huckleberry

February 1, 2021

Clip from the 1993 movie Tombstone in which Doc Holliday (played by Val Kilmer) tells Johnny Ringo (played by Michael Biehn), "I'm your huckleberry" (20-sec)

1 February 2021

The 1993 movie Tombstone has a line when the character of Doc Holliday, played by actor Val Kilmer, tells Johnny Ringo, played by Michael Biehn, a man he is about to kill, “I’m your huckleberry.” The line is often repeated by fans of the film, perhaps because it makes little sense to a twentieth or twenty-first century audience. But the line is historically accurate. It is something the real Doc Holliday might have said.

Huckleberry is a name given to several North American plants in the genera Vaccinium and Gaylussacia, including the blueberry. The name probably comes from the English dialectal hurtleberry or whortleberry, a name for the bilberry, Vaccinium myrtillus. This literal sense of the word dates to at least 1670, when it appears in Daniel Denton’s A Brief Description of New York, in a passage describing the plant life of Long Island:

The Fruits natural to the Island, are Mulberries, Posimons, Grapes great and small, Huckelberries, Cramberries, Plums of several sorts, Rosberries and Strawberries, of which last is such abundance in June, that the Fields and Woods are died red: Which the Countrey-people perceiving, instantly arm themselves with bottles of Wine, Cream, and Sugar, and in stead of a Coat of Male, every one takes a Female upon his Horse behind him, and so rushing violently into the fields, never leave till they have disrob'd them of their red colours, and turned them into the old habit.

Huckleberry growing near Golden, British Columbia; blue berries growing on a green-leaved plant

Several slang senses of huckleberry appear during the nineteenth century. It could mean a small amount or degree, probably from the small size of the berry. From James Kirke Paulding’s 1832 novel Westward Ho!:

For my part, stranger, I can't fetch my breath anywhere except in all out-doors, and had sooner lay down on a bed of leaves with a sky blanket, than sleep on one of your hard feather-beds, that pretty nigh break a man's bones. I wish I may be hoppled all my life to come, if I didn't once get within a huckleberry of being smothered to death in one of them beds with curtains all round 'em. Catch me there agin, and I'll give you leave to curry-comb me, anyhow.

It also commonly appears in the comparative phrase a huckleberry to/over a persimmon, again, probably relating the small size of the huckleberry to the much larger persimmon. Again from Paulding’s book:

We must make a straight wake behind us; for if the horn gets broadside to the current, I wouldn't risk a huckleberry to a persimmon that we don't every soul get treed, and sink to the bottom like gone suckers.

By the 1860s, huckleberry was being used to refer one’s sweetheart or friend, or simply to someone who is useful, the right person for the job. This sense probably arises out of the berry’s sweet and desirable taste. The phrase I’m your huckleberry is recorded in the 1862 papers of Val C. Giles, a soldier in the Confederate Army in reference to two gamblers cheating with loaded dice:

I’ll fling you a dose of high die for enough of Old Culpepper to treat this crowd.”
“All right,” said Mr. Bailey, “I’m your huckleberry.”
Bailey and Brownley kept loaded dice.

And it is used a few years later in Henri Wilkins 1879 play The Coming Man. In this scene, a doctor has instructed his servant Hank to not admit Prosey Greene, a suitor for hand of the doctor’s daughter, into the house:

P. G. Will nothing tempt you to forsake the wrong and espouse the right cause? Here is positive evidence that I am your friend, (shows money) Will you be mine and aid me in the consumation [sic] of my whole life's happiness?
Hank. (taking money) That kind of evidence will go farther towards convincing this jury than all the lawyer's learning, or poet's nonsense in the United States, (puts money in pocket) Now, I'm your huckleberry. Heave ahead and be lively, before the old man returns.

In the play, Hank is a Black man, but the phrase is not peculiar to Black speech.

