ethnic / social cleansing

17 September 2020

The current use of ethnic cleansing as a euphemism for genocide dates to the early 1990s and the war in the Balkans. But the phrase has antecedents that stretch back over a century. While phrases using cleansing have not always been tantamount to genocide, they often have been euphemisms for pacifying or even displacing the lower classes and undesirable elements in a society.

The calque of the Serbo-Croatian etničko čišćenje first appears in the Washington Post on 2 August 1991:

The Croatian political and military leadership issued a statement Wednesday declaring that Serbia’s “aim ... is obviously the ethnic cleansing of the critical areas that are to be annexed to Serbia.”

The use of similar language in the Balkans dates to the early 1980s, as this use of ethnically clean from the New York Times of 12 July 1982 shows. It’s a calque of the Albanian political slogan Kosova etnikisht e pastër (an ethnically clean Kosovo):

''The nationalists have a two-point platform,'' according to Becir Hoti, an executive secretary of the Communist Party of Kosovo, ''first to establish what they call an ethnically clean Albanian republic and then the merger with Albania to form a greater Albania.''

(The slogan is in Albanian, but it’s disputed whether or not it was a genuine slogan of Albanians in Kosovo or the work of Serbian propagandists intent on fear-mongering.)

Unfortunately, similar euphemisms are older. The Nazis, no surprise, used the term Säuberungsaktion (cleansing process) as a euphemism for genocide, as this translation in the American Political Science Review of April 1936 attests:

In Berlin, for example, there was a cleansing process (Säuberungsaktion), directed against Marxists, Jews, and others who were alleged to be enemies of the state.

And the standalone cleansing as a euphemism for genocide is a bit older. From the same journal of August 1935:

At the same time, municipal administration was purged of Jewish, republican, socialist, and other “unreliable” elements. No statistics are available on the cleansing of the professional civil service.

Even older is the term social cleansing, which dates to the late nineteenth century and refers to improving the material lot of the disadvantaged in society as means to prevent revolution and discord. We have this from the Daily Northwestern (Oshkosh, Wisconsin) of 20 April 1887:

The men of honest intentions in the line of reform and improvement are coming to the front, and the blatant, foul-mouthed, blood-seeking frauds and imposters and nihilists are being relegated to the rear. The great social fermentation is going on, and the scum is rapidly being boiled out and slung into the waste hole. The purifying process is progressing admirably. Things will work themselves out all right under the guidance and intelligence of the American people, and the country will be better for the social cleansing it has had.

And this from a December 1895 article on the “Colored Children in the District of Columbia”:

The next two persons interviewed were a gentleman and his wife, who began work for and with the colored people in the old days of the Freedman’s Bureau, and who have been actively engaged in it for thirty years. They seem to have lived and labored through those years firm in the faith that the forces at work for the uplifting and humanity must and will prevail; that with moral and social cleansing will come physical regeneration and the full reward of those how have learned to labor and wait. They attribute the present difficulties to the awful effects of slavery; and hold that beneath skins, black or white, human nature is the same.

And this from the Daily Alaska Dispatch of 28 October 1909:

Those anarchists we have and have had came to us from abroad, where they were bred by reason of abuses against which anarchy is a violent and unreasoning protest. What the world needs is a political and social cleansing of those spots that afford inspiration to this doctrine of chaos.

While ostensibly for the benefit of the poor, such efforts often led to what we know call gentrification and displacement and removal of those whom the programs were supposed to benefit. And there is this, advocating for government spending for social cleansing in the pages of Once a Week of 12 January 1892:

The Reform movement, just inaugurated in New York City, aims to wipe out the slums, and on their sites to lay out parks and playgrounds for the children of the poor; to enlist those millionaires who have no other earthly use for a fraction of their millions in the work of making New York a better place to live in. Government patronage and indorsement and legal sanction, by means of penalties and real estate condemnations, in cases of slums in all large cities, is called for. Rivers and harbors are deepened and repaired by Government appropriations—why not Government appropriations for social cleansing purposes? Men of money will find it in their interest to co-operate in this work. During their lifetime they should do it. They will make money by doing it.

