nuclear option

The “Ivy King” US nuclear test, Enewetak Atoll, 1952; at 500 kilotons it was the largest fission bomb ever detonated

14 July 2025

The term nuclear option is used figuratively, especially in politics, to refer to a response that threatens “mutual assured destruction.” It is, as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it, “the most drastic of the possible responses to a situation.” But of course, it does have a more literal original sense. 

It first appears in the early 1960s referring to the choice of a country to develop nuclear weapons. It appears in an article in the March 1962 issue of the American Political Science Review in reference to Britain’s decision to acquire a nuclear arsenal ten years earlier:

Nuclear forces were also thought to increase positive British influence over the United States by undertaking a share in the task of deterrence and demonstrating technological skill. Moreover the strategic nuclear option was a policy for which both the weapons and a doctrine existed.

That same year, it was used to refer to India’s potential for nuclear weapons in the title of a book review, “The Nuclear Option,” in the New Left Review. The review was of Leonard Beaton and John Maddox’s The Spread of Nuclear Weapons. The phrase does not appear in the review itself, only the title, but the following explains what the title refers to

Thus it emerges that India has an extensive nuclear programme designed to give it an option on nuclear weapons in about 1963. Very little is known about this in India, and Mr. Nehru, who is Minister of Atomic Energy as well as Prime Minister, seldom speaks about it: but from the analysis the book provides, it seems probable that India will go ahead and make nuclear weapons if the Chinese “menace” is considered to warrant it.

Beaton and Maddox’s book does not use the phrase either but makes extensive use of option in the context of the decision to acquire nuclear weapons. India demonstrated it had the capability to build a nuclear arsenal in 1974 with its detonation of a “peaceful” nuclear explosion, and it formally took the nuclear option in 1989, establishing an arsenal of the weapons probably by 1994 and openly testing one in 1998.

Literal use of nuclear option would also come to be used to refer the decision to use nuclear weapons in a war and also, less menacingly, in respect to the choice to use nuclear power for the generation of electricity.

The figurative sense of nuclear option was in place by the early 1990s. The earliest use I’m aware of is in 1993 in the context of UK Prime Minister John Major threatening a general election if a rebellious group of backbenchers in his party did not back him on the decision not to join the social aspects of the European Union. As recorded in The Independent on 23 July 1993:

Today John Major binds his own future as Prime Minister to the policy that lies at the heart of his Government’s meaning. He has detonated what one of his close friends called “the nuclear option”: back the social chapter opt-out or I’ll blow the party apart at a general election. Given the question, it seems certain he will win.

This incident and the phrase appeared in the American press in the same context. From the Washington Post, dateline also of 23 July 1993, an article that was syndicated widely in other papers:

To win the support of rebels within his own Conservative Party, Major had to threaten them with what became known as the “nuclear option”—he would resign as prime minister, dissolve Parliament and call a general election if they voted against him Friday. With the Conservatives lagging far behind in the polls, for the rebels to defy Major would have been, in the words of one Tory, “like turkeys voting for Christmas.”

Nuclear option would come to be used in American politics in the twenty-first century, most notably in reference to threats to end the filibuster in the US Senate.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Beaton, Leonard and John Maddox. The Spread of Nuclear Weapons. New York: Praeger, 1962. Archive.org.

Marr, Andrew. “The Haunting Resonance of a Beaten Leader’s Last Show. Independent (London), 23 July 1993, 1/1. Gale Primary Sources: The Independent Historical Archive.

Martin, Laurence W. “The Market for Strategic Ideas in Britain: the ‘Sandys Era.’” American Political Science Review, 56.1, March 1962, 26–41 at 27/2. JSTOR.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, 2003, nuclear option, n.

Roberts, Adam. “The Nuclear Option.” New Left Review, Winter 1962, 124–25 at 125. ProQuest: Scholarly Journals.

Robinson, Eugene. “Major Survives Vote of Confidence; Europe Pact Approved” (23 July 1963) Washington Post, 24 July 1963, A12/2–3. ProQuest: Newspapers.

