keister

19 March 2021

The slang word keister is best known to us today as meaning the buttocks or ass (or arse), but in the past, it has also meant a satchel or traveling suitcase, especially a satchel that can be secured with straps and a lock. And it could also refer to a safe or strongbox, particularly one within a larger vault. The word comes from the German Kiste, meaning box and with a slang sense of the buttocks. The German word comes from the Latin cista and is cognate with the English word chest.

The slang sense of Kiste meaning buttocks is recorded in Hans Ostwald’s Rinnsteinsprache (Gutter Speech), a slang dictionary from 1906:

Kiste. 1) Hintere, 2) Hast, 3) Geldbörse.

(Kiste. 1) the behind, 2) haste, 3) a wallet.)

This is later than keister’s appearance in English to mean a satchel, but before any known use of the word in English to mean buttocks. Older uses in German are likely to be found. (My resources on German slang are scant.) This early existence of the slang sense in German indicates the slang sense was imported into English along with the standard sense of a satchel.

How a satchel or wallet came to mean the buttocks is speculative. It may come from the idea that one can sit on one’s luggage, or it may be pickpocket slang—a man’s wallet is often carried in a rear pocket.

Keister is first recorded in English in the pages of the National Police Gazette on 1 October 1881 as the nickname of a certain confidence man. It’s not quite clear what the nickname is supposed to represent, but may have come from his being known for carrying a suitcase, perhaps because he frequently traveled for to facilitate a quick departure after the con was concluded:

Prominent among the small army of confidence operators in this city are: “Grand Central Pete” (Peter Lake), “Boston Charlie” (Ed. Foster), “The Guinea Pig” (Harry Ashton), “Smiling Charlie” (Eddie Wall), “Windy” McDermott, “Irish Mike,” John Simpson, Ike Vail, “Big Connelly, “Black Jack,” “Billy Boynton, “The Stuff,” “Keister Bob,” “The Kid,” “Hungry Joe.” Many of these men have escaped identification, and some of the are scarcely known outside of police circles.

The next year humorist George Peck uses it in his 1882 collection of stories titled Peck’s Sunshine. Here the meaning of suitcase is absolutely clear:

The clerk called a bell boy and said, "Show the gentleman to 253."

The boy took the Knight's keister and went to the elevator, the door opened and the Knight went in and began to pull off his coat, when he looked around and saw a woman on the plush upholstered seat of the elevator, leaning against the wall with her head on her hand.

The sense of a safe or strongbox is attested to in The Shadow, a 1913 novel by Canadian-American novelist Arthur Stringer:

He got to know the "habituals” and the “timers,” the "gangs” and their "hang outs” and “fences.” He acquired an array of confidence men and hotel beats and queer shovers and bank sneaks and wire tappers and drum snuffers. He made a mental record of dips and yeggs and till-tappers and keister-crackers, of panhandlers and dummy chuckers, of sun gazers and schlaum workers.

A more specific sense of safe or strong box, and one that connects this sense to the satchel/suitcase sense can be found in a glossary of criminal slang in George Henderson’s 1924 Keys to Crookdom:

Harnessed box. Safe protected by steel bars and levers across front. Also known as harnessed keister.

[...]

Keister. Bars on certain type of safe. A handbag that can be strapped and locked.

The buttocks sense is recorded by 1931 in an article on criminal slang in the journal American Speech.

keister, n. A satchel; also what one sits on.

And about the same time, we have keister appearing in a Tijuana bible, that is a palm-sized, pornographic comic book. This one is part of a series, The Adventures of a Fuller Brush Man, about the amorous encounters of a door-to-door salesman. The issue in question is #10 in the series, titled, “The Amorous Mrs. Twirp.” The comic is undated but seems to be from the early 1930s. The panel in question has a drawing of a naked man and woman copulating, with the woman on top, astride the man. The man says:

Come on—wave that kiester [sic].

But keister would work its way out of the province of criminals and pornography into general slang. By the 1950s it would appear in the mainstream humor of P. G. Wodehouse. From his 1951 novel The Old Reliable:

“I’m glad you didn't say ‘He's a good sort.’”

“Why, is that bad?”

