ground zero

November 18, 2020

18 November 2020

The original sense of ground zero is the point on the earth’s surface at or directly below a nuclear detonation. The term appears to have been invented by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, which undertook extensive analysis, starting in 1944, to determine what impact the bombing of Germany and Japan had on the outcome of the war.

The earliest example of ground zero I have found (not all of the survey’s reports are digitized and readily available) is from a report on effect bombing had on Japan’s electrical grid that was prepared in late 1945:

The atomic bombs rendered substations within five-eighths of a mile of ground zero of the blast inoperative and put them beyond demonstrated recuperative ability of the Japanese.

And on 15 February 1946 the vice chairman of the survey, Paul Nitze, testified before the U.S. Senate and used the term:

I think we might go to some of the major points which have been raised, taking first the question as to the blast effect which was caused by the atomic bomb in relation to the blast effect which might have been caused by a 10-ton blockbuster. We have computed the distances from ground zero point at which structures of all various types were destroyed.

And on 30 June 1946 the survey published its report on The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

Some of the construction details (reinforcing rod splices, for example) were often poor, and much of the concrete was definitely weak; thus some reinforced concrete buildings collapsed and suffered structural damage when within 2,000 feet of ground zero, and some internal wall paneling was demolished even up to 3,800 feet. (For convenience, the term "ground zero" will be used to designate the point on the ground directly beneath the point of detonation, or "air zero.")

This report, which was unclassified, was widely reported in the press, and it is at this point that the general public begins to use ground zero. For example, there is this article from the Chicago Tribune of 30 June 1946, which is only one of several papers that used the term on that and following days:

Within a radius of one kilometer (.62 of a mile) from ground zero (the point beneath the blast center), men and animals died almost instantaneously from the tremendous blast pressure and heat; houses and other structures were smashed, crushed, and scattered; and fires broke out.

Since that original sense, the term has been used for some other, related ones. During the Cold War, the outdoor cafe in the center of the Pentagon’s courtyard was jocularly labeled Ground Zero by wags in the Defense Department. Presumably, the hot dog stand was the Soviet’s aim point. Or there is this jocular use by journalist Bob Besch from 5 June 1960:

This rusty shovel was recovered from ground zero during the Great Septic Tank Heave of 1958. Miraculously nobody was killed or maimed, but the event caused rumblings of terror throughout a three-block area, not to mention a revolting clean-up job.

More seriously, ground zero has been used to refer to the center of a calamity or struggle, as in this example by Philip Ortego from 1971 about the problems of Mexican-American education in the United States:

A new breed of teacher is needed, sensitive to the diverse educational problems of Mexican Americans. At educational ground zero, Mexican American youngsters are being wiped out. The dropout cycle of Mexican Americans can be broken, but it will take a lot of doing.

Finally, the specific use of ground zero to refer to the site of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 falls somewhere between the sense of a nuclear bomb site and the center of a calamity. The name of the first person who used ground zero to refer to the World Trade Center site is not known, and it was probably independently applied to the site by several people. From an Associated Press report on that day:

Crews began heading into ground zero of the terrorist attack to search for survivors and recover bodies. The downtown area was cordoned off, and huge, grisly rescue effort was under way.

All that is known about the origin of this specific sense of ground zero is that by the end of the day on 11 September the phrase was on the lips of millions.

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Sources:

Associated Press. “New York Undertakes Massive Rescue Effort.” Iowa City Press-Citizen, 11 September 2001, Special Edition, 2A. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Besch, Bob. “How to Go Down in History.” Mansfield News-Journal (Ohio), 5 June 1960, 2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Manly, Chesly. “Survey Denies A-Bomb Caused Jap Surrender.” Chicago Tribune, 30 June 1946, 12.