And much later, there is this from the Richmond Times-Dispatch of 2 June 1930:

“In India we find those who worship the plow, because he sees he gets some benefit from the plow.” Said Mr. Brunk. “The carpenter worships his tools, because he gets some benefit from those tools. Worship is the means to the end with those people. The only hope for their social cleansing and the alleviation and banishment of their poverty and ignorance is through the missionary.”

But reformists within the establishment did not have a monopoly on social cleansing. In the early years of the twentieth century, the term also appears in Marxist writing, referring to refer to the toppling of capitalism. We have this from the Socialist Labor Party’s Daily People of 12 September 1905:

Vice tribute is said to be levied in the city as of old. Still, it is impossible to convince the reformers that what is wanted is not reform but revolution. Then a thorough social cleansing will be possible.

And from the same paper on 14 January 1914:

Finally, obedient to the behest that self cleansing is a prerequisite for social cleansing, Union No. 49 begins house-cleaning at home, lays intrepidly and with integrity of purpose the finger upon the serious defects of its own International Union; and urges its fellow wage slaves in the Typographical, as well as in all other unions, to hasten to do likewise, and, by education and, organization, join hands in the requisite joint effort to overthrow the social nightmare of the Capitalist Regimen.

So, while ethnic cleansing is a straight-up euphemism for genocide, the milder social cleansing, while sometimes arising out of the best of intentions, often produced a similar, albeit less extreme, result, that is the purging of undesirable elements from a society.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Daily People (New York), 12 September 1905, 2. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Ford and I.T.U. No. 49.” Daily People (New York), 14 January 1914, 2. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Harden, Blaine. “Croatian Militia Falling Back as Conflict with Serbs Intensifies.” Washington Post, 2 August 1991, A22. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Howe, Marvine. “Exodus of Serbians Stirs Province in Yugoslavia.” New York Times, 12 July 1982, A8. ProQuest.

Lepawsky, Albert. “The Nazis Reform the Reich.” The American Political Science Review, 30.2, April 1936, 346. JSTOR.

Lewis, Herbert W. “Colored Children of the District of Columbia.” The Charities Review, 5.2, 1 December 1895, 95. ProQuest.

“The New Political Party.” Once a Week. 12 January 1892, 2. ProQuest.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2002, s.v. ethnic cleansing, n.; March 2014, s.v. ethnically, adv.

“Pastor Sees India Fertile Field for Missionaries.” Richmond Times-Dispatch (Virginia), 2 June 1930, 3. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“The Red Flag Crowd.” Daily Northwestern (Oshkosh, Wisconsin), 20 April 1887, 2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Remove the Inspiration.” Daily Alaska Dispatch (Juneau), 28 October 1909, 2. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Wells, Roger H. “Municipal Government in National Socialist Germany.” The American Political Science Review, 29.4, August 1935, 653. JSTOR.

elephant / lions, to see the

16 September 2020

To see the elephant or to see the lions mean to have experience in life, to be worldly and world weary, to have seen so much that nothing surprises. To see the lions is the older phrase and originated in Britain, where it has remained. The elephant version is originally American but has since spread to Britain as well.

To see the lions was originally literal, referring to lions that were kept in the Tower of London. The menagerie in the Tower was established by King John, and the earliest record of lions being kept there is from 1210. The Tower menagerie lasted until the nineteenth century, when the animals were transferred to the London Zoo.

John Smith, of Jamestown and Pocahontas fame, records a literal visit to see the Tower lions in 1629. It’s a bittersweet story of an animal’s continuing love for the man who raised it despite being subsequently kept in the intolerable conditions that prevailed in old zoos:

Those they gave Mr. Archer, who kept them in the Kings Garden, till the Male killed the Female, then he brought it up as Puppy-dog lying upon his bed, till it grew so great as a Mastiffe, and no dog more tame or gentle to them he knew: but being to returne for England, at Safee he gave him to a Merchant of Marsellis, that presented him to the French King, who sent him to King Iames, where it was kept in the Tower seven yeeres: After one Mr. Iohn Bull, then servant to Mr. Archer, with divers of his friends, went to see the Lyons, not knowing anything at all of him; yet this rare beast smelled him before hee saw him, whining, groaning, and tumbling, with such an expression of acquaintance, that being informed by the Keepers how hee came thither; Mr. Bull so prevailed, the Keeper opened the grate, and Bull went in: But no Dogge could fawne more on his Master, than the Lyon on him, licking his feet, hands, and face, skipping and tumbling to fro, to the wonder of all the beholders; being satisfied with his acquaintance, he made shift to get out of the grate. But when the Lyon saw his friend gone, no beast by bellowing, roaring, scratching, and howling, could expresse more rage and sorrow, nor in foure dayes after would he either eat or drinke.

