chow

9 July 2020

Chow is slang for food, especially that served in an institutional setting, such as the military. Chow is palatable and nourishing, but no one would mistake it for that served in a Michelin star restaurant. The word comes from one of the languages of Asia but pinning it down more precisely has been maddeningly frustrating. It is undoubtedly related to the Cantonese zaap6, meaning mixed, but whether this is the origin of the root or simply one it its instantiations is not known.

Part of the problem is that the eighteenth-century sources in which the element chow first appear are imprecise in specifying what language or dialect they are discussing (e.g. several early accounts refer to natives of Palau in the western Pacific as “Chinese”). Henry Harris’s self-published 1790 Dictionary of Hindostany, a distinctly amateurish lexicographic effort by today’s standards, records multiple words that use the root chow, which seems to mean all or every, but is unclear whether these are Hindi or another of the languages spoken in India. He clearly references multiple languages in his book, but never specifies which he is referring to in any given instance.

But what we do know is that the word came into English in the reduplicative form chow-chow, transmitted to English sailors from natives of Palau. In September 1783 the British East India Company packet ship Antelope, captained by Henry Wilson, was wrecked off the island of Ulong in Palau. Two accounts of the wreck and the crew’s contact with the islanders were published in 1788. One by George Keate reads:

They had caught only four, two of which were given to the English, and by the ship’s steward divided into messes. The Chinese dressed their portion differently, making a mixture with rice, and other things, which they call Chow Chow.

The second, by an anonymous officer of the Antelope, describes the same incident thusly:

The meat resembled that of the cod, solid and firm: it is in great estimation among the natives; and it may truly be esteemed a delicacy. The China-men cooked their allotment with rice, and other ingredients, giving the name of “Chow-Chow.”

But chow-chow was not restricted to Palau. Aeneas Anderson’s 1795 account of British diplomats in China from 1792–94 includes a glossary, which has this entry:

Chow-Chow – – – Victuals or meat.

And a century later, Yule and Burnell’s 1886 glossary of Anglo-Indian words, Hobson-Jobson includes this rather lengthy entry, which includes the shorter form chow:

CHOW-CHOW, s. A common application of the Pigeon-English term in China is to mixed preserves; but, as the quotation shows, it has many uses; the idea of mixture seems to prevail. It is the name given to a book by Viscountess Falkland, whose husband was Governor of Bombay. There it seems to mean “a medley of trifles.” Chow is in “pigeon” applied to food of any kind. [“From the erroneous impression that dogs form one of the principal items of a Chinaman’s diet, the common variety has been dubbed the ‘chow dog’” (Ball, Things Chinese, p. 179).] We find the word chow-chow in Blumentritt’s Vocabular of Manilla terms: “Chau-chau, a Tagal dish so called.”

1858. “The word chow-chow is suggestive, especially to the Indian reader, of a mixture of things, ‘good, bad, and indifferent,’ of sweet little oranges and bits of bamboo stick, slices of sugar-cane and rinds of unripe fruit, all concocted together and made upon the whole into a very tolerable confection...

“Lady Falkland, by her happy selection of a name, to a certain extent deprecates and disarms criticism. We cannot complain that her work is without plan, unconnected, and sometimes trashy, for these are exactly the conditions implied in the word chow-chow.”—Bombay Quarterly Review, January, p. 100.

1882. “The variety of uses to which the compound word ‘chow-chow’ is put is almost endless....A ‘No. 1 chow-chow’ thing signifies utterly worthless, but when applied to a breakfast or dinner it means ‘unexceptionally good.’ A ‘chow-chow’ cargo is an assorted cargo; a ‘general shop’ is a ‘chow-chow’ shop....one (factory) was called the ‘chow-chow,’ from its being inhabited by divers Parsees, Moormen, or other natives of India.”—The Fankwae, p. 63.

So, in the nineteenth century chow-chow in English came to mean any sort of mixture or medley, especially, but not limited to, food.

The 1886 Hobson-Jobson records the shortened form chow, but that’s not the first appearance of the word in English. It appears in the 27 November 1856 Sacramento, California newspaper Spirit of the Age:

Ah Chow—ah in the Celestial lingo means Mr, Chow something good to eat.

And by the 1890s, chow is appearing quite frequently on both sides of the Atlantic.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2020, s.v. chow2, n.