Ortego, Philip D. “The Education of Mexican Americans.” The Chicanos: Mexican American Voices, Ed Ludwig and James Santibañez, eds. Baltimore: Penguin, 1971, 167. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

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

United States Senate. Hearings Before the Special Committee on Atomic Energy, part 5. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 15 February 1946, 515. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

United States Strategic Bombing Survey. The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 30 June 1946, 5. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

———. The Electric Power Industry of Japan. 9 October 1945–3 December 1945, 5. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Steven Donald Smith, U.S. Department of Defense.

gringo

November 17, 2020

17 November 2020

Gringo is a borrowing from Spanish and is alteration of Griego, or Greek. In Spanish, the phrase hablar en griego, to talk in Greek, means to speak unintelligibly. This is akin to the English phrase, it’s all Greek to me. Both the Spanish and English idioms apparently come from the sixteenth-century Latin phrase, graecum est; non potest legi (it is Greek; it cannot be read). Evidently it was the practice of scholars at the time, who often did not read Greek, when copying texts to omit Greek words that appeared in them, using this notation to mark the omission. An example from 1579 that criticizes a scholar for omitting a Greek word found in Jerome’s works and not marking it with the phrase:

We haue often seene before, what an impudent falsarie M. Hesk. is of the Doctors, and here, I know not for what cause, except it were to trouble the sense of Hieronymes words, both in ye Latine & in his English translation, he hath left out the Greeke word yt Hieronyme vseth in this sentence, A tempore igitur ἐνδελεχισμοῦ, quod nos interpretati sumus iuge sacrificium &c. Therefore from the time of the perpetuitie, which we haue interpreted the perpetuall sacrifice, &c. At least wise he should haue noted in the margent Graecum est, non potest legi.

Gringo is first recorded in Spanish. It appears in Esteban de Terreros y Pando’s 1787 Diccionario Castellano:

Gringos, Ilaman en Malaga á los estranjeros, que tienen cierta especie de acento, que los priva de una locucion facil y natural Castellana; y en Madrid dán el mismo, y por la misma causa con particularidad a los Irlandeses.
(Gringos, they call in Malaga those foreigners who have a certain type of accent which keeps them from speaking Castilian easily and naturally; and in Madrid they are given the same name, and for the same reason, particularly to the Irish.)

And somewhat later, the adjective is recorded in the 1837 edition of Neuman and Baretti’s Dictionary of the Spanish and English Languages:

Gríngo, a. (Coll.) Unintelligible, gibberish: applied to language.

The earliest English example that I have found is by Thomas Sutcliffe, an English mercenary in the employ of the Chilean government as the military governor of Juan Fernandez. He published his account of the 1835 insurrection and earthquake on that island in 1839:

I asked him why they had applied to those persons, knowing me to be their Governor, and who alone had power to pardon them. He replied that they did not even mention my name until one, called Gutierrez, said he would not surrender, for fear of being shot by the Gringo, as he had little dependance on the padre’s promise.

Also in 1839 and in regard to Chile, the Southern Literary Messenger published the following in its August issue:

Whilst looking about for the landing place, our movements were discovered by the guard on shore, and we were hailed with “quien vive,” who comes there? My colleague had previously arranged that this challenge should be answered by the officer of our boat whose Gringo accent would prove that he was not a Chilian. In the present state of hostilities, if I speak, said he, they may suspect us of being enemies, and give us a volley. A satisfactory parley ensued, in which we called ourselves Norte-Americanos, to which the guard replied, Ah, si!—Ingleses—English. By analogy, our people usually call a South American, of whatever republic, a Spaniard.

English adoption of gringo is often associated with the 1846–48 Mexican-American War. Certainly, the word became familiar to many American soldiers, and by extension the rest of the United States, as a result of the war, but it was in circulation prior to that.

There are also stories that gringo’s origin is from a song, the lyrics of which have been claimed to be by Robert Burns, with the refrain “Green grows the rashes, O,” which was sung by soldiers in the 1840s war, or alternatively by English-speaking mercenaries in Bolivar’s army earlier in that century. These stories are pure invention.

