in like Flynn

February 11, 2021

Headshot of actor Errol Flynn, c.1945

11 February 2021

The Americanism in like Flynn means all is set, success is certain. In that way, it is akin to the British Bob’s your uncle. The phrase dates to the early 1940s and has long been associated with the actor Errol Flynn, although there is evidence that this association is after the fact and that the phrase developed in the San Francisco Bay Area as a form of rhyming slang.

The earliest known use of the name Flynn in this context was discovered by word sleuth Barry Popik in the papers of another word sleuth, San Francisco’s Peter Tamony. Tamony’s papers include a usage citation given him by his sister Kathleen, dated 3 July 1940, which reads:

"Your name is Flynn...you're in." Official of BILLY ROSES's "Aquacade"—Golden Gate International Exposition—to party of people, telling them that they would receive passes for 9 pm. show.

(Popik thought the reference to the Golden Gate International Exposition was an error, as Billy Rose’s Aquacade was performing at the New York World’s Fair at the time, but Rose had two productions of his show going simultaneously, one in New York and one in San Francisco. Tamony’s note is undoubtedly correct and refers to the California production.)

The next known appearance in print of your name is Flynn...you’re in is from the sports section of the San Francisco Examiner of 8 February 1942:

Being at wit’s end for your usual big, meaty Sunday theme we are devoting part of today’s column to a questionnaire especially prepared to test applicants for commissions in the Stockton Street tunnel ski patrol.
Answer these questions correctly and your name is Flynn, meaning you’re in, provided you have two left feet and the consent of your parents.

Tamony would weigh in on the subject a year later, writing in the San Francisco Call-Bulletin of 9 February 1943 and providing the earliest in-print example of the phrasing in like Flynn:

SEEMS AS though my guess about the derivation of the phrase, "I'm Flynn" wasn't altogether correct. I said it meant one was all set, ready, fixed, etc.—and that's right. But two correspondents, O.B. and John O'Reilly agree that it began with some such phrase as "Well, I'm in like Flynn." Finally, you were "in, Flynn." Now it's just "I'm Flynn." The reverse of the phrase is not common, but it started with "I'm out like Stout," which was shortened to "out, Stout" and is now "I'm Stout" (meaning things aren't so good).

This rhyming slang explanation is plausible, but no one has turned up other examples of the stout counterpart, and testimony (e.g., from the two correspondents) without actual citations of use is questionable. I would label this explanation as possible, but unconfirmed.

An article in the U.S. Marine Corps magazine Leatherneck https://www.wordorigins.org/big-list-entries/leatherneck from March 1945 has this story, with a passage about a marine taking his girlfriend to the track and betting on a horse named Hogan’s Goat:

So, I put the works on Estrellita’s nose. Then I went back to Dixie.
As I sat down, she looked at me and said: “It’s in?”
“In like Flynn,” I said. I decided for no good reason, to let her think Hogan’s Goat was still our baby.

It seems in like Flynn grew in popularity among U.S. servicemen during World War II. In addition to this Marine Corps reference, the phrase appears in lists of Army and Air Force slang that were published shortly after the war. But it also was popular in sports writing, used to denote an easy win or victory. From the San Francisco Chronicle of 14 July 1946 that bears the supertitle “We’re in Like Flynn”:

The chunky ex-New York Giant chattel, displaying an explosive curve, an intelligently employed change of pace, and an occasional fast ball, was never in trouble. He limited the visitors to single blows in the second, third, fourth, sixth, seventh, and eighth frames, and was in like Flynn as early as the third when mates stakes him to a 3–0 lead.

The association with Errol Flynn is first recorded later in 1946, when it appears in a list of Air Force slang terms in the journal American Speech:

IN LIKE FLYNN. Everything is O.K. In other words, the pilot is having no more trouble than Errol Flynn has in his cinematic feats.

In addition to his swashbuckling feats in front of the camera, Flynn was well known as a “ladies man,” and it is often thought that in like Flynn has an innuendo of success at sexual conquests. Furthermore, in late 1942 the actor was accused of statutory rape by two female seventeen-year-olds. In the January-February 1943 trial, Flynn’s defense impugned his accusers’ moral character, and he was acquitted. Regardless of the actual facts of the case, the trial was widely perceived as yet another example of a rich and famous man using his privilege to avoid punishment. Flynn had managed to avoid criminal penalties, but his reputation and career were permanently damaged. While he would continue to act until his death in 1959, his star power and financial resources faded considerably.