Image credit: US Department of Energy, 1952. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.

concentration camp

Gate at the Auschwitz concentration camp

31 January 2025

(Updated 13 July 2025 with the citations from the Hansard database and the Guardian)

One might, with some justification, think that the term concentration camp, like the term genocide, came out of Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II, but that is not the case. The term is almost half a century older, coming out of another war, the Cuban War of Independence (1895–98).

Concentration camp is an anglophone term to describe the camps in which the Spanish government of Cuba resettled what they called reconcentrados, a word that was also borrowed into English at the time. The earliest example of concentration camp that I have found is in a report from a US consul to Cuba that was reported in Michigan’s Copper Country Evening News on 24 May 1897:

A consular report from Cuba tells of a new order of concentration. The effect of it will be to add greatly to the horrors of the situation. The suffering will be increased, and the deaths will be more numerous. The order, so far as the consul knows, applies to about one-third of the province of Santa Clara. This is the region of sugar estates.

Obliged to form camps.

Under the original order of concentration the agricultural population was obliged to form camps at the centrals, or grinding plants, of such estates as maintained a Spanish garrison. This permitted the farming population to gather in bodies of from 500 to 1,000. By this distribution in small bodies the reconcentrados were able to find some subsistence. The smaller concentration has been attended with less hardship than the larger. The new order just made by the Spanish authorities abolishes the concentration camps on the sugar estates. It directs that only [sic] points of concentration in the district shall be the cities having municipal organizations. In this district there are but three “municipals,” as they are called.

Must Move to Three Towns.

To these three points the entire farming population will now be driven. The report from the consul says:

“There are twenty-five estates on which the camps of reconcentrados had been established. The camps averaged 500 persons. Now these persons, 12,500 in all, must move to the three towns. In the camps on the estates they had built shanties, which must be abandoned. That, however, is not the worst feature. They had planted gardens and were about to realize food crops. All must be left behind, and the 12,500 must be added to the three large camps, where the people are starving. The situation is becoming worse every day, and this new order is going to aggravate it.

Another early use is in the Louisville Courier Journal of 17 July 1897. Weyler was the Spanish governor-general of Cuba General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau:

“In the beginning of the concentration,” this American writes, “the people driven into the towns were occasionally allowed to go to the country on passes and search for food to bring back to the camp. Having such passes, they sometimes escaped the notice of the scouting parties. Now, however, the Spanish columns have received orders from Weyler to shoot any one, whether furnished with a pass or not, wherever found outside of the concentration camp. I will give an example of the operation of this new order, to show how it works. The little town of Mata is situated near the railroad. It had in time of peace about 100 inhabitants and four stores. Under concentration 3,500 reconcentrados have been collected there.”

While the Spanish did have terms for the people who were interned in such camps, concentrados and reconcentrados, they did not have a special term for the camps themselves. The term campo de concentración did not appear until 1918.

The Cuban War of Independence ended in 1898 with the intervention of the United States on the Cuban side, a theater in the global Spanish-American War, which also netted the United States the Philippines as a colony. But concentration camps would again appear in another colonial war, the Boer War in South Africa (1899–1902), when the British interned many Dutch Boer settlers and Indigenous peoples in such camps. There is this use of both concentration camp and camps of concentration in the transcript of British parliamentary debate on 17 June 1901 from the Hansard database:

MR. JOHN ELLIS
(Nottinghamshire, Rusheliffe)

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he can now inform the House as to the number and situation of the camps of concentration formed in Cape Colony, and how many men, women, and children are confined therein, and what have been the figures of mortality therein.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR
(Mr. BRODRICK, Surrey, Guildford)

The places where the camps have been formed are:—Kimberley, Orange River Camp (near Hopetown), Vryburg, Warrenton, and Boer Exile Camp at Port Elizabeth. Lord Kitchener has promised me some figures by telegraph as to the numbers and mortality,

MR. C. P. SCOTT
(Lancashire, Leigh)

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will state the numbers of white persons now or recently in the concentration camps in Natal and the Transvaal, Orange River, and Cape Colonies respectively; also the dietary for adults and for children in force in these several districts. I beg also to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he can state what regulations are now in force in the various concentration camps in South Africa as to the detention of the women and children confined in them; and whether he will consider the desirability of permitting at least those women and children who have no male person with them in the camps, and who have friends or relatives in Cape Colony willing to receive them, to leave the camps and go to these friends.

