Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Warm the cockles of my heart

My first question about this phrase is: what the heck are cockles? My second: how did this reference to high-temperature heart cockles come about anyway?

Let's find out....

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A quick hop over to the Grammarist yields the following:

To warm the cockles of one’s heart means to bestow a feeling of contentment, to kindle warm feelings in a person, especially of happiness and felicity. The term warm the cockles of one’s heart dates back to the mid-1600s, a time when scientific texts were often written in Latin. The Latin term cochleae cordis means ventricles of the heart, and most probably, the word cochleae was corrupted as cockles. This may have been a mistake made by the less learned, or a deliberate joke. Add in the fact that the bivalve mollusk known as a cockle is shaped somewhat like a heart, and the idea of the phrase cockles of one’s heart being more or less a joke gains credence.

My copy of The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer agrees with the Latin origin for cockles and when the phrase first came into use. World Wide Words has its own approach, starting its entry with:

Something that warms the cockles of one’s heart induces a glow of pleasure, sympathy, affection, or some such similar emotion. What gets warmed is the innermost part of one’s being. It’s not that surprising that it should be associated with the heart, that being the presumed seat of the emotions for most people. 

Awww. I like that! A very heart-warming observation. WWW then adds, "But what are the cockles? We’re not sure."

Uh-oh. "Not sure" is not what I wanted to read.

WWW offers the same possible explanations as Grammarist, with some additional fillips, including the fact that the earliest form of the saying was rejoice the cockles of one’s heart. The WWW exploration of the idiom concludes by noting that cochlea in Latin is the word for a snail and suggesting that perhaps we should really be speaking of warming the snails of one’s heart.

Snails?? Uh, no. Just... no.

A case of overheated cockles?
Image by 0fjd125gk87 from Pixabay

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Bite the bullet

The phrase bite the bullet evokes such an unpleasant image, which suits, given that it's generally defined as behaving "bravely or stoically when facing pain or a difficult situation" (The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer). I can't help but picture an Old West cowboy (or maybe a Civil War soldier) biting on a bullet as surgery is performed to remove a bullet (of course!) from his leg...

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The Dictionary of Idioms strengthens that mental image in this explanation:

This phrase is of military origin, but the precise allusion is uncertain. Some say it referred to the tratment of a wounded soldier without anesthesia, so that he would be asked to bite on a lead bulleet during treatment. Also, Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1796) holds that grenadiers being disciplined with the cat-o--nine tails would bite on a bullet to avoid crying out in pain.

I'll pause here so we can all wince in sympathy.

 

Now, forward, to see if The Phrase Finder has more to say about this phrase, and of course, it does! The post considers several origin theories... all of a military nature... before settling on the "surgery before anesthesia" explanation. Word Histories also has a nice entry and offers several 19th-century appearances, including in author Rudyard Kipling's The Light That Failed, published in installments in 1890. Finally, The Grammarist muses on another possible origin for the phrase, with a nod to my imaginings above about cowboys and the Old West:

Biting the bullet is a cliché of the American Old West, cowboys are often depicted as biting the bullet when undergoing medical procedures without anesthetic. Bullets are made of lead, a soft metal, and biting a bullet was a distraction designed to stop a patient from crying out. The term bite the bullet is older than the 1800s, however, and may actually refer to how early guns worked. Gunpowder and a ball were previously loaded into paper cartridges. In the heat of battle, the soldier would rip open the tip of the paper cartridge with his teeth and pour the gunpowder and ball into his gun. Biting these cartridges and calmly loading a gun in the face of the enemy certainly meant facing a difficult situation with bravery, as in the idiom bite the bullet.

So, there you go. I've exhausted my allotted time to research this phrase, so it's time for me to bite the bullet and get busy on the rest of my to-do list for today.

When the bullet is in flight, don't bite.
Photo by physicist Ernst Mach (1888), depicting the waves around a supersonic brass bullet.
Scan from book (now lost), Public Domain
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15716604

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Tit for tat

 Things are getting serious when it becomes tit for tat—that is, according to the online Collins English Dictionary, when one takes revenge on another person for what they have done by doing something similar to them. 

Oh yeah. Sweet revenge. 

Now, that definition ties nicely to synonyms blow for blow and eye for eye, but tit for tat seems to have wandered in from another universe...

