18 The oil men seem to be especially fond of such blends. See Trade Names in the Petroleum Industry, by Dora Lee Brauer, American Speech, April, 1935.
19 See Blends: Their Relation to English Word Formation, by Louise Pound; Heidelberg, 1914; Some New Portmanteau Words, by Robert Withington, Philological Quarterly, April, 1930; More Portmanteau Coinages, by the same, American Speech, Feb., 1932; Dick-ensian and Other Blends, by the same, American Speech, Oct., 1933; Blends, by Steven T. Byington, American Speech, Oct., 1927; Blend-Words in English, by Harold Wentworth; Ithaca, N. Y., 1933; Iteratives, Blends and Streckformen, by F. A. Wood, Modern Philology, Oct., 1911; Some English Blends, by the same, Modern Language Notes, June, 1912; On Blendings of Synonymous or Cognate Expressions in English, by G. A. Berg-ström, Lund (Sweden), 1906.
20 Vaseline was coined by Robert A. Chesebrough in 1870 or thereabout. It was made of the German wasser, meaning water, and the Greek elaion, meaning oil. Mr. Chesebrough was of the opinion that “petroleum is produced by the decomposition of water in the earth, and the union of the hydrogen thus evolved with the carbon of certain rocks, under the influence of heat and pressure.” (Private communication from Mr. T. J. Dobbins, secretary of the Chesebrough Manufacturing Company, March 15, 1935). Vaseline now appears in all the German and French dictionaries, but all rights to the name are still vested in the Chesebrough Company. Its original trade-mark was renewed on July 25, 1905, and upheld by a decree of the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, May 26, 1933. It was similarly upheld in England by the Court of Appeal in 1902. Vaseline is now in most of the Continental languages.
21 Listerine, of course, is derived from the name of Lord Lister, the English surgeon who brought in aseptic surgery, but it was coined in the United States. Lord Lister objected to the use of his name, but in vain.
22 Kodak was coined by George Eastman, inventor of the camera, and he registered it as a trademark on Sept. 4, 1888. Its origin is described in George Eastman, by Carl W. Ackerman; New York, 1930. The k was suggested by the fact that it was the first letter of his mother’s family name. Kodak has got into all the Continental languages. In October, 1917, the Verband Deutscher Amateurphotographen-Vereine was moved to issue the following warning: “Wer von einem Kodak spricht und nur allgemein eine photographische Kamera meint, bedenkt nicht, dass er mit der Weiterver breitung dieses Wortes die deutsche Industrie zugunsten der amerikanisch-englischen schädigt.” Despite this warning, kodak is in all the more recent German (and French) dictionaries. In American there are a number of familiar derivatives, e.g., to kodak, kodaker, kodak-fiend.
23 Word-Coinage and Modern Trade Names, Dialect Notes, Vol. IV, Pt. I, 1913. See also Robots of Language, by Henry Bellamann, Yale Review, Sept., 1929.
24 In Trade-Name Suffixes, American Speech, July, 1927, Walter E. Myers calls attention to the popularity of -ex and -tex. He cites, among other familiar trade-terms, cutex, pyrex, kleenex, and celotex. He surmises that -tex may owe something to texture. The etymology of some of these names is obvious, but others are somewhat puzzling. Pyrex, a name for glass ovenware, was not suggested by the Greek pyra, a hearth, but by the humble English word pie. The first baking-dish brought out was a pie-plate. For this I am indebted to Mr. William H. Curtiss, vice-president of the Corning Glass Works, Corning, N. Y.
25 The Advertiser’s Artful Aid, Bookman, Feb., 1919. See also Word-Coinage, by Leon Mead; New York, n.d., and Burgess Unabridged, by Gelett Burgess; New York, 1914.
26 Late in 1923 Delcevare King, a rich Prohibitionist of Quincy, offered a prize of $200 for the best word to apply to “the lawless drinker to stab awake his conscience.” Mr. King received more than 25,000 suggestions. The announcement that scofflaw, suggested by both Mr. Shaw and Miss Butler, had won was made on Jan. 15, 1924. The word came into immediate currency, and survived until the collapse of Prohibition.
27 For example, A. E. Sullivan wrote to the London Daily Telegraph, March 2, 1935: “The origin of to debunk is doubtless the same as that of American jargon in general — the inability of an ill-educated and unintelligent democracy to assimilate long words. Its intrusion in our own tongue is due partly to the odious novelty of the word itself, and partly to the prevailing fear that to write exact English nowadays is to be put down as a pedant and a prig.”