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Sources:

Forbes, Peter. Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. Edinburgh: R. Menzies, 1812, 148–50. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Fulke, William. D. Heskins, D. Sanders, and M. Rastel, Accounted (Among Their Faction) Three Pillars and Archpatriarches of the Popish Synagogue. London: Henry Middleton, 1579, 120. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

H, W.B. “A Journey Across the Andes.” Southern Literary Messenger, 5.8., August 1839, 513. ProQuest.

Neuman and Baretti’s Dictionary of the Spanish and English Languages, fifth ed., vol. 1 of 2. M. Seoane, ed. London: Longman, et al.: 1837, 458. HathiTrust Digital Library.

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

Sutcliffe, Thomas. “Extracts Relative to the Insurrection.” The Earthquake of Juan Fernandez as it Occurred in the Year 1835. Manchester: Advertiser Office, 1839, 12. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Terreros y Pando, Esteban. Diccionario Castellano, vol. 2 of 4. Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, Hijos y Compañia, 1787. 240. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Photo credit: Strom Carlson, 5 April 2007. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

green room

November 16, 2020

16 November 2020

A green room is a place for performers to wait and relax until they are needed on stage. Why it is called green is not known, although there are many guesses. The issue is complicated because in some of the early uses of the phrase we don’t know exactly what they are referring to.

One of the first references to a green room is in Samuel Pepys Diary of 7 October 1666, although the context at first blush does not seem theatrical. Pepys writes that he was called to the Palace of Whitehall that day to meet with the king to discuss the naval budget:

And anon we were called in to the green-room, where the King, Duke of York, Prince Rupert, Lord Chancellor, Lord Treasurer, Duke of Albemarle, G. Carteret, W. Coventry, Morrice.

Part of the Whitehall Palace complex was the Cockpit-in-Court, so named because cockfighting was held there. But it was also used as a theater and for wide assortment of functions, including as a residence for courtiers. After the Restoration of the monarchy and the legal appearance of women on stage, a dressing room for female actors, decorated in green baize, was constructed there in 1662. Pepys may have been referring to a meeting in this room, or perhaps it was to another room elsewhere in the palace. We do not know.

In his 1676 play The Virtuoso, Thomas Shadwell references a green room:

Your Marriage-Bawd, your Canonical-Bawd is worst of all; they betray people for their lives-time. Here, carry her, and lock her up in the green-room; I'll maul your Bawdship.

Again, while the term appears in a play, the context is not theatrical, so again we don’t know exactly what green room means here. But a few years later, in his 1679 play A True Widow, Shadwell makes the first clear reference to an actor’s waiting room by that name. The scene is set in a theater:

Lady Busy.     Fie, Mr. Stanmore, that you should say such an ungentile thing! Come, Miss, bear up, and do not cry: how can you endure to see a young Lady's tears, and not melt: Come on; pretty Miss, I am sure you will be kind, and constant to Mr. Stanmore, will you not?
Gartrude.     Yes, yes.
Lady Busy.     Good. Why look you, Sir, I know you are a worthy Gentleman, and will consider of a Settlement, such as befits a Gentlewoman.
Stanmore.     No, Madam: Selfish, this Evening, in a green Room, behind the Scenes, was before-hand with me; she ne'r tells of that: Can I love one that prostitutes her self to that Fellow?

The OED brackets this citation, indicating the editors did not think this clearly referred to a actor’s waiting area, but to my mind it at least clearly refers to some space behind a theatrical stage.