Scott, in addition to being a Liberal MP, was the longtime editor of the Manchester Guardian. The following day, 18 June 1901, the Guardian reported on the debate under the headline, “The ‘Concentration’ Camps in South Africa.” Other English-language newspapers reporting on the debate and on the Boer War also started using concentration camp from this date.

And like the Spanish campo de concentración, the Afrikaans konsentrasiekamp was coined as a historical term in 1921.

In contrast, the German Konzentrationslager didn’t make an appearance until 1920, referring to hypothetical camps, and 1933, referring to real ones. The Spanish, Afrikaans, and German terms are calques of the English one.

There is a more innocuous sense of concentration camp that also dates to the Spanish-American War, that is with the meaning of a military assembly location. There is this from the Boston Daily Advertiser with a dateline of 10 May 1898:

Washington, May 10.—Maj.-Gen. Sewell has been assigned to command the concentration camp near Falls Church, Va. This is taken as an indication that the general has concluded to accept his military command, risking his tenure in office as a senator thereby.

(The OED has similar quotation from 12 May, but that one is incorrectly dated. Both the dictionary and NewspaperArchive.com’s metadata give the date as 1897, but it is actually from a year later.)

This military sense of concentration camp would also get some use in the British military. From the Friend of India of 7 September 1899:

The Government of India have sanctioned the Imperial Service troops taking part in the coming winter’s manœuvres, and it is settled that the Mysore Cavalry will join the concentration camp near Bangalore.

Of course, unfavorable press about the camps in South Africa, and of course the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, pretty much ended this military sense of the phrase.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

“The ‘Concentration’ Camps in South Africa.” Manchester Guardian, 18 June 1901, 5/1. ProQuest Historical Newspaper.

“Has Sewell Accepted?” Boston Daily Advertiser (Massachusetts), 11 May 1898, 1/5. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2015, s.v. concentration camp, n., concentrado, n.; June 2009, s.v. reconcentrado, n.

“Telegram from Lee.” Copper Country Evening News (Calumet Michigan), 24 May 1897, 1/2. Library of Congress: Chronicling America.

“Troops Ordered to Cuba.” Elkhart Weekly Truth (Indiana), 12 May 1898, 4/6. NewspaperArchive.com. (Note the database’s metadata incorrectly gives the date as 1897, an error which the OED repeats.)

U.K. Parliament, House of Commons. “South Africa—Sir David Barbour’s Report,” 17 June 1901. Hansard.

“Weyler’s Victims.” Louisville Courier Journal, 17 July 1897, 9/5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Winter Military Manœuvres” (5 September). Friend of India, 7 September 1899, 12/3. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.

Photo credit: Xiquinhosilva, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

leopards eating people’s faces

11 July 2025

The fictional and satirical Leopards Eating Faces Party was the brainchild of Adrian Bott, who posted this tweet to Twitter on 16 October 2015.

The sentiment, in the midst of the run-up to the 2016 presidential election expressed the frustration of progressives at those who supported Republican candidates whose stated policies ran contrary to the interests of those who supporting them.

The New Yorker published this cartoon by Phil Noth on 29 August 2016, while it does not use the same words, the metaphor of the prey voting for the predator is the same:

The cartoon features sheep looking at a billboard with a picture of a wolf in a business suit and the words “I am going to eat you.” One of the sheep says, “He tells it like it is.”