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According to several sources, including Collins,  the phrase tit for tat popped up around 1550 and was (perhaps) a variation of an older expression: tip for tap. NPR/Michigan Radio has a nice little exploration of this phrase that you can either listen to or read at this link. Tip, it turns out, can mean "a light blow," so the equivalent exchange suggested by tip for tap is pretty clear. 

The Phrase Finder (one of my favorite online references!) offers that tip-plus-tap appears in a 1466 book of poems written by Charles, Duke of Orleans, in the line: "Strokis grete, not tippe nor tapp." But tit? and tat? Well, here's what /Michigan Radio has to say:

"Tit" comes from an old Germanic verb that could mean to strike a light blow, similar to "tip" in the expression's earlier form. The "tat" is probably just onomatopoetic. That is, it just sounds good with "tit"-- similar to "chit chat" or "flip flop."

Phrase Finder offers that John Heywood may have been the first to use tit for tat (at least, in a publication) in the parable The Spider and the Flie, 1556: "That is tit for tat in this altricacion [altercation]." 

NPR/Michigan Radio adds this trivia snippet about the phrase: The game "tic tac toe" was first called "tit tat toe." (Whaaat??) 

For more fascinating bits and bobs about tit for tat, be sure to check out the NPR and Phrase Finder links. 

Tit for tat: It's all about revenge, baby.
Image by Tumisu, please consider ☕ Thank you! 🤗 from Pixabay

**** A tip o' the hat to author Dani Greer who suggested this Slang-o-rama phrase!****

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: 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: To a T

 

When something is done exactly, or perfectly, it is done to a T. Or would that be to a tee or to a tea or to the tee or...?

I was pretty sure it was simply "a" capital "T" but embarked on a slang-o-rama journey to discover where this idiom came from and what the heck "T" meant in this context...

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As to the origin of this very simple phrase, there are a lot of theories thrown around. T as in T-shirt? Nope, first use goes waaaay back before t-shirts. How about a sport-related tee? Once again, neither golf nor curling (the other sport where a tee is used) appears in conjunction with this phrase in its earliest uses.

The Phrase Finder delves into the myriad possibilities, before lighting upon the letter "T" itself, as the initial of a word, noting:

If this is the derivation then the word in question is very likely to be "tittle". A tittle is a small stroke or point in writing or printing and is now best remembered via the term jot or tittle. The best reason for believing that this is the source of the "T" is that the phrase 'to a tittle' existed in English well before 'to a T', with the same meaning; for example, in Francis Beaumont's Jacobean comedy drama The Woman Hater, 1607, we find: "Ile quote him to a tittle."  In this case, although there is no smoking gun, the "to a tittle" derivation would probably stand up in court as "beyond reasonable doubt".

The Word Detective agrees, and goes down the rabbit hole exploring the word "tittle."

Daily Writing Tips also has a nice post on the proper form of to a T, and its origins.

So, there you have it. You can have your tea while you wear a tee to tee and do it all to a T.

To a tea/T/tee.

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Spur of the moment

 

With California's largest wildfire just over the hill about 10 miles south, we've made our list, checked it twice, and have our go bags and bins ready to load up, if we find we need to leave on the spur of the moment.

Taking a pause from compulsively refreshing Cal Fire's page on the SCU Lightning Complex (20% contained) to wonder about on the spur of the moment. Does this have to do with cavalry and spurring horses to gallop faster or what?

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Word Histories has a nice entry about on the spur of the moment and a variant, on the spur of the occasion. The earliest appearance of the first is July 24, 1784, in Jackson’s Oxford Journal and has to do with a proposal to tax... (wait for it)... watches. As in, timepieces. And the origin does harken to "the use of spurs to urge a horse forward."

The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer concurs. 

The Online Etymology Dictionary adds that the expression, which they nudge forward to 1801 for first use, "preserves [the] archaic phrase on the spur 'in great haste'" from the1520s. 

And that's all I've got for now!

Don't wait until the spur of the moment to pack your go bag!
By Anonymous - Official Guide and Catalogue of the International Fire Exhibition, Earl’s Court, 1903 (https://archive.org/details/internationalfir00earl/page/n37), Public Domain, Link

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Copper

 A couple of authorly friends and I were musing about the origin of the slang term copper, i.e. police.

One theorized it was because of the "copper" (i.e., brass, shiny) buttons on the uniform. The other suggested that maybe it was because, historically, the Irish often joined the police force. (This was certainly true in 19th century San Francisco, for instance.) And all that red hair led to calling an officer a copper.

So, I looked it up. And guess what?

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The answer is... neither!