It may be that in like Flynn was originally inspired by Errol Flynn’s on-screen persona and perhaps his off-screen sexual exploits, but the rape allegations and trial cannot be the origin of the phrase; as we have seen, the phrase was already well established before that occurred. There is no doubt, though, that the actor’s reputation contributed to the popularity of the phrase.

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Sources:

Decker, Duane. “Hogan’s Goat.” Leatherneck, 28.3, March 1945, 19. ProQuest: Trade Journals.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. in like Flynn, phr.

Miller, Edwin H. “More Air Force Slang.” American Speech, 21.4, December 1946, 310. JSTOR.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2004, s.v. Flynn, n.

Popik, Barry. “In like Flynn; Run for the Roses; Yoot.” ADS-L, 13 June 1999.

Stevens, Bob. “We’re in Like Flynn: Seals Slaughter Pathetic Padres for 8th Straight.” San Francisco Chronicle, 14 July 1946, 33. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Sullivan, Prescott. “The Low Down.” San Francisco Examiner—Sports, 8 February 1942, 2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Unknown photographer, c.1945. Public domain image. National Library of Australia.

hysteria / hysterical

February 10, 2021

10 February 2021

How did a Greek root referring to the uterus come to mean a state of overwhelming emotion? Through a combination of medieval medicine and many centuries of misogyny, that’s how.

The English word hysteria comes from the post-classical Latin combining form hystero-, which in turn from the ancient Greek ὑστέρα (ystera), meaning the uterus. And hysteria once referred to a supposed physical disease in women caused by dysfunction or displacement of the uterus. The uterus was thought to move up, constricting or blocking the heart or throat. Hysteria was characterized by agitation, difficulty breathing or a sensation of choking, tightness of the chest, and other symptoms. These symptoms roughly correspond to those of the modern, and very real, panic disorder.

But this supposed disease of women was not always labeled hysteria. Long before, the name for this supposed condition was suffocation / rising / fit of the mother. The word mother was also used as a label for the uterus. This English sense of mother is a calque of the Latin matrix, referring to a female breeding animal, or in humans, the womb.

An Anglo-Irish medical text from c. 1300 has the following:

Item pro subbito assensu matricis, hoc est aþye þe verliche rakynggys off þe modyr to wommanhis hert.
(Item, for a suddenly ascending womb, that is for the sudden stretching of the mother to the woman’s heart.)

An John Trevisa’s late fourteenth-century translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum (On the Properties of Things) has this:

The modir in a womman is a singuler membre disposid as a bladdre, & kynde haþ ordeyned þat membre to fonge & resseyue þe humour semynal.
(The mother in a woman is a distinct organ arranged as a bladder and nature has ordained that organ to receive and hold the seminal fluid.)

Bartholomaeus’s original Latin is matrix.

And by c.1450 we see suffocation of the mother in a leechbook, or medical text.

For the suffocacion of the modir lat hir receyue þe smoke of turpentyne laid upon the coles þorow hir mouth.
(For the suffocation of the mother let her receive the smoke of turpentine laid upon the coals through her mouth.)

By the turn of the seventeenth century, we see the adjective hysterical used to refer to the supposed disease. This is part of a general trend toward coining words from Latin and Greek roots that began in the Early Modern era. From Edward Jorden’s 1603 A Briefe Discovrse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother:

Now I come to the kinds and sorts of this disease, which may bee reduced vnto three principall heades, according as euerie part of the bodie belongeth vnto some of the three principall functions which do gouerne the bodie of man. Not that euerie Symptom in this disease doth hurt some of the three functions, for some are onely molestations or deformities, as sudden Collickes, windie humors, noyses, alteration of colour, &c. But because euerie part may well bee mustred vnder some of these generals: and we doe seldome see any hystericall affect wherein some one or mo of the functions are not affected. These functions as they are distinct in office, so they possesse in our bodies seuerall seats and haue seuerall instruments belonging vnto them.

And a little more of than a decade later, Helkiah Crooke was writing about how the uterus is attracted to sweet odors, and therefore travels up the abdomen, causing women to become hysterical. From his 1615 Μικροκοσμογραϕια (Mikrokosmographia), an anatomy text:

Placentinus addeth another argument which hee calleth Inuincible, taken from those women that are Hystericall, that is, haue fits of the Mother. For such woemen although they haue no Respiration at all, doe yet receiue and perceiue odours, and not onely so but are almost miraculously redeemed or recouered by them: what shall wee say vnto the wombe it selfe, doth it not smell? yet no man did euer say that the wombe did respire, but dayly experience teacheth vs that it taketh so great pleasure in sweete Smels and is so offended with that which is noysome and abhominable, that it mooueth and applyeth it selfe manifestly vnto the one and auoydeth the other, euen with Locall and Methematicall motion.

