coin / coin a phrase

16 July 2020

We coin words and phrases, and the phrase to coin a phrase is often used ironically to introduce a cliché. The metaphor underlying this usage is rather obvious, referring to the minting of money. And like many words associated with the government and law, the English word coin comes from Anglo-Norman. The noun coign originally meant a wedge-shaped stamp or die, like that used to stamp coins out of a sheet of metal, and the French word comes from the Latin cuneus, meaning wedge. But in French the meaning eventually transferred over to the thing that was created by the stamp. And the verb coigner meant to mint money.

The English verb appears by c. 1338, appearing in Robert Manning’s Chronicle in a passage about the reign of King Edward I (1272–1307):

Edward did smyte round peny, halfpeny, ferthyng
þe croice passed þe bounde of alle þorghout þe ryng,
Þe kynge’s side salle be þe hede & his name written.
Þe croyce side what cite it was in coyned & smyten.

(Edward struck the round penny, halfpenny, and farthing
The coin to be circulated within all the bounds of the realm,
On the king’s side shall be written his head and his name.
And on the cross side the city in which it was coined and struck.)

Chaucer also uses the participle in the Pardoner’s Tale, c. 1390:

And everich of thise riotoures ran
Til he cam to that tree, and ther they founde
Of floryns fyne of gold ycoyned rounde
Wel ny an eighte busshels, as hem thoughte.

(And every one of these rioters ran
Until he came to that tree, and there they found
Of fine round florins of coined gold
Well nigh eight bushels, as they thought.)

In Middle English, the verb was used quite literally, restricted to the actual minting of money. But in Latin, the metaphor of coining or creating other things was already well established. For instance, Alan of Lille’s c. 1165 Latin De planctu naturae (The Plaint of Nature) has this:

Me igitur tanquam pro-deam, tanquam sui vicariam rerum generibus sigillandis monetariam destinavit, ut ego in propriis incudibus rerum effigies conmonetans.

(Therefore, he appointed me his agent-goddess, his vice-regent, coiner of the distinctive likenesses of the several kinds of creatures, to stamp out the images of things each on its own anvil.)

Alan of Lille’s work was well known and influential—Chaucer, for one, knew of it and makes reference to it—but the figurative use doesn’t seem to have taken hold in English usage until the sixteenth century, when coining words and other things became all the rage.

Thomas Norton’s 1561 translation of Calvin’s The Institution of Christian Religion is an early English use of the metaphor in this passage regarding the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation:

These fellowes unseasonably coyne a mystery whereof no mention is made.

A bit later, John Lyly’s 1578 Euphues has this:

Seeinge therefore hee coulde frame no meanes to woorke his delight, hee coyned an excuse to hasten his departure, promisinge the next morninge to trouble them againe as a guest more bolde then welcome.

And George Puttenham’s 1589 The Arte of English Poesie warns against trying to sound too erudite by making up one’s own words from Latin roots:

Ye haue another intollerable ill maner of speach, which by the Greekes originall we may call fonde affectation, and is when we affect new words and phrases other than the good speakers and writers in any language, or then custome hath allowed, and is the common fault of young schollers not halfe so well studied before they come from the Vniuersitie or schooles, and when they come to their friends, or happen to get some benefice or other promotion in their countreys, will seeme to coigne fine wordes out of the Latin, and to vse new fangled speaches, thereby to shew themselues among the ignorant the better learned.

And Michael Drayton’s 1593 Idea. The Shepheard’s Garland coins both misery and phrases. First the misery:

This mischiefe then into her world was brought,
this fram’d the mint with coynd our miserie.

Then the phrases:

Our forgers of suppos’d Gentillitie,
When he his great, great Grand-sires glory blases,
And paints out fictions in base coyned Phrases.

So, by the late sixteenth century, the metaphorical use of coin was well-established in English. But it isn’t until the mid-twentieth century that to coin a phrase begins to be used ironically to refer to uttering a cliché or banal statement. From Francis Brett Young’s 1940 novel Mr. Lucton’s Freedom:

It takes all sorts to make a world, to coin a phrase.