According to the Online Etymological Dictionary, copper, meaning police officer, probably evolved from the verb cop, meaning "to seize, to catch, capture or arrest as a prisoner." This definition of copper first appeared in 1846 or thereabouts. 

As for the verb cop, the dictionary notes it arose in 1704, is northern British dialect and of uncertain origin. Beyond that, the origin of cop might be middle French, or Latin, or Dutch or... Well, you can read it all here.

I was kind of pulling for the buttons explanation, but oh well!

Image by Steffen Salow from Pixabay

Diner Lingo by Guest Author Camille Minichino

Please welcome guest author and good buddy, Camille Minichino. Camille authors several cozy mystery series under a variety of pseudonyms. Mousse and Murder is the first book in her most recent series, the Alaskan Diner Mysteries, written under the pen name of Elizabeth Logan. Camille notes that her idea of a gourmet dinner is a grilled cheese, fries, and a shake. (That’s a Jack Benny, frog sticks, and one in the hay.)
For more information, check out her website at minichino.com.  
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Who invented the battery?

A middle school science student would probably raise her hand and answer, “Volta!” maybe laughing at the confluence of the name and the unit of electromotive force. And for all practical purposes, she would be correct. It’s too cumbersome to go back to the Parthian Empire of 2000 years ago, and what’s known as the Baghdad battery. It’s beyond our grasp to name all the giants of engineering, ancient and modern, who brought us to where we are now, so we summarize and attribute the battery to Volta.

 I run up against this wall whenever I try to find the beginning—of a battery, of a revolution, even of something as large and concrete as a diner.

 The best I can do is go back to 1872 and credit Walter Scott, a horse-drawn wagon in Providence, Rhode Island, and a menu designed to feed night owls, whether workers finishing the late shift, or revelers looking for an off-hours meal.

The wagon evolved into “rolling restaurants,” with a few seats added inside, and then dining cars and finally, around 1924, permanently located “diners,” most maintaining the train-car look.

With a new style of restaurant came a new set of phrases, or “diner lingo,” the way a short order cook might communicate with her staff. Some call it shorthand, but diner lingo is often longer than the regular term for the menu item.

“A side of bad breath,” for example is not as succinct as “with onions.” And “a stack of Vermont” is longer than “pancakes.”

My guess: it’s more for adding fun to a job. Who doesn’t want to do that?

Probably among the best known call-outs are “Adam and Eve on a raft” (two eggs on toast) and “Battle Creek in a bowl” (corn flakes).

Other favorites of mine are:

• “Burn the British” (toast an English muffin)
•  “Cowboy” (western omelet)
• “Cops and robbers” (coffee and donuts)
• “In the alley” (on the side)
• “Butcher’s revenge” (meatloaf)

A few phrases have been assimilated into our language, no longer recognized as diner-related, like sunny side up, BLT, OJ, and 86 it.

Post your favorites. But whatever you do, don’t be a camper*!

*One who stays at the table or counter for a long time, depriving the server of new tips.

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Zounderkite

Here is an vintage word that is perfect for our times: zounderkite.

Any ideas as to what it means?

Go ahead, guess! (No fair peeking on Google.) And then, keep reading to see if you are right...

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According to the Dictionary.com article Insults We Should Bring Back, zounderkite is a Victorian word meaning "idiot." It shows up in many lists of vintage curse words, including 22 Incredible Forgotten Curse Words from Way Back in the Day (which expands on the simple one-word definition with: "a complete idiot who constantly makes clumsy and awkward mistakes"), and BBC America's 10 Victorian Swears from the Real "Ripper Street" (which goes whole hog: "the kind of bumbling idiot that will end up making a disastrous mistake of the sort that beggars belief").

BBC America provided a source, which was a good thing, because this word did not appear in any of my hard copy dictionaries, including Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary. However, their source—1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue—does not contain zounderkite.

What do they take me for, an idiot? That I would not check the source?

I turned to N-gram, thinking surely it would show up there. Nope. Nothing.

Determined, I delved a little further into Google Books, hoping to find a 19th century mention. I finally found it, I'm proud to say, in the 1876 A Glossary of Surrey Words (A Supplement to No. 12.) by Granville William Gresham Leveson Gower, in the Mid-Yorkshire section, where it appears between zookerins! and zounds! 

There it is! Proof, at last!

I think the scarcity of zounderkite in books in general might mean it was a word more spoken than written, at least in the past.