The name hysteria, referring to the supposed disease, is in place by 1757, when it appears in the diary of Virginia planter Landon Carter for 9 March 1757:

She goes on with Floods hysteria medicine.

And it appears in Thomas Marryat’s 1764 The New Practice of Physick:

HYSTERIA
Hysteric Fits, notwithstanding the various shapes they appear in, are too well known to need any description,
The cause is an unequal distribution of the electrical fire, owing in some measure to the peculiar conformation of the uterus and its circumjacent parts—suppression or deficiency of the menstrual flux—delicacy of constitution—luxury—want of exercise—strong inclination to venery—Fluor albus—want of blood—acid gas.
The diagnostics. Syncopes—catchings—rising of hte throat, so as to endanger suffocation—convulsions—quick respiration—laughing—screaming—crying—the hands strongly closed—bawdry expressions—cephalalgia, &c.
The prognostics. If the patient has been long troubled with them, they terminate in perpetual causeless timidity—madness, or—all the horrors of the Hypochondriacal Affection,to which this disorder is very similar—It is by no means dangerous or—if scientifically treated, difficult to cure.
The cure. All evacuations are deleterious, the dry vomit excepted, which succeeds wonderfully, if frequently repeated, and is, propriis viribus, sufficient to effect a cure; but if objected to, the practitioner will find various formulae equally elegant and efficacious subjoined.

But by the early nineteenth century, hysteria had acquired a more general sense, and could now be used to refer to overwhelming emotion in both men and women. From Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 “The Fall of the House of Usher”:

I had taken but a few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it as that of Usher. In an instant afterwards he rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan—but there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes—an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. His air appalled me—but any thing was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.

And the adjective hysterical would specialize even further, referring to something that was very funny, overwhelming one with fits of laughter. This sense is in place by the early twentieth century, when it appears in a movie advertisement in Dundee Scotland’s Courier and Argus newspaper of 18 May 1925:

Sydney Chaplin in
“The Galloping Fish.”
Five Reels of Hysterical Hilarious Merriment.

Sydney Chaplin was the elder half-brother of the more famous Charlie Chaplin.

And by the twenty-first century, despite the fact that most English speakers would know that a hysterectomy referred to the surgical removal of the uterus, hysteria and hysterical had lost any connotation of the female anatomy in the minds of most.

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Sources:

Advertisement. The Courier and Argus (Dundee, Scotland), 18 May 1925, 1. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Crooke, Helkiah. Μικροκοσμογραϕια: A Description of the Body of Man. London: William Jaggard, 1615, 8.45, 702. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Dawson, Warren R. A Leechbook or Collection of Medical Recipes of the Fifteenth Century (c.1450). London: Macmillan, 1934, 188. London, Medical Society of London Library MS 136.

Jorden, Edward. A Briefe Discovrse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother. London: John Windet, 1603, sig. Dr. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Marryat, Thomas. The New Practice of Physick. Dublin: 1764, 323–24. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

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

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2020, s.v. hysteria, n., hysterical, adj. and n., hysteric, n. and adj., hystero-, comb. form2; December 2002, s.v. mother, n.1 (and int.).

Poe, Edgar A. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, 5.3, 1 September 1839, 34. Gale Primary Sources: American Historical Periodicals.

Trevisa, John. On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De proprietatibus rerum (a. 1398), vol. 1 of 3. M.C. Seymour, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, 5.49, 263. London, British Library, Additional MS 27944.

hustings

February 9, 2021

9 February 2021

The hustings is an odd phrase that one often hears in political commentary. The hustings are the places on the campaign trail where a candidate addresses the public. To speakers of present-day English, the word has no obvious meaning except what can be gleaned from context, and it is almost always found in the plural.

