American Language Supplement 2

by H. L. Mencken

  2 I am indebted here to Mr. Carl Kastrup, of Rockford, Ill. I have added a few quarrymen’s terms from Lexicon of Trade Jargon.

  3 A crew consists of a heater, who heats the rivets; a catcher, a buckaroo and a driver.

  1 I take all these from Lexicon of Trade Jargon.

  2 So far as I know, there is no study in print of the argot of tanners, but the Tanners’ Council of America issues a Dictionary of Leather Terminology; third edition, New York, 1941, that lists some of the terminology used in the trade, as opposed to the craft. Says the preface: “Many leathers are known commercially or popularly by names of hides or skins of which they are not actually made.… Names of some skins (like chamois) have come to mean a finish as much as a kind of leather. It has even been necessary to insert the word genuine before some kinds of leather (like buckskin) to distinguish it from its imitators.”

  3 From Lexicon of Trade Jargon.

  1 These come from Tobacco Words, by L. R. Dingus, Publication of the American Dialect Society No. 2, Nov., 1944, pp. 63–72, and Language of the Tobacco Market, by Robert J. Fitzpatrick, American Speech, April, 1940, pp. 132–35. They were all gathered in the Southern tobacco area, where cigar tobacco is seldom if ever grown.

  2 So called, says Fitzpatrick, before cited, “because its freckles resemble those of a Guinea-hen.”

  3 Mr. Leonard Rapport, of Chapel Hill, N. C., tells me that the term has been traced to the 70s. It may be related to pin-hook, a bent pin used as a fish-hook, traced by the DAE to 1840.

  4 I take this definition from Fitzpatrick. He says that “the practise is said to have originated at Smithfield, N. C.”

  5 The more seemly terms in use by union men are listed in Labor Terminology, Bulletin No. 25 of the Bureau of Business Research, Harvard University; Cambridge, 1921. I am indebted here to Messrs. James F. Bender, Harry F. Bruning and John S. Grover.

  6 Apparently picked up from Alice the Goon, a character in Elzie Crisler Segar’s comic strip, Popeye the Sailor. As a verb it is an obsolete form of to gun, and is in Chaucer’s The House of Fame, III, c. 1380. As a noun, defined as “a person with a heavy touch,” it was used in The Goon and His Style, by Frederick L. Allen, Harper’s Magazine, Dec., 1921. Mr. Allen tells me that it was used in his family before this, and may have been either picked up elsewhere or invented.

  1 Associated Press dispatch quoted in Word Study, Feb., 1937, p. 4.

  2 Miriam Allen deFord, in American Notes & Queries, Nov., 1946, p. 127, says that it “was used in the Socialist party at the beginning of the century.” Upton Sinclair made it the title of a novel in 1919.

  3 Word Study, Feb., 1937, p. 4.

  4 Pork-Chopper, by Miriam Allen deFord, American Notes & Queries, Nov., 1946, p. 127.

  5 See Among the New Words, by I. Willis Russell, American Speech, Dec., 1946, p. 298. His earliest example is from Time, Oct. 25, 1943, p. 21.

  6 Scab is traced to 1806 by the DAE and marked an Americanism.

  7 George P. Peter says in Sit-Down, American Speech, Feb., 1937, pp. 31–33, that the term was first proposed in 1911, but that it did not come into general use until 1936.

  8 Strike-Struck, by Hugh Sebastian, American Speech, Oct., 1937, p. 235.

  9 Organized in Chicago, 1905. An attempt at the etymology of the term is in How Wobbly Originated, by Richard W. Hogue, Nation, Sept. 5, 1923, p. 242.

  10 Yellow-dog as a general symbol of worthlessness is an Americanism, traced by the DAE to 1895. It is probably much older.

  11 Called a red-cap by the English.

  1 Supplement I, p. 598.

  2 The Word Commando, by Elliott V. K. Dobbie, American Speech, April, 1944, pp. 81–90.

  3 Army Talk, second edition; Princeton (N.J.), 1943, p. 230.

  4 Snafu (pronounced as a word) produced a numerous progeny, e.g., susfu, situation unchanged: still fu; fubar, fu beyond all recognition; janfu, joint Army and Navy fu, and tarfu, things are really fu, but Jeffrey A. Fleece says in Words in -fu, American Speech, Feb., 1946, pp. 70–72, that none of them ever “really became part of Army language.” Morroe Berger, in Army Language, the same, Dec., 1945, p. 262, adds G. F. U., a soldier who never does anything correctly; F. O., to avoid work, and various others. In F. O. off takes the place of the usual up.

  5 It came originally from the French, and the NED says that it got into English as a euphemism. It is to be found in nearly all the standard writers before the Eighteenth Century.