My thrashing about also turned up a Zounderkite family of fonts.
One just never knows what will turn up during Slang-o-rama research.

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Pish-posh

Now here's a great expression I used in A DYING NOTE and that I'm itching to use again: pish-posh. Or, if you prefer: pish-tosh.

Nice eh? Of course, the expression isn't nice or complimentary.
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According to my copy of Green's Dictionary of Slang, pish-posh is an interjection that confers the same expression of disdain as saying (contemptuously), "Rubbish!" or "Nonsense!"

The Word Detective has a nice post about this alliterative exclamation, noting:

“Pish posh” actually appears to have two sources. “Pish” by itself has been used as an interjection of impatience or contempt since the 16th century, and, like “pshaw” and “pah,” it arose as an imitation of the sound of disgusted surprise (“‘Pish!’ I growled. ‘Someone has fooled you,'” 1894). The “posh” part of “pish posh” is what linguists call “reduplication,” the repetition of a word with slight variation as a means of emphasis or elaboration (as in “hoity-toity”).

I gulped a little seeing the date 1894. Surely pish-posh was used before then?

Down the rabbit hole I go...

Pish-posh. Don't pay him any mind.
Our time will come.
Image by Oberholster Venita from Pixabay

Votes for women? Pish-posh, that's what I say.
Image by Jo-B from Pixabay 

I found the phrase pish! posh! and pshaw! in a novel from 1862 titled Spurs and Skirts by Allet (a pseudonym). From the title, I thought this might be an adventure set in the American West. However the book opens in Edinburgh, Scotland, so I guess not!

In any case, pish-posh has a nice ring to it, and I'm sure I'll find the proper place for it to reappear in my current endeavor.

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: Six ways to Sunday

Six ways to Sunday.

I can recall the first time I gave serious thought to this particular phrase. In What Gold Buys, the fifth book in my Silver Rush mystery series, a character (who shall remain nameless, to avoid any spoilers), says, "Mrs. Stannert, since I’ve come back I’ve explained myself six ways to Sunday."

I wrote this bit of dialogue, stopped and stared at it, and thought that although it certainly sounded "period" (i.e., 19th century), I wasn't entirely positive when it first came into common use. And thus began the journey....
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According to The Free Dictionary (and other such compendiums) six ways to Sunday is defined as "thoroughly or completely; in every possible way; from every conceivable angle."

The Grammarist takes us on a little journey through the various iterations, starting with six ways from Sunday:

Six ways from Sunday seems to have its origins in the middle eighteenth century as the phrases both ways from Sunday and two ways from Sunday. These earlier phrases referred to the eye condition known as strabismus, where someone’s eyes do not focus in unison, giving the appearance of looking in two different directions. From there, the terms both ways from Sunday and two ways from Sunday gained the figurative meaning of looking at something askew. By the mid-1800s the terms two ways from Sunday and nine ways from Sunday appeared, and the meaning evolved to mean to be at a loss. The phrase evolved once again in the late 1800s in America to mean every way possible. One still finds many varieties of the phrase, the number in question might be six, seven, nine or a thousand, the preposition might be from, to or for, but the day referred to in the idiom is always Sunday and the idiom carries the same meaning...

World Wide Words weighs in on this phrase as well. When a poster wonders if the idiom might refer to patterns of activity during a week, from one Sunday to the next, WWW responds:

You’re not alone in feeling unsure of the origin; you are in the company of almost everybody who has looked at it. Others have made this suggestion for its origin. One specific and quite certainly false tale lists punishments that were once meted out on the six days following a Sunday to a person who failed to attend church....

As to its origin, WWW points to the definition of squint-a-pipes (now there's an intriguing bit of argot!), which appears in the 1785 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Captain Francis Grose:

SQUINT-A-PIPES. A squinting man or woman; said to be born in the middle of the week, and looking both ways for Sunday; or born in a hackney coach, and looking out of both windows; fit for a cook, one eye in the pot, and the other up the chimney; looking nine ways at once.

WWW adds that Sunday was presumably chosen because it would have been regarded as the most significant day of the week.

I would never have guessed that six ways to Sunday owed its beginnings to crossed eyes! I wonder if squint-a-pipes was still in use in the 1880s...

Which way to Sunday?
Image by 272447 from Pixabay

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Mosey

These days when I go out for a walk, I perambulate through my neighborhood and mostly just mosey around, musing about... well... all kinds of things, including the where, when and why of the word mosey.

