Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Showdown

 In westerns of old, a showdown is often what follows a remark such as "Them's fightin' words, pardner." I'm guessing showdown predates the mythological rise of "The American West," but what do I know? (Not as much as I sometimes think I do!)

Time to check it out...

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Well, this is interesting! The Online Etymological Dictionary says showdown first popped up in 1873 as a poker-playing term:

...a slang term for the act of laying down the hands face-up, from show (v.) + down (adv.). Figurative sense of "final confrontation" is by 1904.

On the one hand (so to speak!), the term does seem to have arisen in the 19th-century American West On the other hand, calling a confrontation in the middle of main street before the turn of the 20th century a showdown probably isn't accurate.

I did find at least one written example of showdown in the "Draw, pardner!" sense in a 1895 book Second Book of Tales by Eugene Field, in a short story titled "The Wooing of Miss Woppit." I've included the snippet where it appears below, because the stilted Western vernacular is rather fun to read:

And finally, here's a little four-minute clip from  the 1958 movie Showdown at Boot Hill with Charles Bronson. This scene features, yep, a showdown... not on the street, but rather in a hotel restaurant. The end result (bad guy down, good guy standing) is about what you'd expect from a Western movie of this vintage. 

Enjoy!

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: When the chips are down

When the chips are down....

.... the situation (according to Christine Ammer's The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms) is urgent or desperate. Can  you guess how/when this phrase was coined?

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Apparently this expression comes from poker (of course!). When all the bets have been made, and the chips—representing money—are physically put down, the hand is over and the players turn up their cards to see who has won. Ammer dates the phrase to the late 1800s, which is a little too vague for me.

Idiom Origins pushes it even later, to the early 20th century. (Oh dear.)

Well, for a phrase that's tossed around a lot (and is even the title to a song from the Broadway musical Hadestown, which is currently on tour):

So, folks, that's all I've got for when the chips are down.

The chips are down... no going back now!
By Unknown author - http://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-faro.html [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7864393

Leadville, February 1880: Beware of Big Ed Burns

I'm taking a break from the daily grind and from blasting anonymous blog spammers into oblivion to revisit Leadville of the past. There may not have been obnoxious spammers in Leadville of February 1880, but there were plenty of con men and so-called "bummers," including Big Ed Burns, who was described by the Carbonate Chronicle thusly:

. . . His strength was something terrible, and his deep chest was a human embodiment of Hercules . . . but with all his massiveness of frame he was agile and quick as a ballet dancer. Standing by the bar in a saloon he prided himself upon the fact that he could kick a man’s hat off with a single sweep of his foot. . . .

Burns did anything to make money, and as he seldom had the cash to engage in any of what are termed square gambling schemes, he earned a precarious livelihood by “skingames.” The old Theatre Comique was his favorite haunt. In a little side room known as “the joint,” many is the honest miner whom Big Ed robbed by dice, bunko or crooked poker. A cabinet of mineral specimens in one corner was always the pretext under which the victim was enticed into the den, and the gigantic form of the swindler did not make it desirable for the “sucker” to kick very loud or long.

. . . Might was right, muscle was master, and wherever brute strength was needed, Big Ed was called upon. The quieting effect that his massive form had upon a crowd, was something not readily expressed in words, and when he leaped into a wrangling circle of men, flung a chair out of the window, and said: “Let there be peace,” the silence was painful.

Several interesting bits emerge from this. First, newspapers are great for identifying slang, i.e., the term "the joint." According to the online etymology dictionary:

... Slang meaning of "place, building, establishment" (esp. one where persons meet for shady activities) first recorded 1877, Amer.Eng., from an earlier Anglo-Irish sense (1821), perhaps on the notion of a side-room, one "joined" to a main room. The original U.S. sense was especially of "an opium-smoking den.

It's also interesting that the poker was crooked, but apparently not the dice nor the bunko. Add to that, apparently Big Ed was employed to keep the peace. Seems it was a common practice to hire thugs as necessary. A big thug no doubt commanded respect and compliance from the "rougher element."

Hmmm. Could be fun to employ a "Big Ed" type of person in some future Silver Rush tale. I'll have to remember that. Too bad there isn't a virtual Big Ed to take take of the anonymous posters of annoying comments to this blog! I'd even suffer a virtual chair through the virtual window to silence them.