The 1692 divorce proceedings between Henry Howard, the 7th Duke of Norfolk and Mary Mordaunt give us another early instance of the word, again a non-theatrical one. The context of this particular use is quite juicy. Howard was suing his wife for divorce on the grounds that she had slept with Sir John Germain. The testimony of one of the servants, a Thomas Hudson, includes references to Nell Gwyn, actress, prostitute, and mistress to Charles II:

Thomas Hudson saith, That the Duke of Norfolk being at Portsmouth, he was Butler at Windsor, when Germaine, and the Dutchess, and Cornwall went to play; Germaine sent his Footman for clean Linen, which he brought the next Morning; Mrs. Gwin said to the Dutchess, The Dog would have lain with me, but she would not lay the Dog where the Deer laid, for she knew my Lady Dutchess would accept of him; after that he saw a Shirt and a Wascoat in the Closet, which my Ladies Woman and Ann Burton took away. My Lord being absent, we murmured amongst our selves, that my Lord was wrong'd; I told my Lord, whereupon my Master Cragg had me to my Lord Peterborough's Lodging, and threaten'd me, that he would prefer me to his Brother Richards, who turn'd me off in Germany. This was, he thinks, in December or September 1685: Mrs. Gwin spoke this in the Green Room, and he was in a Closet hard by, and the Door open, and so heard it.

The incident in question happened at Windsor, and we don’t know what the green room referred to was. Howard was not granted the divorce in 1692, in large part because his fellow lords found him as guilty of infidelity as she, but the couple eventually divorced in 1700. Mordaunt eventually married Germain.

The term appears again in 1694 in the anonymous play The Adventures of the Helvetian Hero:

The Young Couple's Apartments were fixt, and their Bedchamber assign'd them in that Green Room once her Maiden-Castle or Imprisonment, now the Nuptial Bed-room, abounding with all the Freedom and Delights that Matrimony and the Marriage bed could afford.

The next clear reference to a theatrical waiting area is in Colley Cibber’s 1701 Love Makes a Man:

Yes, Sir, I do know London pretty well, and the Side-box, Sir, and behind the Scenes, ay, and the Green Room too, and all the Girls, and Women-Actresses there.

And we get another in Henry Fielding’s 1736 play Pasquin, which gives us some insight into the hierarchical nature of the London theater of that day:

1st Player.     Sir, the Prompter, and most of the Players, are drinking Tea in the Green-Room.
Trapwit.     Mr. Fustian, shall we go drink a Dish of Tea with them? Come, Sir, as you have a Part in my Play, you shall drink a Dish with us.
1st Player.      Sir, I dare no go into the Green-Room; my Salary is not high enough: I shall be forfeited if I go in there.

After this date, we have many clear references to green room as a theatrical waiting area.

So why the green? We don’t know, but there are two commonly touted explanations that we can dismiss. The first is that actors’ waiting rooms are painted green because the color is psychologically soothing. This explanation relies on twentieth-century psychological theory which would not exist in the seventeenth century. The other clearly false explanation is that the room is called green because actors would be paid there. Besides having no evidence that such rooms were used to conduct financial business, the association of the color green with money comes from U.S. currency being that color. English banknotes are not green as a rule. Besides, back in the day actors would more likely have been paid in coin, not notes.

Perhaps it is named for the female actor’s dressing room in Whitehall Palace. Or maybe to another such room so decorated. The early non-theatrical uses of the term seem to indicate that green room may have had an early sense meaning a woman’s dressing room or boudoir, and over time that extended in theatrical use to include male actors. We’ll probably never know for sure.

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Sources:

The Adventures of the Helvetian Hero. London: Randall Taylor, 1694, 137–38. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Cibber, Colley. Love Makes a Man. London: Richard Parker, 1701, 44. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Fielding, Henry. Pasquin. London: J. Watts, 1736, 12–13. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

———. Pasquin. O.M. Brack, William Kupersmith, and Curt A. Zimansky, eds. Iowa City: U of Iowa Press, 1973, 54. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2011, s.v. green room, n.

Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol. 7 of 10. William Matthews and Robert Latham, eds. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1972, 312. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Shadwell, Thomas. A True Widow. London: Benjamin Tooke, 1679, 61–62. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

———. The Virtuoso. London: T.N. for Henry Herringman, 1676, 62. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

A True Account of The Proceedings Before the House of Lords; (From Jan. 7. 1691. To Feb. 17. Following) Between the Duke and Dutchess of Norfolk. 26. London: 1692, Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Photo credit: Edinburgh Blog, 29 September 2007, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

graveyard shift

November 13, 2020

Three child coal miners with mules, Gary, West Virginia, 1908

13 November 2020

A graveyard shift is a late-night work schedule, often starting at midnight and continuing on until morning. Why it is called graveyard is not known for certain, but it’s likely because it is late, dark, and quiet, with few other people around.

The phrase first appears in the context of mining, with that industry being one of the first to operate twenty-four hours a day. Prior to electrification, night-time shifts in most industries were often unprofitable because of the costs of lighting, but that was irrelevant for mining, which required lighting regardless of the time of day.

The phrase is recorded as early as 9 August 1884, when it appears in The Mining Record in reference to an Arizona mine:

Have resumed work. On Monday afternoon superintendent Hammond received a telegram directing him to resume operations in the mine, and at 6 P.M. the graveyard shift went below, while the whistle sounded loud and long, confirming the good news.

And a definition of graveyard shift appears in Colorado court records from 1894:

Several shifts were at work, and, at the date named, William Sharp and his companions were employed on what is well termed among miners “the graveyard shift," from midnight on to the morning.

As electrification progressed and it became profitable to work at night, the practice and term moved into other industries.

The term swing shift, however, seems to have arisen in another industry and under different circumstances. Today, the term usually applies to the shift between the day and graveyard shifts, but originally it referred to an irregular shift, an unusually long one of eighteen hours or more. And swing shift is first recorded in the context of railroad workers, although it may also have gotten its start in coal mining, as uses in that industry are recorded shortly afterwards.

The earliest examples of swing shift that I have found are from a protracted strike at the Scranton Traction Company, which operated streetcars in that Pennsylvania city at the turn of the twentieth century. From the Elmira Gazette (New York) of 24 June 1899 under the optimistic headline “Strike May Be Settled To-Day”:

The men complain of the system of work known as the “swing shift,” preferring to work a straight shift of nine and ten hours.

The headline was optimistic because a year and a half later, on 28 December 1900, the same paper reported under the headline “Strike Settled”:

The men formerly worked on what is known as the swing shift system, and were frequently required to work eighteen hours for $1.80. Under that system there were three crews to each two cars. Under the new plan there will be two crews for each car. Each crew will work but nine hours a day.

There’s a reference swing shifts relating to coal miner strikes that occurred in 1900–01 over the issue of swing shifts in a 1905 study of colliery labor organization by Frank Warne:

Firemen refused to work in a number of collieries in which officials attempted to introduce the “swing” shift.

And in 1902 the swing shift is again the subject of a strike, this time by coal miners employed by the Lackawanna Steel Company of Scranton. As reported by the New York Times on 13 March 1902:

At the Woodward colliery to-day the refusal of Superintendent Phillips to reinstate the discharged firemen or to change the swing shift order was reported by the committee to the 950 men. His proposition to give the discharged men other work and allow the shift to be made in the middle of the week was refused.

And a 1902 commission reviewing the Lackawanna strike provides more detail in its reporting:

He was one of a committee of Delaware, Lackawanna and Western engineers who on February 12, last, requested District Superintendent Williams in writing that the swing shift be not abolished, but that the twenty-four-hour Sunday shift be continued.

Uses of swing shift in the current sense of a work shift between the day and night shift are in place by the 1940s.

There’s an old bit of internet lore that would have the origin of graveyard shift being in an early modern practice of posting a vigil at cemeteries to listen for the sounds of people who had been mistakenly buried alive. This, obviously, is utter nonsense.

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Sources:

“12.000 Miners May Strike.” New York Times, 13 March 1902, 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Bissell, P.J. “Mollie Gibson Consolidated Mining and Milling Company v. Sharp” (1894). In T.M. Robinson, Reports of the Decisions of the Court of Appeals of the State of Colorado, vol. 5 of 20. New York: Banks and Brothers, 1896. 323. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. graveyard shift, n.

