shanty

Piper sitting and playing on a ship’s capstan while sailors turn the capstan to weigh the anchor, presumably singing a shanty as they do so

16 January 2021

The word shanty has two distinct meanings in English, and in actuality it is two different words, each from a different French root. It can be rude hut or dwelling, and it can be song sung by sailors.

The hut sense is most likely from the Canadian French chantier, a logger’s cabin or camp, but also possibly influenced by the Irish sean tig, hut. Both French and Irish laborers in the wilds of Upper Canada in the early nineteenth century may have contributed to the creation of this word.

But the earliest recorded use of the word that I have found is from the United States, specifically in Ohio in 1820. But that does not necessarily negate the Canadian origin, as trappers and loggers would have roamed freely in the wilds of the frontier. And it is clear from the early sources that the term existed in oral use for some time before appearing in a published source. In a letter to his brother, dated 7 October 1820, Zerah Hawley writes of his travels in northeastern Ohio:

October 7 [1820].—Rode to a part of H[arpersfiel]d, to see a child sick of the intermittent fever, whose parents with two children, lived in what is here called a Shanty. This is a hovel of about ten feet by eight, made somewhat in the form of an ordinary cow-house, having but an half roof, or roof on one side. It is however, inclosed on all sides.

In his 1849 autobiography, Scots-Canadian trader and explorer John McLean writes of his travels in Quebec in September 1822. While this passage is written decades after the fact, it remains good evidence of the term’s existence in the early 1820s:

My man had visited the Indian on several occasions during the previous winter, and told me that he usually halted at a Chantier,* on the way to the lodge. We arrived late in the evening at the locality in question, and finding a quantity of timber collected on the ices, concluded that the shanty must be close at hand. We accordingly followed the lumber-track until we reached the hut which had formerly afforded such comfortable accommodation to my companion.

And McLean’s note on chantier reads:

* The hut used by the lumbermen, and the root of the well-known “shanty.”

Shanty, meaning a sailor’s song, appears somewhat later and, while also from French, has a very different origin. This one is quite straightforward and obvious; it’s from the French chantez, the imperative of chanter, to sing. The word can be dated to the 1860s. but may be much older in sailor’s lingo. But it is not recorded in Smyth’s 1867 Sailor’s Word Book (that source only records the hut sense), so it is likely not that much older in oral use.

An article on sea shanties appears in the British magazine Once a Week on 1 August 1868:

SHANTY—a word which those who are curious in etymology will at once be able to connect with chant—is the name applied to a class of songs but little known to landsfolk. They are the songs with which poor Jack seeks to enliven his toil.

And this appears in Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts on 11 December 1869. Many of the sentences are word for word as those in the 1868 article above, so it was likely written by the same person. Both articles are anonymous:

SAILORS’ SHANTIES AND SEA-SONGS

I once heard an old salt remark, that a good shanty was the best bar in the capstan; and he spoke truly. A good voice and a new and stirring chorus are worth an extra hand on board a merchantman, which, as a rule, is manned by the least possible number that the law allows, and often goes to sea short-handed, even according to the parsimonious calculations of its owners. The only way the heavier work can be done at all is by each mand doing his utmost at the same moment. This is regulated by the shanty, the true song of the “toilers of the sea.” It is not recreation; it is an essential part of the w[ork] on shipboard. It is the shanty that mast-heads the topsail-yards, when making sail; it starts and weighs the anchor; it brings down the main-tack with a will; it loads and unloads cargo; it keeps the pumps going; in fact it does all the work where unison and strength are required.

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Sources:

Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, first edition (DCHP-1), pre-1967, s.v., shanty, n.

Hawley, Zerah. A Journal of a Tour through Connecticut, Massachusetts, New-York, the North Part of Pennsylvania and Ohio. New Haven: S. Converse, 1822, 31. Gale Primary Sources: Sabin Americana.

McLean, John. Notes of a Twenty-Five Years’ Service in the Hudson’s Bay Territory, vol. 1 of 2. London: Richard Bentley, 1849, 57–58. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“On Shanties.” Once a Week, 2.31, 1 August 1868, 92. ProQuest Historical Periodicals.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. shanty, n.2, shanty, n.1.

