shenanigans

9 June 2020

Shenanigans (it’s usually in the plural nowadays, although early uses are often singular) are trickery or illicit machinations, or pranks and light-hearted deceptions. The origin is unknown. It arises in U.S. slang in the mid nineteenth century.

The earliest citation that I have found is from 10 January 1855 in the Portage County Democrat:

How can an intelligent man say of another, as a politician he is a base, corruptible scoundrel, as a man, a fine, honorable, honest gentleman.

This looks like “shenanigan” to outsiders.

Several of the earliest citations are clustered in California, for example this one from the June 1855 issue of The Pioneer:

It seems that some three years since, Mr. Moon—Mr. John Moon, “Professor,” as he is styled in his bills, “Professor of Dexterity and Optical Deceptions, Fellow of the Mystic Lodge of Arts, London,” now one of the “Ethiopian Fakir Troupe” performing at the San Francisco Theater [...] An individual from “Pike County,” who had attended several evening and witnessed the “experiment,” suspected, in the classic language of the times, that there was something of “shenanigan” in it.

The quotation marks around both of these uses indicate that the term was new, at least to the editors. So, if antedatings are found, they are not likely to be much older than 1855.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang speculates on two possible origins. It could be from the Irish sionnach, meaning literally a fox but could be used metaphorically to refer to trickery or hiding, or it might be from the East Anglian dialectal nannicking, meaning fooling around or playing the fool. Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary defines nannick as “to play the fool; to play when one should be working; to idle away one’s time; to fidget.” And it defines nannicking as “full of apish tricks; trifling.” It isn’t far-fetched to think a phrase like is nannicking might become shenanigan. But these are just guesses, with no evidence behind either.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

“Editor’s Table.” The Pioneer; or, California Monthly Magazine, June 1855, 374. ProQuest.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. shenanigan n.

“Our Correspondence.” Portage County Democrat (Ravenna, Ohio), 10 January 1855, 2. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

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

Wright, Joseph. The English Dialect Dictionary, vol 4 of 6. Oxford: Henry Frowde, 1905, 225.

kettling

Police kettle protestors at the Bishopsgate Climate Camp, London, 1 April 2009

8 June 2020 (Updated, 3 pm, 8 June)

Kettling is a police tactic for controlling and shutting down demonstrations. The name arises from a German hunting and World War II army tactic.

The Guardian, on 2 April 2009, defined kettling:

Kettling is the word used to describe the police tactic of corralling demonstrators into a space for several hours. Public order officers say it is used to contain and close down marches when they get violent. But its legality has been challenged over claims that it restricts an individual's human rights and stops the right to peacefully protest. So far, legal challenges have resulted in the use of kettling being upheld by the courts.

The name comes from the metaphor of a kettle being a container where boiling liquids can be safely handled. The word kettle, meaning the cooking vessel, goes back to the Old English cytel and has cognates in several Germanic languages, including Kessel in German.

The police jargon term appears to have originated as a hunting term in Germany. Kesseltrieben, literally kettle-driving, refers to the practice of driving game into an enclosed circle where they can be killed. That term is attested to by 1870. Kesseljagen, literally kettle-hunting, is even older, dating to at least 1682.

The hunting tactic was applied by the Germany military in World War II, and then, in the post-war period, spread to police forces in Germany and then throughout Europe and North America. Time magazine recorded the Wehrmacht tactic of Keil und Kessel on 6 October 1941:

The German Army's favorite tactic is called Keil und Kessel. Keil means wedge: the Army drives tanks and armored vehicles into the enemy mass. Kessel means kettle: infantry units encircle the cut mass, drive it into a kettle-shaped trap. Last week on the Ukraine front the Germans put the heat under the biggest pot o' Russians ever, and had the chock nearly set for a new drive into the apparently endless Red mass beyond.

Kettle. In the deepest encirclement it ever attempted, the German Army had taken in not only Kiev but some 11,000 square miles to the east. Inside that kettle it claimed it had isolated no less than 50 divisions (more than the U.S. Army, two-thirds of the British Army, one-fifth of the German Army).