“Fatal. It would have meant that there was no hope for him. It's what the boys used to say of me twenty years ago. ‘Oh, Bill,’ they'd say. ‘Dear old Bill. I like Bill. She's a good sort.’ And then they'd leave me flat on my keister and go off and buy candy and orchids for the other girls, blister their insides.”

“Is that why you're a solitary chip drifting down the river of life?”

“That's why. Often a bridesmaid but never a bride.”

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Adelman, Bob. Tijuana Bibles: Art and Wit in America’s Forbidden Funnies, 1930s–1950s. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1997, 47.

American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2020, s.v. keister, n.

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

Henderson, George C. “Appendix B: Criminal Slang.” Keys to Crookdom. New York: D. Appleton, 1924, 407, 409. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Lighter, J. E. Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, vol. 2 of 2. New York: Random House, 1997, s. v. keister, n.

“The Man-Traps of New York.” National Police Gazette, 1 October 1881, 10. ProQuest Magazines.

Milburn, George. “Convict’s Jargon.” American Speech, 6.6., August 1931, 439. JSTOR.

Ostwald, Hans. Rinnsteinsprache. Berlin: Harmonie, 1906, 80. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

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

Peck, George W. Peck’s Sunshine. Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Co., 1882, 227. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Stringer, Arthur. The Shadow. New York: Century, 1913. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Wodehouse, P. G. The Old Reliable. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1951, 132. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

keep one's nose clean

18 March 2021

(Explanation of Mississippi bonds added on 19 March)

The phrase to keep one’s nose clean means to stay out of trouble, to behave. The phrase is a metaphor of small children who don’t know enough about politeness and manners to wipe their runny noses; as such, the phrase is often deployed in a condescending manner.

The phrase is an Americanism that dates to at least 15 May 1824, when it appears in the pages of the Louisville, Kentucky Microscope. Like all of the earliest appearances I have found, it is in a brief, untitled snippet of news or commentary—and such snippets, which are often inserted to fill out a column of text, lack the context needed to understand them more than a century later. This one relates to U.S. politics, but the exact references are obscure. The Microscope endorsed John Quincy Adams in the presidential election of that year, so the “Great Bashaw” may be a reference to his chief opponent, Andrew Jackson:

——Club him! Sue him! Dirk him! Put him to prison!”—said a little soul’d fellow the other day; “He has insulted our Great Bashaw.” Go home little man, and keep your nose clean, we fear neither your weapons, nor threats; we shall “Lash the rascals naked through the world.” Take care Jake!

The “little man” clearly frames the speaker as a child, and keep your nose clean here would seem to have a dual valence, one a literal one treating him as a child and the other warning him not engage in violence.

Another one that has a dual valence appears in the Baltimore Sun on 21 July 1838. It may simply be a literal reference to wiping one’s nose, but one suspects that the editors of the Sun are sniping at the editors of the Boston Post, implying they don’t know how to act in polite society. And the identity of Webster is also obscure; it could be Daniel Webster, a New Englander who was then serving as Secretary of State, and perhaps the Sun was implying that Webster was rough around the edges. It could also be a reference to lexicographer Noah Webster, which would be very meta, but that seems less likely. Or it could be any of a hundred other possible Websters:

We should say that it was pretty good times, when we can manufacture our own silk nose-wipers, and get three dollars for them!—Boston Post.

We hope some of the manufacturers will give the editors of the Post a wiper, to carry to the Webster dinner, that he may keep his nose clean.

Another one where we clearly understand the denotation of the phrase but the context is baffling is this one from the Albany Argus of 8 February 1842. The reference to Mississippi bonds would appear to be an 1839 repudiation of state bonds that had been invested in two failed banks, that is the state would not pay out on those bonds to the banks’ creditors. It was a political bruhaha at the time:

“Tom, my boy, you should be careful always to keep your nose clean, and avoid the bonds iniquity.”

“Yeth, pa. I know what bonth them ith.”

“Do you?—tell me then—hold up your head now, and speak out.”

“Yeth, thir. They ith the Mithithippi bonth, ain’t they?”

“To be sure, Tom—to be sure!”

