19 March 2021
The slang word keister is best known to us today as meaning the buttocks or ass (or arse), but in the past, it has also meant a satchel or traveling suitcase, especially a satchel that can be secured with straps and a lock. And it could also refer to a safe or strongbox, particularly one within a larger vault. The word comes from the German Kiste, meaning box and with a slang sense of the buttocks. The German word comes from the Latin cista and is cognate with the English word chest.
The slang sense of Kiste meaning buttocks is recorded in Hans Ostwald’s Rinnsteinsprache (Gutter Speech), a slang dictionary from 1906:
Kiste. 1) Hintere, 2) Hast, 3) Geldbörse.
(Kiste. 1) the behind, 2) haste, 3) a wallet.)
This is later than keister’s appearance in English to mean a satchel, but before any known use of the word in English to mean buttocks. Older uses in German are likely to be found. (My resources on German slang are scant.) This early existence of the slang sense in German indicates the slang sense was imported into English along with the standard sense of a satchel.
How a satchel or wallet came to mean the buttocks is speculative. It may come from the idea that one can sit on one’s luggage, or it may be pickpocket slang—a man’s wallet is often carried in a rear pocket.
Keister is first recorded in English in the pages of the National Police Gazette on 1 October 1881 as the nickname of a certain confidence man. It’s not quite clear what the nickname is supposed to represent, but may have come from his being known for carrying a suitcase, perhaps because he frequently traveled for to facilitate a quick departure after the con was concluded:
Prominent among the small army of confidence operators in this city are: “Grand Central Pete” (Peter Lake), “Boston Charlie” (Ed. Foster), “The Guinea Pig” (Harry Ashton), “Smiling Charlie” (Eddie Wall), “Windy” McDermott, “Irish Mike,” John Simpson, Ike Vail, “Big Connelly, “Black Jack,” “Billy Boynton, “The Stuff,” “Keister Bob,” “The Kid,” “Hungry Joe.” Many of these men have escaped identification, and some of the are scarcely known outside of police circles.
The next year humorist George Peck uses it in his 1882 collection of stories titled Peck’s Sunshine. Here the meaning of suitcase is absolutely clear:
The clerk called a bell boy and said, "Show the gentleman to 253."
The boy took the Knight's keister and went to the elevator, the door opened and the Knight went in and began to pull off his coat, when he looked around and saw a woman on the plush upholstered seat of the elevator, leaning against the wall with her head on her hand.
The sense of a safe or strongbox is attested to in The Shadow, a 1913 novel by Canadian-American novelist Arthur Stringer:
He got to know the "habituals” and the “timers,” the "gangs” and their "hang outs” and “fences.” He acquired an array of confidence men and hotel beats and queer shovers and bank sneaks and wire tappers and drum snuffers. He made a mental record of dips and yeggs and till-tappers and keister-crackers, of panhandlers and dummy chuckers, of sun gazers and schlaum workers.
A more specific sense of safe or strong box, and one that connects this sense to the satchel/suitcase sense can be found in a glossary of criminal slang in George Henderson’s 1924 Keys to Crookdom:
Harnessed box. Safe protected by steel bars and levers across front. Also known as harnessed keister.
[...]
Keister. Bars on certain type of safe. A handbag that can be strapped and locked.
The buttocks sense is recorded by 1931 in an article on criminal slang in the journal American Speech.
keister, n. A satchel; also what one sits on.
And about the same time, we have keister appearing in a Tijuana bible, that is a palm-sized, pornographic comic book. This one is part of a series, The Adventures of a Fuller Brush Man, about the amorous encounters of a door-to-door salesman. The issue in question is #10 in the series, titled, “The Amorous Mrs. Twirp.” The comic is undated but seems to be from the early 1930s. The panel in question has a drawing of a naked man and woman copulating, with the woman on top, astride the man. The man says:
Come on—wave that kiester [sic].
But keister would work its way out of the province of criminals and pornography into general slang. By the 1950s it would appear in the mainstream humor of P. G. Wodehouse. From his 1951 novel The Old Reliable:
“I’m glad you didn't say ‘He's a good sort.’”
“Why, is that bad?”
“Fatal. It would have meant that there was no hope for him. It's what the boys used to say of me twenty years ago. ‘Oh, Bill,’ they'd say. ‘Dear old Bill. I like Bill. She's a good sort.’ And then they'd leave me flat on my keister and go off and buy candy and orchids for the other girls, blister their insides.”
“Is that why you're a solitary chip drifting down the river of life?”
“That's why. Often a bridesmaid but never a bride.”
Sources:
Adelman, Bob. Tijuana Bibles: Art and Wit in America’s Forbidden Funnies, 1930s–1950s. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1997, 47.
American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2020, s.v. keister, n.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. keister, n.
Henderson, George C. “Appendix B: Criminal Slang.” Keys to Crookdom. New York: D. Appleton, 1924, 407, 409. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Lighter, J. E. Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, vol. 2 of 2. New York: Random House, 1997, s. v. keister, n.
“The Man-Traps of New York.” National Police Gazette, 1 October 1881, 10. ProQuest Magazines.
Milburn, George. “Convict’s Jargon.” American Speech, 6.6., August 1931, 439. JSTOR.
Ostwald, Hans. Rinnsteinsprache. Berlin: Harmonie, 1906, 80. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. keister, n.
Peck, George W. Peck’s Sunshine. Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Co., 1882, 227. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Stringer, Arthur. The Shadow. New York: Century, 1913. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Wodehouse, P. G. The Old Reliable. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1951, 132. HathiTrust Digital Archive.