After a somewhat slow build, this metaphor for voter regret, or buyer’s remorse, went viral on social media. Following the first election of Donald Trump, the subreddit /r/LeopardsAteMyFace launched on 25 March 2017, containing examples of tweets and comments from people who were surprised when the politicians they had voted for fulfilled their campaign promises and did something that negatively affected them. For instance, on 28 May 2025, this tweet from a Trump voter bemoaning a raid by US immigration authorities at his workplace was posted to the subreddit:

Jake Cowan—in Florida State University

Lost a lot of good men today. I like Trump but this isn’t what I voted for. This will absolutely kill the economy in construction. I thought he was going after gang members and criminals with warrants. Not hard working guys.

But the sentiment was not restricted to Republicans and Trump voters. Nor is it even limited to the United States, being applied to those in the United Kingdom who regretted voting for Brexit, for example. In her blog of 29 January 2019, writer Carrie Marshall used leopards eating your face to refer to trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFS):

There’s a well-known gag on Twitter: “I can’t believe leopards are eating my face!” says woman who voted for the “Leopards Eating Your Face Party”.

In the US and increasingly in the UK, self-described “radical feminists” who hate trans people are linking arms with virulently anti-women, anti-abortion, anti-LGBT groups such as the Heritage Foundation, convinced that these leopards will only eat other people’s faces.

These leopards are behind much of the anti-trans legislation US republicans are trying to force through, much of which just so happens to restrict cisgender women’s reproductive rights. 

Marshall’s blog post also included Noth’s cartoon.

And the metaphor moved from the internet to traditional media in 2019, although the initial uses by traditional outlets featured the woes of Republican insiders rather than ordinary voters, a significant difference. Jill Filopovic wrote the following for CNN on 8 May 2019:

That the Trump family throws people under the bus when they become inconvenient is not news. Just ask his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Or his former fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen. Or former administration members Rex Tillerson, H. R. McMaster, and Dina Powell. Or the entire nation of Canada.

The question isn't who Trump has screwed over or fed to the wolves. It's who he hasn't. I'm sorry Winston Wolkoff feels wronged. But it's hard not to hear her complaints sound a little too much like Adrean Bott's viral tweet: "'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party."

And Michelle Goldberg wrote in the New York Times on 4 December 2020:

Since Trump’s defeat, the MAGA revolution has begun devouring its own. As it does, some conservatives are discovering the downsides of having a president who spreads malicious conspiracy theories, subverts faith in democracy and turns the denial of reality into a loyalty test. As the internet meme goes, people voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party, and now the leopards are turning on them.

While its wording refers to electoral politics, the phrase’s sentiment is not limited to that sphere. Physician Yoo Jung Kim used the phrase in reference to COVID-19 anti-vaxxers in a USA Today op-ed on 12 August 2021:

Recently, Michael Freedy, a 39-year-old Las Vegas casino employee and father of five, caught COVID-19 while on vacation. He texted his fiancé from the hospital, “I should have gotten the damn vaccine.” He later died.

Freedy’ story went viral because his text highlighted the visceral regret felt by patients on their deathbeds, especially now COVID-19 is more preventable in the United States. While many commentators expressed sympathy to his grieving family, some were vicious. A particularly vocal source of COVID-19 schadenfreude can be seen in Reddit communities such as “CovIdi”ts" and “LeopardsAteMyFace.”

In one thread, users wrote: “It started as a virus and mutated into an IQ test.” “Guy wen from being a moron to a dead moron.” “If you die of Covid because you refused to get the vaccine then I have no sympathy or pity for you.”

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Bott, Adrian (@cavalom). X.com (formerly Twitter.com), 16 October 2015.

cwhmoney555. “I Didn’t Think He was Going to Deport Those Immigrants!” Reddit.com, 29 May 2025.

Filipovic, Jill. “If You Work for Trump, Expect to Be ‘Thrown Under Bus.’” CNN Commentary, 8 May 2019. ProQuest: Wire Feed.

Goldberg, Michelle. “The MAGA Revolution Devours Its Own.” New York Times, 4 December 2020.