Mosey has a nice ring to it. Kind of casual and slow.
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According to Americanisms, Old and New by John Stephen Farmer, to mosey means to depart suddenly and involuntarily; to sneak away. Farmer continues:

This, with some degree of plausibility, is supposed to be a corruption of the Spanish vamose, an elision of the first syllable having occurred and the final vowel being sounded. To mosey is also often used in the primary simple sense of "to go," and to mosey along with any one is also employed idiomatically in the sense of to agree with.

All of this is rather fascinating, although I have to say I've never equated mosey with "sudden (involuntary) departure." The Online Etymological Dictionary puts first use at about 1829 and defines mosey as American English slang meaning "move off or away, get out." 

Even though it states mosey is of unknown origin, the OED can't help but offer a theory or two:

...perhaps related to British dialectal mose about "go around in a dull, stupid way." Or perhaps from some abbreviation of Spanish vamos (see vamoose). Related: Moseyed; moseying.

Well, at least I know that my Silver Rush characters can safely mosey through the 1880s without fear of anachronism. 

For a change of scenery, let's mosey with Seurat for a bit.
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884) by Georges Seurat - twGyqq52R-lYpA at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22319969

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: An arm and a leg

Hello all! I hope you are all staying healthy in these uncertain times. And what kind of a crazy place is this where toilet paper (of all things) has become a commodity as scarce as hen's teeth, and when one does find a pack of the precious paper, it costs an arm and a leg??

And when did things that fetch a pretty penny come to demand various appendages in payment in addition to the coin of the realm?
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The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer says that the idiom arm and a leg became widely known from the 1930s on, and probably had its origins in the 19th-century American criminal slang phrase if it takes a leg (that is, even at the cost of a leg), to express desperate determination.

Phrase Finder offers a more detailed theory:

'It cost and arm and a leg' is one of those phrases that rank high in the 'I know where that comes from' stories told at the local pub.... It is in fact an American phrase, coined sometime after WWII. The earliest citation I can find is from The Long Beach Independent, December 1949:

Food Editor Beulah Karney has more than 10 ideas for the homemaker who wants to say "Merry Christmas" and not have it cost her an arm and a leg.

'Arm' and 'leg' are used as examples of items that no one would consider selling other than at an enormous price. It is a grim reality that, around that time, there were many US newspaper reports of servicemen who had lost an arm and a leg in the recent war. It is possible that the phrase originated in reference to the high cost paid by those who suffered such amputations. A more likely explanation is that the expression derived from two earlier phrases: 'I would give my right arm for...' and '[Even] if it takes a leg', which were both coined in the 19th century. The earliest example that I can find of the former in print is from an 1849 edition of Sharpe's London Journal:

He felt as if he could gladly give his right arm to be cut off if it would make him, at once, old enough to go and earn money instead of Lizzy.

The second phrase is American and an early example of it is given in this heartfelt story from the Iowa newspaper the Burlington Daily Hawk-Eye, July 1875:

A man who owes five years subscription to the Gazette is trying to stop his paper without paying up, and the editor is going to grab that back pay if it takes a leg.

Interesting!

In any case, I hope that, if you are on the search for toilet paper, buying such does not involve losing limbs or handing over great amounts of capital.

Stay healthy, stay sane, and share with others less fortunate and/or more desperate, if you can.

It does seem a bit like this lately...
Image by bbasilico0 from Pixabay

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: A pretty penny

If something costs a pretty penny, you can bet that you'll be paying more than just one shiny copper coin.

So, why (and when) did a pretty penny come to mean a large sum of money? A regular Slang-o-rama reader asked me about this phrase, and as I'm always happy to jump in on special requests and see what I can find, let's hop to it.
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Hop!

The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer provides the expected definition—"a considerable sum of money"—and dates it to early 1700s. The Phrase Finder gives us a little more background:

'A pretty penny' used to have the variants 'a fine penny', 'a fair penny' etc, but these have fallen by the wayside. All the forms of the expression came into the language in the 18th century and an early example is from a play by the popular playwright Susanna Centlivre, The Man's Bewitch'd, 1710: "Why here may be a pretty Penny towards, if the Devil don't cross it."

Intriguing, but I was hoping for an explanation as to why a "pretty" penny. Shiny or worn, a penny is worth the same, right? The Online Etymology Dictionary reminded me that, since the late 15th century, pretty has also been used to mean "not a few, considerable." Yes, I could see where that definition might (Dare I say it? Yes, I dare!) make sense(cents) in this context.