So, the line in the 1993 movie is appropriate speech for a dramatization of events of 1881–82. We, of course, don’t know if Doc Holliday ever actually uttered those words (he does so twice in the movie, addressing Johnny Ringo both times), but it is something he very well may have said. The movie also has Holliday killing Ringo. Historically, Ringo was found shot in the head outside Tombstone, Arizona in 1882, and his killer was never identified. Ringo had been a suspect in the killing of Morgan Earp, and either Holliday or Wyatt Earp may very well have killed him in revenge. Or someone else may have done it. Ringo was not exactly lacking for enemies.

Huckleberry could also be used to refer to a child or to a person of little consequence. A chapter in Louisa M. Alcott’s Little Men is titled Huckleberries and is about two children who go berry picking and become lost. The title refers not only to the berries to be picked, but it also alludes to the two children, huckleberries of a different kind, although the text does not directly use huckleberry in any but the literal sense.

Mark Twain used this sense of the word at least twice in his writing. Most famously, of course, is in the name of Huckleberry Finn (1884), so called because he is the Finn boy, as opposed to his father. But also, because the term could be bestowed affectionately on a friend or sweetheart, the name would evoke the readers’ sympathies.

It also appears in the 1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court in the sense of a person of no consequence:

Expedition No. 3 will start adout the first of next mgnth on a search f8r Sir Sagramour le Desirous. It is in comand of the renowned Knight of the Red Lawns, assissted by Sir Persant of Inde, who is compete9t. intelligent, courteous, and in every mav a brick, and furtHer assisted by Sir Palamides the Saracen, who is no huckleberry himself. This is no pic-nic, these boys mean busine&s.

The typos here are deliberate; Twain is evoking the experience of reading “Arkansas journalism” of the late nineteenth century

The slang senses of huckleberry continued to be used into the twentieth century, but by mid century had faded from use. The literal sense, referring to the actual berry, is still in common use.

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Sources:

Alcott, Louisa May. Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys. Boston, Roberts Bros., 1871. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Denton, Daniel. A Brief Description of New York. London: John Hancock, 1670, 3–4. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Giles, Valerius Cincinnatus. Rags and Hope, the Recollections of Val. C. Giles, For Years with Hood’s Brigade, Fourth Texas Infantry, 1861–65. Mary Lasswell, ed. New York: Coward-McCann, 1961, 56.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. huckleberry, n.

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

Paulding, James Kirke. Westward Ho!, vol. 1 of 2. New York: J. and J. Harper, 1832, 182, 80. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. New York: Harper and Bros., 1889, 247. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Wilkins, Henri. The Coming Man, A Farce in One Act. Clyde, Ohio: A.D. Ames, 1879, 5. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Bruno Karklis, 2018, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Video credit: George P. Cosmatos, dir. Tombstone. Hollywood Pictures, 1993. Fair use of a 20-second clip to illustrate the topic under discussion.

hocus-pocus

January 30, 2021

31 January 2021

Hocus pocus is a traditional utterance of stage magicians upon performing a trick. It’s part of their patter to distract the audience to prevent them from noticing the sleight-of-hand trick being performing. It’s pseudo-Latin, just nonsense syllables. Its origin is in the early years of the seventeenth century and the court of King James I of England where Hocus Pocus was the stage name of William Vincent, one of the king’s jugglers and magicians (with a side-job as a grifter and swindler).

The phrase hocus pocus appears as early as 1621 in Ben Jonson’s Masque of Augures, in which a character describes a masque within the masque as:

O Sir, all de better, vor an Antick-masque, de more absurd it be, and vrom de purpose, it be euer all de better. If it goe from de nature of de ting, it is de more art, for dere is Art, and dere is Nature; you shall see. Hochos-pochos. Fabros Palabros.

The earliest known mention of the magician is by Anglican priest John Gee in a 1624 anti-Catholic tract. The “they” in the passage is a reference to Jesuits:

Another matter more troubled my curiositie, where and of what Master they learned these trickes of legerdemaine. I alwayes thought they had their rudiments from some iugling Hocas Pocas in a quart pot.