But when we use the verb to coin in etymological or historical linguistics contexts, we’re referring to the actual creation of a word or phrase or the new sense of a word or phrase.

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Sources:

Alan of Lille. “De planctu naturae.” Literary Works. Winthrop Wetherbee, ed. and trans. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 22. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013, 8.30, 108–09.

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2008, s.v. coigner4, coign2.

Calvin, John. The Institution of Christian Religion. Thomas Norton, trans. London: Reinolde Wolfe and Richard Harison, 1561, 4.18, fol. 142v.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Pardoner’s Tale.” The Canterbury Tales, lines 769–71. Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website, 2020.

Drayton, Michael. Idea. The Shepheard’s Garland. London: Thomas Woodcocke, 1593, 29, 58. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Lyly, John. Euphues. London: T. East for Gabriel Cawood, 1578, 25r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Manning, Robert. Peter Langtoft’s Chronicle, vol. 2 of 2. London: S. Bagster, 1810, 238–39. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Middle English Dictionary, 2018, s.v. coinen, v.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. coin, v.1.

Puttenham, George. The Arte of English Poesie (1589). London: 1869, 258–59. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

cocktail

Image of a martini cocktail with olive

15 July 2020

A cocktail is, of course, a mixed drink. Looking at the word’s roots, cock + tail, how the word developed this meaning would seem to be a complete mystery, but a bit of research reveals that the history of the word is one of horses, mixed parentage, electoral politics, and, of course, booze.

Cocktail is also a superb example of how the brevity of the citations in the Oxford English Dictionary, while perfectly adequate for illustrating how a word has been used over the centuries, often cannot express the most interesting aspects of the word, how it fits into the historical and cultural trends of the period and the artistry of some of writers who employ it. In this case, the OED’s entry has been updated quite recently, September 2019, and it is superbly researched. I can find no antedatings or factual information to add to it. But reading the citations in their full context is informative and fun. (At least I had a great time researching this one.)

Cocktail makes its appearance in the mid eighteenth century with the sense of a horse with a bobbed tail, so that it stands upright, or cocked. Generally considered unnecessary and cruel today, the bobbing or docking of a horse’s tail was done to prevent the tail from becoming entangled in its harness. Here is the first citation in the OED, from an advertisement in the London Evening-Post of 17 February 1750:

A black Cock Tail Gelding, about fifteen Hands high.

This is a perfectly fine citation. It shows exactly how the term was being used in that year. But such a brief clipping cannot convey the full context. One might, as I did, assume that it was an advertisement for the sale of a horse, but by actually reading the newspaper in question you discover that is not the case. The classified ads in the paper of that day unfold the story of a mini crime spree committed by a grifter on the merchants of Winchester, England. Here are two classified ads from that paper. The first contains the OED’s citation, but the story continues in the second:

WHEREAS G—— D——n, a small Size Man, about five feet high, a brown Coat, a Plad [sic] Waistcoat edg’d with Silver Twist, a cut Bob Wig, who called himself a Riding-Groom, did on or about the 12th Day of January last hire of Edward Eccott, Blacksmith, of Winchester in the County of Southampton, a black Cock Tail Gelding, about fifteen Hands high, goes straddling behind, with a Swelling between the Hair and Hoof of the Off Leg behind: The said Dunn hired the said Gelding to go to Lady Middleton’s, five Miles beyond Farnham from Winchester aforesaid, and has not been heard of since; These are therefore to give Notice, that whoever will apprehend the said G—— D——n, or secure the said Gelding, shall receive one Guinea Reward of me.