Kim, Yoo Jung. “Mocking Unvaccinated Is Counterproductive.” USA Today, 12 August 2021, 7A/3–4. ProQuest: Newspapers.

“Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.” Knowyourmeme.com, accessed 11 June 2025.

Marshall, Carrie. “The ‘Leopards Eating Your Face’ Party.” Bigmouth Strikes Again (blog), 29 January 2019.

Noth, Phil. “He Tells It Like It Is” (cartoon). New Yorker, 29 August 2016, 47.

Image credits:

Tweet: Adrian Bott, 2015. X.com. Fair use of copyrighted tweet to illustrate the topic under discussion.

New Yorker cartoon: Phil Noth, 2016. Fair use of copyrighted image to illustrate the topic under discussion.

Tweet: Jake Cowan, 2025. Reddit. Fair use of copyrighted Reddit post to illustrate the topic under discussion.

love bug

Two conjoined love bugs, Plecia nearctica

9 July 2025

Back when I lived in Texas, each spring I would be subjected to two assaults. The first was by allergies, which I’d experienced before when living in more temperate climes, but which are especially bad in the Texas spring when everything is in bloom. The other was by swarms of Plecia nearctica, commonly known as the love bug. They are so called because they are most commonly seen when copulating, which is pretty much continuously during their short lifespans, appearing as two-headed bugs floating lazily through the air. They are also known as honeymoon flies, fuck bugs, and telephone bugs. This last name is a bit mysterious but is perhaps because, with their black color, they bear a vague resemblance to an old-time telephone.

Love bugs are common in Texas and all along the Gulf Coast of the United States. Originally from Central America, they were first recorded in the United States in 1911 and have been moving northward, now found as far north as North Carolina. They are mostly harmless. They don’t bite and are really only a nuisance because they tend to swarm, blackening car hoods and windshields, although their body chemistry is acidic and can damage the paint on older cars if not cleaned off quickly. The name love bug is also applied to other species that exhibit the same mating behavior, such as the Plecia longiforceps, originally native to the East Asian subtropics but which has been moving northward in recent years due to climate change, and annual swarms are now plaguing Seoul, Korea.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has a citation from 1937, but when viewed in context it’s not clear what insect is being referred to, or even if it is an insect at all. The article, about a Nebraska entomologist, that appears in the 25 July 1937 edition of the Lincoln, Nebraska Sunday Journal and Star reads:

There’s a popular song that goes like this: “The love bug will get you if you don’t watch out.”

It is not the love-bug though that is worrying the Nebraska farmer these days. He can put up with love-bugs, kissing-bugs and lady-bird beetles from spring until frost and from sun up until the chores are all done, but there are hundreds of other kinds, large and small, that make him fret at night and cuss during the day.

The first instance of love bug in the piece is clearly a reference to the metaphorical source of erotic infatuation. The second mention of love-bug is likely also metaphorical, and the third may refer to an actual insect, but if so it’s not clear which species.

The Dictionary of American Regional English records uses of love bug referring to Plecia nearctica from 1968 in north-central Florida and southeast Louisiana. The Florida description reads:

Love bugs—black-and-orange insects which mate in late August through September. They are seen coupled in thick swarms for as long as three weeks.

And Louisiana:

Love bug—a little black-and-orange insect about three-eighths of an inch long. They mate at certain times of the year, smearing windshields and covering pedestrians. You never see one separately; they are always coupled.

That metaphorical meaning of love bug is much older. But it seems this love bug was originally envisioned as a bacterium rather than an insect. There is this clearly tongue-in-cheek description of pathogen in Georgia’s Macon Telegraph and Messenger of 2 August 1882:

The Love Bug.