The next year, an account from 18 November 1625 regarding an allegation of fraud identifies Vincent as Hocus Pocus:

William Vincent, alias Hocus Spocus, of London, the Kinge's Majestie's servant, to use his faculty of feales[?] &c, saith he was in company with the said Francis Lane and playd at [ ] for vjd., and soe till Hocus Spocus lost iijs. to Francis Lane, and said he would be halves with him, and would have had him fourth of the roome at Spencer's house into a private place.

Vincent was quite famous in his day. Playwright Ben Jonson mentions him in his 1631 play The Staple of News:

That was the old way, Gossip, when Iniquity came in like Hokos Pokos, in a Iuglers ierkin, with false skirts, like the Knaue of Clubs! but now they are attir'd like men and women o' the time, the Vices, male and female!

A book of magic tricks titled Hocus Pocus Junior was published in 1634 and went through several editions. The frontispiece of the book, seen here, shows a magician uttering the words hocus pocus as part of an incantation. Scholar of theater Philip Butterworth has argued that Vincent was the author of the book, but the evidence of authorship Butterworth presents is not definitive. In any case, the title is clearly a reference to Vincent, with the book being junior to the man’s senior.

And a few years before that, Thomas Randolph includes this bit of dialogue in his 1632 play The Jealous Lovers. The play was performed for King Charles I, so it would seem that by this date the magician’s patter of hocus pocus was well known, at least among the court:

I think Cupid be turn'd jugler. Here's nothing but Hocas pocas, Praestò be gon, Come again Jack; and such feats of activitie.

And several decades later, physician Thomas Ady gives a fuller account of Vincent’s patter in his 1655 book A Candle in the Dark, an attempt to disprove there is such a thing as witchcraft. The book was used, unsuccessfully, by the defense during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692–93. The mention of hocus pocus comes in a passage discussing different types of magic

The first is profitably seen in our common Juglers, that go up and down to play their Tricks in Fayrs and Markets, I will speak of one man more excelling in that craft than others, that went about in King Iames his time, and long since, who called himself, The Kings Majesties most excellent Hocus Pocus, and so was he called, because that at the playing of every Trick, he used to say, Hocus pocus, tontus talontus, vade celeriter jubeo, a dark composure of words, to blinde the eyes of the beholders, to make his Trick pass the more currantly without discovery, because when the eye and the ear of the beholder are both earnestly busied, the Trick is not so easily discovered, nor the Imposture discerned.

The words hocus pocus, tontus talontus are nonsense, but vade celeriter jubeo is I command you go quickly.

It is sometimes said that hocus pocus is a corruption of the Latin mass in particular the sentence, accipite, et manducate ex hoc omnes: hoc est enim corpus meum (take and eat, all of you, for this is my body). This is unlikely. While it’s certainly possible that hoc est corpus could be misheard as hocus pocus by someone who does not know Latin, the intervening enim militates against this, and the rest of the patter as given by Ady doesn’t match the words in the mass either.

This particular idea got its start, or at least was popularized, by Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson, who in 1684 penned an anti-Catholic tract suggesting the magic phrase was a mockery of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Presumably by this date, memory of Vincent and his stage name had faded from popular memory:

And in all probability those common jugling words of hocus pocus are nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the Priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation. Into such contempt by this foolish Doctrine and pretended Miracle of theirs have they brought the most sacred and venerable Mystery of our Religion.

So, that’s it. Hocus pocus comes from the stage name of the most famous magician you’ve never heard of.

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Sources:

Ady, Thomas. A Candle in the Dark. London: Robert Ibbitson, 1655, 29. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Butterworth, Philip. “Hocus Pocus Junior: Further Confirmation of its Author.” Theatre Notebook, 69.3, 2014, 130–35.

Gee, John. New Shreds of the Old Snare. London: J. Dawson for Robert Mylbourne, 1624, 21. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Guilding, John Melville, ed. Reading Records: Diary of the Corporation, vol. 2 of 4.. London: James Parker, 1895, 264. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Jonson, Ben. The Masque of Augeres. London: 1621, sig. B.r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

———. The Staple of News (1631). In The Works of Benjamin Jonson, vol. 2 of 3. London: Richard Meighen, 1640, second intermeane after the act 2, 35. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. hocus-pocus, n., adj. and adv.