28 Moron is the name of a character in Molière’s La Princesse d’Elide, 1664. But Dr. Goddard got it from the Greek.
29 Some of them deserved a better fate, e.g., sothers (brothers and sisters), megaphonia (the habit of talking too loud), hesh (for he and she), and radiorator. In Nov., 1935 the readers of Word Study (published at Springfield, Mass., by the publishers of Webster’s New International Dictionary, and edited by Max J. Herzberg of Newark, N. J.) were invited to send in invented words. Some of those received were cacogen (an anti-social person) pajamboree, and Gersteinian (from Gertrude Stein).
30 See Some English Stretch-Forms, by Louise Pound, Dialect Notes, Vol. IV, Pt. I, 1913. Also, Terms of Approbation and Eulogy in American Dialect Speech, by Elsie L. Warnock, Dialect Notes, Vol. IV, Pt. I, 1913, and Notes on the Vernacular, by Louise Pound, American Mercury, Oct., 1924, p. 236.
31 Vogue Affixes in Present-Day Word Coinage, by Louise Pound, Dialect Notes, Vol. V, Pt. I, 1918; The Irradiation of Certain Suffixes, by E. C. Hills, American Speech, Oct., 1925.
32 American Speech, April, 1935, p. 154.
33 At first glance I suspect that the kalf- and kaf- came from kaif, an interesting and instructive American form of café. But diligent inquiry revealed the fact that their origin was in calf. Both words indicate a shoe-store.
34 Cafeteria, American Speech, Oct., 1927. The dictionary is E. Pichardo’s Diccionario Provincial … de Vozes Cubanas, published at Havana.
35 See especially Basketeria and the Meaning of the Suffix -teria, by J. M. Steadman, Jr., American Speech, June, 1930. Mr. Steadman distinguishes three meanings for -teria: 1. A place where articles are sold on the self-service plan; 2. A place where certain articles are sold without the self-service feature; and 3. A place where certain services are rendered — by others, not by the customer himself. Other interesting notes on the word are in the Barry paper just quoted, and in The Pronunciation of Cafeteria, by E. C. Hills, American Speech, Nov., 1926; More Cafeteria Progeny, by Mamie Meredith, the same, Dec, 1927; Barberia, by Phillip Davis, the same, Aug., 1928; and The English Language in America, by George Philip Krapp, Vol. I; New York, 1925, p. 143.
36 Of these, -ite and -ist go back to the Sixteenth Century, and -ette to the Fifteenth. See English Words With Native Roots and With Greek, Latin, or Romance Suffixes, by George A. Nicholson, University of Chicago Linguistic Studies in Germanic, No. III, 1916.
37 In Three Hard-Worked Suffixes, American Speech, Feb., 1927, Josephine M. Burnham says that -dom has acquired four significances in American. First, it means “realm or jurisdiction,” as in bookdom, playdom and traveldom. Second, it means “state or condition,” as in pauperdom, stardom and gypsydom. Third, it means “those of a certain type or character,” as in fandom, flapperdom and crookdom. And fourth, it means “those interested in a given thing,” as in Shrinedom, flowerdom and puzzledom.
38 Receptionist is used by English theologians to denote one who believes that “the bread and wine remain only bread and wine after consecration, but that, together with them, the faithful communicant really receives the body and blood of Christ.” In the sense of one who receives the customers of a photographer or the patients of a physician or dentist it is American only. See the New York Times, Section 9, Oct. 5, 1924. Manicurist appeared in American in the 90’s; it is still rare in England, where manicure is preferred. Behaviorist seems to have been invented by Dr. John B. Watson, 1913. Electragist is defined in Webster’s New International (1934) as “one who installs electrical apparatus and sells electrical goods, and who is a member of the Association of Electragists International.” It is thus a brother to realtor, noticed in Chapter VI, Section 6. See America
n Speech, April, 1928, p. 351, and March, 1926, p. 350. A recent novelty is canitist, apparently from the Latin canities, signifying grey hair. It is used by beauticians who specialize in “tinting hair for discriminating women.” I owe its discovery and its etymology to Dr. Isaac Goldberg.
39 It is dealt with at length in Chapter VI, Section 6.
40 Josephine M. Burnham, in Three Hard-Worked Suffixes, above cited, gives some appalling specimens, e.g., conventionitis, headlineitis, crosswordpuzzleitis, ain’t-supposed-to-itis, let-George-do-it-itis, and Phi-Beta-Kappa-itis.