Hustings is a preserved fossil from Old English. Husting, from the Old Norse hus-þing, was an assembly of household or of a noble’s retainers, as opposed to an ordinary þing, which was a more general assembly of the people. The word appears in the entry for the year 1012 in the Abingdon Chronicle II:

1012. Her on þissum geare com Eadric ealdorman & ealle þa yldestan witan, gehadode & læwede, Angelcynnes to Lundenbyrig toforan þam Eastron; þa wæs Easterdæg on þam datarum Idus Aprilis. & hi ðær þa swa lange wæron oþ þæt gafol eal gelæst wæs ofer ða Eastron; þæt wæs ehta & feowertig þusend punda. Ða on þæne Sæternesdæg wearð þa se here swyðe astyred angean þone bisceop, forþam ðe he nolde him nan feoh behaten, ac he forbead þæt man nan þing wið him syllan ne moste. Wæron hi eac swyþe druncene forðam þær wæs broht win suðan. Genamon þa ðone bisceop, læddon hine to hiora hustinge on ðone Sunnanæfen octabas Pasce—þa wæs XIII Kł. Maī—& hine þær ða bysmorlice acwylmdon, oftorfedon mid banum & mid hryþera heafdum. & sloh hine ða an hiora mid anre æxe yre on þæt heafod, þæt mid þam dynte he nyþer asah, & his halige blod on þa eorðan feol, & his haligan sawle to Godes rice asende.
(1012. Here in this year Ealdorman Eadric and all the chief counselors of England, ecclesiastical and lay, came to London before Easter—Easter Day was on the ides of April [13 April]—and they were there so long until the tribute was paid after Easter, that was 48,000 pounds. Then on the Saturday the army became roused against the bishop because he would not promise them any money, and instead he forbade that anyone pay them on his behalf. They were also very drunk because wine from the south had been brought there. The seized the bishop, took him to their husting on the Sunday evening of the octave of Easter—that was the thirteenth Kalends of May [19 April]—and shamefully put him to death there. They pelted him with bones and with the heads of oxen, and one of them struck him there with the back of an axe in the head, so that he sank down from the blow, and his holy blood fell on the earth, and his holy soul ascended to God’s kingdom.)

This sense became obsolete in the early Middle English period, except for historical references. But it continued to be used to refer to a local court of justice, especially that held in the Guildhall of London. This use is recorded c. 1100 in the Carta civibus London (Charter of the City of London), c. 1100. The text is mainly Latin, but it uses the English nomenclature for the local courts:

Et amplius non sit miskenninga in hustenge, neque in folkesmote, neque in aliis placitis infra civitatem. Et husting sedeat semel in ebdomada, videlicet die lunæ.
(And besides, there should be no mispleadings in the husting, nor in the folkesmote, nor in other pleas within the city. And the husting should sit once a week, that is on Monday.)

Over time, the word came to mean the raised platform on which such a court was held, particularly on those occasions when elections were held. From the London Gazette of 13–17 July 1682 regarding just such an election:

London, July 15. Yesterday the Common-Hall met, pursuant to the Adjournment made that day Sevennight, where the Lord Mayor and Aldermen being come down to the hustings, the following Order of His Majesty in Council was read.

And in Roger North’s Examen of 1740:

At Midsummer-Day, when the Common-Hall meets for the Election of Sheriffs, and the Lord-Mayor and the Court of Aldermen are come upon the Suggestum, called the Hustings, the Common Serjeant, by the Common Crier, puts to the Hall the Question for confirming the Lord-Mayor’s Sherriff, which used to pass affirmatively by the Court.

And humorist Thomas d’Urfey uses it in his 1719 collection of songs titled Wit and Mirth:

No matter pass’d in Common-Councel, of weight,
So private in th’ Morn, but I knew it at Night;
At the Pricking of Sheriffs, I could tell who would Sign,
To the chargeable Ofﬁce, or else pay the Fine:
Of chusing Lord Mayors too, I found the Intrigue,
And knew which would carry’t, the Tory or Whigg;
What Tricks on the Hustings Fanaticks would play,
And how the Church Party were still kept at Bay:
With Bribery Cheats and perverting the Law,
From the First of King JAMES to the 12th of Nassau.

But by the late eighteenth century, hustings was being used to refer to electoral platforms in other cities. Edmund Burke uses it in a speech during his election to parliament for the city of Bristol:

I stood on the hustings (except when I gave my thanks to those who favored me with their votes) less like a candidate than an unconcerned spectator of a public proceeding.

And it is this sense that continues in use today.

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Sources:

Burke, Edmund. “Speech to the Electors of Bristol” (3 November 1774). The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, revised edition, vol. 2 of 4. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1865, 91. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

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

d’Urfey, Thomas. Wit and Mirth or Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. 2 of 6. London: W. Pearson for J. Tonson, 1719, 242. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

The London Gazette, no. 1738, 13–17 July 1682, Gale Primary Sources: Nichols Newspapers Collection.