San Francisco Post

A California physician who discovered a new disease—love madness—has been experimenting with the persons afflicted therewith, and has produced the “love parasite,” or bacillus microccus. This he cultivated up to the twentieth generation, and with the parasites of that generation he inoculated a number of subjects. The inoculation was invariably successful, symptoms of the disease appearing a very short time after the operation. A bachelor, aged 50 years, on the first day after inoculation, had his whiskers dyed, ordered a suit of new clothes and a set of false teeth, bought a top buggy, a bottle of hair restorer, a diamond ring and a guitar, and began reading Byron’s poems. The inoculation produced symptoms of the same nature in a young lady of 45. She spent $5 at a drug store for cosmetics, sang “Empty is the Cradle,” sent out invitations for a party, and complained that the Chico young men do not go into society. An inoculated youth of 17, employed in a country store, did up a gallon of molasses in a paper bag, but [sic] the cat in the butter tub and threw some fresh butter of the window. Finally he sat in a basket of eggs while looking at the photograph of a pretty girl and was discharged for his carelessness. The Chico doctor is still experimenting, and will soon lay lay the results of his observations before the medical world.

(I can’t find any records for the San Francisco Post.)

And here is one that is a metaphorical insect from the Indianapolis Star of 29 June 1907:

LOVE BUG STINGS AGED MAN FOR FIFTH TIME

Senile Bridegroom Proudly Makes Unique and Surprising Announcement of Coming Marriage to His Friend.

CHICAGO, June 28.—“Charlie, my son, I have been stung by the love bug the fifth time.” This was the announcement made today by Ossian Guthrie, 81 years old, of his marriage next Monday night to Mrs. Elizabeth F. Flower, 71 years old, 122 East Forty-second Place.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Bond, George. “Prof. D. B. Whelan Traps Insects, Studies distribution, and Determines Infestations.” Sunday Journal and Star (Lincoln, Nebraska), 25 July 1937, C-D—Two/1. NewspaperArchive.com.

Dictionary of American Regional English, 2013, s. v. love bug n, honeymoon fly n, fuck bug n, telephone bug n.

“The Love Bug.” Macon Telegraph and Messenger (Georgia), 2 August 1882, 2/5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Love Bug Stings Aged Man for Fifth Time.” Indianapolis Star, 19 June 1907, 1/4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Myung-hee Yi, et al. “Microbiome of Lovebug (Plecia longiforceps) in Seoul, South Korea.” Microbiology Spectrum, 12.7, July 2024, 1–10. DOI: 10.1128/spectrum.03809-23. National Library of Medicine: PubMed Central.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, 2008, s.v. love bug, n.

Rashid, Raphael. “Seoul Wrestles with How to Handing Invasion of ‘Lovebugs.’” Guardian, 30 June 2025.

Photo credit: Unknown photographer, 2005. Wikimedia Commons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lovebugs.jpg Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

tarheel / rosin heel

“The Turpentine Industry of North Carolina,” W. P. Snyder, 1884

7 July 2025

Tarheel is a nickname for a native of North Carolina. The term is preceded by the older rosin heel. Originally an epithet, its early history is mixed up in the racist attitudes of the antebellum South. But tarheel has been ameliorated and is now used proudly by residents of that state, and its use today is free of any racial connotation.

The tar and rosin in the term is from the use of pine-tree sap in the maritime and naval industries of the early nineteenth century. Workers who harvested the sap in the American South, a mix of poor whites and enslaved Blacks, would often go barefoot, getting the tar/rosin on the soles of their feet. And this industry was a significant contributor to North Carolina’s economy in the antebellum era.

The earliest use of rosin heel that I’m aware of is from a 5 May 1826 letter to the Natchez, Mississippi Ariel describing an argument between two white men, one well to do and the other poor:

One of the disputants was a short, fat, rich, independent looking fellow, with a large gold watch-key and chain, hanging from his fob, and a gold headed cane dangling in his right hand, and as I have since understood is a rich planter in this neighborhood; he most uncivilly told the other he had no right to an opinion upon the subject of a lighthouse; that he was a rosin heel, and should not offer an opinion upon a subject of national concern. The other who was dressed in plain homespun, with a long ox-whip in his hand, replied by calling the other a gum head, and told him he reckoned he had seen some people with golden purses have very gummy heads; that it was not every man who had a long purse that had a long head.