Randolph, Thomas. The Jealous Lovers. Cambridge: Thomas and John Buck, 1632, 2.5, 25. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Tillotson, John. A Discourse Against Transubstantiation. London: M. Flesher for Brabazon Aylmer, 1684, 34. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Image credit: St. John’s College, Cambridge. Public domain in the United States as a mechanical reproduction of a work that was produced before 1925.

bubble (investments)

January 29, 2021

A GameStop store in Griffin, Georgia, 2014. In January 2021 GameStop stock was a speculative bubble.

29 January 2021

A stock or investment bubble is when the price of a stock, commodity, or other investment vehicle rises sharply because of speculation and then falls precipitously—inevitably because its price has become completely divorced from its actual value. The metaphor underlying the term is that of a soap bubble that expands until it pops.

The word bubble, referring to a literal membrane of liquid that encloses a gas, dates to the fourteenth century. Like its cousins blub, blubber, and burble, it is echoic, imitating the sound bubbles make when popped. An early appearance is in a recipe for making blue ink (azure) written sometime before 1350:

Yef thin asure is fin, tac gumme arabuk inoh, ant cast into a standys with cler watur, vorte hit beo imolten. Ant seththe cast therof into thin asure, ant sture ham togedere. Ant yef ther beth bobeles theron, tac a lutel erewax, ant pute therin, ant thenne writ.
(If your azure is pure, take enough gum arabic and put it into a stand with clear water until it is molten. And then cast some of this into your azure and stir them together. And if there are bubbles in it, take a little earwax, and put it in, and then write.)

But the investment sense took a few centuries to develop. The Oxford English Dictionary divides the investment usage into two senses, that of a fraudulent investment and a later sense of a rise in price due to irrational exuberance rather than deceit. But in practice it is often difficult to parse these two apart, and what caused the bubble, fraud or wild-eyed hopes, doesn’t affect the trajectory or effects of the bubble; they are the same either way.

The 1699 slang Dictionary of the Canting Crew records a sense of bubble to mean a con man’s mark:

Bub, or Bubble, c. one that is Cheated; also an Easy, Soft Fellow.

This sense probably comes from the idea of the mark being soft, easily punctured. It is not the same thing as the investment sense, but since that sense is recorded the next year, this slang sense probably had an influence on the latter.

In his 1700 book Labour in Vain, satirist Ned Ward includes an imagined dialogue between himself and his printer that is an early use of bubble to mean a speculative investment:

A DIALOGUE Between the AUTHOR AND THE PRINTER.
Printer. What Title do you design to give this Book?
Author. Labour in Vain: Or, What Signifies Little or Nothing.
Printer. Then I'm like to make a very hopeful Bargain this Morning; and grow Rich like a Jacobite, that would part with his Property, for a Speculative Bubble.

The first actual investment bubble was the South Sea Bubble of 1720. The South Sea Company, a joint-stock company founded in London in 1711 acquired a monopoly on British trade in slaves from Africa to South America and the South Pacific. Leaving aside the ethical considerations of buying and selling human beings, since Spain controlled South America and Britain was at war with Spain at the time, the chances of reaping profit from such trade were slim to none. Yet, the price of the company’s stock rose sharply, largely due to the company trading in its own stock and giving loans to people to buy shares, all of which drove the stock’s price up before it suddenly came crashing down in 1720.

Ned Ward, again, was one of the first to use bubble in this new sense in his 1720 The Delights of the Bottle, a poem about failed investors seeking solace in booze while creditors pounded at their doors:

When tir’d with intricate Affairs,
Or punish’d with inviduous Cares;
When Disappointment gives us trouble,
In South-Sea, or some other Bubble;
When Duns, by their impatient canting,
Perplex us, cause the Money’s wanting;
When teas’d at Home by Nuptial Dowdy,
Too Fond, too Noisy, or too Moody;
Whither can Man repair to find
Relief, when thus disturb’d in Mind.

