American Language (113 page)

During the World War there was some compensatory borrowing of English army slang and argot by the American troops, but it did not go very far. Indeed, the list of loan-words that came into anything approaching general use in the A.E.F. was about limited to
ace, blimp, cootie, Frog, Jack Johnson, Jerry, over the top
and
whizz-bang
. Some of the favorites of the British soldiers,
e.g., fag, blighty, cheerio, to strafe, funk-hole
and
righto
, were seldom if ever used by the Americans. The greater part of the American vocabulary came from the Regular Army, and some of it was of very respectable antiquity,
e.g., hand-shaker, Holy Joe
(for chaplain),
slum
(stew),
corned willie
(corned beef hash),
outfit, belly-robber, dog-robber
(an officer’s servant or orderly),
⁵³
doughboy, jawbone
(meaning credit, or anything spurious or dubious),
mud-splasher
(artilleryman),
buck-private, top-kick, gold-fish
(canned salmon),
gob, leatherneck, padre, chow, outfit
and
punk
(bread). A few novelties came in,
e.g., tin-hat
and
a.w.o.l.
, and there was some fashioning of counter-words and phrases from French materials,
e.g., boocoo
or
boocoop
(beaucoup),
toot sweet
(tout de suite) and
trez beans
(très bien), but neither class was numerous. Naturally enough, a large part of the daily conversation of the troops was obscene, or, at all events, excessively vulgar. Their common name for cavalryman, for example, could hardly be printed here. The English called the military police
red-caps
, but the American name was
M.P.’s
. The British used
O.C
. for Officer Commanding; the Americans used
CO
. for Commanding Officer. The British were fond of a number of Americanisms,
e.g., blotto, cold-feet, kibosh, nix, pal
and
to chew the rag
, but whether they were borrowed from the A.E.F. or acquired by some less direct route I do not know.
⁵⁴
About
gob, leatherneck
and
dough-
boy
there have been bitter etymological wrangles.
Gob
has been traced variously to a Chinese word (
gobshite
), of unknown meaning and probably mythical; to
gobble
, an allusion to the somewhat earnest methods of feeding prevailing among sailors; and to
gob
, an archaic English dialect word signifying expectoration. The English coast-guardsmen, who are said to be free spitters, are often called
gobbies
. In May, 1928, Admiral H. A. Wiley, then commander-in-chief of the United States Fleet, forbade the use of
gob
in ship’s newspapers, calling it “undignified and unworthy.” But the gobs continue to cherish it.
Leatherneck
, I have been told, originated in the fact that the collar of the Marines used to be lined with leather. But the Navy prefers to believe that it has something to do with the fact that a sailor, when he washes, strips to the waist and renovates his whole upper works, whereas a Marine simply rolls up his sleeves and washes in the scantier manner of a civilian. It is the theory of all gobs that all Marines are dirty fellows. But the step from unwashed necks to leather seems to me to be somewhat long and perilous. The term
devil-dogs
, often applied to the Marines during the World War, was supposed to be a translation of the German
teufelhunde
. During the fighting around Chateau Thierry, in June and July, 1918, the Marines were heavily engaged, and the story went at the time that the Germans, finding them very formidable, called them
teufelhunde
. But I have been told by German officers who were in that
fighting that no such word was known in the German army.
Doughboy
is an old English navy term for dumpling. It was formerly applied to the infantry only, and its use is said to have originated in the fact that the infantrymen once pipe-clayed parts of their uniforms, with the result that they became covered with a doughy mass when it rained.
⁵⁵

The cant of criminals is, in part, international. In its English form it includes a number of German words, and in all forms it includes Hebrew, Italian and gypsy words. The first vocabulary of it to be compiled was that of a German, Gerold Edilbach,
c
. 1420. This was followed in 1510 by the famous “Liber vagatorum,” which passed through many editions, and in which Martin Luther had a hand. The earliest English references to the subject are in Robert Copland’s “The Hye Waye to the Spyttel House,” 1517, a dialogue in verse between the author and the porter at the door of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. A great many similar books followed during the Sixteenth Century, and toward the end of the succeeding century appeared the first formal glossary, “The Dictionary of the Canting Crew,” by some unknown lexicographer signing himself B. E. This remained the standard work until the publication of the first edition of Captain Francis Grose’s “Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue” in 1785, which contained about 3000 entries. There was a second edition in 1788, with 1000 more entries, and a third in 1796. Grose went on gathering materials until his death in 1791, and a fourth edition was brought out by Hewson Clarke in 1811. A fifth, edited by Pierce Egan, followed in 1823, and a sixth in 1868. In 1931 Eric Partridge published a seventh, based on Grose’s third, with somewhat elaborate comments. Most of the dictionaries of slang also include thieves’ cant; I have listed the more important of them in the preceding section.