The police tactic dates to the late 1980s in Germany, although I haven’t yet found the words kettle or Kessel applied to it as a label until the 2000s. There are, however, several uses of the kettle metaphor in describing the tactic. For instance, there is this 7 October 1994 article in Die Zeit detailing a demonstration in East Germany that had occurred on 9 October 1989:

Wir haben Steffi natürlich nicht gefunden. Sie war irgendwo anders im Kessel und ihr blieb erspart, geschlagen oder verhaftet zu werden. [...] Es gibt eine Photographie im stern, auf der man die jungen Leute (zufällig auch unsere Tochter) mit weit aufgerissenen Augen und Kerzen in der Hand direkt vor einer dichten Reihe Polizei und Sperrautos stehen sieht.

(Of course, we didn't find Steffi. She was somewhere else in the kettle and was spared being beaten or arrested. [...] There is a photograph in Der Stern on which you can see the young people (coincidentally also our daughter) standing with wide open eyes and candles in front of a dense line of police and blocking cars.)

And there is this from Die Zeit on 25 February 1999 that doesn’t describe the police tactic but does use the metaphor of a boiling kettle to describe a demonstration:

Recht behalten haben aber auch die Hamburger und Stuttgarter Behörden. Sie genehmigten Demonstrationen, um Dampf aus dem Kessel zu lassen und den Protest besser kontrollieren zu können. Anders als in Berlin blieb es dort friedlich.

(The Hamburg and Stuttgart authorities have also been right. They approved demonstrations to let steam out of the kettle and better control the protest. Unlike in Berlin, it remained peaceful there.)

The earliest uses of kettling as a label for the police tactic that I have been able to find are in reference to the protests at the G20 summit in London on 1 April 2009. The term is undoubtedly older in police jargon but doesn’t appear to have caught the notice of journalists until this date. In addition to the definition quoted above, there is this from a different Guardian article on 2 April 2009:

They used familiar tactics to trap 4,000 people into streets outside the Bank of England in a practice known as "kettling", tightening the cordon when violence flared in one part of Threadneedle Street and a group of protesters, whose faces were covered, broke into the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Commander Bob Broadhurst, in charge of the operation, said his aim was to facilitate peaceful protest. But those peaceful demonstrators caught inside the cordon with no toilet facilities, and little water, questioned the idea that they were being allowed to exercise their right to march.

"The police should let us dribble out when we need to," said June Rogers, a gardener from south London. "We've just come on a peaceful protest. We've got fire in our belly and we want to say something and be heard, we are just ordinary people but they made the situation worse."

Jeannie Mackie, a barrister who had attended the climate camp as an observer, was penned in for two hours after police cordoned off both ends of Bishopsgate.

"I thought it was completely unnecessary," she said.

"I was kept for two hours. Lines of police lined up with their batons and they were completely pumped up and looking to have a go. My feeling was everyone in there was peaceful but they wanted to clear them out." Responding to the police use of the kettling technique she said that although the courts had ruled that it was legal, there had to be a good reason. "I asked one officer could I go and he said no—I might go and cause trouble. I giggled and said that wasn't very likely and he said, 'you can never tell with these people'."

Since 2009, the term appears numerous times in news articles from around the world. But perhaps using the name of a hunting term turned into a Nazi military maneuver as a label for a twenty-first century police tactic isn’t the best public relations move.

[I’ve updated the original with the references to the older German hunting practice.]

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Brewer, W. “Kettling.” ADS-L ,8 June 2020.

“Chock and Pot.” Time, 6 October 1941, 28.

Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. cytel.

“G20: Protestors: In the Kettle.” The Guardian, 2 April 2009, 3. ProQuest.

Klingst, Martin. “Maß halten!” Zeit Online, 25 February 1999.

Kluge, Friedrich, et al. Etymologisches Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache, seventeenth edition. Berlin: W. de Grruyter, 1957, 364–65. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Meikle, James and Sandra Laville. “‘Bottles Thrown’ as Man Lay Dying.” The Guardian, 2 April 2009, 1, ProQuest.

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

Reich, Jens. “Ohne Furcht vor den Herrschenden.” Zeit Online, 7 October 1994.

Photo credit: Charlotte Gilhooly, 2009, Wikimedia, used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Thanks to Susan Conklin Akbari for discovering the 1941 Time article.

curfew / sundown town

Kansas City, Missouri sign indicating a nighttime curfew is in effect for minors, 2013

8 June 2020

A curfew is a law or regulation requiring that people be off the streets at a certain hour. Curfews can be either temporary or permanent, and they can apply to everyone or only to certain categories of people.