                                                            Edward Eccott

The said G—— D——n left at the same Time, at Christopher Todd’s, at the Castle Inn, in Winchester aforesaid, a Bay-Gelding, about fourteen Hands high, a Hog Mans, cut Tail, Blaze down his Face, and a gall’d Back; These are to give the said G—— D——n Notice, that unless he comes and pays the Charges for keeping the said Gelding, it will be appraised and sold as the Law directs.

                                                            Christopher Todd

By the end of the eighteenth century cocktail was being used to refer to non-thoroughbred horses, as thoroughbreds would be too valuable to put into harness to drag a cart about. From a 1796 treatise on horses by John Lawrence:

In the reign of Elizabeth, the generality of English Horses were either weak, or consisted of sturdy jades, better adapted to draft than to any other purpose; but, with some exceptions, exhibited strong proofs of initient improvement, one of which is, an instance of a Horse travelling fourscore miles within the day for a wager; a feat which would puzzle a great number of those fine cock-tail nags, sold by dealers of the present day, at three or fourscore pounds each.

And there is this letter from poet George Ellis to Walter Scott on his new book on Dryden, dated 23 September 1808, which uses the cocktail-as-non-thoroughbred as a metaphor for writers:

Your Dryden was to me a perfectly new book. It is certainly painful to see a race-horse in a hackney-chaise, but when one considers that he will suffer infinitely less from the violent exertion to which he is condemned, than a creature of inferior race—and that the wretched cock-tail on whom the same task is usually imposed, must shortly become a martyr to the service, one’s conscience becomes more at ease, and we are able to enjoy Dr. Johnson’s favorite pleasure of rapid motion without much remorse on the score of its cruelty.

It wasn’t long before cocktail took on the sense of improper decorum or a lack of breeding. Here is writer Robert Smith Surtees using it in the New Sporting Magazine of March 1835. The general context is still indirectly related to horses, in this case foxhunting, but it doesn’t refer to the horse itself. Note that the character of Jorrocks was one that Surtees used regularly, a sport-loving, cockney grocer, a vulgar but amiable fellow:

Stranger.         What! you hunt do you?
Jorrocks.         A few—you’ve perhaps heard tell of the Surrey unt?
Stranger.         Cock-tail affair isn’t it?
Jorrocks.         No such thing I assure you—Cock-tail indeed! I likes that.

And there is this from the London Morning Post of 9 April 1849, about a certain Mr. Lloyd who had been misrepresenting himself in Paris as a representative of the British government:

Who is he, what is he, whence comes he; where are his credentials? In truth, it is high time that this extremely cock-tail affair should be exploded: it is a blackguard business, and although it were lost time and trouble to break such a fly as Mr. Lloyd upon the wheel, yet he really should be made to desist from assuming a status for himself and his followers to which none of them are entitled.

So by the mid nineteenth century, cocktail had gone from referring to a horse’s docked tail that that of a mixture or dilution.

The connection to alcohol occurs at the turn of the nineteenth century in America, specifically in reference to a mixture or potion of spirits. The first known use is from the Amherst, New Hampshire publication The Farmer’s Cabinet of 28 April 1803:

Drank a glass of cocktail—excellent for the head. [...] Call'd at the Doct's. [...] Drank another glass of cocktail.

The OED records another citation from three years later that describes what a cocktail is in detail. From the Hudson, New York newspaper The Balance of 13 May 1806:

Cock tail, then, is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters.

Again, this brief citation, while conveying all the necessary information, fails to convey the larger context, that of politicians getting the electorate drunk in order to convince them to vote for them. It’s also an example of what appears to be a “letter from the editor,” using a fictional man on the street to convey a political opinion held by the publisher. More fully, it reads:

Sir,

I observe in your paper of the 6th instant, in the account of a democratic candidate for a seat in the legislature, marked under the head of LOSS, 25 do. cocktail. Will you be obliging as to inform me what is meant by this species of refreshment? Though a stranger to you, I believe, from your general character, you will not suppose this request to be impertinent.