But the metaphorical use of the phrase predates Smith’s literal visit. Robert Greene refers to it as an “old proverb” in 1590 when he tells of a prostitute taking advantage of an inexperienced young man:

This courtisan seeing this countrey Francesco was no other but a meere nouice, & that so newly, that to vse the old prouerb, he had scarce seent the lions. She thought to intrap him and so arrest him with her amorous glances that shee would wring him by the pursse.

The American to see the elephant would seem to have a similar origin, except the reference is to a circus elephant. Asa Green, writing under the pseudonym of Elnathan Elmwood uses the phrase in his 1833 A Yankee Among the Nullifiers:

“Two hundred dollers!” exclaimed the Yankee. “By gauly, what a price! Why they axed me only a quarter of a dollar to see the Elephant and the whole Caravan in New York.”

George Wilkins Kendall gives a full explanation of the phrase and his first encounter with it in his 1844 Narrative of the Texan Santa Fé Expedition:

There is a cant expression, “I’ve seen the elephant,” in very common use in Texas, although I had never heard it until we entered the Cross Timbers, or rather the first evening after we had encamped in that noted strip of forest land. I had already seen “sights” of almost every kind, animals of almost every species, reptiles until I was more than satisfied with the number and variety, and felt ready and willing to believe almost anything I might hear as to what I was yet to see; but I knew very well that we were not in elephant range, and when I first heard one of our men say that he had seen the animal in question I was utterly at a loss to fathom his meaning. I knew that the phrase had some conventional signification, but farther I was ignorant. A youngster, however was “caught” by the expression and quite a laugh was raised around a camp fire at his expense.

A small party of us were half sitting, half reclining around some blazing fagots, telling stories of the past and speculating upon our prospects for the future, when an old member of the spy company entered our circle and quietly took a seat upon the ground. After a long breath, and a preparatory clearing of his throat, the veteran hunter exclaimed, “Well, I’ve seen the elephant.”

“The what?” said a youngster close by, partially turning round so as to get a view of the speaker’s face, and then giving him a look which was made up in equal parts incredulity and inquiry.

“I’ve seen the elephant,” coolly replied the old campaigner.

“But not a real, sure-enough elephant, have you?” queried the younger speaker, with that look and tone which indicate the existence of a doubt and the wish to have it promptly and plainly removed.

This was too much; for all within hearing, many of whom understood and could fully appreciate the joke, burst out in an inordinate fit of laughter as they saw how easily the young man had walked into a trap, which, although not set for that purpose, had fairly caught him; and I, too, joined in the merry outbreak, yet in all frankness I must say that I did not fully understand what I was laughing at. The meaning of the expression I will explain. When a man is disappointed in anything he undertakes, when he has seen enough, when he gets sick and tired of any job he may have set himself about, he has “seen the elephant.” We had been buffeting about during the day, cutting away trees, crossing deep ravines and gullies, and turning and twisting some fifteen or twenty miles to gain five—we had finally to encamp by a mud-hole of miserable water, and the spies had been unable to find any beyond—this combination of ills induced the old hunter to remark, “I’ve seen the elephant,” and upon the same principle I will here state that I had by this time obtained something more than a glimpse of the animal myself.

One of the joys of researching word origins is that while we may see many metaphorical elephants, there is a constant joy of discovery that keeps us from becoming jaded and world weary.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Elmwood, Elnathan (a.k.a. Asa Greene). A Yankee Among the Nullifiers. New York: William Stodart, 1833, 31. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Greene, Robert. Greenes Neuer Too Late. London: Thomas Orwin for Nicholas Ling and John Busbie, 1590, 40. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. elephant, n., see, v.