Anderson, Aeneas. A Narrative of the British Embassy to China in the Years 1792, 1793, and 1794. Philadelphia: T. Dobson, 1795, 392.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. chow, n.1.

Harris, Henry. A Dictionary of English and Hindostany, vol. 2 (vol. 1 never published). Madras: 1790.

Keate, George. An Account of the Pelew Islands. Dublin: Luke White, 1788, 123. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Moody, Andrew J. “Transmission Languages and Source Languages of Chinese Borrowings in English.” American Speech, 71.4, Winter 1996, 416.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. chow, n., chow-chow, n. and adj.

The Shipwreck of the Antelope East-India Packet. London: D. Brewman for R. Randall, 1788, 71. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Yule, Henry and Arthur Coke Burnell. Hobson-Jobson: Being a Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms. New Edition Edited by William Crooke. London: John Murray, 1886, 164. HathiTrust Digital Library.

stan

Eminem performing live in Washington, D.C., 2014

8 July 2020

Stan is slang for an obsessive fan, and it’s inspired by the song “Stan” by rapper Eminem (Marshall Mathers). The lyrics tell the story of an obsessed fan of the rapper, named Stan, who ends up killing himself and his pregnant girlfriend:

You got some issues Stan, I think you need some counseling
To help your ass from bouncing off the walls when you get down some

The song appears on the album The Marshall Mathers LP, which was released on 23 May 2000.

Use of stan as a label for a fan appears as early as 29 October 2000 in the magazine New Musical Express in a review of the song:

This twisted journey into the mind of an embittered Mark Chapman type takes on a whole new dimension in front of thousands of potential Stans.

And in December 2001 the rapper Nas uses stan on his diss track “Ether” to refer to a wannabe rapper who imitates established artists. In particular the song is directed at and supposedly describes JayZ, whose recently released “Takeover” was a diss on Nas and another rapper, Prodigy. Nas writes:

Well life is hard, hug me, don't reject me
Or make records to disrespect me, blatant or indirectly
In '88 you was getting chased through your building
Callin' my crib and I ain't even give you my numbers
All I did was give you a style for you to run with
Smilin' in my face, glad to break bread with the God
Wearin' Jaz' chains, no TEC's, no cash, no cars
No jail bars, Jigga, no pies, no case
Just Hawaiian shirts, hangin' with little Chase
You a fan, a phony, a fake, a pussy, a Stan
I still whip yo' ass, you 36 in a karate class?

Urban Dictionary records the term on 31 January 2006, and an entry dated 5 February 2006 reads:

Stan

Based on the central character in the Eminem song of the same name, a "stan" is an overzealous maniacal fan for any celebrity or athlete.

A Typical Kobe Bryant Stan would say something like.

"Kobe Bryant scored 81 points last night. Kobe could beat God himself in a game of 1 on 1 hoops. To hell with Michael Jordan or Wilt Chamberlain, they arent on Kobe's level!"

(Urban Dictionary is hardly an authoritative secondary source, but since it dates its entries it can, with appropriate care, be used as evidence for a slang term’s existence and meaning.)

Since the early 2000s, stan has been widely used on the internet and social media, but like most slang terms, is more rarely found in published sources.

Discuss this post

---

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2018, s.v. stan, n.2.

Urbandictionary.com, s.v. stan

Photo Credit: E.J. Hersom for U.S. Department of Defense News, 2014.

China

Eighteenth-century, Chinese, white, porcelain flask painted with an underglaze of blue waves and clouds and a red dragon

7 July 2020

The name for the country in Asia and the porcelain-ware named for it ultimately comes from Middle Chinese tsɦin, rendered in Pinyin as Qin. In Mandarin, the name refers to a state in what is now western China, c. 897–206 BCE, and a dynasty that ruled 221–206 BCE. The word’s exact route into English is uncertain, but the name makes its way into European languages with the earliest editions of the Travels of Marco Polo in the early fourteenth century. English borrowed it from Latin or another continental language.

