cracker

27 July 2020

Cracker is a derogatory name given to poor, white people of the American South.

The verb to crack goes back to the Old English cracian, which appears in several texts glossing the Latin verb crepare, meaning to rattle, creak, or clatter. In Middle English, the sense of speaking or making an utterance was added to the original sense, presumably from the metaphor of the sound of a voice. This sense of crack survives in the phrase to crack a joke. For instance, in his Reeve’s Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer writes:

For which this millere stal bothe mele and corn
An hundred tyme moore than biforn;
For therbiforn he stal but curteisly,
But now he was a theef outrageously,
For which the wardeyn chidde and made fare.
But therof sette the millere nat a tare;
He craketh boost, and swoor it was nat so.

(For which this miller stole both meal and grain
A hundred times more than before
For before this he stole only decently,
But now he was thieving outrageously,
For which the warden (of the college) complained and made a fuss.
But the miller thought that was not worth a weed;
He cracked loud talk and swore it was not so.)

And a craker is someone who boasts. The Promptorium parvulorum, a Latin-English dictionary from 1440 has this entry:

Schakere, crakere, or bost makere: Iactator

Shakespeare uses cracker to mean someone who boasts or otherwise talks loudly in his play King John:

What cracker is this same that deafes our eares
With this abundance of superfluous breath?

The connection to the American South rises in the mid eighteenth century. In June 1752 an anonymous poet, signing himself as Jack Cracker, pens this poem attacking another with whom he was having a dispute:

A SQUIB
“Each Critic, come! your Squib provide,
“See Pindar there in Triumph ride!”
Since fairly, Friend, you thus Invite;
With due Respect I cast my Mite.
Whoever reads you, Pindar, over
May have the Pleasure to discover
Your Worms resemble Men so well,
That which is which no Man can tell.
Which makes some People think your Rants
Want Worming like Tobacco-Plants.
But Critics will not be so rude, To [sic] blame so just Similitude.
So when you Critics praise, pray name us
Your Bookworms, for Destruction famous; And in Return we you will dub
Our most triumphant swaggering Grub.
JACK CRACKER.

And a British officer, Captain Gavin Cochrane wrote the following in a report to the Earl of Dartmouth in 1766:

I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls [sic] on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode.

So, the insult comes from a stereotypical tendency to boast and speak loudly.

Cracker is often conflated with corncracker, another term for a poor, white farmer, and cracker, which comes first, undoubtedly influenced the later term. Literally, a corn cracker is a corn mill, and by extension a person who grinds corn, and more specifically, one who makes or drinks corn whiskey.

The literal use of corn cracker, meaning a grist mill, appears in this 1829 description of a cider mill in the periodical New York Farmer:

By a simple and cheap appendage it is converted into a corn cracker: Taking it altogether, it is in our view, the cheapest and most convenient article of the kind, yet brought before the public.

And the use of the term as an epithet for a poor farmer appears as early as June 1835 in the Western Review:

There is neither wit nor meaning in the terms Hoosier, Sucker, Corncracker, and Buckeye, which have become so current.

But the idea of cracking corn is probably most familiar to people today from the antebellum and racist minstrel song “Jim Crack Corn, or the Blue Tail Fly.” In the song, predominantly performed by whites in blackface, a slave celebrates his master’s death by getting drunk. The slave owner was thrown from a horse because it was bitten by a blue-tail fly, which the slave was supposed to keep away from the horse. The song, since it was written and performed by whites, was undoubtedly intended to be critical of the ungrateful and lazy slave, but it can also be read as subversive, with the slave having given the master what is coming to him and celebrating that he got away with it:

When I was young I us’d to wait
On Massa and hand him de plate;
Pass down de bottle when he git dry,
And bresh away de blue tail fly.
     Jim crack corn I don’t care,
     Jim crack corn I don’t care
     Jim crack corn I don’t care
     Ole Massa gone away.

An’ when he ride in de arternoon,
I foller wid a hickory broom;
De poney being berry shy,
When bitten by de blue tail fly.
     Jim crack corn &c.

One day he rode aroun’ de farm,
De flies so numerous dey did swarm;
One chance to bite ‘im on the thigh,
De debbie take dat blu [sic] tail fly.
     Jim crack corn &c.

De poney run, he jump an’ pitch,
An’ tumble massa in de ditch;
He died, an’ de jury wonder’d why
De verdic was de blue tail fly
     Jim crack corn &c.