Kendall, George Wilkins. Narrative of the Texan Santa Fé Expedition, vol. 1 of 2. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1844, 108–10. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. elephant, n., lion, n.

Smith, John. The True Travels, Adventures and Observations of Captaine Iohn Smith. London: John Haviland for Thomas Slater, 1630, 37. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

eighty-six

15 September 2020

Eighty-six or 86 originated in restaurant slang with the meaning that an item was out of stock. It soon also came to mean to eject or not serve a customer. It has passed into general slang to mean to cancel something or someone. Why the number eighty-six was chosen is not known. There are number of explanations floating about, but only two are plausible: that it is rhyming slang or that it is simply an arbitrary assignment of a number in a larger numbering scheme.

The term appears in the late 1920s or early 1930s in the United States. George Manker Watters and Arthur Hopkins’s 1927 play Burlesque contains an exchange where a waiter uses eighty-six, but it seems to be in the opposite sense, that of being able to supply something in short supply, in this case liquor in the days of Prohibition:

Waiter...If you need any Scotch or gin, sir—...My number is Eighty Six...
Skid...Yeah. Eighty Six. I know.
(Waiter exits R. Skid draws enormous flask from pocket.)

The first recorded, clear use of the current slang sense is in a Walter Winchell newspaper column from 23 May 1933:

A Hollywood soda-jerker forwards this glossary of soda-fountain lingo out there... “Shoot one” and Draw one” is one coke and one coffee... “Shoot one in the red!” means a cherry coke... An “echo” is a repeat order... “Eighty-six” means all out of it... “Eighty-one” is a glass of water... “Thirteen” means one of the big bosses is drifting around... A “red ball” is an orangeade.

By 1947 it had become a verb, as can be seen by this item in the 5 February 1947 issue of Variety, which also shows the term had moved beyond the food service industry:

Jeffries Eighty-Sixed?

Hollywood, Feb. 4.

Disk jockeys test their weight tonight when vocalist, Herb Jeffries, is named initial candidate for jockey’s nix list. He failed to show as promised to substitute for Bob McLaughlin, ill, on pilot’s daily show over KLAC, here. McLaughlin will ask his fellows to play no more Jeffries platters, and has had it indicated by organization sparkers, Bill Anson and Peter Potter that they’ll press the measure at regular meeting tonight.

Various explanations have been put forward for the term. The most plausible is that it is rhyming slang for nix. The only issue with this explanation is the existence of a more comprehensive numbering scheme, as evidenced by Winchell’s column. The larger scheme suggests the assignment of this meaning to eighty-six may be arbitrary.

Most of the other proffered explanations aren’t worth mentioning as there is no evidence to support them, but there is one frequently comes up that needs to be dismissed. This explanation holds that eighty-six comes from Chumley’s Bar at 86 Bedford Street in Manhattan. Chumley’s opened as a Prohibition-era speakeasy in 1922 and closed its doors for the last time in 2020, a victim of the Covid-19 pandemic. While the chronology works, there is no evidence tying Chumley’s to the slang term, and the explanation has all the hallmarks of an after-the-fact attempt to make sense of an arcane term.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. eighty-six, adj., eighty-six, v.

“Jeffries Eighty-Sixed?” Variety, 5 February 1947, 46. ProQuest.

Lighter, J. E. Historical Dictionary of American Slang, vol. 1 of 2. New York: Random House: 1994, s.v. eighty-six.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. eighty-six, n.

Winchell, Walter. “On Broadway” (syndicated column). Times-Union (Albany, New York), 23 May 1933, 8. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

pizza / tomato pie

A pepperoni pizza

14 September 2020

That the word pizza comes from Italian should be of no surprise to anyone, but that’s not the entire story. Piza or pizza appears in medieval Latin in central Italy by the end of the tenth century with the meaning of flat bread. Pizza as we know it today, with tomato sauce, cheese, and other savory toppings, arose in Naples in the early sixteenth century.

Pizza starts appearing in English in the early nineteenth century in the writings of British travelers to Italy, but these early instances are all in the context of Italy. For instance, one of the earliest appears in the diary of Frances Bunsen, a Welsh painter and baroness, for 13 October 1825:

The name of our host is Angiolotti, a rich possidente, or farmer, from whom and his wife we have received great civilities. We were the day before yesterday at their farm, or tenuta, where the vintage is going on. They gave us ham, and cheese, and frittata and pizza, and wine, and grapes as much as we could eat.