It appears in a 1533 English translation of Damião de Góis’s The Legacye or Embassate of the Great Emperour of Inde Prester Iohn, vnto Emanuell Kynge of Portyngale. In this passage, de Góis is referring to one George Lupe Dandrade:

In the tyme of his beyng at Inde for certayne maters he had there of his prynce (where he remayned by the space of certayne yeres) one a very valyant man Lupus Soarez, by the kynges commaundement was the chyefe capitayne of the Portyngales warres, & chyefe ruler of all the realmes, cyttes, townes, and castelles, that be vnder the kynge of Portyngales domynyon, euen from Ethiope, thorough out the Chynas.

China used as a designation for porcelain appears in English by the end of the sixteenth century. It first appears as a modifier before becoming a standalone noun for the porcelain-ware. Here is a 1588 English translation of Venetian Cesare Federici’s travels to Asia:

Both the Citties are portes of the sea, and are great cities, and haue vnto them great traffique & trade of marchandize, of all sortes of spices, Drugges, Silke cloth of silk, Sandolo, Marfine, Versiue, Procelane of China: Ueluets and Scarlets that come from Portingale, and from Meca: with many other sorts of marchandize.

In his 1597 Navigator’s Supply, William Barlow recounts a conversation he had Filipino and Japanese sailors that refers to porcelain as China earth:

They described all things farre different from ours, and shewed, that in steade of our Compas, they vse a Magneticall Needle of sixe ynches long, and longer, vpon a pinne in a dish of white China earth filled with water: In the bottome whereof they haue two crosse lines, for the foure principall windes: the rest of the diuisions being reserued to the skill of their Pilots. Vpon which report of theirs, I made present triall howe a Magneticall Needle would stand in water, and found it to proue excellently well; not doubting but that many conclusions of importance in Marine affaires will thereby more readily be performed.

And in 1613, dramatist and pamphleteer Thomas Dekker refers to China dishes in his A Strange Horse-Race:

Yet would they serue this Banquet to the Table, neither in Plate, in Christall, in Chyna dishes, glasse or any other furniture, but in a Stuffe, deerer to them (and more deere to others) then any of the Mettals recited.

So, by the end of the first Elizabethan era, the word china was well established as a term for porcelain.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2020, s.v. china n., Qin.

Barlow, William. The Nauigators Supply. London: G. Bishop, R. Newbery, and R. Barker, 1597. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Dekker, Thomas. A Strange Horse-Race. London: Nicholas Oakes for Joseph Hunt, 1613. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Federici, Cesare. The Voyage and Trauaile of M. Cæsar Frederick, Merchant of Venice, into the East India, the Indies, and Beyond the Indies. London: Richard Jones and Edward White, 1588, 6v–7r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Góis, Damião de. The Legacye or Embassate of the Great Emperour of Inde Prester Iohn, vnto Emanuell Kynge of Portyngale. London: W. Rastell, 1533, 21. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. China, n.1 and adj.

Photo credit: Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, public domain photo.

brass monkey, cold enough to freeze the balls off a

Statue of a brass monkey with detached balls in Post Office Square, Stanthorpe, Queensland, Australia, 2008

6 July 2020

Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey is slang phrase that is quite literal, even though it describes an impossibility. It refers to the testicles on a brass figure of a monkey, exaggerating the severity of the temperature. But one often hears a nautical explanation for the term that bowdlerizes it and renders it “safe” for use around innocents and the easily offended.

The key to understanding the phrase is that it, like many slang phrases, existed in multiple variants in its early years, before settling into the canonical form we’re familiar with today. For instance, there is this 1835 reference from Frederic Chamier’s The Unfortunate Man to a monkey in cold weather, but with no reference to brass or to parts of the anatomy:

He was told to be silent, in a tone of voice which set me shaking like a monkey in frosty weather.

Three years later, we have this appearing in the New York Herald on 30 May 1838. It is the canonical form we know today, except it’s a reference to the monkey’s nose:

Old Knites was as cool as a cucumber, and would have been so independent of the weather, which was cold enough to freeze the nose off of a brass monkey.

And there is this sermon that was reprinted in the Plattsburgh Republican on 4 June 1842 that varies it more, including a reference to the brass monkey’s nose. I include the rather long quote mainly because this may be the only description of love in the English language that makes an allusion to sheep ticks:

When you love, you go it like water down an eave’s spout—you cling to the idols of your hearts like sheep-ticks to the wool—now the waves of joyful excitement beat about in your breasts, and now the mild moonlight of melancholy rests upon a scene of gloom and silence—now you feel a curious, silly, sublime, mysterious and magnetic sensation all over, even to your very ancles [sic], as though you were just beginning to feather out—and now again your hearts, hands, feet and flesh are as cold and senseless as the toes of a brass monkey in winter.