So, cracker does not come from corncracker, as many believe. Rather the use of the latter as an epithet was influenced by the former.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

“ART. 150. —Making Cider—Description and Drawing of Thurston’s Improved Grater Cider Mill.” New York Farmer, October 1829. ProQuest American Periodical Series II.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Reeve’s Tale” (c. 1390). The Canterbury Tales. 1:3995–4001. The Geoffrey Chaucer Page, Harvard University, 2008.

Cracker, Jack. “A Squib.” Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg), 25 June 1752, 2. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

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

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. cracker n.3, corn n.1.

Mathews, Mitford, M. A Dictionary of Americanisms. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1951, s.v. cracker, n., 426.

Middle English Dictionary, 2018, s.v. craken, v., craker, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. cracker, n., corn-cracker, n.

Promptorium parvulorum (1440). A. L. Mayhew, ed. Early English Text Society. London: K. Apul, Trench, Trubner, and Co., 1908, 393. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Shakespeare, William. King John (c.1595). First Folio, 1623 (Folger copy no. 68). Act 1, scene 2. Folger Shakespeare Library.

Virginia Minstrels. “Jim Crack Corn, or the Blue Tail Fly.” Baltimore: F.D. Benteen, 1846. Temple Digital Collections.

cop

New York City police uniforms, 1854

25 July 2020

Why are policeman called cops? The question has vexed many, and several false etymologies have sprouted up in attempts to explain the term. But the term’s origin is rather simple really. It comes from the English dialectal verb to cop, meaning to grab or seize. Thus, a copper or cop is one who makes arrests.

The verb ultimately comes from the Latin capere, meaning to seize, to grasp. It makes its way into English legal language via Anglo-Norman French, which is no surprise as many English legal terms are legacies of the Norman Conquest. When the Normans took over, they imported their laws and legal terminology. The jargon terms writ of cape and writ of capias, referring to authorizations to seize a debtor’s property, appear in the 1419 Liber Albus (White Book), a book of laws governing the city of London:

Et al proschein Hustenge apres la tierce essone, si les tenauntz facent defalt, proces serra fait devers eaux par Graunt Cape, ou Petit Cape apres apparaunce; et altre proces, come au Comune Ley.

(And at the next Hustings after the third attempt, if the tenants default, process shall be made against them by Grand Cape; or by Petit Cape after appearance; and by other process, as at Common Law.)

And:

Et les clerks et ministres des ditz Viscountz, meyntenaunt sur les pleyntes faitz, usent de agarder Capias et autres proces envers les defendantz par tesmoignaunce des sergeauntz del dit office a ceo deputeez, sibien es les ditz Countours come a le Guyhalle. Et usee est dagarder Capias en pleyntes de dett, accompt, covenaunt, et autres accouns personelx qecouncqs.

(And it is the custom for the clerks and officers of the said Sheriffs, forthwith upon the complaint being made, to award Capias and other process against the defendants, upon testimony of sergeants deputed to the said office, as well at the said Compters at the Guildhall. And it is the custom to award Capias in complaints of debt, account, and covenant, and in all other personal actions whatsoever.)

The word wormed its way into English, first in the form of the verb to cap, which appears in a 1590 pamphlet titled Plaine Perceuall by astrologer Richard Harvey:

Speake a blooddy word in a Barbors shop, you make a forfet: and good reason too, Cap him sirra, if he pay it not. Speake a broad word or vse a grosse tearme a∣mongst huntsmen in chaze, you shall be leasht for your labor: as one that disgraceth a gentlemans pastime and game, with the termes of a heardsman.

In northern English dialect the verb became to cop. Here is a 1704 example from Edward Ward’s Dissenting Hypocrite:

Others again, like fickle Frogs,
Were weary of their Kingly Logs;
And without more ado Assaulted
Their Lawful Monarch, and Revolted:
But if the Cruel Stork should come,
He’d Tyrannize and Cop up some;
Or thro’ all Frogland cause a Croaking
Against the Doom of their Provoking.

To cop is used specifically in the sense of an arrest by a policeman in a nineteenth-century English translation of Eugène Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris:

At one o’clock in the morning I came to the Rue du Provence to hang about my lodgings, waiting until the patrol should pass, to commence my robbery, my burglary, in order to be copped!

