this is a Wendy's

A pair of tweets from 22 July 2018 in which U.S. President Donald Trump threatens Iran and to which an ordinary Twitter user replies, “Sir, this is a Wendy’s drive-thru.”

23 March 2021

This is a Wendy’s is a joke commonly found on Twitter and other social media platforms. It’s used as reply to a rant or controversial comment. It is a reference to the Wendy’s fast-food chain and implies that the forum isn’t an appropriate one for that rant or comment. The use of the phrase on social media is a succinct illustration of how comedic lines from movies or television can become memes and the difference between regular tweets and those that go viral.

The phrase originated on an episode of the U.S. version of The Office television series that originally aired on 17 April 2008. The character of Michael Scott, played by Steve Carell, is trying to find a particular woman he has seen and is enamored with, and his co-worker Kevin has given him a phone number that is purportedly hers.

The Wendy’s chain, named after the daughter of its founder, has as its icon the image of a freckled, red-haired girl in pigtails, and promotes its “hot and juicy” hamburgers:

Michael Scott:            Okay. Wendy. "Hot and juicy redhead." I'll give this a try. [dials number]

Woman:                      Wendy.

Michael Scott:            Hello, Wendy. This is Kevin's friend, Michael.

Woman:                     This isn't Wendy.

Michael Scott:            Oh, I'm sorry could you put her on please?

Woman:                      Dude, this is a Wendy's restaurant.

Michael Scott:            [mutters] Damn it, Kevin.

It was quickly turned into a joke on Twitter. Just a week later on 24 April 2008, this tweet appeared, the first such tweet that did not directly reference the television episode. The tweeter was making a self-deprecating joke, and the “ego storm” refers to the fact that he has been having a day when everything has been going right for him. In early use, the phrase was often so deployed by the original poster, indicating self-awareness of their own unreasonableness:

Emergency call to Dominos to quell the ego storm: "I need a humble pie!" "What?!" "It's a joke!" "I get it, sir, but this is a Wendy's."

The joke would be repeated on Twitter sporadically until 2012, when it started taking off, with the number of people making the joke growing steadily. It just so happens that 2012 was when the Netflix video service started streaming episodes of The Office. The on-demand availability of the episode kept the joke fresh in people’s minds.

These early repetitions of the joke were almost all in the context of embarrassing incidents, mostly presumably fictional, involving dialing wrong phone numbers or obliviously trying to order something not available at a Wendy’s.

But around 2016, the line this is a Wendy’s began to be used as a reply to rants or controversial statements. An early example is this tweet from 29 September 2016 (it’s not necessarily the first, as it’s often difficult to determine the context in which a particular tweet has been made):

Trump: [leans into microphone] Doing illegal business deals in Cuba means I’m *smart*.

Drive-through clerk: This is a Wendy’s, Mr. Trump.

And we have this tweet from 7 December 2016 about football coach Matt Rhule leaving Temple University for Baylor University:

Me: I'm happy for Coach Rhule and I expected him to leave at some point, but Baylor? Why? I don't get it.

Cashier: Sir, this is a Wendy's.

Neither of these are actual replies to another’s tweet. That happens on 25 August 2017 when @GaryCMiller2 replied to a tweet by @LordeCelsius. The context is that of Hillary Clinton and the 2016 U.S. presidential election:

Yeah, we should have went [sic] the "witch" who was so smart she "didn't know" that it was wrong to send classified emails by public server.

To which @LordeCelsius replied:

sir this is a Wendy's drive-thru

None of these early examples garnered much notice. The joke was widespread and understood by many, but it had not gone viral.

That would change on 22 July 2018. At 11:24pm on that Sunday night, President Donald Trump, seemingly without provocation, tweeted the following:

To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!

The tweet rattled many, who were afraid of the potential fallout from such bellicose words from a U.S. president. But unperturbed, Ben Yelin, @byelin, an ordinary Twitter user, replied to Trump:

Sir, this is a Wendy’s drive-thru.