The word, like many English legal terms, comes from Anglo-Norman, the dialect of French spoken in England following the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Norman coeverfeu, a compound of couvre (imperative form, to cover) + feu (fire), an order that fires should be banked and lights extinguished. The word also applied to the tolling of bells that signaled the start of the curfew. The French word appears in the 1285 Statutes for the City of London:

Defendu est qe nul seit si hardi estre trove alaunt ne wacraunt par my les Ruwes de la Citee, apres Coeverfu persone a Seint Martyn le grant a Espeye ne a Bokuyler ne a autre arme pur mal fere, ne dount mal supecion poet avenir; ne en autre manere nule, sil ne seit grant Seignour ou altre prodome de bone conysaunce, ou lour certeyn message qi de els serra garaunty qe vount li un a lautre pur conduyte de Lumere.

(It is ordered that none be so brazen as to be found going or wandering about the streets of the city, after curfew has been tolled at St. Martins le Grand, with sword or buckler, or other arms for doing harm, or whereof evil suspicion might arise; nor any in any other manner, unless he be a great lord or other lawful person of good repute, or their certain messenger, having their warrants to go from one to another, with lantern in hand.)

Curfew appears in English by c. 1330 when it is used in the poem The Seven Sages of Rome, found in the Auchinleck Manuscript, Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates 19.2.1:

Þan was þe lawe in Rome town,
Þat wheþer lord or garsoun,
Þat after corfu bi founde rominde
Faste men schoulden hem nimen and binde
And kepen him til þe sonne vprising,
And þan bifore þe fo[l]k him bring
And þourgh toun him villiche driue.

(Then was the law in Rome town,
That [anyone] whether a lord or servant,
Who is found roaming after curfew
That men should quickly take and bind him
And keep him until the sun’s rising,
And then bring him before the people
And drive him humiliatingly through town.)

The basic meaning of curfew hasn’t changed since the medieval period, except that we no longer ring bells to announce its start. But while the meaning hasn’t changed, the word has gained an additional connotation in the American context. During the Jim Crow era, it was a common practice for municipalities to impose curfews on Blacks, requiring them to be off the streets or to even leave the city limits by a certain time, usually at sundown.

The term sundown town, denoting a municipality where Blacks were not welcome after dark, appears by 1936, when it appears in Janet Seville’s Like a Spreading Tree:

Few realize, too, that the “sundown” towns of white faces were a Negro may not be found after dark with safety are matched by Negro towns, South and North, where a white face is a novelty.

Even older is the phrase don’t let the sun go down (or set) on you. It appears by the 1890s. The Oxford English Dictionary has a citation from the McKinney, Texas Democrat of 25 April 1895 that reads:

“Don't let the sun go down on you here to-morrow negro. Yours truly, White Caps.” This note [...] penned on the tent of some negroes.

Cap here refers to well capper, an oil field worker. I have not found a copy of the Democrat of that date to determine the wider context. But I did find a remarkably similar example from the Dallas Morning News of 13 May 1897 referring to the town of Savoy in central Texas after a group of black workers were hired to replace striking white workers. I don’t know if these are two separate incidents or if the OED got the date wrong:

Last night a miniature coffin was placed in the yard of their quarters. The coffin contained a hangman’s knot, some cartridges and the following note:

“Colored section boys: Don’t let the sun go down on you here Saturday night. If you do this is your fate. You give us the dodge Sunday night or you would have come up missing, so we will give you until Saturday night to leave. If you let the sun go down on you Saturday night here you will go to h—ll a glimmering. Bill and Caleb will get the same thing if they keep your any other n[——]rs any longer. We Will be there Saturday or Sunday night, so be prepared.

OLD TIME WHITECAPS.”

The parties committing the depredations are not known, but the whole affair is regarded with disapproval by the best element of the community.

And this report about Port Arthur, Texas appeared in the Detroit Free Press of 4 September 1901:

Not far from Beaumont there is a place called Port Arthur, which is settled by many people from Michigan, but particularly from the New England States, and soon after the town was established, a sign was found there reading: “N[——]r, don’t let the sun go down on you in Port Arthur.” There was considerable comfort in that sign for us southerners.