“Sailor’s Shanties and Sea-Songs.” Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts, 11 December 1869, 794–95. ProQuest Historical Periodicals.

Smyth, W.H. The Sailor’s Word-Book. London: 1867.

Image credit: Anonymous, nineteenth century drawing.

hooker

Corlear’s Hook, Lower East Side of Manhattan, 1876

15 January 2021

Hooker is a slang term for a prostitute. We don’t know its origin with certainty, but there are two leading contenders, and the actual origin may very well be a combination of the two. Hooker is also a word with one of the more famous false etymologies.

The earliest known appearance of hooker in the sense of a prostitute is in the New York Transcript of 25 September 1835, which records a courtroom conversation:

Prisoner: [...] he called me a hooker.
Magistrate: What did you call her a hooker for?
Witness: ’Cause she allers hangs around the hook, your honner.

The hook here is a reference to Corlear’s Hook, a neighborhood on the lower east side of Manhattan, near what is now the Williamsburg Bridge. At the time, Corlear’s Hook was a well-known red-light district, as shown an 1839 pamphlet titled, Prostitution Exposed; or a Moral Reform Directory. Despite its title, the pamphlet is a guide for finding prostitutes, rather than an advocate for ending the practice. The author goes by the nom de plume of Butt Ender, and the publisher is For Public Convenience. Presumably, no one put their names on it for fear of being arrested for solicitation. It doesn’t use the word hooker, but it does describe Corlear’s Hook:

The Hook.—There are 32 houses of assignation in Walnut street and its vicinity, and 87 houses of prostitution of the most wretched description; frequented by sailors, &c.

Hooker appears again in another “sporting” New York newspaper, the Weekly Rake of 20 August 1842:

The rake wants to know. When are we to have a fresh importation of “hookers.” The stock is [...] pretty well used up. We want fresh hands at the bellow but don’t want fire.

The word appears in North Carolina in the papers of a Bryan Grimes of Chowan County, North Carolina on 18 November 1845. The book, Tarheel Talk, in which the use is recorded is not clear about the context, but it’s probably a letter by a T. Houghton to Grimes or a member of his family:

If he comes by way of Norfolk he will find any number of pretty Hookers in the Brick row not far from French's hotel.

It’s possible that hooker started as a label for ladies doing business in Corlear’s Hook and given New York City’s position as a travel destination and waypoint, the term spread outward from there.

The second likely origin is in an older slang word for a type of thief. The term dates to the sixteenth century as described by Thomas Harmon:

These hokers or Anglers be perillous and most wicked knaues, and be deriued or procede forth from the vpright men, they commonly goe in fréese yerkynes and gally sloppes, pointeth beneth the knée: these when they practise their pilfryng, it is al by night, for as they walk a day times from house to house to demaund charitie, thei vigilantly mark where, or in what place they may attayne to there pray, casting their eyes vp to euery window, wel noting what they sée ther, whether apparell or linnen, hanging neere vnto the sayde wyndows, and that wil they be sure to haue yt next night folowing, for they customably cary with them a staffe of v. or vi. foote long, in which, within one inch of yt top therof is a little hole bored through: in which hole they putte an yron hoke, and with the same they will pluck vnto them quikly any thing yt thei may reach therwith, which hoke in the day time they couertly cary about the[m], and is neuer sene or taken out till they come to the place where they worke their feat.

The 1725 New Canting Dictionary also records this sense, but adds that hooker is also used by grifters as the name of the person who lures a mark into the con:

ANGLERS, alias HOOKERS; the Third Order of Villains: Petty Thieves, who have a Stick with a Hook at the End, wherewith they pluck Things out of Windows, Grates, &c. Also those that draw People in to be cheated.

It’s very possible that this “luring” sense was extended to include prostitutes, who might very well be alluring. And it may be that oral use of hooker to mean a prostitute predates the red-light district of Corlear’s Hook by quite some time. If so, it’s also possible that the existing slang term became a play on words when the houses of Corlear’s Hook opened their doors for business. In that case, the Corlear’s Hook connection would be one of amplification and spread, rather than origin.