I have heard of a jorum, of phlegm-cutter and fog driver, of wetting the whistle, and moistening the clay, of a fillip, a spur in the head, quenching a spark in the throat, of flip, &c. but never in my life, though I have lived a good many years, did I hear of cock-tail before. Is it peculiar to a part of this country? Or is it a late invention? Is the name expressive of the effect which the drink has on a particular part of the body? Or does it signify that democrats who take the potion are turned topsyturvy, and have their heads where their tails should be? I should think the latter to be the real solution; but I am unwilling to determine finally until I receive all the information in my power [....]

                                                            Yours,

                                                            A SUBSCRIBER

As I make it a point, never to publish any thing (under my editorial head) but what I can explain, I shall not hesitate to gratify the curiosity of my inquisitive correspondent :—Cock tail, then, is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters—it is vulgarly called bittered sling, and supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said also, to be of great use to a democratic candidate: because, a person having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow any thing else.

                                                            Edit. Bal.

(Note: do not read any intent of present-day, political commentary in my including this fuller citation. The Democratic party described here is that of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, not that of Joe Biden and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)

Originally, the alcoholic sense of cocktail referred specifically to a sling, that is a mixture of gin or other spirit, sugar, and grated nutmeg. By about 1850 it started to refer to any mixed drink, and all specificity to a sling was gone by 1900. Also, by the turn of the twentieth century it was being used for mixtures of food like a fruit cocktail.

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Sources:

The Balance, and Columbian Repository, vol. 5. Hudson, New York: Harry Croswell, 1806, 146.

“Express from Paris.” The Morning Post (London), 9 April 1849, 7.

Lawrence, John. A Philosophical and Practical Treatise on Horses, and On the Moral Duties of Man Towards the Brute Creation, vol 1 of 2. London: T.N. Longman, 1796, 89. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Lockhart, J.G. Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, vol. 2 of 7. Boston: Otis, Broaders and Co., 1837, 144–45. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Classified Ads.” London Evening-Post. 17 February 1750, 2. Gale News Vault.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2019, s.v. cocktail, adj. and n.

Surtees, Robert Smith [not credited]. “Jorrocks at Cheltenham.” New Sporting Magazine, 8.47, March 1835, 320.

Photo credit: Copyright, Ralf Roletschek, 2015, used with permission.

irregardless

14 July 2020

The word that grammar pedants most love to hate is irregardless. The origin of the term is not known for sure, but the word is most likely a blend of irrespective and regardless. (For a discussion on the use of the word, see this post.)

We do know that irregardless is originally an Americanism that appeared at the end of the eighteenth century and starts to appear regularly in newspapers in the latter half of the nineteenth. Objections to use of the word begin in 1927, some seventy-five years after the word had become established in American speech and writing and well over a century after its coinage. It didn’t start out as jocular term or a result of “uneducated” speech, but originally had a decent pedigree of appearing in respectable, edited publications before anyone thought of objecting to its use.

The oldest known use of the word is in a poem about a woman and her cat that appears in a Charleston, South Carolina newspaper on 23 June 1795:

But death, irregardless of tenderest ties,
Resolv’d the good Betty, at length, to bereave:
He strikes—the poor fav’rite reluctantly dies!
Breaks her mistress’s heart—both descend to the grave.

And here are some examples of the word’s use from the mid nineteenth century, the period when irregardless started to be regularly used:

This commentary on political ambition was originally published in the Richmond Enquirer, and was reprinted in the Daily Union on 13 July 1849:

Or is it because the bloodhound spirit of an office-seeker will track any victim so that he can but secure the spoils irregardless of any incumbent, however faithful, honest, or competent he be?

And this reminiscence in Harper’s Weekly by a servant, born in Kent, England but resident in the U.S. for twenty-two years:

I thought the young lady was the squire’s daughter where Master Ralph was visiting; but when he came to stay at Chatham, and I was more with him, I found she was the daughter of a tradesman, and her name was Brown; and then I knew that Master Ralph had no business with her, and I felt it my stern duty, irregardless of all results, to break off this acquaintance.