[The expurgation of hell is in the original, but the elisions of the N-word in these quotations are mine. The unexpurgated word appears in the original articles.]

So, the implementation of a curfew in the United States, even if not explicitly targeted at Blacks, carries with it a considerable amount of racist baggage.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2006, s.v. coverfeu.

Brunner, Karl, ed. The Seven Sages of Rome (Southern Version). Early English Text Society, O.S. 191. London: Oxford UP, 1933, 60. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Getting Rich in Texas.” Detroit Free Press, 4 September 1901, 5. ProQuest.

Middle English Dictionary, 2018, s.v. curfeu n.

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

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, January 2018, s.v. sundown, n., sun, n.1.

Seville, Janet E. Like a Spreading Tree: The Presbyterian Church and the Negro. New York: Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., 1936, 11. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Statutes for the City of London” (1285). The Statutes of the Realm (1810), vol 1 of 11. London: Dawsons, 1965, 102. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“White Cappers’ Work.” Dallas Morning News, 13 May 1897, 1. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Paul Sableman, 2013, Wikimedia Commons, used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

bogey / boogie man

7 June 2020

What do a bad score on a golf hole, an enemy aircraft, and a child’s nightmare have in common? The names for them all come from an old word for a ghost or evil spirit, in another word, a bogey.

The root of the term is bug, meaning a ghost or goblin. The origin of the root is uncertain, though. It’s probably from a common Germanic root, but there are also Welsh and Irish cognates, which allows for a possible Celtic origin for the word. These, however, appear later and are probably borrowings from English rather than vice versa. Bug appears c. 1395 in a Wycliffite translation of the Roman Catholic Bible, in Baruch 6.70:

As a bugge either a man of raggis in a place where gourdis wexen kepith no thing, so ben her goddis of tree.

(As a bug or a scarecrow in a place where cucumbers grow does nothing, so do their wooden gods.)

In Scotland and the north of England, bug developed into bogle, the use of which dates to the opening years of the sixteenth century when it appears in the Scottish poet William Dunbar’s The Tretis of the Twa Mariit Wemen and the Wedo, where one woman uses it to describe her slovenly and unattractive husband, lines 111–12:

The luf blenkis of that bogill fra his blerde ene
(As Belzebub had on me blent) abasit my spreit.

(The love glances of that bogey from his bleary eyes
—as if Beelzebub had looked upon me—abased my spirit.

The form bogey comes to us either from bogle or directly from bug, we can’t tell which. It’s a much later development, appearing in the nineteenth century. The earliest use of bogey that I’m aware of is in a nickname for the devil. From Thomas Ingoldsby’s 1838 “Grandpapa’s Story—The Witches’ Frolic”:

The cups pass quick,
The toasts fly thick,
Rob tries in vain out their meaning to pick,
But hears the words “Scratch,” and “Old Bogey,” and “Nick.”

The word is generalized within two decades, when it’s used metaphorically to refer to menacing humans in Sherard Osborn’s 1857 Quedah:

It may be supposed that nothing was more keenly sought for, by all on board the “Hyacinth,” than news about Malay pirates, those ogres, those bogies of the Archipelago.

The golfing sense of bogey appears by 1891 and comes from the idea of a phantom player. The original golf sense was that of par, the score that one is expected to beat. This system, which is the basis for modern professional golf tournaments, was originally dubbed the ground score. Supposedly in 1890 one player, a Major Wellman, who was unfamiliar with the new system and evidently disappointed with his own performance on the links, took a cue from a popular song of the moment, “The Bogey Man,” and claimed to be playing just such a figure. The name caught on and appeared in print by the next year. From the 28 November 1891 issue of The Field:

The members of this club have lately been trying, with success, a somewhat novel form of competition, introduced from Great Yarmouth by an ex-member of the U.S.G.C. The object of the scheme is to decide a competition by holes, without the lengthy process of everyone playing everyone else. The competition is conducted by all the players pitting their scores against a fixed round, with which an imaginary Col. Bogey challenges all comers, and it is won by the player who inflicts the most condign punishment on, or suffers least ignominious defeat, at the hands of this Col. Bogey.