I can’t leave hooker without mention of General Joseph Hooker. The licentious behavior of this U.S. Civil War general is often given as the origin of the term. During his brief tenure as commander of the Union Army of the Potomac, the army’s camp followers were known as Hooker’s Division, and Charles Francis Adams, Jr., grandson and great-grandson of the presidents, describes Hooker’s headquarters thusly:

During the winter (1862-63), when Hooker was in command, I can say from personal knowledge and experience, that the Headquarters of the Army of the Potomac was a place where no self-respecting man liked to go, and no decent woman could go. It was a combination of barroom and brothel.

As we have seen, the slang use of hooker long predates the Civil War, so the general cannot be the term’s origin. But, as perhaps is the case with Corlear’s Hook, the general and his reputation no doubt amplified the term, bringing it to the vocabularies of thousands of soldiers.

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Sources:

Adams, Charles Francis. Charles Francis Adams, 1835-1915: An Autobiography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916, 161.

Butt Ender. Prostitution Exposed; or a Moral Reform Directory. New York: Published for Public Convenience, 1839, 29. Gale Primary Sources.

Eliason, Norman Ellsworth. Tarheel Talk: an Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Press, 1956, 277. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

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

Harmon, Thomas. A Caveat for Commen Cursetors Vulgarely Called Vagabones. London: Henry Middleton, 1573, sig. B4r–v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

A New Canting Dictionary. London: Booksellers of London and Westminster, 1725, B2. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. hooker, n.1.

Quinion Michael. Port Out, Starboard Home: and Other Language Myths. London, Penguin, 2004, 152–53. HathTrust Digital Archive.

Photo Credit: Unknown photographer, 1876, New York Public Library.

hoodwink

14 January 2021

To hoodwink someone is to deceive or fool them, and the word has a rather straightforward etymology, although the meaning of wink has changed over the centuries, and that can confuse present-day speakers. Hoodwink is a compound of hood + wink, two elements with roots in Proto-Germanic and which are still very much in use today.

Hood, meaning a head covering, appears as early as c. 700 C.E. as an Old English gloss to the Latin word capitium in the Épinal Glossary. And the present-day wink comes from the Old English verb wincian, meaning to close one’s eyes. From the c. 897 Old English translation of Gregory’s Pastoral Care:

Ac se þe agiemeleasað ðæt he ðence, ærðæmþe he do, se stæpð forð mid ðæm fotum, & wincað mid ðæm eagum. He gæð on ðone weg, ac he nat on hwæt he gæð, ac he wierð swiðe hræðe on fielle.

(But he who neglects to think before he acts, he steps forth with his feet and winks with his eyes. He goes on his way, but he does not know where he is going, and he very soon comes to a fall.)

Gregory’s original Latin reads oculos claudit (he closes his eyes).

The present-day sense of hood is much the same as it was in the early medieval era, but the sense of wink has changed. Wink now generally refers to the momentary closing of one eye, often in discreet acknowledgement of something. This sense first appears in the fourteenth century and gradually drove out the sense of closing both eyes so one cannot see.

The compound hoodwink appears by the mid sixteenth century. The earliest instance I’m aware of is in a 1562 religious tract, An Apologie of Priuate Masse, arguing for the legality of private celebrations of the mass, saying that old traditions should not govern modern conduct. In this particular instance, though, hoodwink is being used to denote covering women’s faces with a veil and not in the sense of blinding someone:

And will you I beseeche ye reforme al thynges to the very state of the primatiue churche now? Will you suppresse al christian kyngis which were not in the Apostels time? Wyll you alter the state now, and make all thinges to be common? Wyll you disgrace all preachers that woorke not miracles? Wyl you inforce women to hoodwinke them selues in the churche? will you rayle against bisshoppes that kéepe any temporalties?

And about fifty years later, the metaphorical sense of to deceive someone appears. From John Healey’s 1610 translation of Augustine’s City of God:

For the riuer Iordan parted, when Iosuah lead the people ouer it, and when Heliah passed it, as likewise when his follower Heliseus deuided it with Heliah his cloake, and the sunne as wee said before went back in the time of Hezechiah. But Varro doth not say that any one desired this change of Venus. Let not the faithlesse therefore hood winck them-selues in the knowledge of nature, as though Gods power could not alter the nature of any thing from what it was before vnto mans knowledge.