The 1720 published version of Ward’s poem also included the lyrics to a song titled “South-Sea Ballad, or, Merry Remarks upon Exchange-Alley Bubbles.”

Since then, there have been many speculative bubbles, the most famous ones in recent years being the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and 2000 and the real estate bubble that burst in 2008.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2018, s.v. bubble, n. and adj.

Middle English Dictionary, November 2019, s.v. bobel, n.

A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew. London: W. Hawes, 1699, 1. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“Vorte Temprene Asure.” The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript, vol. 2 of 3. Susanna Greer Fein, ed. U of Rochester TEAMS Middle English Text Series, 2014. London, British Library, MS Harley 2252, fol. 52v.

Ward, Edward (Ned). The Delights of the Bottle. London: Sam Briscoe, 1720, 4. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

———. Labour in Vain. London: 1700. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Photo Credit: Michael Rivera, 2014, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

hooligan

January 28, 2021

28 January 2021

A hooligan is a ruffian, a street tough. The word arose in London in the 1890s as the name of a gang, Hooligan’s Boys or Hooligan’s Gang. It’s not known if there was a man named Hooligan at the head of the gang or if the name was chosen arbitrarily. The name Hooligan was commonly used in 1890s music-hall songs as a generic name for an Irish person, and there was a series of comics in British newspapers of the day featuring the adventures of the Hooligan family. The street gang’s name may have been inspired by these uses.

The earliest reference to this Hooligan gang that I’ve found is from the Sheffield Evening Telegraph and Star of 24 April 1894:

THE HOOLIGAN BOYS
REMARKABLE ALLEGATIONS
At the Southwark Police Court yesterday Charles Clarke, a powerful lad of 19, described as a general dealer, who refused his address, was charged upon a warrant with violently assaulting Police-constable 51 M and Constable Chappell, employed by Mrs. Poole, the managing director of the South London Palace of Varieties, London Road.—It appeared from the evidence that on Saturday night, the 14th inst., a disturbance was created in the hall by a gang headed by the prisoner, who were throwing bottles and glasses about the gallery. Upon Chappell speaking to them the prisoner seized a broom and struck him (Chappell) a violent blow with it, felling him to the ground, where he lay in an unconscious condition. The prisoner and his companions then kicked him violently about the body. When Police-constable 51 M went to Chappell’s assistance he was also “set upon,” thrown to the ground, and kicked about the head and body. The officer, owing to this treatment, was on the sick-list for a week.—Police-constable 51 M said the prisoner was the “king of a gang of youths known as the Hooligan Boys,” who paid to a secretary 2d. per week towards settling fines inflicted upon the members of the gang for assaults upon the police. They were fined by the secretary 2d. if they were found without a belt or a stick.—Accused was remanded to give the police an opportunity to arrest some of the prisoner’s companions.

And there is this from the Nottingham Evening Post of 7 August 1894 describing a different incident:

THE HOOLIGAN GANG
For disorderly conduct and an assault on the police, a labourer, named Harry Whettham, was yesterday sent to gaol by Mr. Slade, at the Southwark Police-court, for 14 days. The prisoner was said to be a prominent member of the “Hooligan Gang.” whose disorderly conduct has frequently engaged police attention, and he was described by the magistrate as a young ruffian.

By 1898, hooligan was being used as a generic term for such a ruffian. From the London Daily News of 26 July 1898:

There was another stabbing case in Lambeth on Saturday night, or, to be accurate, at seven o’clock, that is, broad daylight. We are not surprised that South London groans under the Terrorists, and cries aloud for protection from the lawless gangs of roughs which the police force is hopelessly inadequate to cope with. We vote millions a minute for new ships, and grudge a few hundreds for policing the overcrowded Alsastias across the water, whose foul courts and alleys would disgrace even a Chinese city. It is no wonder, indeed, that Hooligan gangs are bred in these vile, miasmatic byways, but it is surely time that active steps are taken to stamp them out.