The sense of bogey being one over par developed in the United States, a modification of the original British sense of bogey being par. The new sense appears by 1930 when it appears in the Los Angeles Times on 13 January:

The eighteenth, a difficult par 4, netted Smith a bogey, when his second stopped in the tall grass on a sloping hillside lie. He was on in three and down in two putts, his putt for a 4 just sliding by the cup.

The verb, meaning to shoot one over par on a hole, appears by 1935. From the Miami Daily News of 14 January 1935:

Bryan then bogied the next three holes, allowing Gormley to win them with par figures for four straight to forge ahead, one up.

The air force use of bogey to mean an unidentified aircraft dates to World War II. It is, obviously, also from the sense of ghost or phantom. From a story in the New York Herald Tribune (and syndicated to many other papers) on 11 April 1943, an American pilot tells of his time flying with the RAF in 1940:

On our first night-fighter patrol, we learned that teamwork between planes and ground radio stations is a most vital element. One foggy morning at 5:30 a.m., a flash came to our dispersal hut. A “bogey” (unidentified aircraft) had been detected by ground stations as it started across the Channel toward England. Interception was ordered, though there was a chance it might be a friendly plane returning from a mission.
[...]
Then a laconic report came through from the nearest ground station: “Bogey identified as ‘bandit’” (enemy aircraft).

Finally, the boogey-man (also boogie-man and booger-man) is an Americanism for an imaginary monster or spirit conjured up to frighten children. This term is recorded by 1847 in a story titled “White Jim,” about a young child kidnapped by native Americans:

One day, early in September, the two girls returned home after having been at work with their father in the corn-field, and inquired of their mother what had made James cry so—they heard him scream, “The booger man has got me,” but thought nothing of it, supposing him with her. The mother at once became deadly pale; she had supposed the child was safe with them all the while, and now flashed upon her the painful conviction, that he was lost in the woods, if a worse fate had not befallen him.

The kidnapping took place in 1827, but as the story is told twenty years later, we cannot assume the boy’s words are accurate renditions of what he actually said. The story ends with the boy, now a young man, being reunited with his parents. The use of booger man here, as with the use of bogey to refer to the Malay pirates, is loaded with racist undertones, identifying people of color as demonic.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Dunbar, William. Selected Poems. Edited by Priscilla Bawcutt. London: Longman, 1996, 39.

Godwin, Frank. “Bryan Beats Gormly to Wear Mid-Winter Crown.” Miami Daily News, 14 January 1935, 18.

Ingoldsby, Thomas. “Family Stories. No. X. Grandpapa’s Story—The Witches’ Frolic.” Bentley’s Miscellany, vol. 4, July 1838, 507.

Lawrence, Edward. “Shute 147; Horton Smith 149.” Los Angeles Times, 13 January 1930.

McCloskey, John J. “Night Fighters.” New York Herald Tribune, 11 April 1943, 7.

Middle English Dictionary, 2018, s.v. bugge n.

Osborn, Sherard. Quedah; or Stray Leaves from a Journal in Malayan Waters. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1857, 17.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. bogey, n., bogy | bogey, n.1, bogle, n.1, bug, n.1.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2006, s.v. booger, n.2. and September 2018, boogie, n.1.

“United Service Golf Club, Portsmouth.” The Field, The Country Gentleman’s Newspaper, no. 2031, 28 November 1891, 842.

tear gas / pepper spray

6 June 2020

[While I do address the origins of the terms tear gas and pepper spray in this piece, much of what follows has little to do with historical linguistics and instead comes from my experience as a U.S. Army chemical officer and my past work on the U.S. delegation to the Chemical Weapons Convention Preparatory Commission (CWC) and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during the U.S. Senate’s CWC ratification hearings. The definition and allowed uses of “riot control agents” was a controversial topic during ratification.]

Tear gas is a general term for lachrymatory agents that typically cause eye and respiratory pain and in high doses can irritate the skin. Their effects are generally transitory but can be long-lasting and more serious if the tear gas exacerbates an underlying medical condition. And use during the COVID-19 pandemic carries additional risk by making those exposed to the gas more susceptible to the respiratory illness. Deaths from tear gas are rare, but not unknown, and tear gases are classified as “non-lethal.” They are commonly used by police forces worldwide.