So, not only are the elements of hoodwink old, the word itself has been around for quite a while.

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Sources:

An Apologie of Priuate Masse, London: T. Powell, 1562, 8. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Augustine. Of the Citie of God. John Healey, trans. London: George Eld, 1610, 21.8, 848. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

The Épinal-Erfurt Glossary Project, Dictionary of Old English Project, University of Toronto, 2019. Épinal, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 72 (2), fols. 94–107. 

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. hoodwink, v., hood, n.1, wink, v.1.

Sweet, Henry. King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, vol. 1 of 2. Early English Text Society, London: N. Trübner & Co., 1871, chap. 39, 286. London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius MS B.xi.

copacetic

13 January 2021

Copacetic is an Americanism that means fine or satisfactory. The origin is not known with certainty, but we have a pretty good guess.

As far anyone can tell, the copacetic, in its earliest incarnations spelled copasetic, pops up first in Irvin Bacheller’s 1919 novel A Man for the Ages, about Abraham Lincoln. The word appears three times in the novel, and all three instances are either spoken by or in reference to a Mrs. Lukins, a character in the book. The first of these is:

Now there's the kind of a man! Stout as a buffalo an' as to looks I'd call him, as ye might say, real copasetic." Mrs. Lukins expressed this opinion solemnly and with a slight cough. Its last word stood for nothing more than an indefinite depth of meaning.

About halfway through the book, there is this comment about her vocabulary:

There was one other word in her lexicon which was in the nature of a jewel to be used only on special occasions. It was the word "copasetic." The best society of Salem Hill understood perfectly that it signalized an unusual depth of meaning.

And toward the end there is this:

In the words of Mrs. Lukins “it is very copasetic,” and I begin to feel that I have made some progress in the study of Bim Kelso.

Despite many hours of searching by numerous researchers, no one has been able to find an earlier instance of the word. As a result, it seems likely that Bacheller coined the term for the character and Mrs. Lukins’s speech is akin to the malapropisms of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s Mrs. Malaprop. If this is the case, copacetic may be Bacheller’s blending of the Latin copia (plenty) with ceterum (otherwise, in other respects).

Supporting this conjecture is the fact that Mrs. Lukins also uses the word coralapus, which like copacetic has not been antedated, but unlike copacetic does not seem to have a life outside this novel. Bacheller also coined Latinate words in his other writing.

The following year we see the word start to slip into slang usage. The Chicago Daily Tribune of 21 August 1920 reprinted an advertisement that had run in the Times of London a few weeks before as an example of a faux pas implying cannibalism:

VERY COPASETIC
(From the London Times.)
Good position—French lady, cooks herself, speaks English, beautiful climate; exchange of money favourable; good references. Déjardin 18, Porte Gayole, Boulogne.

The original ad in the Times did not have the headline copasetic. That headline is commentary on the ad by the Chicago paper.

Copacetic also appears in the 1920 song “At the New Jump Steady Ball” by Black songwriters Tom Delaney and Sidney Easton:

Copasetic was the password for one and all, At the New Jump Steady Ball!

The song was recorded in 1921 by Ethel Waters. Bill “Bojangles” Robinson was also known for having used the word, and it entered into American slang, especially that of Black speakers.

While the evidence that Bacheller actually coined the word is strong, it’s possible that he, wittingly or not, plucked a word that was already floating about the ether and used it in his novel. But it would be odd for a writer like Bacheller, who seemed attuned to slang and neologisms, to put a current slang term in the mouth of character who was supposed to have lived many decades before. But without more evidence, we cannot be sure which direction the word flows, from Bacheller into slang or vice versa.

Copacetic is also known for having a large number of explanations, all false, attached to its origin. It has been speculated that it comes from Chinook jargon, from Hebrew, from Louisiana French, from Italian, and with utmost absurdity from “the cop is on the settee.” None of these are plausible in the least.