In these early uses, it’s not just monkeys that lose their body parts; one use of the phrase from Britain in 1859 refers to the tail of a tin opossum.

Nor is it always the cold temperature that is important in early uses of the phrase. Herman Melville’s 1847 Omoo has:

Falling to with our hoes again, we worked singly, or together, as occasion required, until “Nooning Time” came.

The period, so called by the planters, embraced about three hours in the middle of the day; during which it was so excessively hot, in this still, brooding valley, shut out from the Trades, and only open toward the leeward side of the island, that labor in the sun was out of the question. To use a hyperbolical phrase of Shorty’s, “It was ‘ot enough to melt the nose h’off a brass monkey.”

Other references to the brass monkey’s anatomy include tails, hairs, and guts. Because, as a general rule, references to genitalia in print were avoided until the latter half of the twentieth century, we don’t have a record of balls as part of the phrase in print until Eric Partridge’s 1937 Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. Some of these references to other anatomical parts are undoubtedly bowdlerized versions that avoid referring to testicles in print. The key point is that balls, brass, and even monkey are not essential elements of early uses of the phrase. What is important is the phrase’s hyperbolic nature and impossibility.

We also see use of brass monkey as an adjective referring to inclement weather from at least 1890, attesting that the use of the full phrase, in all of its variants, was so common that it didn’t need to be used in full.

The oft-repeated, but false, nautical origin would have the monkey be a brass rack used to store cannonballs on board ship. According to the tale, in cold weather the rack would shrink, spilling the balls onto the deck. As we have seen, the lexical evidence doesn’t support this. The early uses of the phrase are not especially in nautical contexts, and they also refer to heat and other body parts. Furthermore, there is no record of monkey being used to mean a rack holding cannonballs (or anything similar)—although there are some seventeenth century uses of monkey to mean a type of brass cannon and monkey tail is a 19th century name for a handspike used to aim and level cannon.

And the nautical origin story ignores some basic facts of physics and naval life. First, while brass, like any metal, does contract in cold weather, the amount of such shrinkage would be so infinitesimal that it would not cause the spilling of a rack’s contents. Also, naval ships did not store cannonballs in vertical racks; the rolling of the ship made this impractical. Instead, they were stored in holes drilled in horizontal wooden planks known as shot garlands.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Chamier, Frederic. The Unfortunate Man, vol. 1. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1835, 55. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Dow, Jr. “Short Patent Sermon.” Plattsburgh Republican (New York), 4 June 1842, 1. NewsBank Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey phr., brass monkey, adj.

Melville, Herman. Omoo. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1847, 258.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. brass, n. (entry partially revised post-1997), shot-garland, n.

———, third edition, September 2002, s.v. monkey, n., monkey tail, n.

“Stray Leaves from a Straggler’s Note Book.” New York Herald, 30 May 1838, 2. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.

Photo credit: Vmenkov, 2008, Wikimedia Commons, used under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

all your base are belong to us

Animated gif capture from the introduction to Zero Wing with subtitles

5 July 2020

All your base are belong to us is an ungrammatical phrase first appeared as a subtitle in the introduction of the 1991 English-language release of the Japanese video game Zero Wing. It’s a shoddy translation that became an in-joke among video gamers, who in the spirit of Kilroy and Mr. Chad copied it as a graffito wherever there was a flat surface. The relevant sequence of subtitles in the game reads as follows:

In A.D. 2101
War was beginning.
Captain: What happen?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It’s You !!
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
Cats: All your base are belong to us.
Cats: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Cats: HA HA HA HA ....
Captain: Take off every ‘zig’ !!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move ‘zig’.
Captain: For great justice.

In 1998 the phrase began to be posted to the Internet and what had been an in-joke among gamers went mainstream.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Mistretta, William, “Game of the Week: Zero Wing.” Gamespy.com, accessed 25 Dec 2008.

“Story of All Your Base.” Gamespy.com, accessed 25 Dec 2008.

Image credit: Toaplan, Zero Wing for the Sega Genesis Mega Drive, 1991.