However, I think I will give the final word to the Wordwizard site, where this theory was posited:

The origin of this phrase is uncertain but it is often attributed to the special gold pennies, worth 20 silver pennies, that Henry III had coined in 1257. Since they were more valuable than the silver pennies, they became known as pretty pennies. (Picturesque Expressions by Urdang, American Heritage Dictionary, Facts on File Dictionary of Clichés)

So, there you go, inquiring reader. Pretty as in considerable or pretty as in gold? You choose! However, no matter how you look at it, if something costs a pretty penny, it'll probably also cost an arm and a leg. (More about that next week.)

More than one pretty penny in that pile...
Image by makingmilly from Pixabay

*Cents, because I cannot resist the possible pun...

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: Close, but no cigar

Here's a phrase that one hears on occasion, particularly when someone has just missed the mark:

Close, but no cigar.

It sounds pretty old-timey, right? Maybe even used in the 19th century? After all, cigars have been around for a looooong time.
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As it turns out, close, but no cigar is a relative newcomer, and of U.S. origin to boot... At least, according to The Phrase Finder, which says:

The phrase, and its variant 'nice try, but no cigar', are of US origin and date from the mid-20th century. Fairground stalls gave out cigars as prizes, and this is the most likely source, although there's no definitive evidence to prove that.

It is very much an American expression and is little used elsewhere in the English-speaking world. The first recorded use of 'close but no cigar' in print is in Sayre and Twist's publishing of the script of the 1935 film version of Annie Oakley: "Close, Colonel, but no cigar!"

Mid-20th century??

I don't believe it. It's got to be older than that.

The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms places it in early 1900s, which pushes it back some. After some digging, I found the phrase in a 1929 issue of Princeton Alumni Weekly:

And another mention in a 1925 issue of The New Yorker:

This post by Barry Popik (a contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary, Dictionary of American Regional English, Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Yale Book of Quotations and Dictionary of Modern Proverbs) has some fascinating detail about the origin of the phrase. Popik notes that carnival games featuring cigars for prizes dates to late 1800s, early 1900s. Still, even assuming the phrase was in use in speech before it finally appeared in print, I'd better not have the words fly out of my 1880s characters' mouths (or intrude on their thoughts). That would DEFINITELY be a "no cigar" situation.

Good try, lads, but I don't think she's interested. (Close, but no cigar.)
By Peter Baumgartner - Palais Dorotheum, Wien, 12. April 2011, lot 67, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16052963

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Face the music

In my newest Silver Rush novel MORTAL MUSIC, several characters—including prima donna Theia Carrington Drake—must face the music as the story unfolds.

Since I'm exploring music-related slang this month, this seems like the perfect time to dig into the origins of this idiom. On the surface, to face the music sounds enjoyable—what's not to like about experiencing a musical interlude? (Unless it's really loud or not to your liking, of course.) But the definition of this phrase is anything but pleasant: to meet, take, or accept the consequences of one's mistakes, actions. 

So, what's the origin, and why isn't facing the music a more welcome prospect?
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PhraseFinder's thorough entry reflects my musing before giving a shrug:

The phrase 'face the music' has an agreeable imagery. We feel that we can picture who was facing what and what music was playing at the time. Regrettably, the documentary records don't point to any clear source for the phrase and we are, as so often, at the mercy of plausible speculation...

 Two possibilities offered up are:

1. It reflects the tradition of disgraced officers being "drummed out" of their regiment
2. It originated in the theater world: Actors "face the music" when they go onstage and face the orchestra pit.

The PhraseFinder notes the phrase first popped up in U.S., with one of its earliest appearances in The New Hampshire Statesman & State Journal in August 1834:

Will the editor of the Courier explain this black affair. We want no equivocation - 'face the music' this time.

My copy of American Slang: Second Edition, edited by Robert L. Chapman, has the phrase in use by 1850 and offers two possible sources:

1. It might have come about from the necessity of forcing a cavalry horse to steadily face the regimental band.
2. It refers to the plight of a performer on stage.

I'm going to go with the second suggestions in both cases. For me and MORTAL MUSIC, it hits the right note!

Unlike some of my characters, this singer is prepared to face the music.
By Ivan Kramskoi - The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6359697

POSTSCRIPT: In the comments to this post, Liz V notes she found another "origin story" for face the music on the World Wide Words blog site. Theory: That it comes from contra dancing (which I also had to look up... :-) ). Thank you, Liz!