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Sources:

Bacheller, Irving. A Man for the Ages. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1919, 69, 287, 401. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Delaney, Tom and Sidney Easton. “At the New Jump Steady Ball.” 1920.  DigitalCommons@UMaine.

Goranson, Stephen. “Copasetic.” Language Log, 3 March 2017.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. copacetic, adj.

“A Line o’ Type or Two.” Chicago Daily Tribune, 21 August 1920, 4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Merriam-Webster.com, 2020, s.v. copacetic, adj.

“Nursing Homes.” Times (London), 22 July 1920, 4. Gale Primary Sources: The Times Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. copacetic, adj.

sedition

12 January 2021

Sedition has a rather straightforward etymology; it’s from the Latin seditio, via the Anglo-Norman sediciun. The Latin word literally means a going apart; the se- prefix, denoting separation, can also be seen in secession and separate. And the -it- is a form of the verb ire, meaning to go. That’s the literal meaning Latin, but the word was used to refer to insurrection or civil discord, or in poetic works to strife or quarrel.

The Latin word appears in Anglo-Latin texts by the eighth century. In one glossary it is defined as:

Seditio . perturbata . simulatio.

(Sedition:  pretenses/deceits that cause discord)

And it appears as a definition in another entry:

Tumultus . seditio.

(rebellion: sedition.)

But the word is not used in English until the 1380s, when it was borrowed or influenced by the Anglo-Norman sediciun, meaning treachery. It appears in a Wycliffite translation of the biblical book Deeds 24 (Acts 24) in a passage about Paul’s trial before Felix. Here sedition is being used in the sense of violent civil strife or dissension:

We han founden this man beringe venym, or pestilence, and stiringe sedicioun, or dissencioun, to alle Jewis in al the world, and auctour of seducioun of the secte of Nazarens; the which also enforside for to defoule the temple; whom and takun to, we wolden deme, aftir oure lawe.

(We have found this man bearing venom, or pestilence, and stirring sedition, or dissention, to all Jews in the all the world, and author of the sedition of the sect of the Nazarenes, which also undertook to defile the temple, whom we have taken and would judge under our law.)

The Vulgate Bible uses seditio in this passage.

By c.1450 sedition was being used to mean insurrection when it appears in a translation of Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus (Of Famous Women) in a passage about Medea:

And, whan she saw hym, forthwith, anon-right
Hir feith and trouth to hym she dydde plyght:
Cupydo ys bronde so sore had hir inflamed,
That hym to folow she was no-thynge ashamed,

But stale out priuely of hir faders lond
And— ȝit wele wersse—made a sedicyon
Ageyns hir fader with powere and stronge honde,
The comunalte to make an insurreccion,
That she and and hir dereward luf Jason
Myght eskape, vnknowynge the kynge,
Whyle he was occupyed in werfarynge .

(And when she was him, forthwith and instantly, she pledged her faith and troth to him: Cupid’s torch had inflamed her so fervently that she was in no way ashamed to follow him but stole out of her father’s land secretly. And—yet more sinfully—She made a sedition against her father with a powerful and strong hand. The nation to make an insurrection, so that she and her then-dear love Jason might escape without the king knowing, while he was occupied in warfare.)

The general sense of violent strife or dissension dropped out of use in the seventeenth century, leaving the sense of insurrection, and particular inciting an insurrection, as the sense in use today.

In the United States today, there is no crime of sedition, per se, but there is a crime of seditious conspiracy. 18 U.S. Code § 2384 — Seditious Conspiracy reads:

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

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Sources:

“18 U.S. Code § 2384 — Seditious Conspiracy.” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, accessed 11 January 2021.

Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND1), 1992, s.v. sedicun.

Deeds 24. The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest English Versions, vol. 4 of 4. Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden, eds. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1850, 579. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce MS 369. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013, s.v. seditio. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Hessels, Jan Hendrik. An Eighth-Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1890, 107, 117. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 144. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1879, s.v. seditio. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. sedicioun, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. sedition, n., se-, prefix.

Schleich, Gustav. "Die Mittelenglische Umdichtung von Boccaccios De claris mulieribus," Palaestra, 144, 1924, lines 1320–30, 65. London, British Library, Additional 10304. HathiTrust Digital Archive.