At the turn of the twentieth century the word pizza starts appearing in the Americas, but at first it´s just the word, not the thing itself, as composer Pietro Mascagni discovered on his 1902–03 tour of North America. From the Morning Journal Gazette of Fort Wayne, Indiana on 15 December 1902:

As a matter of fact his yearning was so great that he did go to the edge of the ditch and cry aloud, "Pizza Neapolitana," and though his compatriots came swarming up the ladders in answer to his cry, and strained him to their clayey bosoms. It was only to echo in mournful refrain "New Yorka nou maka pizza!"

Mascagni could have wept.

But nine months later pizza, both the word and the thing, could be found in New York, as reported in the Evening Telegram of 21 September 1903, but the word isn’t yet fully Anglicized:

Student [sic] of the quarter says that pizze cavuie and taraluccio, eaten with beer, are a delicacy in Mulberry street. Wonder if this is the germ of the vendetta and the Blackmailing Brotherhood of the Black Hand?

A month later it is recorded in Boston, with a full description that shows that what the reporter is writing about is what we know today as pizza. From the Boston Sunday Journal of 4 October 1903:

Scattered throughout North and Prince streets and other portions of the Italian colony where Neapolitans congregate are occasional little shops with the words "Pizze Cavuie" on the windows. The words mean simply "hot cakes" in the Neapolitan dialect. But only a traveler would know that pizze are one of the famous products of Naples, eaten by rich and poor, high and low, and dutifully partaken of by every tourist as one of the features that must be "done" in order to say that one has seen Naples. The devotion of the American race to pie is a poor thing in comparison with that of the Neapolitans for their pizze.

[...]

In behind, two Neapolitan bakers, clothed in white, are baking pizze from morning till night, and almost from night till morning. Quantities of dough are kept prepared, made in fat rolls. The baker takes a roll, and with a few deft slaps flattens it as flat as a pancake, but somewhat thicker and a little larger than an ordinary pie. Then he dabs bits of lard on its surface. Over this he sprinkles grated cheese, from a dish which stands always full beside him. Then he pours on cooked tomato, and on top of that he throws a handful of aregata, the spicy aromatic herb which is such a favorite of Italian seasoning. The cheese used is the Roman, so much employed for culinary purposes. The whole operation has not taken him more than a minute. Then he slaps it on a broad, flat, long-handled paddle, and thrusts it into the furnace oven. In two minutes it is done.

It comes to the table on a big, flat pewter plate. Ordinarily individual plates are not furnished or required, for every true Neapolitan takes his piece pf pizze, folds it over so that the crust is outside, and eats it from the hand. The pastry seems to be a cross between bread dough and pie crust, and is not lacking in suggestions that when cold it might lie somewhat heavily upon the unaccustomed interior. But as a whole the confection is enticing, by reason of its delectable hotness and crispness, and the cunning blend of spicy flavors for which it is renowned. It is probably indigestible, but certainly not more so than Welsh rarebit.

The word is fully Anglicized and becoming a staple of the American diet by the 1930s. From the Hartford Courant of 19 March 1936:

There is, of course, a form of tomato pie that is not to be sneezed at, except by rock-ribbed New Englanders. That is Italian pizza, and long may it wave. The pizza cook cannot be any Italian. He must be a Neapolitan, for only in Naples does it reach its perfection. There is at least one Neapolitan making pizza in Hartford, and he’s an artist at his trade.

The use of tomato pie in the above quotation brings to mind another name for pizza, one that is rarely found nowadays, but was common in the greater New York City area in the twentieth century.

There are two distinct types of tomato pie. The first is nothing like a pizza and has nothing to do with Italy. It is simply a pie made with tomatoes, like one would make an apple or cherry pie. Starting in New England in the early nineteenth century, references to tomato pies gradually spread and were common into the early twentieth century.

The earliest reference I have found to this type of tomato pie is a three-line article with the headline “Tomato Pie” in the Boston Investigator of 6 April 1838. Unfortunately, the article is written in a reformed spelling style, as was common in newspapers of the era, and that, coupled with a less-than-good digital scan, makes it impossible to read what the three lines say.