I’m not certain of the date of this translation. I have found this passage in an 1878 translation. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), in an old entry, gives a date of 1844, but I cannot find an edition with that date. I have found an 1845 translation, however, that uses taken up instead of copped. I can’t tell if the OED is in error or if they have access to an edition that I cannot find.

In any case, there is another use of to cop meaning to be arrested by the police from the 1840s, but again there is a discrepancy in the date. Swell’s Night Guide, a guidebook to prostitution and other vices in Victorian London has this:

I means in my busines [sic], ven I pitches; and they counts me the best flag pitcher of all the shallows; and I never gets copped by the Bobbies, cos I never patters to the swells, nor the donnas; but yet I nails the browns [i.e., copper coins].

Green’s Dictionary of Slang gives this a date of 1846. The edition I found online is from 1849.

The same article in Swell’s Night Guide also uses to cop to mean to acquire:

Besides he’s been on the tramp cadge to day, and has copped a dacent swag of scran [i.e., food].

And somewhat more specific than to acquire, the verb can also mean to steal. From an Octboer 1879 article in Macmillan’s Magazine:

Some time afterwards I was taken by two pals (companions) to an orchard to cop (steal) some fruit, me being a mug (inexperienced) at the game.

And by the early twentieth century, someone copped by the police for copping fruit could cop a plea, meaning to strike a plea bargain. From the New York Times of 15 September 1921:

The break between Brindell and Stadtmuller came when the latter refused to “cop a plea of guilty” at the dictation of Brindell, who is said to have declared he had “it all fixed” for Stadtmuller to get a light sentence.

And while most would not associate copping a feel with the criminal underworld, that phrase is first recorded in Albin Pollock’s 1935 glossary of criminal slang:

Cop a feel, a presumptuous man, who will not let his hands behave when with an attractive girl.

And there is this New York Times review of Woody Allen’s 1972 film Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask that shows by that late date the phrase had fully transitioned out of underworld slang to the pages of respectable newspapers:

On the whole, Allen's approach is based on the pseudo-sophisticated notion prevalent among many New York reviewers that once sex is verbalized it no longer has to be visualized. Say a dirty word and you're striking a blow for freedom of speech, but show a dirty picture and you're peddling pornography—not that Allen is here in the vanguard of permissiveness, even linguistically, His locution "cops a feel," for example, is strictly Flatbush fifties.

Okay, so we’ve had a run-down of the verb to cop, but where does the noun meaning policeman come in? Copper is in place by the 1830s, as shown in this example from Renton Nicholson’s Cockney Adventures and Tales of London Life of 3 February 1838:

“Do it at vonce, else the coppers ’ill come,” said he of the short pipe.

So, a copper is one who cops.

It is clipped to just cop by 1859, when it appears in a satirical poem in George W. Matsell’s Vocabulum; or, the Rogues Lexicon. The poem uses the traditional Ubi sunt (where have they gone) motif:

Oh! where will be the culls of the bing
A hundred stretches hence?
The bene morts, who sweetly sing,
A hundred stretches hence?
The autum-cacklers, autum-coves
The jolly blade who wildly roves;
And where the buffer, bruiser, blowen,
And all the cops and beaks so knowin’,
A hundred stretches hence?

Despite the word’s straightforward etymology, various spurious etymologies have arisen. It’s not an acronym for Constable on Patrol, nor does it have anything to do with copper buttons on police uniforms. It quite simply comes from a policeman’s power to arrest, or cop, criminals.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2014, s.v. cape1, capias.

“Attempts to Free Bridell Aid [sic] Fail.” New York Times, 15 September 1921, 36. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Autobiography of a Thief in Thieves’ Language.” Macmillan’s Magazine, vol. 40. October 1879, 500. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. cop v., cop a... v, copper n.

Harvey, Richard. Plaine Perceuall the Peace-Maker of England. London: Eliot’s Court Press for G. Seton, 1590, 11. Early English Books Online.

“A Hundred Stretches Hence.” Vocabulum; or, the Rogues Lexicon, George W. Matsell, ed. New York: George W. Matsell and Co., 1859, 124.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. cap, v.2, cape, n.4, capias, n., cop, n.5, cop, v.3, copper, n.4.

The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories. Springfield, MA: Merriam Webster, 1991. s.v. cop.

Munimenta Gildhallæ Londoniensis; Liber Albus, Liber Custumarum, et Liber Horn, vol. 1 (1859) and vol. 3 (1862). Henry Thomas Riley, ed. London: Longman, Brown, Green Longmans, and Roberts, 1859–62, 1:181, 1:199, 3:17–18. Hathi Trust Digital Library.