Yelin’s reply went viral, putting a humorous face on a scary situation. It garnered over 15,000 retweets and over 80,000 likes by the next day, and the exchange was reported in major media outlets.

The phrase is an excellent example of how a joke from an old television show can percolate for years before bursting into public consciousness as the result of a combination of continued availability from on-demand streaming and its being deployed in a very apt situation.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

@byelin. Twitter, 22 July 2018.

@fuzzytypewriter. Twitter, 24 April 2008.

@GaryCMiller2. Twitter, 25 August 2017.

@Jallen_Town. Twitter, 7 December 2016.

@LordeCelsius. Twitter, 25 August 2017.

@Moltz, Twitter. 29 September 2016.

@realDonaldTrump (suspended account), Twitter, 22 July 2018. Trump Twitter Archive V2.

“Mediaite: Trump's Explosive Late-Night, All-Caps Threat to Iran Melts Down Twitter: 'DEFCON 2'” Newstex Trade & Industry Blogs, 23 July 2018. ProQuest: Blogs, Podcasts, and Websites.

Novak, B. J. “Chair Model.” The Office (U.S. TV series), airdate 17 April 2008. Deedle-Dee Productions. IMDb.com.

Kilroy was here / Mr. Chad

An engraving of the Kilroy was here graffito on the National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC. In the graffito, the phrase Kilroy was here is placed alongside the sketch of a man peering over a wall that originated as the British Mr. Chad.

22 March 2021

In the 1940s, Kilroy was here was a phrase scrawled on walls, vehicles, and other pieces of equipment around the world, from French villages to Pacific atolls, wherever American service men and women were stationed during World War II. Kilroy was something of a Scarlet Pimpernel, appearing everywhere and nowhere at the same time. At some point, perhaps after the war, Kilroy started appearing alongside the drawing of his British counterpart Mr. Chad.

The first citation of Kilroy was here in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Saturday Evening Post of 20 October 1945. While it is not the first appearance of the phrase in print, it does give an excellent description of the ubiquity of the graffito:

When an Army Air Forces lieutenant entered the bedroom of a furnished house in Long Beach, California, which the Army’s 6th Ferrying Group had rented for him, he saw a baby’s crib. On the crib hung a hand-lettered sign which asserted: KILROY SLEPT HERE. “Well,” said the lieutenant softly, “I’ll be damned.”

With this comment about the Army Air Forces’ celebrated man of mystery, the flier was repeating himself. He had made a similar comment after landing in Accra, Africa, after hopping the Atlantic from Natal, and again at Karachi, India, and still again when he arrived in China on his first flight over the Hump from the Mohanbari airfield in Assam.

In those faraway places messages from Kilroy had greeted him, not on a baby’s crib but from the walls of rooms and the doors of hangars and from all manner of other strange places wehre a communication could be written or hung. In Australia, New Guinea, the Philippines, on islands all over the Pacific, he had read the record of the man who had been everywhere and, apparently, invariably had been there first. Wherever he was, Kilroy had been there and left his mark behind: KILROY WAS HERE, or KILROY PASSED THROUGH, or YOU’RE IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF KILROY.

In his diary entry for 5 September 1945, Major Ben Kaplan, one of the first Americans to arrive in Japan after the surrender, has this account of how fast the graffito appeared in that country and of the various places he had seen it during his wartime service:

A sign on one of the hangars: “Kilroy was Here.” This was the first I’ve seen in Japan, but Kilroy is a mythical character one is likely to meet anywhere in the world. Don’t know who “invented” the gag, but one sees the signs, or scrawlings everywhere. Sometimes it’s “Kilroy Slept Here,” or variations thereof; “Kilroy’s Island—Discovered by Kilroy”; “Kilroy Doesn't Live Here Anymore.” In Bengazi [sic] once I saw a sign which read: “Kilroy’s Home Town.” There was an oversized “Kilroy Kurrency” note under a glass desktop at Hickam Field, Hawaii, when we passed through there.

The phrase probably originated c. 1943 by some anonymous serviceman, but the earliest use in print that I’m aware of is from the air base newspaper Sheppard Field Texacts on 21 April 1945:

Who is Kilroy? What a one man campaign! He seems destined to go down in history along with Foo and Novschmozkapop as a family by word.

Roger Angell, who later became famous as an essayist, baseball writer, and fiction editor for the New Yorker, wrote the following on 26 June 1945 in Brief, a publication of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Pacific Ocean Areas:

Who is Kilroy?

Kilroy is the guy who just stepped out of the orderly room as you came in. Kilroy was in the latrine, but he left before you got there. He was in your messhall, but didn’t like the food and left before you showed up. He’s the tail gunner that doesn’t answer when you call him on the intercom; he’s the character that bought the last lighter at the PX, just before you went over to buy one.

This wacky routine is the latest AAF gag, that is spreading fast from the States. Every bulletin board, officer’s club and latrine in the States has a notice up about Kilroy—the imaginary character that no one ever catches up to. Planes have been named for him, but nobody has ever seen him. Notices on bulletin boards which say to turn in laundry at 0700 also announce that Kilroy turned his in at 0645.

Kilroy, as far as we can find out, never got to the ETO. The farthest east he ever got was Jamaica. But he is on his way here from home, along with all the new pilots that are heading Pacific-ward. His latest non-appearance occurred somewhere between California and Oahu. A B-29 crew, flying out, got into a radio conversation with a ship. The radioman, just as he was about to sign off, asked the the sailor if he had seen anything of Kilroy. “Yeah,” said the sailor. “We passed a sign in the water a few miles back. It said ‘Kilroy ditched here.’”

Kilroy will be here any day, but you won’t be seeing him.

Angell was mistaken about Kilroy not making it to Europe, and there is this early use in the Seattle Times of 29 July 1945 that shows that Kilroy was not limited to the air force:

The most notorious character at Fort Lawton these days is a soldier—(or something)—named Kilroy—who isn’t there.

The one-time existence of Kilroy, who has been described as everything from an infantry private, first-class, to a white rat, is resumed from numberless chalked signs, scattered about the fort, which read:
“Kilroy slept here.”
“Kilroy drove this truck.”
“Kilroy got clipped here.” At the barber shop) [sic]
“Kilroy got the needle here.” (At the medical processing center.)

Kilroy is an uncommon—but far from unknown—surname in North America, but who the Kilroy was, if he even was a real person, is unknown. There are multiple claims as to the original Kilroy, but none can be verified. For instance, there is this 24 November 1945 story in the San Francisco Chronicle that credits an Army Airman Francis J. Kilroy with being the original:

HERE IS KILROY: Thanks to Navy Lieutenant John M. Lamb of Berkeley, Newsman Bill Walsh, one or two anonymous contributors and some one who calls himself “Pipefitter Pete,” we’re able to identify the young man who inspired, on a global scale, the appearance of all the signs reading, “Kilroy was here.” We understand he’s been identified before, but for those who, like us, came in late, here is the word on Kilroy.

In the first place, he is AAF Sergeant Francis J. Kilroy Jr., of 967 Broadway, Everett, Mass. In 1943, at the Boca Raton Army Air Field in Florida, he struck up a friendship with Sergeant James Maloney of Philadelphia. One day, Kilroy became a flu victim and was hospitalized. When he learned how soon his friend would be out of the hospital, Maloney returned to his barracks and for no good reason scrawled on the bulletin board: “Kilroy will be here next week.” A month later, Maloney and Kilroy were transferred to different fields, but the Kilroy signs appealed to Maloney, and he kept on scrawling them when he thought of it and on anything that happened to be handy. They caught on, and soon every one was doing it in various parts of the world and various theaters of war. The contagion seems to be very similar to that which followed the American Legion convention of several years ago, which had every one exclaiming, “Where’s Elmer?” for months afterward.