(Alsatia, not to be confused with Alsace in France, was the name for an area within the Whitefriars district of London that was a legal sanctuary for debtors and criminals prior to 1697, The term continues to be used to refer to places that are beyond the reach of the law.)

And hooliganism appears a few months later. From the Dundee, Scotland Evening Telegraph of 3 October 1898:

HOOLIGANISM
In various quarters of the country there have been outbreaks of a ruffianism which is expressly described as Hooliganism. The Hooligan may be man or woman, boy or girl. Their distinguishing characteristic is misconduct, ranging from rudeness and roughness to blackguardism of the most pronounced kind.

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Sources:

The Daily News (London), 26 July 1898, 5. Gale Primary Sources.

“The Hooligan Boys.” Sheffield Evening Telegraph and Star (Sheffield, England), 24 April 1894, 2. Gale Primary Sources.

“The Hooligan Gang.” Nottingham Evening Post (Nottingham, England), 7 August 1894, 2. Gale Primary Sources.

“Hooliganism.” Evening Telegraph (Dundee, Scotland), 3 October 1898, 2. Gale Primary Sources.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. hooligan, n.; third edition, September 2012, s.v. Alsatia, n.

Photo credit: Wolfreid Paetzold, 14 April 1990, Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1990-0414-009, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license.

Charlie

January 27, 2021

27 January 2021

Charlie has many slang meanings, but perhaps the best-known today is the American Vietnam War slang for the Vietcong, the enemy. But this sense is rooted in an older, racist term for Asians in general.

Charlie has long been a slang term for an unnamed or non-specific man, often used in informally addressing a man whose name one does not know. This sense dates to the early nineteenth century. From the New-York Mirror of 2 April 1825:

A few days ago, a gentleman being rather fatigued, called a coachee—“What will you take me about the distance of a mile for?”—“Twenty-five cents,sir.”—“Well open the door,” and in he got. In a few minutes they arrived at the place proposed.—Having alighted, the twenty-five cents was tendered—“This is not enough, sir.”—“Why, it was your price.”—“Yes, sir, but it is not enough, and I won’t take it.”—“How much is enough?”—“Half a dollar, sir”—“Well, rather than dispute with such an infernal pickpocket, I’ll pay you”—and the gentleman left Charley turning over the silver, quite satisfied with his success in making, as he expressed himself, “the flats pay for their experience.[“] Now we would seriously inquire, whether such conduct ought not to be severely punished by the proper authorities?—A law should be made to bring all such fellows to a proper sense of their duty.

About a century later, a Black English slang sense of Mr. Charlie appears in print, meaning a White person, often used contemptuously. From the glossary of Black slang terms that appears at the end of Rudolph Fisher’s 1928 Harlem Renaissance novel The Walls of Jericho:

MISS ANNE
MR. CHARLIE
Non-specific designation of “swell” whites. Ex. “Boy, bootlegging pays. That boogy’s got a straight-eight just like Mr. Charlie’s.”

This slang sense of Mr. Charlie continues up to the present day.

Use of Charlie to refer to an Asian, in particular a Chinese man, appears about the same time, probably influenced by the fictional Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan, who makes his literary debut in 1925 in the novel The House Without a Key by Earl Derr Biggers. The use of Charlie referring to a generic Chinese man is in place by 1938 in A.I. Bezzerides novel The Long Haul (adapted for the screen in 1940 with the title They Drive by Night, starring Humphrey Bogart and George Raft):

He walked to the Chinaman, “Hey, Charlie, what you know?”

But as with many racial slurs, the use of Charlie was not precise and could be applied to any Asian man. During World War II, the Japanese were often dubbed Charlie. From Time magazine of 9 February 1942, reporting on the fighting on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines:

The Jap, who is variously “Mr. Moto,” “Tojo,” “Charlie,” or “the Japanzy” to U.S. troops, was beginning to show a heavy preference for night movement, when concealment is best.