Down to the Civil War the cant of American criminals seems to have been mainly borrowed from England. During the 30’s a great many professional criminals were driven out of London by Sir Robert Peel’s act constituting the Metropolitan Police (1829), and not a few of them immigrated to the United States. In the 50’s they were reinforced by escaped convicts and ticket-of-leave men from Australia, many of whom settled in California.
⁵⁶
The argot of these argonauts was not only borrowed by their native brethren; a good part of it also got into the common slang of the day, especially along the two coasts. Some of it still survives,
e.g., skirt
for woman,
hick
for countryman,
moonshine
for illicit whiskey,
dip
for pickpocket, and
rat
for betrayer.
⁵⁷
But by the opening of the Civil War the American underworld was beginning to fashion its own cant, and by 1870 it was actually making exports to England. One of the first words exported seems to have been
joint
, in the sense of an illicit or otherwise dubious resort. Many others followed, and since the rise of racketeering in this country the eastward tide has been heavy. “Until about 1880,” says Eric Partridge, “English cant was essentially English, with a small proportion of words from French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Low German, plus an occasional borrowing from
lingua franca
, the mongrel Esperanto of the Mediterranean coast. Since that date, however, and especially since the war, it has received many guests from America.”
⁵⁸
Meanwhile, a number of terms borrowed from English cant have been changed in meaning in this country,
e.g., conk
, which means the nose to English criminals but has come to mean the head in the United States. The present jargon of the American underworld, says Dr. Elisha K. Kane of the University of North Carolina, “embraces the slang of three general classes — criminals, tramps and prostitutes. But as all
classes meet, the cant of one is understood, to a degree, by all.”
⁵⁹
Dr. Kane says that of the terms listed in “the English beggar books and cony-catching pamphlets of the Sixteenth Century, not a dozen words have survived” in this country, and that these are “mostly verbs.” He adds that the lingo of all English-speaking criminals, as it has come down through the centuries, has gained in simplicity, and that the cumbersome polysyllables that once marked it,
e.g
.,
clapperdogeon, hankstelo, holmendods, jobbernoll, jockungage, nig-menog, supernaculum
and
tickrum-juckrum
, have now disappeared. That it is true is proved by an examination of his own glossary, or of any of the others that have been printed.
⁶⁰

In general, criminal argot bears a close resemblance to ordinary slang, and employs the same devices to extend its vocabulary. Making an attribute do duty for the whole produces
broad
for woman,
clatter
for patrol-wagon,
apple-knocker
for farmer,
law
for policeman,
yip
for dog,
hard stuff
for metal money,
eye
for Pinkerton detective, and
big-house
for prison. Hidden resemblances produce
ice
for diamonds,
paper-hanger
for forger, and
third-degree
(borrowed from Freemasonry) for police examination. The substitution of far-fetched figures for literal description gives the felon
altar
for toilet-seat,
bull
for policeman,
bug
for alarm-bell,
bone-orchard
for cemetery,
Fourth of July
for gun-fight, and
clown
for village constable, and the contrary resort to a brutal literalness gives him
croaker
for doctor, and
body-snatcher
for kidnaper. He is fertile in abbreviations,
e.g., dinah
for dynamite,
dick
for detective,
poke
for pocketbook,
poly
for politician, and
to gyp
, obviously from
gypsy
. He invents many quite new words,
e.g., goofy
and
zook
(an old prostitute), and borrows others from foreign languages,
e.g., spiel
,
fin
and
gelt
from German, and
ganov, kibitzer, kosher
and
yentzer
from Yiddish.
⁶¹
He makes common nouns of proper nouns,
e.g., Brodie
(from Steve Brodie), meaning a leap;
Valentino
, meaning a handsome young man who preys upon women; and
Pontius Pilate
, a judge. Finally, he devises many new verbs and verb-phrases or provides old ones with new meanings,
e.g., to belch
(to talk),
to bible
(to make oath),
to breeze
(to clear out),
to case
(to spy out),
to crash
(to enter forcibly),
to drill
(to shoot),
to jail
(to be convicted),
to finger
(to point out),
to h’ist
(to hold up),
to bump off, to hi-jack, to do the book
(to serve a life sentence),
to flatten out
(to lie low),
to give the once-over, to go gandering
(to look for something or someone),
to shake down, to wipe out
. Down to a few years ago, for some reason unknown, Cockney rhyming cant, supposed to have come in by way of Australia, was very popular among American thieves. It consists largely of a series of rhyming substitutions,
e.g., mince-pie
for eye,
lump O’ lead
for head,
north and south
for mouth,
tit for tat
for hat,
twist and twirl
for girl,
storm
(or
trouble) and strife
for wife, and
babbling brook
for crook. It has now gone out of fashion, but a few of its locutions,
e.g., twist
for girl, remain in use. The idea behind such far-fetched forms is to conceal meaning from the uninitiated. This is an essential characteristic of cant, as opposed to slang. The criminal frequently has to communicate with his fellows in the presence of the enemy, and under circumstances which make a revelation of his plans hazardous to him. For the same reason he inclines toward the terseness that Dr. Kane has remarked. “Brevity, conciseness,” says Ernest Booth, “is the essence of thieves’ jargon. To be able to convey a warning and the nature of the danger in a single word or phrase is the test.”
⁶²
Mr. Booth describes a tense situation in which “two or more thieves must make immediate decision regarding their actions.” “
Lam
[
i.e.
, run away]?” pants a waverer.
“No — stick
[
i.e.
, remain and shoot it out],” replies the leader — “and the battle is on.”