The earliest use of tear gas that I have found is this item that appeared in the Asbury Park Press on 11 November 1910:

Baltimore—Answering a burglar alarms [sic]. Patrolmen Edward Miller and Joseph Bullinger heard thuds and crashes behind the basement door at William T. Corrum’s home.

With guns cocked and tear gas in reserve, they rushed in—and fled, along with a skunk that had a salad dressing jar firmly wedged over its head.

Of course, tear gas and other far more lethal chemicals were widely used during the First World War. Here is a mention of tear gas in the trench newspaper The Wipers Times from 25 December 1916:

I wonder if he’s heard the tale of the Transport Officer and the rum. Of course there are many tales of T.O.’s and rum. The oldest one of all is the one of the T.O. who was coming up with the rations. The said rations included “rum for weary soldiers.” Also the cargo had a consignment of tear-gas in a ram-jar [sic] for the M.O. to try a few experiments with. That is all the tale—but I may as well add that the T.O. recovered.

There is no chemical definition of or criteria for what constitutes a tear gas, and a wide variety of substances are labeled as such. These include: CS gas (2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile), which is used by the U.S. military; CN gas (phenacyl chloride), which is more toxic and therefore less widely used; OC agents (oleoresin capsicum), better known as pepper spray or pepper gas, which are commonly used by police forces; and Mace which is a branded product containing a mix of agents. Mace originally used CN, but that has been replaced by OC agents in most Mace products, although a CN-OC version is still on the market.

The terms pepper spray or pepper gas, referring to OC, are technically accurate, but serve as euphemisms. Oleoresin capsicum is naturally occurring in pepper plants and chili powder and is what gives those foods their pungent taste, but the chemical agents in so-called pepper spray are synthetic, concentrated, and are far nastier than anything found in nature.

The earliest use of pepper gas that I have found is in an Associated Press story of 4 October 1923 about four convicts who attempted an escape from a Kentucky prison, only to end up barricading themselves in the prison’s kitchen:

A tear gas machine brought here last night proved unavailable as the operators could not get close enuf to lossen [sic] its streams effectively. Officials devised the ingenious plan of charging the steam pipes leading to the kitchen with pepper gas intending to smoke the men out.

And the use of pepper spray to refer to a lachrymatory agent dates to at least 8 February 1964 in another Associated Press article:

Pepper Spray Gun Protects Gals Against Muggers

New York (AP)—Women who want to protect themselves against attacks by muggers are now offered a spray repellent which shoots a solution of cayenne pepper about 15 feet.

Among new products is this aerosol device called “rebuff,” offered by Animal Repellents, Griffin, Ga. The manufacturer says this liquid will make any human attacker very uncomfortable for at least 10 minutes but will have no lasting adverse effects. It’s similar to the company’s dog repellent called “Halt!” but is much weaker. The police department of Saigon has ordered 3,600 units of “Rebuff,” the company says.

The fact that there is no clear distinction between chemical agents like CS and CN and chemical agents like OC has resulted in confusion at times. For example, on 1 June 2020 the U.S. Park Police used lachrymatory agents to clear crowds from Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, to allow Donald Trump to conduct a photo op in front of a church. The Park Police initially denied having used “tear gas,” but later retracted that statement, clarifying that they meant they hadn’t used CS or CN, when in fact they had used “pepper balls.” Then the Park Police retracted the clarification and again insisted they hadn’t used “tear gas.” The Park Police were engaging (ineptly) in semantic sophistry. The term tear gas covers all of these, and they were trying to make a distinction when none existed.

Some wonder why. if chemical warfare agents are banned by international law, specifically by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), police are allowed to use tear gas. The simple answer is that the CWC permits use of riot control agents for domestic law enforcement purposes. I cannot speak to what is permitted under any country’s domestic laws or rules regarding use of force, and those will vary from place to place, but I can address how tear gas and pepper spray are considered under international law.

The CWC regulates toxic chemicals, placing them on three different “Schedules,” depending on their toxicity and use in warfare. But the treaty defines a riot control agent as:

Any chemical not listed in a Schedule, which can produce rapidly in humans sensory irritation or disabling physical effects which disappear within a short time following termination of exposure.

Since they are not on the treaty’s Schedules, riot control agents fall outside the treaty’s ordinary regulation and verification regime, but the treaty still requires that:

Each State Party undertakes not to use riot control agents as a method of warfare.