And Bedcheck Charley (also Washing-Machine Charlie) was the nickname applied to solitary, Japanese planes that harassed U.S. troops at night. From an Associated Press story of 12 January 1944 reporting from the Gilbert Islands:

First it was the snipers. Then it was trigger-happy Americans who thought they heard snipers.
But now it’s “Bedcheck Charley,” a Japanese bomber that comes over this base just as hard-working GIs settle down for a night’s sleep.

And Bedcheck Charlie would also appear on the European front late in the war, referring to solitary, harassing German planes, the term evidently having made its way there from the Pacific. From a story by a correspondent who was hospitalized on the night they received news of Franklin Roosevelt’s death in the Black newspaper the Chicago Defender:

It was the quietest night I ever experienced there for nobody talked any more and the only sounds were muffled sniffles from all of us at this blow that made us all oblivious to our wounds. When “Bedcheck Charlie,” the German plane, who strafes and bombs night convoys, came over at his usual hour, everyone was awake, but this time nobody commented on the machine-like staccato booms that every one of us knew would send in more wounded from that strafed convoy travelling up front.

In this last, the sense of solitary night raider had overridden the racist connotation of the term.

During the Korean war, the term was again applied by American servicemen referring to enemy combatants. In the cases I have found, the appellation is to Chinese soldiers, but I would think it was applied to North Koreans too. (Charlie is a difficult term to search for since there are so many uses of it as a nickname for Charles.)

Two of these refer back to the Charlie Chan origin, one obliquely and one directly. From the Austin Statesman of 17 January 1951, about soldiers on the front lines publishing a regimental newspaper:

Their paper has been put out by candlelight, Korean gaslight and flashlight. It has gone to press in bombed out buildings, abandoned factories, in the open fields, in tents and in creek beds.
Its editors sometimes have to melt the frozen ink on the stove to publish, but no difficulty yet has stopped them.
“We were busy cranking out copies six hours before Charlie Chang kicked us out of Pyongyang,” said Sgt. Fulcher, smiling. “But we made our deadline.”

And the Chicago Defender of 10 February 1951:

When Charlie Chan’s hordes struck UN forces last November, 25th Division had to high-tail it out of Chongchon River area after destroying thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

And Bed-check Charley made his appearance in Korea too. From an Associated Press piece of 20 June 1951:

“Bed-check Charley,” a single-engined Communist nuisance raider, was out again early today. The plane bombed and strafed the Uijongu area about 10 miles north of Seoul.

Having been applied to Asian enemy combatants in the last two wars, when U.S. troops entered the Vietnam War, Charlie was used there as well. From Newsweek magazine of 9 August 1965:

The American GI’s whose mission is to kill him, call the enemy simply, “Old Charley”—an elusive, slippery fellow out there somewhere, beyond the next paddy field, or lurking in the next clump of bush.

It’s commonly claimed that the Vietnam use of Charlie stems from the use of the military phonetic alphabet letters Victor Charlie to refer to the Vietcong or VC, the communist insurgents in South Vietnam. But as we have seen, this is not the origin of this use of Charlie. Rather it reinforces the existing use. And in so doing, it served two purposes that benefited the U.S. military: it served to obscure the racist origin of the term, and it helped distinguish the South Vietnamese allies from the enemy.

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Sources:

Associated Press. “‘Bedcheck Charley’ Keeps GIs Awake.” Christian Science Monitor, 12 January 1944, 6. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Associated Press. “Reds Again Lose Big Jet Battle; Fight in Hills.” The Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania), 20 June 1951, 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Boyle, Hal (Associated Press). “Regiment’s ‘Daily’ Meets Frontline Need for News.” Austin Statesman, 17 January 1951, 7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Fisher, Rudolph. The Walls of Jericho (1928). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994, 303. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. Charlie, n., charlie, n.2, charlie, n.6, Mr. Charlie, n.

Lighter, J.E., Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, vol. 1. New York: Random House, 1994, s.v. Charlie or Charley, n.

New-York Mirror, and Ladies’ Literary Gazette, 2 April 1825, 287. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989 and draft additions, June 2014, s.v. Charlie | Charley, n.

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Image credit: Fox Film Corporation, 1931. Public domain image.