“Mining Notes.” The Mining Record, 9 August 1884, 86. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

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

“Strike May Be Settled To-Day.” Elmira Gazette (New York), 24 June 1899, 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Strike Settled.” Elmira Gazette (New York), 28 December 1900, 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Warne, Frank Julian. The Coal-Mine Workers: A Study in Labor Organization. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1905, 144. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Wright, Carroll D. “Proceedings of Friday, Dec. 5 [1902].” Proceedings of the Anthracite Mine Strike Commission. Scranton: Scranton Tribune, 1902–03. 69. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Lewis Wickes Hine, 1908, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Records of the National Child Labor Committee.

Gotham

November 12, 2020

12 November 2020

Most of us are probably familiar with Gotham as the name of the city in which Batman prowls the streets at night. It’s an old nickname for New York City, and in the comic the fictional Gotham City stands in for the real place. But the name Gotham is older than New York.

Gotham got its start as the name of a village in Nottinghamshire, England, and in the fifteenth century the townspeople of that hamlet developed a reputation for being fools and simpletons; the village became the butt of jokes. We see this sense in the First Shepherd’s Play of the Towneley cycle of plays that is preserved in the manuscript San Marino, Huntingdon Library MS HM 1, which was copied c. 1500:

Now God gyf you care,
Foles all sam!
Sagh I neuer none so fare
Bot the foles of Gotham.
(Now God give you sorrow,
You two fools!
I never saw any behave so
Except the fools of Gotham.)

The name stood as the butt of jokes for several centuries. But around the turn of the nineteenth century, Gotham started to be used as a nickname for Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in an unironic sense. It may be that the application to that city started as a jocular term, indicating the inhabitants were none too smart, but the earliest clear references to Newcastle as Gotham are quite serious and not at all derogatory. Here is a passage from the poem Kiver Awa’ from November 1804:

Heav’n prosper thee, Gotham! thou famous old town,
Of the Tyne the chief glory and pride;
May thy heroes acquire immortal renown,
In the dread field of Mars, when they’re try’d.

And a bit later, in 1825, it’s glossed in dictionary of terms from the North of England:

GOTHAM, a cant name for Newcastle

But about the same time on the other side of the Atlantic, Gotham also starts to be applied to New York City. Washington Irving uses it as a nickname for that city, and Irving is definitely using it the mocking sense, making fun of its citizenry. Here is a sample from his Salmagundi of 27 June 1807:

Straddle was equally successful with the Giblets, as may well be supposed; for though pedestrian merit may strive in vain to become fashionable in Gotham; yet a candidate in an equipage is always recognized, and like Philip's ass, laden with gold, will gain admittance every where. Mounted in his curricle or his gig, the candidate is like a statue elevated on a high pedestal, his merits are discernable from afar, and strike the dullest opticks.——Oh! Gotham, Gotham! most enlightened of cities!—how does my heart swell with delight, when I behold your sapient inhabitants lavishing their atten- tion with such wonderful discernment!

Batman makes his appearance in Detective Comics #27, May 1939, but Gotham City is not named as his place of residence until Batman #4, December 1940.

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Sources:

Bell, John, ed. Rhymes of the Northern Bards. Newcastle: M. Angus and Son, 1812, 15. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Brockett, John Trotter. A Glossary of North Country Words. Newcastle: T. and J. Hodgson for E. Charney, 1825, 84. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“First Shepherds’ Play.” The Towneley Plays, vol. 1 of 2. Martin Stevens and Arthur C. Cawley, eds. Early English Text Society, SS 13. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994, lines 257–60, 113. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Irving, Washington (as Launcelot Langstaff). Salmagundi, no. 12, 27 June 1807, 235. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

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

Image credit: Mitch Gerads, Batman, 3.14, March 2017, DC Comics. Fair use of a low-resolution copy to illustrate the topic under discussion.