  6 Pronounced arse in England, but ass in this country. It has cognates in all the Germanic languages. It lies defectively hidden in BAM, the Navy name for a lady marine, i.e., broad-assed marine. During the war a naval officer of rank and fancy suggested that leatherteat be substituted, but this stroke of genius was frowned upon by the High Command. The lady marines were known officially as the Women’s Reserve of the Marine Corps. Their heroic record is given in the Congressional Record, Dec. 18, 1945, pp. A6042–43. That of their comrades-in-arms, the WAVES of the Navy proper, is in the same, Feb. 11, 1946, p. A685. That of the SPARS, who fought with the Coast Guard, is in the same, Jan. 25, 1946, pp. A237–38. SPARS was coined by the commander of the outfit, Captain Dorothy G. Stratton. She got it from the Coast Guard motto, Semper paratus, always ready.

  7 Says Frederick Elkin in The Soldier’s Language, American Journal of Sociology, March, 1946, pp. 414–22: “Such terms, used by themselves or in combination phrases, are in almost every sentence a soldier says.” Elkin adds that “this constant and crude use of obscenity” often shocks recruits, but that “with constant exposure the shock lessens,” and “eventually, to a greater or less degree, practically all soldiers adopt it.… Violating the taboos of language gives feelings of courage and freedom,… strength and virility.” In the same issue of the same journal, p. 411, Henry Elkin (not the same writer), says: “By pronouncing those ‘dirty words,’ which he never dared to utter in the presence of Mom or his old-maid schoolteachers, the GI symbolically throws off the shackles of the matriarchy in which he grew up.” Testimony to their prevalence in the Army is to be found in many other discussions of soldiers’ argot, e.g., Warriors’ Slang, by Robert L. Wheeler, Providence (R.I.) Sunday Journal, Feb. 4, 1945, Section VI, p. 1, and American Army Speech in the European Theatre by Joseph W. Bishop, Jr., American Speech, Dec., 1946, pp. 241–52.

  1 Dave Breger claimed in Time, Feb. 26, 1945, p. 7, that he was the first to use GI Joe, to wit, in Yank, June 17, 1942. “I decided on GI,” he said, “because of its prevalence in Army talk … and Joe for the alliterative effect.”

  1 A writer in the Baltimore Evening Sun – GI and Other Army Terms, editorial page, March 14, 1945 – reported that it was resented as much as the English Sammy had been resented in World War I. Said Wheeler, before cited: “The GI doesn’t mind being called a GI or a Joe by other soldiers … but there are standard four-letter words for what he thinks about being tagged GI Joe by, say, a guy like me.” Westbrook Pegler predicted in his column, Jan. 17, 1945, that GI would also soon fade, but the GI Bill of Rights apparently gave it a new lease of life.

  2 By James F. Bender in Thirty Thousand New Words, New York Times Magazine, Dec. 2, p. 22.

  3 Jargon by Command, Saturday Review of Literature, Nov. 24, p. 14.

  4 The favorite of American headline-writers was the innocuous nazi, which almost completely displaced kraut, jerry, heinie and the hun of World War I.

  5 War Words in England, by H. L. Mencken, American Speech, Feb., 1944, pp. 9 and 10.

  6 Among the New Words, by I. Willis Russell, American Speech, April, 1946, p. 140.

  1 Stateside, Feb., 1947, p. 170.

  2 He added that it was used by Walter Karig and Welbourn Kelley in Battle Report, Vol. I; New York, 1944. See also Stateside, by Harold A. Welch, American Notes & Queries, Sept., 1945, p. 88.

  5 Pin-up Girl, American Notes & Queries, July, 1946, pp. 55–56. He says that “at the outset of World War II” he offered General Powell, then in command at Fort Dix, a collection of 5000 photogr
aphs typifying “not the usual glamorous, show-girl type, but the girl back home, wholesome, sweet and vivacious.”

  4 M. D. C. says in American Notes & Queries, Oct., 1945, p. 108, that it was first used in Yank, April 30, 1943. “Prior to that date,” he adds, “Yank had been fumbling for a tag-line with such commonplaces as dream girl.”

  5 Said Fred Backhouse in Pre-War Mae West, Newsweek, Sept. 4, 1944: “[It] was thought up by an unknown Royal Air Force man before the war and was in common usage when I joined the slang-loving body in 1940. From being slang it moved up into official documents.… The Mae West is a bulky canvas and rubber affair, and when worn gives you a bust measurement like that attributed to the actress.”

  6 War Words in England, before cited, p. 7.

  7 On June 19, 1941 the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch headed an editorial Blitz Comes to Stay, and said: “After all, the word does express something that is not adequately expressed by any English word. And it has doubled its hold by becoming adjective and verb as well as noun.” American Speech, Feb., 1940, p. 110, shows that it had come into use in the United States in 1939.

  8 Global Darkness, American Notes & Queries, Oct., 1942, pp. 99–100.

  1 In Among the New Words, American Speech, April, 1946, p. 145, I. Willis Russell traces V-day to March 16, 1942, VE-day to Sept. 18, 1944, and VJ-day to the same day. See also Russell’s paper in the same, Oct., 1946, pp. 220–222.