“Padding Kens.” Swell’s Night Guide. London: H. Smith, 1849, 66. London Low Life, Adam Matthew.

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

Sarris, Andrew. “Everything He Thinks About Woody Allen and Isn’t Afraid to Say.” New York Times, 13 August 1972, D9. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Sue, Eugène, The Mysteries of Paris. London: George Routledge and Sons, 1873, 655. Hathi Trust Digital Library.

———, The Mysteries of Paris. Charles H. Town, translator. New York: Harper, 1843, 370. Hathi Trust Digital Library.

Ward, Edward. In Imitation of Hudibras. The Dissenting Hypocrite. London: 1704, 30. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Image Credit: Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, 7 January 1854, 7.

condom

24 July 2020

A condom is, of course, a prophylactic sheath, usually made of rubber, worn on the penis to prevent pregnancy and the transmission of infection. We all know what it is, but where the name comes from is a mystery. All we know is that the name appears in England at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Various sheath-like devices have been used, with varying degrees of success, as prophylactics since antiquity, but in the late seventeenth century people began using such devices made out of animal intestines, and these can be considered the first modern condoms. There are various references to them, without using the word condom, during that period. For instance, there is this undated handbill from the early eighteenth century advertising the wares of a certain Mrs. Philips:

She has thirty-five years experience, in the business of making and selling machines, commonly called implements of safety, which secures the health of her customers: she has likewise great choice of skins and bladders.

And there is this scene from William Burnaby’s 1701 play The Ladies Visiting-Day, in which the character Lady Lovetoy explains the new fashions and moralities to the elderly Sir Testy Dolt:

Lov.   The first thing they’ll do is will be to strip ‘em of their Country Customs, and instead of the Aukward Games of Whisk and Lue teach ‘em the more agreeable ones of Piquet, Basset, and Ombre.
Sir Test.   And instead of the clownish qualities of Modesty and Silence, teach ‘em the courtly ones of being very coquet, and very noisy.
Lov.   Buy all their Silks at an India house, their Looking-glass at Gumly’s, and all their Tea at Phillips’s.
Sir Test.   At Phillips’es! why there’s a great deal of plain dealing in your Ladyship’s Conversation!
Lov.   O’tis the new manner among us to make no secrets; our Dressing, Painting, Gallantrys, are all publick, and now a Lady wou’d no more have a Lover unknown, than she wou’d a Beauty.
Sir Test.   (Aside) A very modest Age, By-Gingo! but there is a Westminster-hall to relieve honest Men, and call Cuckold-makers to account——Then I suppose Modesty is a sort of want of Breeding among the Ladies?
Lov.   A fine Woman shou’d be above the concerns of little People; to apprehend indecency is to make it, and however free our Conversation is, a certain Assurance still justifies our words, whereas to be shock’d and to blush is the Education of a Boarding School.

Sir Testy Dolt is shocked by Lady Lovetoy’s mention of Phillips, perhaps conflating the well-known London tea house named the Green Canister, run by a different Mrs. Phillips, with the other Mrs. Philips, the purveyor of prophylactic sheaths. Or perhaps the two women were one and the same, which is suggested by Lady Lovetoy’s attitude toward sexuality.

So, it is clear that condoms, as we know them today, were available in London by 1701, but the word condom doesn’t seem to have been.

The word itself follows in the next few years. (See below regarding the claim in Wikipedia for an earlier date.) It first appears in regard to John Campbell, the 2nd Duke of Argyle, who allegedly brought a quondam with him to Edinburgh from London and proceeded to use it with gusto. We have a nineteenth-century transcript of a document from Argyle’s papers, the original now lost, that reads:

He wes made comm[issione]r to the parl[iamen]t, 6th March 1705. He brought along with him a certaine instrument called a Quondam, q[ue]ch occasioned ye debauching of a great number of Ladies of qualitie, and oy[e]r young gentlewomen.

But we don’t know when the source document was written. The copy is from the nineteenth century in the hand of Charles Sharpe and was published in 1888. From the spellings, it is obvious that Sharpe is copying a much older, Scottish document. The wes for was, oyer for other, and ye for the indicate it is well before the nineteenth century, and the quech spelling of which marks it as Scottish. The source document obviously postdates 6 March 1705, but exactly when is uncertain.