This next one is from a New Orleans correspondent for the New-York Commercial Advertiser that was printed in that paper on 19 January 1844. Clearly, the phrase has a literal meaning here, but the fact that it is italicized makes one think that more than that is intended. Could the paper be implying the handkerchief is for the officer?:

As an evidence of the military ardor which prevails with us, I will relate a fact. Yesterday an officer, dressed in full uniform, passed up our (Magazine) street with his little son, 4 or 5 years old, dressed completely like himself, accompanied by a nurse with a handkerchief in her hand to keep his nose clean.

But sometimes, both the meaning and context are quite clear. In this one from 2 February 1849, the Boston Herald is poking at its rivals, the Boston Daily Bee and Boston Daily Republican:

The Bee appears in new type. Two columns of very interesting personal news appeared on its first page, yesterday.

The Republican, from which the above is taken, is the organ of the major, as the Bee is of the minor Mutual Admiration Society of Boston. Don’t be envious, Messrs. Republican. Ben is only following in your wake. Allow him to gather the laurels which attend his efforts. There is room enough in the world for both of you. Be good boys, keep your noses clean, and don’t cultivate the bad passions.

Finally, I’ll cap this list of early uses with one that engages in a more extended metaphor. It is from a 22 March 1855 letter printed in the New Haven Morning Journal and Courier from a woman whom the paper describes as a “zealous belier [sic] in the Mormon doctrines and at present a resident of the Great Salt Lake City.” The context is that of government persecution of Mormons, and one cannot help but wonder if the above typo was not deliberate:

If Uncle Sam will cleanse his own face and hands, and keep his nose clean, he will have enough to do without interfering with us.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Albany Argus (New York), 8 February 1842, 4. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Boston Herald, 2 February 1849, 2. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Correspondence Commercial Advertiser” (New Orleans, 9 January 1844). New-York Commercial Advertiser, 19 January 1844, 2. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

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

“An Interesting Letter” (22 March 1855). Morning Journal and Courier (New Haven, Connecticut), 29 May 1855, 2. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

The Microscope (Louisville, Kentucky), 15 May 1824, 2. ProQuest Magazines.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2003, s.v. nose, n.

The Sun (Baltimore), 21 July 1838, 1. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Thanks to reader Oecolampadius for explaining the phrase Mississippi bonds.

shamrock

Dew-covered shamrocks (Oxalis acetosella)

17 March 2021

Shamrock is an Anglicization of the Irish seamróg, which means little/young clover (seamar). The name is applied to a variety of species of clover, i.e., the genus Trifolium, as well as to other three-leaved plants, such as the wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella).

The shamrock’s role as a symbol of Ireland stems from the legend of St. Patrick using the plant to explicate the doctrine of the Christian Trinity. The truth of the legend—as well as nearly every detail of Patrick’s life—is dubious. The legend about the shamrock isn’t recorded until the eighteenth century.

The word shamrock is first recorded in English by Edmund Campion in his c. 1571 history of Ireland. The work is a piece of colonial propaganda, portraying the Irish as savages:

Their infants of the meaner sort, are neither swadled, nor lapped in Linnen, but foulded up starke naked into a Blankett till they can goe, and then if they get a piece of rugge to cover them, they are well sped. Linnen shirts the rich doe weare for wantonnes and bravery, with wide hanging sleeves playted, thirtie yards are little enough for one of them. They have now left their Saffron, and learne to wash their shirts, foure or five times in a yeare. Proud they are of long crisped glibbes, and doe nourish the same with all their cunning: to crop the front thereof they take it for a notable peece of villany. Shamrotes, Water-cresses, Rootes, and other hearbes they feede upon: Oatemale and Butter they cramme together. They drinke Whey, Milke, and Beefe broth, Flesh they devoure without bread, corne such as they have they keepe for their horses.

This passage needs some decoding for the present-day reader. The belief that the Irish ate shamrocks is probably based on either starvation dietary practices or the fact that some tri-foliate plants (e.g., the wood sorrel) can be eaten. The reference to saffron is to the Irish practice, starting in the tenth century, of dyeing clothing with saffron to produce a distinctive yellow color. Since saffron was rare and expensive, such clothing was viewed as a status symbol. The English began to pass sumptuary laws to forbid the wearing of saffron—laws meant to keep the Irish in a lower social status—in the mid fifteenth century, and outlawed saffron-dyed clothing entirely in 1537. The word glib refers to hairstyle. A glib is the forelock when it is worn long, over the forehead and eyes. The law, 28 Henry 8 c. 15, passed by the Irish parliament in 1537 reads

Wherefore be it enacted, ordeyned and established by authoritie of this present Parliament, That no person ne persons, the kings subiects, within this land being, or hereafter to be, from and after the first day of May, which shall be in the yeare of our Lord God, a thousand fiue hundred thirtie nine, shall be sworne, or shauen aboue the eares, or use the wearing of haire upon their heads, like unto long lockes, called Glibbes, or haue or use any haire growing on their upper lippes, called or named a Crommeal, or use or weare any shirt, smocke, kerchor, bendell, neckerchove, mocket, or linnen cappe, coloured, or dyed with Saffron.

Getting back to the three-leafed plant, the spelling shamrock appears a few years after Campion’s history in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles, in a passage cribbed in part from that earlier work:

Water cresses, which they terme shamrocks, rootes and other herbes they féede vpon, otemeale and butter they cramme together, they drinke whey, mylke, and biefe brothe. Fleshe they deuour without bread, and that halfe raw: the rest boyleth in their stomackes with Aqua vitæ, which they swill in after such a surfet by quartes & pottels.

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Sources:

Campion, Edmund. “Campions Historie of Ireland” (c. 1571) Two Histories of Ireland. Dublin: Society of Stationers, 1633, 17–18. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Flavin, Susan. Consumption and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Ireland. Irish Historical Monograph Series 13. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2014, 120. JSTOR.

Holinshed, Raphael. “A Treatise Contayning a Playne and Perfect Description of Irelande.” The First Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande. London: John Hunne, 1577. 28. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

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

The Statutes of Ireland, Beginning the Third Yere of K. Edward the Second, and Continuing Until the End of the Parliament, Begunne in the Eleventh Yeare of the Reign of Our Most Gracious Soveraigne Lord King James. Dublin: Society of Stationers, 1621, 129–30. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Photo credit: Erik Fitzpatrick, 2009. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

kangaroo

A pair of Eastern Grey Kangaroos, a female and a joey; photo taken near Brunkerville, New South Wales, Australia

16 March 2021

English use of the name for this antipodean quadruped dates to the arrival of the first Europeans to Australia. That was in 1770 by the expedition led by Captain James Cook on board HM Bark Endeavour. The name kangaroo comes from the Guugu Yimidhirr gaŋurru. Guugu Yimidhirr is an indigenous language of northeast Australia. But the word has one of the more persistent and amusing false etymologies attached to it.

Cook describes kangaroos in his 14 July 1770 journal entry without naming them:

Mr. Gore, being in the Country, shott one of the Animals before spoke of; it was a small one of the sort, weighing only 28 pound clear of the entrails; its body was [   ] long; the head, neck, and Shoulders very small in proportion to the other parts. It was hair lipt, and the Head and Ears were most like a Hare's of any Animal I know; the Tail was nearly as long as the body, thick next the Rump, and Tapering towards the End; the fore Legs were 8 Inches long, and the Hind 22. Its progression is by Hopping or Jumping 7 or 8 feet at each hop upon its hind Legs only, for in this it makes no use of the Fore, which seem to be only design'd for Scratching in the ground, etc. The Skin is cover'd with a Short, hairy furr of a dark Mouse or Grey Colour. It bears no sort of resemblance to any European animal I ever saw; it is said to bear much resemblance to the Jerboa, excepting in size, the Jerboa being no larger than a common rat.

(Cook’s manuscript is blank where the length should be. Evidently, he was uncertain about the number and left room to fill it in later, but never did.)

And in his entry for 4 August 1770 he gives the name:

Besides the Animals which I have before mentioned, called by the natives Kangooroo, or Kanguru, here are Wolves, Possums, an Animal like a ratt, and snakes, both of the Venemous [sic] and other sorts.

(The reference to wolves is probably to dingoes.)

And he mentions the name again a few weeks later on 23 August 1770:

Land Animals are scarce, so far as we know confin’d to a very few species; all that we saw I have before mentioned. The sort which is in the greatest Plenty is the Kangooroo or Kanguru, so called by the Natives; we saw a good many of them about Endeavour River, but kill’d only 3, which we found very good Eating.

Concurrently, the name is recorded by the expedition’s naturalist, Joseph Banks, who writes in his journal for 16 August 1770:

Quadrupeds we saw but few and were able to catch few of them that we did see. The largest was calld by the natives Kangooroo. It is different from any European and indeed any animal I have heard or read of except the Gerbua of Egypt, which is not larger than a rat when this is as large as a midling Lamb; the largest we shot weighd 84 lb. It may however be easily known from all other animals by the singular property of running or rather hopping upon only its hinder legs carrying its fore bent close to its breast; in this manner however it hops so fast that in the rocky bad ground where it is commonly found it easily beat my grey hound, who tho he was fairly started at several killd only one and that quite a young one.

In 1793, Watkin Tench, a British marine officer who was among those who first established the penal colony at Botany Bay (modern-day Sydney) published an account of his time in Australia in which he gives a different Aboriginal name for the animal and seemingly claims that the name kangaroo was introduced by Europeans:

Hitherto I have spoken only of the large, or grey kanguroo, to which the natives give the name Pat-ag-a-ràn.* But there are (besides the kanguroo-rat) two other sorts. One of them we called the red kanguroo, from the colour of its fur, which is like that of a hare, and sometimes is mingled with a large portion of black: the natives call it Bàg-a-ray. It rarely attains to more than forty pounds weight.

*Kanguroo, was a name unknown to them for any animal, until we introduced it. When I shewed Colbee the cows brought out in the Gorgon, he asked me if they were kanguroos?

The confusion over the names is a result of there being hundreds of Aboriginal languages and different names for the creature in each. To be fair to Tench, he may have meant that the indigenous people in the vicinity of Botany Bay were not familiar with the name kangaroo, not that the British invented it—Guugu Yimidhirr is not spoken in what is now New South Wales, but rather far to the north in what is now Queensland. And later writers made the same mistake, with many understanding it to mean that it was not a native word at all.

From this confusion over the origin, the tale arose that in an Aboriginal language the word kangaroo meant “I don’t understand.” So, when Cook and company asked, presumably slowly and loudly in English, what the animal was called, the natives answered “kangaroo.” It’s a funny story, but utterly untrue. (Cf. Toronto for a similar tale from a different continent.)

Discuss this post

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Sources:

American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2020, s.v. kangaroo.

Banks, Joseph. The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks, vol. 2 of 2. J. C. Beaglehole, ed. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1962, 116–17. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Cook, James. Captain Cook’s Journal. W. J. L. Wharton, ed. London: Elliot Stock, 1893, 287–88, 294, 318. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

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

Tench, Watkin. A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson. London: G. Nicol and J. Sewell, 1793, 171–72. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Photo credit: John J. Harrison, 2019, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

jump the shark

Fonzie during his attempt to jump the shark. This still photo from a 1977 episode of the TV series Happy Days depicts actor Henry Winkler on water skis and wearing a leather jacket and bathing suit.

15 March 2021

Jumping the shark is a moment of peak popularity or quality, after which there is an inevitable decline. Originally applied to television series, the concept has since extended into other realms. The phrase refers to an episode of the television show Happy Days that aired on 20 September 1977 in which the character Fonzie, played by Henry Winkler, on water skis jumps over a shark. The series continued for another seven years, but many consider this to be the show’s high point.

But the Fonz was not the first to literally jump a shark. The Happy Days episode was inspired by an attempt by daredevil motorcyclist Evel Knievel to jump a tank filled with twelve sharks. The attempt was scheduled for 31 January 1977, and on 8 December 1976 Variety ran the following:

Jump The Shark

Hollywood, Dec. 7

Producer-director Marty Pasetta has signed Evel Knievel to a five-year contract for exclusive daredevilling on tv specials.