As Dr. Kane says, the argots of criminals, of tramps and of prostitutes have a great deal in common and are mutually intelligible; nevertheless, there are some differences. The criminals themselves are divided into classes that tend to keep apart, and the tramps and prostitutes shade off into the general population. There are also regional differences, and a term still in vogue in the East may be
passé
in the Middle West or on the Pacific Coast, or vice versa. Thus the Western crooks sometimes call a forger a
bill-poster
and on the Pacific Coast he may be a
scratcher
, whereas he is usually a
paper-hanger
, which is the eldest term, in the East. Again, in the East a jewelry-store is a
slum-joint
, whereas in the West it is an
ice-house
. Whenever a new form of thieving is invented it quickly develops a sub-cant of its own. Thus the automobile thieves who had their heyday in 1928 or thereabout devised a series of terms of their own to designate cars of the various more popular makes and designs,
e.g., breezer
for an open car,
shed
for a closed car,
front-room
for a sedan,
B.I
. for a Buick,
caddy
(or
golfer
) for a Cadillac,
ducker
for a Dodge,
Hudson-pup
for an Essex,
papa
for a Lincoln,
spider
for a Ford,
Studie
for a Studebaker, and so on.
⁶³
In the same way the drug peddlers who began to flourish after the passage of the Harrison Act in 1915 were ready with neologisms to reinforce the terminology of drug addiction in the general cant of the underworld. Physicians who supplied addicts with drugs became
ice-tong doctors
, the addicts themselves became
junkers
, and the Federal agents who tried to put down the traffic became
whiskers, gazers
or
uncles
. A mixture of cocaine and morphine was called a
whizz-bang
, an occasional user of drugs was a
joy-rider
, and to simulate illness in the hope of getting drugs was to throw a
wing-ding
.
⁶⁴
The racketeers who came in with Prohibition in 1920, and quickly arose to first place in the underworld, were lavish enrichers of its language. Some of their inventions, indeed, were adopted by the whole
population,
e.g., big shot, bathtub-gin, torpedo, trigger-man, gorilla
(the last three meaning assassin),
hide-out, pineapple
(a bomb),
heat
(trouble),
to needle, to cook
(to redistil denatured alcohol),
to cut
(to dilute),
to muscle in, to take for a ride, to put on the spot
. Their term for genuine liquor,
McCoy
,
⁶⁵
promises to survive, at least until the last memory of Prohibition fades. They added two Yiddishisms to the common stock of all American rogues:
meshuggah
(crazy) and
goy
(a Christian).
Racket
itself, of course, was not a new word. It had been used by English criminals, in exactly its present sense, in the Eighteenth Century.
Racketeer
was a novelty, but I suspect that it was introduced, not by anyone deserving to be so called, but by some ingenious newspaper reporter.
⁶⁶