But we can say for certain the word was around by the next year. Condum appears in a 1706 poem written by John Hamilton Belhaven, A Scots Answer to a British Vision. Argyle was in favor of the Act of Union between England and Scotland, and Belhaven was not. Belhaven accuses Argyle of not only being a traitor to Scotland but, in his use of condom, also of being a symbol of newfangled decadence in his disregarding of the virtuous quondam (virtuous past):

When Reasoning’s answer’d
By Seconded Votes,
And Speeches are Banter’d
By Outfield Turn-Coats,
Then Sirenge and Condum
Come both in Request,
When Virtuous Quondam
Is Treated in Jest.

So, we have a date of first appearance of the word in 1705–06, but still no clue as to why it’s called a condom.

Etymology unknown may be an accurate conclusion, but it is unsatisfying to many. In such cases, invented etymologies tend to arise, and condom is no exception. There are multiple suggestions as to the word’s origin, none with solid evidence behind them. The earliest and probably most widespread and persistent is that it is named for its inventor, a certain doctor, or sometimes colonel, named Condom, Condon, or something similar.

The idea that it is named for its inventor dates to at least 1708, very shortly after the word’s appearance. An anonymous satire, titled Almonds for Parrots: or, a Soft Answer to a Scurrilous SATYR, call’d, St. James’s Park. With a Word or Two in Praise of Condons is published that year, and it reads, in part:

O matchless Condon! thou’st secur’d thy Fame
To last as long as Condon is a Name.
Such mighty Things are by they Influence done,
Thou ha’st the foremost of this Age out-run.
Vulcan himself has been out-stript by thee,
Thou Patron of the Paphian Diety.
For Mars’s Heroes, shining Arms he made;
But thou for Venus, takes up Vulcan’s Trade.
Superior much, thou do’st the God out-shine.
Achilles Armour cannot match with thine.
Thine makes the Knight invulnerable still;
And Condon triumph’s o’er Apollo’s Skill.
Sons of the Sun, no more in vain pretend
To heal what all your Art can never mend.
No more to Hermes mighty Skill aspire;
Condon has quench’d the heat of Venus’s Fire,
And yet preserv’d the Flame of Love’s Desire.

Hail! mighty Leader of the Condon Crew,
Who charge the Fair, arm’d Cap-a pee, like you!
To noble A——le first you did impart
The secret Knowledge of your saving Art:
Which, had you taught to O——r——ry before,
You’d sav’d his Calfs, not such as Israel did adore,
But such as he has offer’d to his Wh——.

[...]

Long had these Æsculapian Heroes vex’d
Their leisure Thoughts, and long their Minds perplex
To search the Cause why Nature had assign’d
To Men and Brutes, a Gut the Learn’d call, Blind;
Till Condon, for the Great Invasion fam’d,
Found out its use, and after him ‘twas nam’d,
Long will thy Story last, and thou reman
Dear to posterity, a Matchless Man,
Like him at Ephesus, that burnt the sacred Fane.

The A——le here is undoubtedly Argyle, and the Wh—— is obviously whore. The O——r——ry is probably a reference to Charles Boyle, the fourth Earl of Orrery, or perhaps to his older brother Lionel, the third earl, who had died in 1703. The poem implies some misfortune befell Orrery which would have been avoided had he used a condom.

Another reference to an inventor, albeit one that does not mention his name because to do so is “obscene,” comes from the pages of the broadsheet The Tatler of 13 May 1709. The source is important to understanding this reference, as The Tatler was often filled with gossip and invented, satirical stories. It cannot be considered a reliable source for facts:

Not but there are considerable Men appear in all Ages, who, for some eminent Quality or Invention, deserve the Esteem and Thanks of the Publick. Such a Benefactor is a Gentleman of this House [i.e., Will’s Coffee House], who is observ’d by the Surgeons with much Envy; for he has invented an Engine for the Prevention of Harms by Love-Adventures, and has, by great Care and Application, made it an Immodesty to name his Name. This Act of Self-denial has gain’d this worthy Member of the Commonwealth a great Reputation. Some Lawgivers have departed from their Abodes for ever, and commanded the Observation of their Laws till their Return; others have us’d other Artifices to fly the Applause of their Merit; but this Person shuns Glory with greater Address, and has by giving his Engine his own Name, made it obscene to speak of him more. However, he is rank’d among, and receiv’d by the modern Wits, as a great Promoter of Gallantry and Pleasure.