Initial project will be 90-minute “Evel Knievel’s Death Defiers” to air Jan. 31 on CBS from the Chicago Amphitheatre. Knievel promises to jump his motorcycle over an indoor pool stocked with 12 killer sharks.

Mike Seligman coproduces.

Advertisement for the 31 January 1977 TV special Evel Knieval’s Death Defiers. Sensationalist drawing of a motorcyclist leaping over two sharks; in the background are a man on an exploding chair and a man making a high dive off a platform.

And a TV listing in the Calgary Herald on the air date read as follows:

(12)—Special: Evel Knievel’s Death Defiers: Telly Savalas and Jill St. John host a variety of daredevils. 1. Evel attempts to jump the shark pool. 2. 72-year-old Karl Wallenda will walk the tight rope. 3. Orville Kisselberg will blow himself up. 4. Joe Gerlach will dive 90 feet into a sponge.

But the stunt was not aired. On a practice run, Knievel easily cleared the shark tank but crashed on landing, severely injuring himself. He gave up stunt riding after that.

Jumping the shark would have remained a literal co-location of three words and a fading tidbit of 70s nostalgia if it were not for Jon Hein, who in December 1997 launched the web site jumptheshark.com. The site, which no longer exists (the URL redirects to the TV Guide site), defined jumping the shark as:

It's a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on...it's all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it jumping the shark.  From that moment on, the program will simply never be the same.

And Hein said of the inspiration for the site:

The term "jump the shark" was coined by my college roommate for 4 years, Sean J. Connolly, in Ann Arbor, Michigan back in 1985. This web site, book, film, and all other material surrounding shark jumping, are hereby dedicated to "the Colonel."

The aforementioned expression refers to the telltale sign of the demise of Happy Days, our favorite example, when Fonzie actually "jumped the shark." The rest is history.

Jumping the shark applies not only to TV, but also music, film, even everyday life. "Did you see her boyfriend? She definitely jumped the shark." You get the idea.

There is no independent evidence to validate the 1985 date, but there is no reason to doubt Hein’s account.

The phrase jump the shark made its mainstream media debut in the Los Angeles Times on 9 April 1998 in an article about the television show South Park:

If you think the show’s already passed its peak, be sure to vote for it at “Jump the Shark” (http://www.jumptheshark.com), a site that pinpoints the moment of each TV show’s decline. The name comes from the “Happy Days” show where Fonzie jumped a shark tank. Other such points of no return include Farrah leaving “Charlie’s Angels,” and the stars of “Blossom” and “Wonder Years” reaching puberty.

Has “SP” “jumped the shark” with its April Fools’ episode? Only time and ratings will tell.

The phrase has generalized to other genres and aspects of life. For instance, the Financial Times ran this in an article on Formula One racing on 14 July 2001:

Formula One has jumped the shark and consequently I will not be going near the British Grand Prix at Silverstone this weekend. Since last year when I kicked the habit and no longer spent Sunday afternoons watching grands prix, I have regressed a little; the internecine fighting of the Schumacher brothers has dragged me off the wagon.

Despite the duelling Germans, I’m still largely ambivalent about F1. It’s not just the stultifying nature of most races. It is the inherent tackiness of the sport and its reluctance to say no to anything that might hinder the chances of getting the sponsors’ message in front of as many people as possible that turns me off.

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Sources:

Glaser, Mark. “Love ‘Em or Hate ‘Em, ‘South Park’ and Its Antics Set the Web Abuzz.” Los Angeles Times, 9 April 1998, 48. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Harvey, Michael. “Why F1 Is Not Up to Speed.” Financial Times (London), 14 July 2001, 18. Gale Primary Sources: Financial Times.

Internet Archive. jumptheshark.com (5 December 1998).

“Jump the Shark.” Variety, 8 December 1976. ProQuest Magazines.

Oxford English Dictionary, draft additions March 2006, s.v. jump v.

TV Listings. Calgary Herald (Alberta), 28 January 1977, 27. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Happy Days: Henderson Productions, 1977, fair use of a still from the television show Happy Days to illustrate the topic under discussion. Evel Knieval’s Death Defiers: imdb.com.