And this from an 1865 Civil War history of a Massachusetts regiment:

It is the privilege of a Surgeon to remain in the rear in time of battle, and some Surgeons regard it, I believe, as a regulation; but our Surgeon, irregardless alike of either privilege or regulation, in his desire to aid in beating the enemy, allowed his enthusiasm to get mastery over his prudence.

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Sources:

“The ‘Blood-hound’ Spirit.” Daily Union (Washington, DC), 13 July 1849, 3. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Cushman, Frederick E. History of the 58th Regt. Massachusetts Vols. Washington, DC: Gibson Brothers, 1865, 18. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Merriam-Webster.com, s.v. irregardless. Accessed 13 July 2020.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1994, s.v. irregardless.

“The Old Woman and her Tabby.” City Gazette and Daily Advertiser (Charleston, SC), 23 June 1795, 3. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. irregardless, adj. and adv.

Willis, James. “A Story of Our Family.” Harper’s Weekly, vol. 3, no. 110, 5 February 1859, 92. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

cloud nine

13 July 2020

A Dixie Dugan comic strip from 6 June 1946 using the phrase on cloud 9

To be on cloud nine is to be in euphoric state. Many people speculate on the origin of the phrase, wondering what the significance of the number nine might be, but the origin and underlying metaphor is rather straightforward, and the use of the number nine is arbitrary. The nine really doesn’t stand for anything (cf. the whole nine yards). The phrase as we know it is relatively recent, appearing in 1930s American slang, but it has predecessors going back the seventeenth century.

In the seventeenth century, the phrase in the clouds could be used to refer to things that were either unknown or mystical, that is things known only to God in the heavens. For example, Nathaniel Bacon, writing in 1651 about the reign of Henry IV (1399–1413):

However, for the present the House of Lancaster hath the Crown intailed, and the Inheritance is left in the Clouds to be revealed in due time.

And by the nineteenth century, to have one’s head in the clouds is to be unconcerned with practical, down-to-earth matters, a phrase that is still very much in use. From Maria Edgeworth’s 1806 novel Leonora:

What the devil would you have of your wife, my dear L——? You would be loved above all earthly considerations; honour, duty, virtue, and religion inclusive, would you? and you would have a wife with her head in the clouds, would you? I wish you were married to one of the all-for-love heroines, who would treat you with bowl and dagger every day of your life.

The addition of a number to the cloud occurs in American slang in the 1930s and was likely influenced by or a play on seventh heaven. Albin Pollock’s 1935 glossary of criminal slang, The Underworld Speaks, records:

Cloud eight, befuddled on account of drinking too much liquor.

And two years later, on 15 August 1937, sportswriter Harry Borba subtracts one and connects the resulting on cloud seven with the older sense of being left to fate or the gods:

But the subject of harangue—and we’re sure they argue up there on cloud seven—is not about the futility of war to end all wars. It is about that unending warfare between universities and college football.

On 12 November 1944, gossip columnist Hedda Hopper uses on cloud eight to refer to the divinity that is Greta Garbo when relaying a tale about the actress during the filming of the 1927 silent movie Love, an adaptation of Anna Karenina:

Within a few minutes Goulding was at work on her hair, with his mouth full of hairpins. That did it. By that simple device Garbo, momentarily stunned, got off her perch somewhere on cloud eight and became one of the people.

Finally, on 6 June 1946 the comic strip Dixie Dugan uses on cloud nine to describe a lovestruck woman:

Wow—Is she on cloud 9—Maybe he is worth waiting for.

The following year, a storyline in the Dixie Dugan comic featured an airplane named Cloud 9.

And in 1951, jazz singer Julia Lee, famous for her edgy and risqué lyrics, recorded the song “Pipe Dreams (Up on Cloud Nine)” about an opium high. The phrase doesn’t appear in the song itself, only in the title. (At least, it isn’t in the recorded version I have heard.)