  2 Amgot (soon shortened to AMG) seems to have been an English invention. In Amgot (editorial), July 19, 1943, the London Daily Sketch described it as “a new word” and said: “It stands for the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory, which is headed by Major-General Lord Rennell.”

  3 From CB, construction battalion. The New Practical Standard Dictionary says that the seabees were “given this name in 1942, soon after they were inaugurated to handle all construction for the Navy in combat zones abroad, such as air bases and landing places.”

  4 A writer in American Notes & Queries, May, 1946, p. 30, said that it then seemed to be “on the way to becoming a permanent speech figure.” He cited its use in Operation Dixie, the CIO’s name for its attempt to organize Southern labor.

  5 Let’s be Honest Again, Tit-Bits (London), Dec. 14, 1945: “In the services scrounging (or liberating, in the current slang) is not generally frowned on.”

  6 War Words in England, before cited, p. 6. For the use of quisling see Quisling, Life, May 6, 1940. Major Vidkun Quisling was executed Oct. 24, 1945. Said the London Times, quoted by Life: “Quisling … has the supreme merit of beginning with a q, which (with one august exception) has long seemed to the British mind to be a crooked, uncertain and slightly disreputable letter, suggestive of the questionable, the querulous, the quavering of quaking quagmires and quivering quicksands, of quibbles and quarrels, of queasiness, quackery, qualms and quilp.” The “august exception,” of course, is to be found in queen.

  1 This application was filed on Jan. 23, 1939. The patent, No. 21,195,432, was issued on April 2, 1940.

  2 Docket No. 4959, May 6, 1943. More details are given in Hail to the Jeep, by A. Wode Wells; New York, 1946. See also Whose Jeep?, Tide, Feb. 15, 1944, pp. 21–22.

  3 PM reported, March 28, 1944, that the sole survivor of this first batch, affectionately called Gramps, was deposited in the Smithsonian Institution a short while before. I take this from American Notes & Queries, April, 1944, p. 12.

  1 J. K. Layton in Life, Aug. 10, 1942, p. 6.

  2 Colby, before cited, p. 116.

  3 I am indebted here to Mr. Ward Greene, editor and general manager of the King Features Syndicate, and to A Word-Creator, by Jeffrey A. Fleece, American Speech, Feb., 1943, pp. 68–69.

  4 Repaired Jeep in ’37, Moline Mechanics Say, St. Paul Pioneer Press, June 6, 1944, and Jeep, American Notes & Queries, Jan., 1944, p. 155.

  5 American Notes & Queries, May. 1944, pp. 26–27.

  6 Jeep, by P. Burwell Rogers, American Notes & Queries, March, 1944, p. 189.

  1 The Jerk, Saturday Evening Post, July 16. I take this from American Speech, Oct., 1938, p. 235.

  2 What Happens When the Finance Adjuster Steps In, editorial page, Oct. 8.

  3 Service Slang, by J. L. Hunt and A. G. Pringle; London, 1943, p. 41.

  4 Time, Sept. 22, p. 20.

  5 Jeep, by Richard Gordon McClosky, American Notes & Queries, Dec., 1943, pp. 136–37.

  6 But Maurice Hindus reported in a Moscow dispatch in the New York Herald Tribune, March 28, 1944, that the Russians used Willys. Sc did Tide, Feb. 15, 1944, p. 22. I am indebted here to Col. R. G. Howie, Col. Francis V. Fitzgerald, Major Eugene C. Merrill, Lieut. W. C. Alcock, and Messrs. Nick M. Carey, F. H. Fenn, W. J. Konicek and M. A. White.

  1 New York, 1942.

  H. L. MENCKEN

  was born in Baltimore in 1880 and died there in 1956. Educated privately and at Baltimore Polytechnic, he began his long career as journalist, critic, and philologist on the Baltimore Morning Herald in 1899. In 1906 he joined the staff of the Baltimore Sun, thus initiating an association with the Sun papers which lasted until a few years before his death. He was co-editor of the Smart Set with George Jean Nathan from 1908 to 1923, and with Nathan he founded in 1924 the American Mercury, of which he was editor until 1933. His numerous books include A Book of Burlesques (1916); A Book of Prefaces (1917); In Defense of Women (1917); The American Language (1918–4th revision, 1936); Supplement One (1945); Supplement Two (1948); six volumes of Prejudices (1919, 1920, 1922, 1924, 1926, 1927); Notes on Democracy (1926); Treatise on the Gods (1930); Treatise on Right and Wrong (1934); Happy Days (1940); Newspaper Days (1941); Heathen Days (1943); A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949); and Minority Report (1956). Mencken also edited several books; he selected and edited A New Dictionary of Quotations (1942). He was co-author of a number of books, including Europe after 8:15 (1914); The American Credo (1920); Heliogabalus (a play, 1920); and The Sunpapers of Baltimore (1937).