But some evidently believed in such an inventor. Daniel Turner, in his 1717 treatise on syphilis makes mention of the condum and its eponymous inventor:

As to the Preservative in general, I have this only to add farther, that whether any such Thing be possible or not, I shall not take upon me absolutely to determine. But when a certain Gentleman tells us, That it will become every Man to become modest, when at any time a Method of preventing may be recommended upon due Experience: I can’t forbear Enquiring, whether we may expect the Discovery from a Modest Man, or what Reward even a common moral Man will deem him worthy, (without consulting Casuists) that shal first publish it to the World? and indeed when it is revealed, I leave every honest Man to judge of the Consequence; tho’ I think there is no great Danger of such an invention. The Condum being the best, if not the only Preservative our Libertines have found out at present; and yet, by reason of its blunting the Sensation, I have heard some of them acknowledge, that they had often chose to risque a Clap, rather than engage cum Hastis sic clypeatis [i.e., with the spear thus shielded].

So did a man named Condom or Condon invent the device, or at least introduce it to England from the Continent? Many have searched, but no plausible candidate exists. Searches of lists of physicians and surgeons and of army colonels have turned up nothing. More likely, the idea of an eponymous inventor was created in order to explain a word that had no clear origin. Almonds for Parrots and the piece in The Tatler were most likely written tongue in cheek, and by 1717 more serious people like Turner had absorbed the idea as truth.

Three other explanations, none of them having any evidence to back them up, seem to circulate. All three were first proposed in the early twentieth century. The first is that it named after Condom, a town in France. The town’s only claim to fame is that of seventeenth-century theologian Jacques Bénigne Boussuet, the Bishop of Condom. The town has no particular association with sex or birth control, other than the stereotype that things related to sex come from France. The second is that the word is from the Latin condus, a storage container. The third is that it is from the Persian kondü or kendü, an earthenware vessel. All three seem to be rather desperate reaches for an explanation.

The Wikipedia article on the condom claims a 1666 date for the word’s appearance in English, attributing it the “English Birth Rate Commission.” The footnote is to a 2007 popular-press book that gives no source information. I have found no record of condom or any reasonable variation thereof from the seventeenth century, and the “English Birth Rate Commission” does not sound like the name of a body from that era. There was a “National Birth Rate Commission” in existence c.1920, and perhaps that is what is being referred to. But if that commission made such a claim, it was undoubtedly in error. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that condoms were available in London in 1666, but there is no evidence the name is that old.

In the end, we’re left with the answer of etymology unknown. While that may not satisfy, the journey to get to the non-solution has been rather fun.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

My thanks to Jack Lynch of Rutgers University for his help with my analysis of Almonds for Parrots and the history of the Earls of Orrery.

Allardyce, Alexander, ed. Letters from and to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, vol. 2 of 2. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1888, 472. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Almonds for Parrots: or, a Soft Answer to a Scurrilous SATYR, call’d, St. James’s Park. With a Word or Two in Praise of Condons. London: 1708, 5–6.

Belhaven, John Hamilton. A Scots Answer to a British Vision. Edinburgh: 1706. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Bickerstaff, Isaac. The Tatler. No. 15, 13 May 1709. In The Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff Esq., vol 1 of 2. London: John Morphew, 1710. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Burnaby William. The Ladies Visiting-Day. London: Peter Buck, 1701, act 3, 27. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Kruck, William E. Looking for Dr. Condom. Publication of the American Dialect Society (PADS), 66. U of Alabama Press: 1981.

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

Turner, Daniel. Syphilis. A Practical Dissertation on the Venereal Disease. London: 1717, 73–74. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Wikipedia, accessed 23 May 2020, s.v. Condom.

commando

Men of No. 4 Commando after a raid on the French coast near Boulogne, 22 April 1942

23 July 2020

Commandos are elite, special operations soldiers, specializing in raids and operations behind enemy lines. Or at least that’s the prevalent definition today. But the word has its roots in Dutch colonial oppression in South Africa.

The word comes from the Portuguese, meaning a command or a party of soldiers. It was adopted into Afrikaans, the South African dialect of Dutch, in the sense of an armed party, specifically that of a local, paramilitary militia. It first appears in English in 1790, in a translation of naturalist François Le Vaillant’s Travels from the Cape of Good Hope. This citation is also an excellent example of how the brief usage citations found in dictionaries often do not convey the entire sense and context of usage. The Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED’s) citation, taken from a 1791 work that excepts the 1790 translation, simply says:

“A colonist,” says he [sc. Le Vaillant], “who lives [...] up the country [...] intreats a commando, which is a permission to go, with the help of his neighbours, to retake his property.”