North, Roger. Examen. London: Fletcher Gyles, 1740, 3.8.22, 598. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

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

Schmid, Reinhold. “Leges Henri Primi.” Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1858, 435. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Whitelock, Dorothy, David C. Douglas, and Susie I Tucker. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1961, 91–92. London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius MS A.vi. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: James Gillray, 15 December 1806, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England. Public domain image.

hold my beer

February 8, 2021

7 January 2021

The phrase hold my beer is used as punchline to a joke in which someone has just done something incredibly stupid or spectacularly failed at something and someone else says “hold my beer,” implying that they are about one-up them with an even stupider stunt. The implication is that alcohol has impaired their judgment. (Sorry, jokes are never funny when explained.)

Hold my beer gets its start as part of an old joke making affectionate fun of people from the American South, who are stereotypically assumed to regularly engage in such behavior. The earliest appearance of the joke that I have found (it is likely much older, as such jokes invariably are) is from an 18 May 1995 Washington Post article:

Meanwhile, Spectator editor in chief R. Emmett Tyrell Jr. entertained his audience of 450 with a rendition of “famous last words of a redneck.” To wit: “Hey y’all, watch this!”

Comedian Jeff Foxworthy, who has made a living off jokes about rednecks, has used the joke, and had a large role in popularizing it.

Somewhere along the way, someone added hold my beer to the joke. So, we have this from Jim Hightower’s 2003 book Thieves in High Places:

How optimistic are we Texans? The U.S. government did a little-known study during the past five years, installing black boxes in hundreds of pickup trucks. The idea was to get data on truck crashes, like they do when airplanes go down. They found that in forty-nine of the fifty states, the last words of drivers in the majority of crashes were: "Oh, shit!" But the researchers were surprised to find that in the vast majority of pickup crashes in Texas, the last words were: "Hey, y'all hold my beer and watch this!"

As the joke became universally recognized, the watch this was dropped, leaving just hold my beer.

A tweet from 26 January 2007 uses the phrase hold my beer, but without any context, so it’s hard to tell what is meant. Later that year, on 14 November 2007, another tweet uses the phrase, including a link to a BBC story about a man who injured himself trying to loosen a lug nut with a shotgun:

Belmont Club Hold My Beer: The BBC describes the unsuccessful efforts of a man to loo[sen lug nut].

(The BBC story does not use the phrase; it only appears in the tweet linking to it.)

The /r/holdmybeer subreddit launched on 20 November 2012, dedicated to similar tales of epic fails.

Finally, an entry for the phrase appeared in Urbandictionary.com on 15 September 2013:

hold my beer
(1) The act of giving up one's alcoholic beverage temporarily to attempt a stunt he or she has never ventured.
(2) Ones personal death wish fueled by ignorance.
Person: "Omg that guy tight-roped Niagara Falls"
Drunk Guy: If you think that's somethin', just "hold my beer"
Person: Did he just do a double backflip?
DG: double backflip you say..hold my beer
Person: That guy just drank 30 beer
DG: Bitch gimmie my beer

By this time, the phrase was firmly established in internet vocabulary and had become the stuff of memes.

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Sources:

@msitarzewski, Twitter, Jan 26, 2007.

@wretchardthecat, Twitter, Nov 14, 2007.

Grove, Lloyd. “The Candidate Reconnoiters.” Washington Post, 18 May 1995, C5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Hightower, Jim. Thieves in High Places. New York: Viking, 2003, 147. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Hold My Beer.” Know Your Meme, 2020. https://knowyourmeme.com/

“hold my beer.” Urbandictionary.com, 15 September 2013.

“Man Hurt Using Gun to Change Tyre.” BBC News, 13 November 2007.

“‘What were the Aggie’s last words?’ / ‘Hey y’all, watch this!’(joke).” BarryPopik.com, 5 September 2011.

Photo credit: Images from Game of Thrones (television series), HBO Entertainment, 2011–19; fair use of copyrighted images to illustrate the topic under discussion.

white trash

February 4, 2021

4 February 2021

The phrase white trash or poor, white trash is a derogatory Americanism referring to poverty-stricken White people, particularly those in the American South. The phrase originated among Black speakers in the early nineteenth century, but by mid century was being used by Whites as well. But even in the mouths of Whites, the phrase retains the racial distinction.