But a few months later a full description of tomato pie appears in the Vermont Chronicle of 3 October 1838:

Tomato Pies equal to the fine English Gooseberry Pies.—The other day we partook, for the first time, of a Tomato Pie, and were so much pleased with the treat, that we inquired into the mode of making them. The tomatoes are skinned, sliced, and after being mixed with sugar, are prepared in the same manner as other pies. The tomato is likely to become one of the most useful of plants.—Springfield Pioneer.

So much for the first type of tomato pie. The second type of tomato pie is essentially a pizza, although aficionados of the dish will claim there are significant differences. This tomato pie could be found New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and eastern Pennsylvania. This tomato pie appears in New York at the same time as pizza. From the New York Tribune of 6 December 1903:

Pie has usually been considered a Yankee dish exclusively, but apparently the Italian has invented a kind of pie. The “pomidore pizza,” or tomato pie, is made in this fashion. Take a lump of dough, and, under a roller, flatten it out until it is only an inch thick. On this scatter tomatoes and season plentifully with powdered red pepper. Then bake the compound. “Salami pizza,” or bologna pie, is made with this under a layer of dough and a combination of tomatoes, cheese, red peppers and bologna. To use a slang expression, this might be said to be a “red hot” combination.

The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) records the following in a 1942 New Haven, Connecticut telephone directory:

Frank Pepe Old Reliable Neapolitan Tomato Pies.

And from 2002 DARE has from New Jersey:

“Pie” is used by non-Italians. Short for “pizza pie” or “tomato pie.” (This last is an old usage. I haven’t heard it since my early childhood, but you can still see painted signs advertising “tomato pies” on the Jersey Shore.)

Also from DARE is this description of tomato pie collected from the internet in 2003:

Where I grew up near Trenton, NJ it was always tomato pie ... In Trenton at least, tomato pie is distinct from pizza, the distinction being the use of smushed canned tomatoes on the pie rather than a pizza sauce. Even in Trenton, though, many people don’t make the distinction.

Black and white photo of Maruca’s Pizza, Seaside Heights, New Jersey, c.1960s; a sign advertises pizza and a man’s t-shirt reads Maruca’s Tomato Pie

When I worked on the Seaside Heights, New Jersey boardwalk in the 1980s, I worked a stand opposite Maruca’s Tomato Pies. Founded in 1950, they’re still there and still feature tomato pies on their signage.

So far, we’ve been talking about New York-style pizza, but perhaps the fiercest debate over pizza is between that and deep-dish or Chicago-style pizza. Of the two, New York-style is the oldest and closest to the Neapolitan original.

Chicago-style pizza was allegedly invented at the original Pizzeria Uno in Chicago in 1943, but while I have found no reason to doubt the claim, I have found no documentary evidence for it either. The earliest reference to deep-dish pizza I have found is this horror from the Atlanta Constitution of 3 June 1955:

This variation of a deep-dish pie, a pizza pie and a hamburger casserole offers a thrifty homemaker a flavorful, hearty and colorful dinner-in-one.

And there is this abomination in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of 9 March 1961:

Deep Dish Tuna Mushroom Pizza

The first reference to Chicago-style pizza that I’m aware of appears in the San Francisco Chronicle three days later, signaling that by this date deep-dish pizza was widely associated with Chicago:

BIG AL’S GASHOUSE—Roaring ‘20s funspot of the Peninsula. Speakeasy atmosphere, top banjo stars every night. German brass band concerts Wednesdays and Sundays. Chicago-style pizza. 4335 El Camino, Palo Alto.

And by the end of the decade the debate was on and the gloves off in this comparison of Chicago and New York styles in the Chicago Tribune of 26 May 1969:

Then he went to New York, where he sold advertising for THE TRIBUNE and for the Wall Street Journal. Goldberg compares New York pizza to “wallpaper smeared with red paint,” which is not a nice thing to say about wallpaper and red paint. In New York, pizza is usually sold by the slice. It’s a snack, not a meal.

One day Goldberg and a friend, Reva Rose, a Chicago actress who originated the role of Lucy in the off-Broadway musical, “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” were reminiscing about the pizza they used to get in Chicago.