Note that gum is another name or pine-tree sap.

Also from 1826 is this from Timothy Flint’s account of his travels through the Mississippi Valley:

Such is the general face of the country in West Florida. It possesses in its swamps a considerable quantity of live oak, and masts and spars enough for all the navies of the world. It is capable of furnishing inexhaustible supplies of pitch, tar, &c. The high grass, which grows every where among the pine trees, opens an immense range for cattle. There are some tolerable tracts of land along the rivers; but generally the land is low, swampy, and extremely poor. The people, too, are poor and indolent, devoted to raising cattle, hunting, and drinking whiskey. They are a wild race, with but little order or morals among them; they are generally denominated “Bogues,” and call themselves “rosin heels.” The chief town is Pensacola, which grew rapidly, and received an increase of many inhabitants and handsome houses, until the fatal summer of 1822, when it suffered so severely from yellow fever, since which it has declined. It has a fine harbour, and the government has made it a naval depot, which will probably raise it once more.

Rosin heel seems to have been applied only to poor whites. Tarheel, however, was applied to both whites and Blacks. The difference may have to do with the fact that rosin is lighter than tar. Use of tarheel to refer to Blacks was probably influenced by the phrase, current at the time, like tar on a n——r’s heel. Here is an example of the phrase from Indiana’s Fort Wayne Sentinel of 16 September 1848. The article, in the dialectal voice of one Hetty Jones, undoubtedly fictional and perhaps Black, uses the phrase in reference to Martin Van Buren. During his earlier term as president, Van Buren, a Democrat, compromised his anti-slavery principles in order to get elected. In 1848 he was running on the abolitionist Free Soil Party ticket:

He talked as nice and soft as a Congressman about the dear people, and comperises  of the constitution, and scrub treasury, & all them things—he stuck up to the South then like the tar to a n[——]er’s heel—woul n’t even let a woolly headed cuss go free in the District of Columbia—nor he wouldn’t let a dockiment of the abolitioners go in the mail bags.

The earliest published use of tarheel that I’m aware of, however, is in reference to poor whites. From a letter, dated 6 October 1846, published it the Emancipator, it is not specific to North Carolina:

There are at this moment at least as many poor whites in the slave states as there are slaves, who are hardly less miserable than the slaves themselves. They have no weight in society, grow up in ignorance, are not permitted to vote and are tolerated as an evil, of which the slaveholder would gladly be rid. They are never spoken of without some contemptuous epithet. “Red shanks,” “Tar heels,” &c., are the names by which they are commonly known. The slaveholders look with infinite contempt upon these poor men—a feeling which they cherish for poor men every where.

But there is this mention of the name Pompey Tarheel in Philadelphia’s Neal’s Saturday Gazette and Lady’s Literary Museum of 22 January 1848:

Mrs. Farthingale was the other day overlooking a lazy son of Guinea in her employ, as he was sweeping down the sanded floor of the kitchen, and remarking the queer figures the dark one drew with his broom, observed:

"Well Caesar, you can draw, pretty well, can't you?"

"Yah, yes, gorramighty Missus, I can draw fust rate; last Saturday I took a policy for Pompey Tarheel, and I drawed fifty dollars."

Mrs. F. drew herself up into one of her highly dignified attitudes, and—left the kitchen.

Several scholars have taken the name Pompey Tarheel to be a reference to an enslaved person—naming enslaved Blacks after classical figures was common, as seen by the name Caesar here. But I think it may be the name of a racehorse, given the use of the word policy, which can refer to a promissory note made when making a wager. It's not uncommon for slang terms to make early appearances in print in the names of racehorses; edited publications might eschew slang terms in general, but they would print the names of horses in race results.