41 Pastorium is widely used in the South, especially among the Baptists, in place of parsonage. According to Bernard M. Peebles (Pasto-rium, American Speech, Dec., 1926, p. 159) the word was invented, c. 1898, by the Rev. Morton Bryan Wharton, D.D., pastor of the Freemason Street Baptist Church, Norfolk, Va. “News reports on the invention,” says Mr. Peebles, “brought forth editorial approval in several leading Baptist journals. One hardy brother attacked it in the Baltimore Baptist, only to be squelched by a ‘scholarly article’ from Professor Carroll, then of the Johns Hopkins.” I am unable to identify Professor Carroll. In 1898 Dr. Wharton published a book of poems, “Pictures From A Pastorium,” the first poem in which was called. “The Pastorium.” I quote one stanza:
The place where congregations meet
We style an auditorium;
The place where pastors make their seat
Should, then, be called pastorium.
See also Irradiations of Certain Suffixes, by E. C. Hills, American Speech, Oct., 1925.
42 For boyology see American Speech, Sept., 1927, p. 515. For clockologist see the same, June, 1927, p. 408.
43 For avigator see American Speech, Aug., 1928, p. 450. See also Avigation, by J. R. Killian, Jr., the same, Oct., 1928.
44 It is denounced by R. S. G. in American Speech, Aug., 1930, p. 495. A letter by Garth Cate, printed in F. P. Adams’s column in the New York Herald Tribune, June 29, 1931, ascribes the coining of motorcade to Lyle Abbott, automobile editor of the Phoenix (Ariz.) Republican, and fixes the date at 1912 or 1913. See The Earliest Motorcade, by W. L. Werner, American Speech, June, 1932, p. 388. Other notes on motorcade are in American Speech, Dec., 1930, p. 155; April, 1931, pp. 254 and 313, and Aug., 1931, p. 189; in Modern Language Notes, March, 1925, p. 189, and in Notes and Queries, April 19, 1924.
45 I am indebted here to Professor Atcheson L. Hench, of the University of Virginia, and to Vogue Affixes in Present-Day Word-Coinage, by Louise Pound, Dialect Notes, Vol. V, Pt. I, 1918.
46 The first use of dance marathon to designate a long-distance dancing-match was in 1927. After a while the promoters introduced rest-periods, during which the dancers were free to walk about. In 1930 a promotor in Des Moines called such an ameliorated contest a walkathon, and the word quickly spread. I am indebted for this to Mr. Hal J. Ross of St. Louis, and to Mr. Don King, endurance-shows editor of the Billboard (Cincinnati). I have been informed by other authorities that the use of walkathon was encouraged by the passage of laws in some of the States forbidding dancing for more than eight hours on end. The cops, it appears, were easily persuaded that a walkathon was really a walking-match, which had no time limit.
47 See Chorine, by Louise Pound, American Speech, June, 1928, p. 368, and Dudine, by M. H. Dresen, the same, Aug., 1928.
48 The Scope of the American Dictionary, American Speech, Oct., 1933, p. 14.
49 Here I am again indebted to Professor Hench.
50 Headline Words, by Harold E. Rockwell, American Speech, Dec., 1926.
51 It might be interesting to inquire how far the popularity of politicians and other public figures runs in proportion to the shortness of their names. I suspect that Mr. Eden, the English Foreign Secretary (1936), owes something to the fact that his name is not Cholmondelay or Donoughmore. The English newspapers have headlines more elastic than ours, but their contents-bills are just as crowded. In the case of politicians with long names abbreviations usually come into newspaper use, e.g., T.R. (the elder Roosevelt), F.D.R. (the younger), C.B. (Campbell Bannerman), and L.G. (Lloyd George). Sometimes nicknames take their place, e.g., Cal (Coolidge), G.O.M. (Grand Old Man, i.e., Gladstone), and Al (Smith). Movie performers are commonly designated by their given names, or by abbreviations thereof, e.g., Gloria (Swanson), Mary (Pickford) and Doug (Fairbanks).
52 More than 100 headline nouns are discussed in detail in Scribes Seek Snappy Synonyms, by Maurice Hicklin, American Speech, Dec., 1930. See also Newspaper English, by Francis F. Beirne, American Speech, Oct., 1926; The Art of the Copy-Reader, by Kittredge Wheeler, American Mercury, July, 1932; The Attributive Noun Becomes Cancerous, by Steven T. By-ington, American Speech, Oct., 1926; and Newspaper Headlines, by George O. Curme, American Speech, April, 1929. In Newspaper Headlines: A Study in Linguistic Methods, by Heinrich Straumann; London, 1935, the grammar of headline English is discussed with abysmal learning. Unfortunately, the author deals only with English headlines.