And on 25 March 1952 a syndicated description of the NCAA basketball tournament appearing in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and other papers, uses on cloud nine to describe a team’s hopes for victory:

Clyde Lovellette, the cloud scraping Kansan with 27 nicknames, is the terror of the NCAA basketball tournament before he has even lifted a finger.

“After we won the western regional in Corvallie, Ore.,” said Coach Bobby Feerick of Santa Clara today, “we were on cloud nine. We came down fast when we saw Lovellette there.”

At about this time, nine becomes cemented as the canonical number in the phrase and uses of cloud seven and cloud eight fade away. So, it seems that the number nine has no actual significance. Perhaps the fact that nine has mystical connotations in some numerological systems helped it beat out the competition from seven or eight, but any such connection doesn’t seem to factor into the phrase’s meaning.

Some have contended that in the 1930s the U.S. Weather Bureau promulgated a nine-tiered system of cloud classification, but I have been unable to find any such classification scheme. In 1910 the International Meteorological Committee met in Paris and put forward definitions for ten different cloud types, and these were republished by the U.S. Weather Bureau in 1928, but the ten definitions can be combined into a larger number of cloud types. And the phrases cloud one, cloud two, cloud three, etc. are not used. Currently, the U.S. National Weather Service classifies clouds into thirty-two types. While it is within the realm of possibilities that the meteorological schema influenced the phrase, there is no reason to think that it did.

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Sources:

Bacon, Nathaniel. The Continuation of An Historicall Discourse of the Government of England. London: Thomas Roycroft for Matthew Walbanck and Henry Twyford, 1651, 128. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Borba, Harry. “Borba-Rometer.” San Francisco Examiner, 15 August 1937, SF5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Capital Buyer’s Guide” (advertisement). Billboard, 27 January 1951, 19.

Edgeworth, Maria. Leonora, vol. 2. London: Joseph Johnson, 1806, 24.

“Giant Kansas Cager Feared by NCAA Foes.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 25 March 1952, 14. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. cloud nine n.

Hopper, Hedda. “Thar’s Gold in That Thar Goulding.” Chicago Daily Tribune, 12 November 1944, D2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

McEvoy, J.P. and John H. Striebel. Dixie Dugan (comic strip). Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 6 June 1946, 12. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

———. Dixie Dugan (comic strip). Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 23 April 1947, 12. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“NOAA/NWS and NASA’s Sky Watcher Chart.” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and National Air and Space Administration. Accessed 13 May 2020. https://gewa.gsfc.nasa.gov/clubs/sailing/IMAGES/MISCELLANEOUS/CloudChart.pdf.

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

———, third edition, June 2013, s.v., head, n.1.

Pollock, Albin J. The Underworld Speaks. San Francisco: Prevent Crime Bureau, 1935.

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Weather Bureau. Cloud Forms According to the International System of Classification. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1928. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

church key

A church key manufactured by a Pennsylvania brewery, c. 1940

10 July 2020

Church key is American slang for a bottle or can opener. Prior to the advent of twist-off bottle caps and pull-tabs on drink cans, a device was needed to open those containers. A typical church key has a round bottle opener at one end and a triangular punch for opening holes in cans, and as such resembles an old-style key, such as those found in churches. Hence the name. Of course, the irony of a church key opening a beer can played into the coining and spread of the term.

While the devices are older, the term dates to at least 1951 when it appears in an article on barroom slang in the American West. The mention is brief, just a definition:

Church key: A bottle opener.

Of course, the fact that the first record of it is in a glossary means that the term was circulating in speech for some time before this.

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Sources:

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v., church n.3. https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/dvmfbpi#e5f3nda

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2011, s.v. church key, n.

Wallrich, William J. “Barroom Slang from the Upper Rio Grande.” Western Folklore, 10.2, April 1951, 170, DOI: 10.2307/1497973.

Photo credit: unknown photographer, a. 1977, public domain image.