Then there is a use of Fred Douglass Tarheel in the Indiana Herald of 24 November 1852:

“Well, we are glad the election is over, if we did “come out a little horn.” Democrats will now discover that there are some decent people among the Whigs, and vice versa. A Whig lady can now lend her Democratic neighbor her coffee-mill, and in turn, borrow an egg to put in her pan-cakes. Andrew Jackson Croutcutter will now be allowed to play with Henry Clay Snakefeeder's pet hog; and Fred Douglass Tarheel will se-saw with John Quitman Screwdriver, and take the South side of the fence. All will go just as if one person were as good as another!

Again, the association here of tarheel with Douglass more likely arises out of his politics than because of his race. The proper names mentioned are fictional stand-ins for members of the two political parties, named after prominent members of them: Andrew Jackson and John Quitman were Democrats; Henry Clay and Frederick Douglass were Whigs. Of course, tarheel here could carry both a racial and a political connotation.

But the earliest use of tarheel to refer specifically to a North Carolinian is in reference to a Black man. It appears in California’s San Andreas Independent of 6 February 1858:

“Dont yah call dis er’n a Down-easter,” said Scip, “yah mis’ble dirt-eatin Norf C’lina tar-heel,” and with this he grew bellicose and pitched into Pomp, knocking his nose into something like a mashed potato putting Paddy’s seal on both his eyes, scattering half a pound of wool over the ground, and winding up an argument more creditable to the valor than the discretion of the chivalrous Pompey.

The question here, however, is to what degree was the epithet applied because of the man’s race as opposed to where he was from. So the association of tarheel with Blackness is a muddied one. The word could be applied to Blacks as well as whites, tar is often associated with Blackness, and the contexts that used tarheel to refer to a Black person were clearly racist. But it’s not clear that the term itself had a primary meaning of, or even a strong connotation of, race.

Tarheel becomes even more strongly, and even exclusively, associated with North Carolina during the Civil War, when soldiers in regiments from other Southern states used it to refer to North Carolina regiments. The North Carolinian soldiers took the epithet in stride and proudly claimed it for their own. Thus the process of amelioration began, and today it is not only used proudly, but it lacks any racist association that it might have once had.

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Sources:

I am indebted to Bonnie Taylor-Blake and Bruce Baker, who pioneered the scholarship of this term in recent years. Most of the citations in this entry were discovered by them.

Baker, Bruce E. “Why North Carolinians Are Tar Heels.” Southern Cultures, 21.4, Winter 2015, 81–94. DOI: 10.1353/scu.2015.0041. Project Muse. An open-access version without the source notes is available here. 

Bayley, A. L. “To the Workingmen of Essex” (6 October 1846). Emancipator (Boston), 21 October 1846, 1/3. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.

“Carrying the War into Africa.” San Andreas Independent (California), 6 February 1858, 3/1. NewspaperArchive.com.

Dictionary of American Regional English Online, 2013, s.v. tarheel, n.

“Evening Lectures of Hetty Jones.” Fort Wayne Sentinal (Indiana), 16 September 1848, 1/5. NewspaperArchive.com.

Flint, Timothy. Recollections of the Last Ten Years. Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, 1826, 318–19. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

A Funny Man.” Indiana Herald (Huntington), 24 November 1852, 2/3. Newspapers.com.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, accessed 8 June 2025, s.v. tarheel, n., tarheel, adj., rosin heel, adj.

Letter (5 May 1826). Ariel (Natchez, Mississippi), 12 May 1826, 6/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. tarheel, n.

Taylor-Blake, Bonnie. “Tar heels [1846].” ADS-L, 11 April 2009.

———. “Unusual Use of ‘Tarheel’ (1848, 1852).” ADS-L, 21 September 2013.

———. “Who Put the ‘Tar’ in ‘Tar Heels’?: Antebellum Uses of the Epithet and Its Application to North Carolinians.” So They Say (blog), 29 April 2022.

“Whims and Oddities.” Neal’s Saturday Gazette and Lady’s Literary Museum (Philadelphia), 22 January 1848, 4/9. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Image Credit: W. P. Snyder, 1884. Harper’s Weekly, 17 May 1884, 312. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Public domain image.