "necessity compels," and provided a nice definition of the entire phrase:

[I]f the devil drives you, you have no choice but to go, or in other words, sometimes events compel you to do something you would much rather not.

If you are curious about needs must, you can read more about it here, on The Grammarphobia Blog.

My takeaway: My fictional 1882 character could definitely think needs must when the devil drives, take a deep breath, and do what must be done.

Who's driving now?
By Roberts [artist] This file comes from the Bodleian Libraries, a group of research libraries in Oxford University. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47060855

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Twitterpated/Shatterpated

Ooooh I'd love to use twitterpated in my historical mystery circa 1882, but nope nope nope...
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According to The Online Etymological Dictionary, twitterpated only came into being in 1942. (It sounds so much older, right?) What's more, it was Disney Studios that apparently coined it:

twitterpated: [F]irst attested in the Walt Disney movie "Bambi"... a past-participle adjective formed from twitter in the "tremulous excitement" noun sense (1670s) + pate (n.2) "head".  

Thumper: Why are they acting that way? 

Friend Owl: Why, don't you know? They're twitterpated. 

Flower, Bambi, Thumper: Twitterpated? 

Friend Owl: Yes. Nearly everybody gets twitterpated in the springtime. For example: You're walking along, minding your own business. You're looking neither to the left, nor to the right, when all of a sudden you run smack into a pretty face. Woo-woo! You begin to get weak in the knees. Your head's in a whirl. And then you feel light as a feather, and before you know it, you're walking on air. And then you know what? You're knocked for a loop, and you completely lose your head!

However, the word shatterpated is another story. This is what I found in the online 1828 Webster's Dictionary:

1. Disordered or wandering in intellect.
2. Heedless wild; not consistent.

Shatterpated also shows up in A Dictionary of the English LanguageIn which the Words are Deduced from Their Originals; and Illustrated in Their Different Significations, by Examples from the Best Writers: Together with a History of the Language, and an English Grammar, Volume 4 by Samuel Johnson and Henry John Todd, from 1818. The definition: inattentive; not consistent.

So, I'd better not include twitterpated characters in my fictional world of the 1880s, lest I be accused of being shatterpated.

This twitterpation must stop! (Or at least be moved to a different century.)
Les Amants dans la campagne by Gustave Courbet, 1844

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Out of kilter

Now here's a phrase for these crazy days: out of kilter.

How perfect, right?

I think of it as a feeling of coming apart at the seams in a messy way, very much like the YouTube video of a washing machine going to pieces at the end of this post. (You really need to watch this video.)

However, I have no idea what a kilter is, and how this phrase came about.

Do you?
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If you're as clueless as I am, keep reading.

The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer provides a definition, an alternate phrase, and a shrug:

out of kilter. Also, out of whack. No properly adjusted, not working well, out of order. The first term, also spelled kelter, dates from the early 1600s and its origin is not known. The precise allusion of the variant, a colloquial term dating from the late 1800s, is also unclear. Possibly it relates to a whack, or blow, throwing something off, or some suggest, to wacky, that is, "crazy."

At least the Online Etymological Dictionary provides a definition of kelter to help us along:

"order, good condition," in out of kilter (1620s), apparently a variant of English dialectal kelter (c. 1600) "good condition, order," a word of unknown origin.

The Phrase Finder agrees that it is a variant of an older English dialect word kelter, meaning good health; good condition. He then adds:

In 1643, the English Protestant theologian Roger Williams travelled to America and made a study of Native American languages, especially Narragansett, an Algonquian language. He subsequently published A Key Into the Language of America, which was a glossary of the language he had heard, which included this comment: "Their Gunnes they [native Americans] often sell many a score to the English, when they are a little out of frame or Kelter."

... This is seriously out of kilter.

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Stultiloquy

Let's go archaic this week and bring back a word that may actually be relevant to today's world: Stultiloquy

What, you are probably asking, does stultiloquy mean? Well, I could go on and on and on at great and tedious length...

Which is, more or less, the point.
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Webster's 1913 dictionary defines the noun stultiloquy as foolish talk; silly discourse; babbling. 

But O! Let us not stop here, for there's much more to learn about this wonderful word.

Dr. Goodword from Alphadictionary.com has an entry on stultiloquy that is full of explanations and examples (and even a little "Hear it!" button so you can hear how it is pronounced). He notes that the word is based on an obsolete adjective stulty, which means "foolish, stupid." Stulty is also the basis for the word stultify, which is defined as "to make stupid, render useless." Marching right alongside stultiloquy is the equally polysyllabic adjective stultiloquent and an alternative noun, stultiloquence.

World Wide Words notes that stultiloquy is from the Latin stultiloquus, speaking foolishly, which come in turn from stultus, foolish, plus loquus, that speaks.

Both Alphadictionary.com and World Wide Words make snarky comments about how this is the perfect word to apply to certain, unnamed political figures.

It does seem a pity it has fallen out of use. In a quest to discover when it was popular, I turned to Google's Ngram. Here are the results:

Stultiloquy appears to have peaked sometime around 1820, and was not very popular even then. I think this would be a most excellent word to reintroduce into the English language, don't you agree?

This pretty much says it all for stultiloquy.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay