Welcome to The Mad Logophile. Here we explore words; their origins, evolution, usage. Words are alive. They are born, they change and, sometimes, they die. They are our principal tool for communicating with one another. There are millions of words yet only an estimated 171,476 words are in common current use. As a logophile, I enjoy discovering new words, using them and learning about their origins. Please join us!
All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.~~Gilbert K. Chesterton
Slang is a word that covers a huge amount of territory. So many words can be considered slang, depending on the situation and person using them. Jargon, colloquialisms, lingo, patois, vernacular, argot... these are all synonyms for slang and each deserves a diary unto itself. Heck, there are categories within these that deserve their own diary. The thing is, narrowing down slang is not an easy job. So I decided to start by age (age before beauty?). Below is some of the oldest slang we still use -- words and phrases -- and their generally accepted etymology. The fact is, some are so old that we can only make an educated guess at how they entered the vernacular.
Fair warning. I am practicing some recycling with this particular TML entry. It was my second of the series. I'm looking through the batch with an eye to publishing them as a book. So, over the next several months, I might run an older piece with updates and/or expansions. Please to forgive your humble logophile and enjoy!
Idiot, and its close relative, moron both come from Ancient Greece. The former is from the Greek word Idiotes which was used to refer to a person who would not take part in the democratic process. The Oxford English Dictionary eventually gave it the following definition: “A person so deficient in mental or intellectual faculty as to be incapable of ordinary acts of reasoning or rational conduct”. When IQ tests arrived, a score of less than 20 was regarded as the “idiot’s score.” Moron meant foolish or stupid, from moros "foolish, dull." It found its way into English via American psychologist Henry Goddard (1886-1957). His report about a study of the feeble-minded, included an argument for the adoption of the word which he defined as: “One who is lacking an intelligence, one who is deficient in judgment or sense.” It is used in medicine to refer to an adult with a mental age of between 8 and 12. But we revert back to their original meanings when we use them as slang.
How many of us are psyched for something? The roots of that word are also Greek. Some of you might remember the myth of Eros and Psyche. The names are, of course, metaphorical. Eros refers to love, from erōtikós; of love, caused by love, given to love. Psyche is from psȳche ;literally, breath, derived of psȳ́chein to breathe, blow and hence, live. In the myth, Eros (the god of love and son of Aphrodite) and Psyche are married. The myth is metaphor of the physical and the spiritual impulses. It was first used as "psych out" circa 1934 as "to outsmart," and from 1963 as "to unnerve." However, to be psyched up for something only dates from 1968.
The ancient Greeks, when deciding an issue, voted by bean-counting. Different colored beans would represent each vote; white for yes, black for no. The beans were deposited in a helmet or an urn. Of course, if the container were to be accidentally knocked over, the beans would spill. Hence, to spill the beans, or release a secret before it time.
One of the most ancient slang words that we still use is the good old "F" word - fuck. It comes from a Greek root, phu. As an agricultural term, it means to plant seeds. When adopted by the Romans, its Latin root changed from phu to fu, and the noun fututio soon became part of Roman vernacular. The Roman poets discovered the word at a time when erotic love poetry was all the rage in Rome, and fututio became a metaphor for planting a “particular” kind of “seed” in a “specific” kind of “furrow.” Fuccant is a pseudo-Latin derivation. From that, the word moved into the various regions and became fukka (Norwegian), focka (Swedish), the Middle English fkye, fokken (Dutch), and the German ficken. It's still part of our everyday vernacular and one of the most used slang words, in all its permutations.
We may be hoping that some people will be eating humble pie soon. The umbles were the innards of the deer: the liver, heart, entrails and other leftover bits. In medieval times, servants and people at the lower tables (the 'little people') at a feast were served a pie made of these parts. Samuel Pepys mentions it in his diary for 8 July 1663: “Mrs Turner came in and did bring us an Umble-pie hot out of her oven, extraordinarily good.” Now of course, it means to act submissively or apologetically, especially in admitting an error.
Sometimes we may find ourselves unable to make a decision. At such a time we are said to be at sixes and sevens. The etymology of this one is difficult to trace because it has changed in both form and meaning over the nine-hundred or so years that it has been in use. It was originally to set on six and seven and is thought to have derived in the 14th century from playing at dice. Then, it meant "to carelessly risk one's entire fortune." The current meaning refers to a state of confusion, disorder or disagreement, not one of risk. So, what happened? Two meanings apparently arose independently and eventually overlapped. The first time we saw the final form and meaning was in 1670, in Leti's Il cardinalismo di Santa Chiesa: "They leave things at sixes and sevens." And that is what it has meant ever since.
When we are surprised or annoyed, we may exclaim, "Oh crap!" This handy bit of slang comes from a bunch of words generally applied to things that are cast off or discarded. And all of them probably came from the Middle English crappe meaning, "grain that was trodden underfoot in a barn or chaff" (c.1440). This came from the Latin crappa,"chaff." Despite persistent legend, it had nothing to do with Thomas Crapper (1837-1910). Nor was the toilet invented by Mr. Crapper. So much for that fun story...
The epithet bastard dates from the 13th century. Meaning, "illegitimate child," it is from the Old French, fils de bast meaning "packsaddle son." The implication was that the child was conceived on a saddle, which often doubled as a bed while traveling. So the child may be the product of a passing tryst. In the figurative sense, the way we tend to use it, the word dates from 1552.
In a similar vein, we might refer to a woman we dislike as a bitch. But that word didn't start out as a bad thing... In ancient Greece Artemis was known as "The Great Bitch," and her Priestesses were known as her sacred Bitches. A son of a bitch originally meant a follower of that goddess. The word eventually came to refer to female animals, especially dogs. In around 1000 it appears in the Old English written record as bicce. There is an Old Norse word bikkja with the same meaning, but it's not clear if one came from the other or they both came from the same root. However, we can follow how bitch came to be applied to women (probably a reference to a dog's 'heat" and prolific breeding). It was being used as early as 1400 to refer to a lewd or sensual woman. The modern meaning of "malicious or treacherous woman" seems to have arisen in the 19th century. The male version (as bitch-son) first appears (in written form) in 1330 in Of Arthur & of Merlin. It did not show up again in literature until Shakespeare's King Lear: "One that...art nothing but the composition of a Knave, Begger, Coward, Pandar, and the Sonne and Heire of a Mungrill Bitch." So ladies, if someone calls you a bitch, either thank them and smile knowingly or correct them as to which religion you actually practice.
One idiom that has seen many attempts to pin down is, raining cats and dogs. There are several stories that claim to explain its origin, but do not hold up under investigation. Perhaps Oxford etymologist Anatoly Liberman has got it pegged here:
I think that the only clue to the origin of the idiom was furnished by N. E. Toke (Notes and Queries, 12th Series, vol. 4, 1918, pp. 328-329). He paid attention to a 1592 sentence from the OED (under cat 17): “Instead of thunderboltes shooteth nothing but dogboltes or catboltes” (G. Harvey). By the end of the 16th century, our phrase (in some form at least) must have been known. Toke adds: “...‘dogbolts’ and ‘catbolts’ are terms still employed in provincial dialect to denote, respectively, the iron bolts for securing a door or gate, and the bolts for fastening together pieces of timber.” If Harvey’s catbolts and dogbolts are not a pun on thunderbolts, one can imagine that people compared a shower (or better a hailstorm) to heavy instruments falling on their heads from the sky, with thunderbolt supplying a convenient model for the other two words. Characteristically, the fuller version of the idiom is raining cats and dogs and pitchforks (with their points downwards). Evidently, cats and dogs were thought to belong with sharp instruments rather than animals. If there is any truth in this reconstruction, the idiom sounded raining catbolts, dogbolts, and pitchforks; the second element -bolts was later left out, perhaps because the whole came out too bulky or as a joke (whose humor soon became incomprehensible).
I'm sure we all know folks who would rather fiddle about than work. This comes to us from the German Fiedel, which is from the Latin vitula, "stringed instrument." This may have been an allusion to Vitula, the Roman goddess of joy and victory. Music was an important part of celebrations in her honor and was played on (along with bells and drums) a stringed instrument. The figurative sense, "to act idly" dates to 1530. Related phraseology is fiddlestick ("nonsense") from 1621 and fit as a fiddle from 1616.
Many of us have a person we see as our guru. The word guru means teacher in Sanskrit and it is widely used with that general meaning. It originated in a Hindu context and holds a special place in Hinduism, referring to the sacredness of knowledge (vidya) and the person who imparts knowledge. The dialogue between guru and student is an important part of Hinduism, and was established in the oral traditions of the Upanishads (c. 2000 BC). Nowadays, it can mean anyone who we hold in high regard as a person who passes knowledge to us.
A similar word we may use is kahuna. This is an ancient Hawai'ian word meaning, "Priest, sorcerer, magician, wizard, minister, expert in any profession." Only men were kahunas in old Hawai'i (in the priestly sense) and their office was second only to that of the chief. The term traveled through the surfing community and has come to mean an expert or skilled person in any field.
For some of us, being true blue to a person or cause is important. We get this term from England where, in Coventry, the fabric dyers had a reputation for making a colorfast blue dye that didn't fade with washing; it remained "fast" or "true." This was recorded by John Ray in 1670 in his first edition of A Compleat Collection of English Proverbs: "Coventry had formerly the reputation for dying of blues; insomuch that true blue became a Proverb to signifie one that was always the same and like himself." The reputation of the fabric was transferred to The Covenanters, who wore the blue badge and swore to uphold the National Covenant and oppose the rule of James I of Scotland. Those who unwaveringly supported the cause were called "true blue." Blue was later adopted as the color of the Tory Party (the Conservative Party). So, the political red/blue thing is reversed in England.
The story behind the term toady is an interesting one. In the 15th century, there were many wandering salesmen, selling "miracle cures" for every ailment. These rip-off artists would travel with a shill who would help sell their wares. The shill would fake eating a "poison" toad, thus enabling his master to make a show of expelling the poison and "prove" that his cure worked. Naturally, this would impress those gathered for the show and result in many sales. This shill was eventually called a "toady." That term went on to describe a servile suck-up or flatterer.
Having a disagreement with someone? Then you may be said to be at loggerheads. Early in its history it was used with the meaning of "a stupid person - a blockhead." A logger was a thick block of wood which was fastened to a horse's leg to prevent it running away. And loggerheads are "iron instruments with long handles and balls or bulbs at the end" It's from these that etymologists believe the current meaning was derived as apparently they were often used for sparring. The English Rogue (1680), by Francis Kirkman, was the first time the current meaning is found in print: "They frequently quarrell'd about their Sicilian wenches, and indeed... they seem... to be worth the going to Logger-heads for."
Certain days are red-letter days for of us. In medieval times, church calendars were studiously kept and written down. The days of church festivals and holy days were written in red ink. The term first appeared in the 15th century in the The Boke of Eneydos. William Caxton wrote: "We wryte yet in oure kalenders the hyghe festes wyth rede lettres of coloure of purpre." So-called purpure dye was, in fact red. In 1549 the first Book of Common Prayer included a calendar with holy days marked in red ink. The term eventually came to mean any special day.
In close quarters we might say there is not enough room to swing a cat; Whether the 'cat' was real or the whip used to punish sailors isn't clear. The phrase dates from at least the 17th century as seen from Richard Kephale's Medela Pestilentiae, 1665: "They had not space enough (according to the vulgar saying) to swing a Cat in." So the phrase was already in use before the nautical terminology came along. In that context, the cat in question is the 'cat o'nine tails', a flail-like whip used for discipline on naval vessels. Its use required room in which to draw the whip back so as to deliver a blow.
Either in jest or literally, we refer to some people as mad as a hatter. Many years ago, Mercury was used in the making of hats. This affected the nervous systems of those who made them. Symptoms included trembling and "insane" behavior. Mercury exposure can cause aggressiveness, mood swings, and anti-social behavior. Lewis Carroll obviously knew about this meaning when he created the character of the Mad Hatter.
If you have ever quit a habit suddenly, you have gone cold turkey. This term is most common in relation to drug or cigarette withdrawal. The earliest reference to that usage is from the Canadian newspaper The Daily Colonist, in October 1921: "Perhaps the most pitiful figures who have appeared before Dr. Carleton Simon... are those who voluntarily surrender themselves. When they go before him, they [drug addicts] are given what is called the 'cold turkey' treatment." Anyone who has gone through this may recall the shivers that one sometimes gets, and the oft accompanying goosebumps. This may be the source of the term, but that is pure conjecture.
Have you ever watched an old Western and winced at the stereotypical "Injun" portrayals? One word often used by an "Injun" character to indicate their ethnicity is Firewater. This is not a Hollywood affectation. It is from an Ojibwa word; ishkodewaaboo, meaning whiskey or distilled liquors. The other word indicators for the stereotype -- "ugh", "how" and "-um" -- are prejudicial creations of writers and film makers.
An important person may be referred to as a Bigwig. In the 18th century, large wigs called perukes were worn by men of importance. Judges in particular wore large elaborate wigs to denote their line of work. These men sat in judgment of others, so they were important. The elitist behavior of many of them inspired the term. Consequently, anyone with great power became a big wig.
Pass the buck and the buck stops here are poker terms. Poker became very popular in America during the second half of the 19th century. Cheating was common and suspicion among players ran deep. In order to keep it fair, the dealer would change every few hands or so. The person who was up next as dealer would be given a marker, commonly a knife. In that era, knives often had handles made of buck's horn. Hence the marker became known as a buck. When the dealer was done he "passed the buck." Later, silver dollars were used as markers. This could very well be the origin of "buck" as a slang term for dollar. The best-known use of buck in this context is "the buck stops here", as a promise made by President Harry S. Truman. He kept this prominent in his own, and the citizen's minds, by the sign on his desk.
Every community relies on its scuttlebutt to know what's going on. Dating back to the early 19th century, a scuttle was a water cask kept on a ship's deck. The barrel was named for the ship's scuttle, which is an opening in the deck. The second half of the word, butt, means "barrel." The sailors would gather around the scuttlebutt to take a break, have a drink of water and gossip.
We've all come upon something shoddy in our time. Because of a wool shortage in the mid 1800s, manufacturers began to collect used wool cloth and rags so as to reprocess them into yarn. Workers called the recycled cloth "shoddy." During the Civil War the huge demand for uniforms increased the number of shoddy garments being produced. The shoddy uniforms looked fine, but they wore out quickly. The soldiers who wore the shoddy uniforms began using the word to signify anything of substandard quality. That meaning lives on to this day.
At least once in our lives, most of us have had to pull up stakes. All early dwellings in America were surrounded by fences. Gathering the timber and building the fences involved significant effort. So if and when settlers would decide to move they would take their fences with them.
Have you ever moved so fast that you were hell bent for leather? Also hell bent for breakfast, these are terms for moving fast or doing something quickly. They appear to have been coined during the Industrial Revolution, the American versions, anyway. Charles Earle Funk claims that "hell for leather" is a British expression originating in the British army in India. It's possible that Rudyard Kipling coined it as he was the first to record it. Of course he may have been quoting army speech he had heard. He first used it in The Story of the Gadsbys. The term probably referred to the beating inflicted upon leather saddles by riders at full speed. But even by Kipling's time it had acquired the current sense of indicating great speed.
If you make it clear that you are interested in something, you may be said to stake a claim. This term and the related grubstake, date to the California Gold Rush. Claim staking is the procedure of marking the boundaries of the mining claim, usually with wooden posts or piles of rocks. Once the claim was staked, the prospector had to document the claim by filing required forms with the mining district recorder. That claim was valid only as long as it was being actively worked. Miners worked at a claim only long enough to determine if it would pay off. If it didn't, they would abandon the site and search for a better one. In the case where a claim was abandoned or not worked upon, other miners could "claim-jump" the spot. Some prospectors were lucky enough to have sponsors and a grubstake was a supply of food (grub) which a wealthy investor would provide a gold prospector in exchange for a share (stake) in whatever gold might be found.
Eventually, some of us may find something so difficult that we will meet our Waterloo. This phrase refers to the 1815 battle outside the Belgian town of Waterloo in which Napoleon Bonaparte was finally defeated by forces commanded by the Duke of Wellington. The term Waterloo quickly became synonymous with one's downfall or with anything difficult to master. It also became something of an embarrassment for ol' Jim DeMint.
Hopefully, none of us have ever had to live on Skid Row. This American expression came into popular use in the Great Depression. Living on Skid Row is analogous to someone who was on the bottom of society, or "on the skids." These skids come from a very real term, though. In the late 19th century the logging industry was growing, especially in the northwest. Large tree-trunks had to be hauled, either to sawmills or to the nearest road, river or railway. They would be moved along tracks made of greased timbers. The loggers called these "skid roads." Legend has it that the first Skid Row was along a Skid Road built in Seattle.
Many of us use the term, A-1 or A-OK to connote something first rate. These come to us from the First World War. The British War Office created an ABC system of classification for the Department of Recruiting. Each category was then graded in a scale of 1 to 3. A-1 men were fit for general service overseas. The Americanized version is A-OK. There was a similar system which Lloyds of London used for evaluating ships. This may be a case of the WWI's spreading a term to a wider reach.
An area which is shunned by people is sometimes called a no-man's land. The term originally dates from the 1300s, when it meant the waste ground between two kingdoms. It did not acquire its military meaning until World War I, when it came to denote the territory between the Allied and German trenches, a place where no man would wish to be.
While jazz may now apply to just the music, it almost certainly is of different origin. It referred to sex before it was applied to music, dancing, and other things (all that jazz). The word was in general use in dance halls in the early 20th century. A 1919 announcement of the first 'Jazz band' to play in Columbia, SC inspired terror among the local Baptists. Until that time 'Jazz' had never been heard in the area except as a verb with the meaning previously mentioned. 'Jazz' probably comes from a Creole or maybe an African word, but exact connections have not been found. Similarly, the term rock and roll, was another euphemism for sex among Southern Blacks. So maybe those prudes who say it is sexual do know what they are talking about. It probably doesn't help that "guitar face" is nearly identical to "sex face." ;)
Perhaps, when things are going well, you've said it's copacetic. This term was supposedly coined by Mr. Bojangles himself, Bill Robinson. It means everything is just hunky dory. Robinson claimed to have invented the word during his shoeshine days as a boy in the South, but others of the era say it was used before Bojangles came along. An alternate theory of the word's origin suggests that it may come from a similar sounding Hebrew or Yiddish word with the same meaning.
Whether you are a musician or a film buff will color how you define vamp. In music, it means to improvise so as to fill time. Singers often vamp at the end of a song. If you are a film buff, you immediately think of Theda Bara and this meaning; "a woman who uses her sex appeal to entrap and exploit men." This began with a Kipling poem, "The Vampire", which became a play and then a film, "A Fool There Was", in 1915. Sultry Theda Bara played the title role and the word as we use it may ultimately trace to that. Bara (real name Theodosia Goodman) remains the classic vamp.
Not so much in use today but notable for its etymology (or entomology?) is the bee's knees. There is no definitive origin it, but it seems to have been coined in the 1920s. The first printed reference is in the Ohio newspaper The Newark Advocate in 1922; "That's what you wonder when you hear a flapper chatter in typical flapper language. 'Apple Knocker,' for instance. And 'Bees Knees.' That's flapper talk. [an 'apple knocker' is a rustic] Clearly the phrase must have been new then for the paper to plan to take the trouble to define it. In the 1920s it was fashionable to devise nonsense terms for something good - 'the snake's hips', 'the kipper's knickers", 'the cat's pyjamas', 'the sardine's whiskers' etc. Of these, the bee's knees and the cat's pyjamas are the only ones that have stood the test of time. A possible connection between the phrase and a bee relates to Bee Jackson, a dancer in 1920s New York. She was the World Champion Charleston dancer and was quite celebrated at the time. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that the expression was coined in reference to her and her very active knees.
Some of us may have been lucky enough to have visited a ritzy place. Here is a word that began as a person. Caesar Ritz opened the first Hotel Ritz in Paris in 1898. It quickly set a standard of luxury and comfort. Due to Ritz's perfectionism, it became the measure of all other hotels. Ritz Hotels opened in London and New York and a few other cities and soon the name of the hotel and the man came to mean something lavish and extravagant. If one was aspiring to be high class, well-dressed or cultured, they were said to be "putting on the Ritz." Irving Berlin even wrote a song about it.
If you are feeling scared, you might say that you have the heebie-jeebies. Contrary to some rumors, it is not an anti-Semitic expression. The the Oxford English Dictionary tells us; "the heebie-jeebies are a feeling of discomfort, apprehension, or depression." The term was coined by cartoonist Billy DeBeck in 1923. DeBeck was the creator of Barney Google, the hapless partner of Snuffy Smith and erstwhile owner of Sparkplug. DeBeck also invented hotsy-totsy (a term of approval) and horsefeathers (utter nonsense and a damn funny Marx Brothers film) in his strip. The only possible way to make it anti-Semitic is by its unfortunate similarity to the epithet Hebe. But it is innocent of the charge.
A word we use when we mean "go away!" is scram. When it first came into the vernacular in the 1920s, it was a shortened form of scramble or possibly came from the German word, schrammen "depart." But the word's history took an interesting turn in 1988 when a member of Enrico Fermi's team working on the first nuclear reactor used it as follows:
"The word arose in a discussion Dr. (Volney) Wilson, who was head of the instrumentation and controls group was having with several members of his group. The group had decided to have a big button to push to drive in both the control rods and the safety rod. What to label it? "What do we do after we punch the button?" someone asked. "Scram out of here," Wilson said. Bill Overbeck, another member of that group, said, "Okay, I'll label it SCRAM." _ As related by Gene Carbaugh of the Pacific NW National Laboratory.
Have you ever watched a celebrity and thought that he or she has it? The word, used in this context, was coined by Elinor Glyn in her 1923 novel, The Man and the Moment. The book was the basis for a 1927 film, It, starring Clara Bow. The actress became known as "the It girl." What is it? The short version is "a euphemism for sex appeal" but there is more to it than just that. According to Glyn herself, to have it, the person must have sex appeal but not be aware of it. They are a person that remains unaffected by fame and riches. A woman with it is one that men want to be with and women want to be (or at least be friends with). Similarly a man with it is a man that other men would want to hang out with and women would like to bed. A few modern celebrities who have or had it (IMHO of course) are Audrey Hepburn, George Clooney, Paul Newman, David Boreanaz and Salma Hayek... I'm sure you can come up with more.
Your turn now. What are your favorite slang words or phrases that have been around for a long time. Now, for you younger Kossacks, that does not mean the 60's and 70's! Seriously, I did a search using "ancient slang" and one of the hits I got referred to that era as ancient.