But the treaty does not define method of warfare. This lack of a definition is deliberate; as the negotiators could not find a definition that all could agree upon, it was left deliberately vague, to be interpreted on a case-by-case basis.

And under purposes not prohibited under this Convention, the CWC includes:

Law enforcement including domestic riot control purposes.

So, to sum up, use of tear gas in war is banned by international law, but the use of tear gas is allowed domestically and in certain undefined, non-combat military situations.

A major reason the phrase method of warfare was left vague is that the United States wanted its military to be able to use riot control agents in certain situations. U.S. military use of riot control agents is governed by Executive Order 11850 of 8 April 1975, signed by Gerald Ford as part of the post-Vietnam reforms of the military. It prohibits:

First use of riot control agents in war except in defensive military modes to save lives such as:
(a) Use of riot control agents in riot control situations in areas under direct and distinct U.S. military control, to include controlling rioting prisoners of war.
(b) Use of riot control agents in situations in which civilians are used to mask or screen attacks and civilian casualties can be reduced or avoided.
(c) Use of riot control agents in rescue missions in remotely isolated areas, of downed aircrews and passengers, and escaping prisoners.
(d) Use of riot control agents in rear echelon areas outside the zone of immediate combat to protect convoys from civil disturbances, terrorists and paramilitary organizations.

The treaty, as written, leaves intact the executive order, except for the first use phrase. Retaliatory use as a method of warfare is illegal.

Furthermore, when it gave its consent to ratification of the CWC, the Senate made the following reservation to the treaty:

(26) Riot control agents:

(A) Permitted uses. — Prior to the deposit of the United States instrument of ratification, the President shall certify to Congress that the United States is not restricted by the Convention in its use of riot control agents, including the use against combatants who are parties to a conflict, in any of the following cases:

(i) United States not a party. — The conduct of peacetime military operations within an area of ongoing armed conflict when the United States is not a party to the conflict (such as recent use of the United States Armed Forces in Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda).

(ii) Consensual peacekeeping. — Consensual peacekeeping operations when the use of force is authorized by the receiving state, including operations pursuant to Chapter VI of the United Nations Charter.

(iii) Chapter vii peacekeeping. — Peacekeeping operations when force is authorized by the Security Council under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.

(B) Implementation. — The President shall take no measure, and prescribe no rule or regulation, which would alter or eliminate Executive Order 11850 of April 8, 1975.

This reservation makes E.O. 11850, not the CWC, the only governing authority for U.S. use of riot control agents, but also prevents a future president from unilaterally changing or rescinding the executive order.

So, that’s it. The term tear gas encompasses pepper spray and pepper gas, and while its military use is limited, police are allowed to use it for domestic law enforcement purposes.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

“Another Guard Dies; Convicts Yet Barricaded in Kitchen.” The Daily Democrat (Tallahassee, FL), 4 October 1923, 1. ProQuest.

“By Order” The B.E.F. Times with Which Are Incorporated the Wipers Times, the ‘New Church’ Times, the Kemmel Times & the Somme-Times, vol. 1, no. 2, 25 December 1916. ProQuest.

“Flashes of Light: Improvised Gas Mask.” Asbury Park Evening Press, 11 November 1910, 17. ProQuest.

Ford, Gerald. Executive Order 11850--Renunciation of Certain Uses in War of Chemical Herbicides and Riot Control Agents. 8 April 1975.

Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction. 27 September 2005.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. tear, n.1.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2005, s.v. pepper spray, n., pepper gas, n.

“Pepper Spray Gun Protects Gals Against Muggers.” Plain-Dealer (Cleveland, OH), 8 February 1964, 20. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

U.S. Park Police. “Statement from United States Park Police acting Chief Gregory T. Monahan about the actions taken over the weekend to protect life and property.” 2 June 2020 (updated as of 4 June 2020).

“U.S. Senate’s Conditions to the Ratification of the CWC.” Senate Resolution 75, 105th Congress, 1st Session, 24 April 1997.

Ward, Alex. “US Park Police Said Using ‘Tear Gas’ in a Statement Was a ‘Mistake.’ It Just Used the Term Again.” Vox.com, 5 June 2020.