53 The Queen’s English, 3rd ed., 1870.
54 See Exclamations in American Speech, by E. C. Hills, Dialect Notes, Vol. V, Pt. VII, 1924. This is an almost exhaustive and very valuable paper. See also The English of the Comic Cartoon, by Helen Trace Tysell, American Speech, Feb., 1935, especially p. 50.
55 Ex Libris, by The Bookman, Baltimore Evening Sun, June 16, 1923. The Bookman is Hamilton Owens, editor of the paper.
56 He meant, of course, American.
57 Quoted by Brander Matthews in Newspaper English, 1920, reprinted in Essays on English; New York, 1921.
58 G.K.’s Weekly (London), May 2, 1931.
59 “Sky-scraper,” says Charles White in a letter to the London Morning Post, Jan. 26, 1935, “was applied to Queen Anne’s Mansions [an apartment-house in Queen Anne’s Gate, London, near St. James’s Park] in the early 80’s, before American cities had any structures of their present variety.” But this seems to have been a nonce-use, not generally imitated. The Oxford Dictionary’s first quotation is from the Boston (Mass.) Journal, Nov., 1891. Sky-scraper had been used to designate a sky-sail (1794), a tall horse (1826), an exaggerated story (1841), and a tall man (1857).
60 Rubber-neck is described by Prof. J. Y. T. Greig, the Scottish philologian, in Breaking Priscian’s Head; London, 1929, p. 83, as “one of the best words ever coined.”
61 The date here is a guess. The first example in the Supplement to the Oxford Dictionary is dated 1908. Low-brow followed soon afterward. Mezzo-brow and mizzen-brow came later.
62 This is another guess. The inventor of the hot-dog was the late Harry Mozely Stevens, caterer at the New York Polo Grounds. The sale of sausages in rolls was introduced in this country many years ago, but Stevens was the first to heat the roll and add various condiments. According to his obituary in the New York Herald Tribune, May 4, 1934, this was in 1900. But sausages in rolls were then called simply wienies or frankfurters. Stevens himself used to say that the late T. A. Dorgan (Tad), the sports cartoonist, coined hot-dog, but he was apparently uncertain about the date. The name was suggested, of course, by the folk-belief that wienies were made of dog-meat. In 1913 the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce passed a resolution forbidding the use of hot-dog on signs at Coney Island. See The Hot-Dog Mystery (editorial) in the New York Herald Tribune, June 2, 1931.
63 According to Henry F. Pringle (New Yorker, June 30, 1934) brain-trust “was invented by James M. Kiernan of the New York Times in the Summer of 1932 to describe the economists and other experts who were active in the [presidential] campaign” of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
64 See Terms of Disparagement, by Marie Gladys Hayden, Dialect Notes, Vol. IV, Pt. III, 1906.
65 “A statement is phoney,” said an editorial in the Boston Traveler, Feb. 20, 1922, “if it is like the practical jokes and false impersonations that are so frequently perpetrated over the telephone.”
66 See Movie Jargon, by Terry Ramsaye, American Speech, April, 1926.
67 On Nov. 8, 1924 the New York Evening Sun repo
rted that speakies had recently appeared in Film Fun, a fan magazine.
68 Hokum, New York World, March 28, 1923. The same facts are given in The Lexicographer’s Easy Chair, Literary Digest, May 5, 1923.
69 New York World, Oct. 21, 1925.
70 Ye Maverick; San Antonio, 1905.
71 New York World, Oct. 25, 1925. Kingsley had previously dealt with the matter in the New York Sun in 1917, and his lucubrations were reprinted in the Literary Digest for Aug. 25 of that year.
72 Where is Jazz Leading America? Éctude, July, 1924.
73 Some of them are rehearsed in Jazz, by Henry Osborne Osgood, American Speech, July, 1926.
74 See a somewhat guarded discussion of its original meaning by Clay Smith, Éctude, Sept., 1924, p.595.
75 This etymology is given in Sundae, by John Fairweather, London Sunday Times, Aug. 25, 1928, on the authority of “Miss Anna C. Mitchell, librarian to the Public Service Corporation of New Jersey, U. S. A.”
76 Quoted in How Wobbly Originated, by Richard W. Hogue, Nation, Sept. 5, 1923, p. 242.
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