And the OED’s definition for this sense reads:

An armed and usually mounted party of men, typically civilians, mustered, esp. against indigenous peoples, for forays, reprisals, and the recovery of stolen cattle; an expedition undertaken by such a party.

But the relevant passage in Le Vaillant’s book reads, in full:

A Colonist who lives two hundred leagues up the country, arrives at the Cape, to complain that the Caffrees have taken all his cattle, and intreats a Commando, which is permission to go, with the help of his neighbours, and re-take his property; the Governor, who either does not, or feigns not to understand the trick, adheres strictly to the facts expressed in the petition; a preamble of regular information would occasion long delays—a permission is easily given—'tis but a word—the fatal word is written, which proves a sentence of death to a thousand poor savages, who have no such defence or resources as their persecutors.

Thus the monster (regardless of religion) having compleated his business at the Cape, returns with an inhuman joy to his villainous accomplices, and extends his Commando as far as his interest requires; the massacres this occasions, is but the signal for other butcheries; for should the Caffrees have the audacity to attempt regaining any part of their lost herds. the confusion recommences, and only ceases when there are no more victims or no more plunder.

(Note that Caffrees, as spelled by Le Vaillant’s translator, is a highly offensive term today, akin to the N-word in American English.)

The brief citation does not convey the brutality with which the Dutch settlers oppressed the indigenous peoples of the region. Le Vaillant was clearly shocked by the Dutch tactics, so this is not a case of applying twenty-first century morality onto an earlier age.  The OED’s definition and clipped citation are a whitewashing of the horrors of European colonial practices. (Note that the definition was written after the 1989 second edition, which reads similarly but is different; so, this is not a case of an old nineteenth-century definition just not being updated.)

Commando continued to be used in English in this sense through to the end of the nineteenth century. Then the Boer War of 1899–1902 saw the word used to refer to units in the Boer army, especially paramilitary, militia units. For instance, from the Edinburgh Evening News of 2 October 1899:

Trustworthy information has reached camp that the Boers intend attacking Dundee at an early date, and that a commando at Buffalo bridge has been detailed for this duty, and is only waiting for reinforcements.

It is during this war that the word is introduced to the British public at large, and the number of uses of the word skyrocketed. For instance, the Hansard Corpus of speeches in the British parliament records six uses of commando in the 1890s, but a total of eighty-six in the decade 1900–09.

I have also found a use of the paramilitary/militia sense of commando used in a non-South-African context. During World War II, the London Times uses the word to refer to unit of Greek resistance fighters on Crete in May 1941:

On report says that Greek passion reached almost a sublime intensity at one moment when a little half-armed commando called on a heavy concentration of German machine-gunners to surrender.

But this is not the common use of commando in that war, which introduces the sense of a unit of special operations troops, or the soldiers constituting such a unit. Winston Churchill was the first to use this sense of the word that have a record of, but he did not coin the term as it is clear from his use that this sense was already in use. On 2 July 1940, Churchill wrote to General Ismay about the German seizure of the Channel Islands:

Plans should be studied to land secretly by night on the islands and kill or capture the invaders. This is exactly one of the exploits for which the Commandos would be suited.

The name was undoubtedly adopted out of memory of the ferocity of Boer resistance in the earlier war, and the adoption resulted in commando being valorized and reclaimed as a positive term.

The existence of the special operations commando units was made public in late 1941. This mention appears in Aberdeen Press and Journal of 11 October 1941:

The secret of the “Commandos” has just been released. For more than a year they have been in existence—specially selected bodies of what the War Office last night called “Shock Troops”—men put through the most intensive training that any units of the British Army have had to undergo. [...] Men of the Commandos must be tough—as tough as the old South African Commandos during the Boer War.

From this British use doing World War II, commando has grown to unofficially refer to special operations troops and units of any nation.

It has also developed a slang sense. The phrase to go commando, meaning to forgo wearing underwear, was first identified in U.S. student slang in 1974 by linguist Connie Eble. The phrase was made famous in the 26 September 1996 episode of the sitcom Friends, “The One Where No One’s Ready,” in which the character Joey says:

It's a rented tux. Okay? I'm not gonna go commando in another man's fatigues.