They both missed it.

So that’s it, pizza has made a millennium-long journey, crossing an ocean in the process.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

“Agricultural.” Vermont Chronicle (Windsor, Vermont), 3 October 1838, 4. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“The Cries of War and Festival.” Evening Telegram (New York), 21 September 1903. 4. Fulton History.

“Deep Dish Pizza Pie Casserole.” Atlanta Constitution, 3 June 1955, 34. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), 2013, s.v. tomato pie, n.

“Do Fiery Foods Cause Fiery Natures?” New York Tribune, 6 December 1903, B5. ProQuest.

Hare, Augustus J. C. The Life and Letters of Frances Baroness Bunsen, vol 1 of 2. New York: G. Routledge, 1879. 254.

“‘Hot Cakes’ in North Street.” Boston Sunday Journal, 4 October 1903, 12. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Look What You Can Do with a Can of Tuna.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9 March 1961, 1D. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“On the Town: Night Clubs.” San Francisco Sunday Chronicle, 12 March 1961, 12 / 135. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2006, s.v. pizza, n.

Peterson, Clarence. “A Pizzeria by the Name of Goldberg’s.” Chicago Tribune, 26 May 1969, B5. ProQuest.

Popik, Barry. “Pizza.” The Big Apple, 30 July 2004.

Rosenfeld, Genie. “Mascagni and His Favorite Dish, Pizza Neapolitana.” Morning Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne, Indiana), 15 December 1902, 6. Newspaperarchive.com.

“Tomato Pie.” Boston Investigator, 6 April 1838, 3. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

W.J.F. “The Lighter Side: Man-Eating Ground Cherry.” The Hartford Courant, 19 March 1936, 14. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Photo credits: Pepperoni pizza, Alexandroff Pogrebnoj, 2013, Wikimedia Commons, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license; and Maruca’s Pizza.

egg on

11 September 2020

To egg someone on is to urge them to do something. The word has nothing to do with eggs, instead being more closely related to the word edge. It’s a borrowing of the Old Norse verb eggja meaning to incite. The noun and verb edge come from the same Germanic root, but via a different path.

The verb geeggian appears once in the extant Old English corpus, in a tenth-century gloss of the early eighth-century, Latin Lindisfarne Gospels. Mark 15:11 with its gloss reads:

Pontifices autem concitauerunt turbam ut magis barabban dimitteret eis.

(But the high priests urged the crowd to release Barabbas instead.)

ða biscobas ðonne gewæhton geeggedon ðone ðreat þætte suiðor ðone morsceaðe forleorte him

(But the bishops then deceived and egged on the crowd to have him release the thief instead.)

I give two translations into present-day English because the tenth-century Old English is subtly different from the eighth-century Latin.

The Lindisfarne Gospels were produced in Northumbria, in the north of England, and the dialect of that region has been heavily influenced by Old Norse, given that the Vikings settled in and ruled much of the area in the ninth through eleventh centuries. Most of the surviving Old English texts are written in West Saxon, spoken in the south. The word was probably more common in the Northumbrian dialect than in West Saxon, and it’s rarity is in large part due to the relatively few northern manuscripts surviving.

The verb appears in a number of Middle English manuscripts, the oldest being the Ormulum, written in the twelfth century. Lines 11683–84 read:

For deofell eggeþþ agg þe mann
To follghenn gluterrnesse.

(For the devil always eggs on the man
To follow the path of gluttony.)

The Ormulum is from further south, in the East Midlands region, but the dialect there was again heavily influenced by Old Norse, and the Ormulum has fewer Anglo-Norman influences than other English texts of the same period. Even the name of the manuscript comes from Ormin, the name of the author, a common Danish name of the period. Orm means worm or dragon.

Over time, to egg on worked its way into other English dialects, until today when it can be heard wherever English is spoken.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. ge-eggian.

Holt, Robert. The Ormulum, vol. 2 of 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1878, 51. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. eggen, v.(1).

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

Skeat, Walter W. The Gospel According to Saint Mark in Anglo-Saxon and Northumbrian Versions. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, and Co., 1871, 125. HathiTrust Digital Archive.