Use of the plain trash to refer to people of low status is, however, much older. It dates at least to the early seventeenth century, and Shakespeare uses it twice in Othello, both times in the mouth of Iago. At the end of Act 2, Scene 1, when Iago reveals his plan to the audience, he uses trash to refer to Cassio:

And nothing can, or shall content my Soule
Till I am eeuen’d with him, wife for wife.
Or fayling so, yet that I put the Moore,
At least into a Ielouzie so strong
That iudgement cannot cure, Which thing to do,
If this poore Trash of Venice, whom I trace
for his quicke hunting, stand the putting on,
Ile haue our Michael Cassio on the hip,
Abuse him to the Moore, in the right garbe
(For I feare Cassio with my Night-Cape too)
Make the Moore thanke me, loue me, and reward me,
For making him egregiously as Asse,
And practicing vpon his peace and quiet,
Euen to madnesse.

Shakespeare is engaging in wordplay by using both trash and trace in the same line. In Early Modern English both words can mean a cord used to harness or control animals and a verb meaning to control an animal by this means, and the noun trace is still used in this fashion. So Shakespeare is not only calling Cassio trash, but saying he can use him like he would use a dog or draft horse.

In the second instance, in Act 5, Scene 1, Iago uses trash to refer to Bianca, claiming that she had a role in wounding Cassio, when it was he who did it:

Gentlemen all, I do suspect this Trash
To be a party to this Iniurie.

The more specific white trash, however, makes its appearance by 1821, in an account in the Illinois Gazette describing a mixed-race crowd that had gathered upon the apprehension of a runaway slave. The account is given by a White person, but the phrase white trash is quoting a Black woman:

The males said little on the occasion, but some of the other sex gave free scope to their feelings, both against the Marylanders who had him then in their custody, and the whites in general. I happened to be in the vicinity of one who spoke the English language tolerably well, she was at no loss for words, nor sparing in throwing out her aspersive epithets. She had gone a certain distance with the man who was forced away, and on her return accompanied by her son, who stopped almost opposite where I stood, to talk with a white boy nearly his own size. She, the mother, on missing him, turned round, and observing how ill he was paired, like a fury vociferated, with a curse upon her son, why do you lag behind? Come along and do not stand there spending your precious time, in company too, and conversing with White Trash.
On hearing the phrase white trash, as it was altogether new to me when taken in her sense, I seemed as if bitten by a tarantula or stung by a gallinipper. I stood motionless and mum for a short period, but fortunately thinking of Zimmerman on the Prejudices and Pride of Nations. I was in a short time all serenity again, and believed now, that this lady of colour had as good a right and it was as natural for her to say White Trash as it would be for myself or any other of my colour to say Black Trash.

The next year we get poor white trash. From Maine’s Bangor Register of 1 August 1822, a description of a trial of a Black woman for manslaughter. Despite the references to witchcraft, this incident seems to be a rather straightforward assault with a fireplace poker. The race of the victim, Peter Belt, is not mentioned, but it seems probable that he was also a Black person, as the editors would not likely have described a deadly assault on a White person by a Black person as “whimsical.” She was convicted:

Georgetown, D.C. May 4
A very novel and whimsical trial came on in our Circuit Court on Thursday last, Nancy Swann, a lady of color whose mighty powers of witchcraft have made “de black n[——]s, and de poor white trash” tremble, was indicted for practising in and upon one Peter Belt, in the peace of God and the said United States, then and there being feloniously, willfully and of her malice aforethought did make an assault, and that the same Nancy Swann with a certain hot poker which she in her right hand then and there held wilfully [sic], and of her malice aforethought, did push and thrust down the throat of him, the said Peter Belt.

By the 1860s and the Civil War, White people were using the phrase. From the 25 June 1864 diary of John Ransom, a Union prisoner at the Andersonville prison camp in Georgia:

Our guards are composed of the lowest element of the South—poor white trash Very ignorant, much more so than the negro.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Bangor Register (Maine), 1 August 1822, 1. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. white trash, n.

The Illinois Gazette (Shawnee-Town, Illinois), 23 June 1821, 1. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2015, s.v. white trash, n. and adj., poor white trash, n. and adj.; second edition, 1989, s.v. trash, n.1., trash, v.1.

Ransom, John L. Andersonville Diary. Auburn, New York: 1881, 71. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Shakespeare, William. Othello. The First Folio, 1623. Oxford, Bodleian Library Arch. G c.7.