The connection between commandos and underwear is uncertain. It could be a reference to the tough nature of the soldiers who don’t need comfortable clothing, or perhaps to the difficulty in obtaining fresh clothing during long-range patrols, or it simply could be a reference to being daring and unconventional.

So, commando has undergone quite a journey, from Dutch colonial oppression to elite soldiers to students going without underwear.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

A Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles. Oxford University Press, 1996, s.v. commando n.

“The Coming War.” Edinburgh Evening News, 2 October 1899, 2.

Davies, Mark. (2015) Hansard Corpus. Part of the SAMUELS project.

Divine, A.D. “‘Commandos’ Our Secret Shock Troops. Press and Journal (Aberdeen), 11 October 1941, 4.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. commando adv.

Internet Movie Database (IMDb), accessed 22 May 2020.

Le Vaillant, François. Travels from the Cape of Good Hope, vol. 1 of 2. London: William Lane, 1790, 355–57. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Matter, Kathy. “Slang: The Language of Students.” Lafayette Journal and Courier (Indiana), 22 October 1989, 41.

“No Respite Struggle for Crete.” Times (London), 26 May 1941, 4.

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

Photo credit: Imperial War Museum.

colonel

Civil War-era (1860s) insignia of a U.S. Army (Union) colonel

22 July 2020

In most military organizations, colonel is the officer rank immediately below that of brigadier general. (Ironically, in the U.S. Army a brigade is commanded by a colonel, not a brigadier general.) Colonel is a sixteenth century borrowing from French, which got it from Italian. It would be an unremarkable etymology except for the word’s pronunciation. Colonel has an < l > that is not pronounced. Present day British pronunciation is / ˈkəːnl /, and U.S. pronunciation is / ˈkəɹn(ə)l /. Where does the / ɹ / phoneme come from and what happened to the / l /?

The word originally comes from the Italian colonnello, which is from the root colonna, or column, and a colonnello was originally the commander of a column of infantry. When the word was borrowed into French it became coronnel through a process called dissimilation. That is, when a word has a repeated sound, in this case a double / l /, the first of them will tend to disappear or change. To give another example, dissimilation is why many people don’t pronounce the first / ɹ / in February. In the Romance languages, when a word has a double / l /, the first often becomes an / ɹ /. Both / l / and / ɹ / are liquid phonemes and frequently interchange.

When colonel first appears in English it is with the < r > spelling. From a 1548 letter from Thomas Fisher to the Duke of Somerset regarding the Siege of Haddington, a battle in War of Rough Wooing (which is one of my favorite names for a war, second only to the War for Jenkins’s Ear, but I digress):

Emonge the whiche, there was slaine in the base courte a very nere kynesman of the Ringraves, who being uppon the first repulse left behind ded in the courte, certen of the worthiest Almaynes at the desire of their coronell, with a new showte eftsones approached and reentred the same, of purpose to fetche awey his said kynesman.

But in the early modern era, it was common for spelling to be altered to reflect a word’s etymology. Hence, the < b > in debt, from the Latin debitum. In the case of colonel, the < l > was reinserted in the spelling, although the pronunciation remained unchanged. We can see this a few decades later in Richard Knolles 1603 Generall Historie of the Turkes:

Amongst others of the nobilitie called to counsell, was Michaell Paleologus (of whom we haue before spoken) much superiour to the rest, as descended of the imperiall house of the Comneni, a man of a cheerefull countenance, gracious, and courteous, and withall exceeding bountifull and liberall, whereby he easily woon the hearts of all men in generall, but especially of the colonels, captaines, and other martiall men, commaunders in the armie.

This old practice of using etymology, rather than pronunciation, to guide spelling is one of the reasons that English spelling is so perniciously haphazard. But before you jump on the spelling-reform bandwagon, remember that processes like dissimilation are constantly occurring. Pronunciation is always changing and trying to keep spelling up to date with the latest changes (not to mention whose pronunciation you will use) is a fool’s errand.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Ellis, Henry. Original Letters Illustrative of English History, third series, vol. 3. London: Richard Bentley, 1846, 295–96. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Knolles, Richard. The Generall Historie of the Turkes. London: Adam Islip, 1603, 111. Early English Books Online.

Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories, 1991, s.v. colonel.

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

Photo credit: U.S. National Archives.