Anyway, to wind up the part about Kilroy, the sergeant spent 10 months in Italy with a bomb group and received a distinguished unit citation and five battle stars. As of a few weeks ago, he was awaiting discharge at Davis-Monthan field, near Tucson, and may by now be back in civilian clothes.

And a little over a year later, the New York Times of 24 December 1946 credits a shipyard inspector named James J. Kilroy with being the original:

In brief, Mr. [James J.] Kilroy’s claim is based on the following:

During the war he was employed at the Bethlehem Steel Company’s Quincy shipyard, inspecting tanks, double bottoms and other parts of warships under construction. To satisfy superiors that he was performing his duties, Mr. Kilroy scribbled in yellow crayon “Kilroy was here” on inspected work. Soon the phrase began to appear in various unrelated places, and Mr. Kilroy believes the 14,000 shipyard workers who entered the armed services were responsible for its subsequent world-wide use.

It’s possible that both are the progenitors of Kilroy was here, or perhaps neither and that it was someone else who inspired all that graffiti.

As mentioned above, the simple drawing of a man peering over a wall has been associated with Kilroy, but the drawing was originally of his British counterpart, Mr. Chad, or simply Chad. The British Mr. Chad was typically accompanied with the interrogative phrase What! No ____? or Wot! No ____? with the blank being filled by whatever happened to be in short supply that week. The origin of the name Mr. Chad is just as mysterious as Kilroy, but we can pinpoint the origin of the drawing.

The first published appearance of the figure later known as Mr. Chad in a “Useless Eustace” cartoon by Jack Greenall in the Daily Mirror, 11 December 1937. A man stands at a bank teller’s window in front of a pile of money, saying, “I don’t want to draw it out!—I was only making sure it was all there.” In the background, a Mr. Chad-like figure peers over a wall.

The drawing was created by British cartoonist and erstwhile drawing instructor Jack Greenall in the mid 1920s, early in his career when he was employed at a technical drawing school, as an exercise for his students in drawing simple forms. The figure first saw print when Greenall included the image in a Useless Eustace cartoon published in London’s Daily Mirror on 11 December 1937. The oft-included caption of “Wot! No ____?” would be added later, as commentary on wartime shortages.

Like Kilroy, the name Mr. Chad would not be documented in print until the very end of the war, but there is an intriguing London Times crossword clue for 14 July 1941. The clue reads, “The weight of Mr. Chad,” and the answer was drachm, an anagram for Mr. Chad. This crossword clue is probably just coincidence, but we cannot rule out that Mr. Chad was in oral circulation at this early date and inspired the clue.

The first unambiguous use of the name in print is in the Gloucestershire Echo of 6 September 1945:

A local member of the Association of Army Radio Mechanics, a newly-formed ex-Servicemen’s Association, Cfn. W. Cole, of 11, White Hart-street, Cheltenham, tells us that the president is the mysterious “Mr. Chad,” well known to all Army and ex-Army radio mechanics.

The first recorded appearance of Mr. Chad was when he was with the No. 2 Radio Mechanics School when this was located at Oakley Farm, Cheltenham.

The “first recorded appearance” mentioned in the article is unknown and may simply refer to someone’s recollection of having seen it at the school. But the explanation of the origin being at the radio mechanics school is probably incorrect, although one cannot completely discount the idea that Greenall’s drawing exercise from the 1920s continued to be used by other technical drafting instructors. The idea that the image stems from the Greek letter omega, the symbol for electrical resistance, or from a drawing of a simple electrical circuit would seem to be after-the-fact groping for an explanation.

Another early appearance is in The Daily Mirror of 10 September 1945:

Who is Mr. Chad? You probably don’t know, just as you didn’t know what a Gremlin was when you first heard the name. But for several years now Mr. Chad’s portrait has been appearing regularly on the walls—inside and outside—of Service huts and vehicles.

In the end, we’ll probably never know who the original Kilroy was or the name of the Tommy who first scrawled “Wot! No?” under a drawing of a man peering over a wall. In a way, it’s more appropriate that Kilroy and Mr. Chad remain mysterious. He is every soldier, sailor, and airman who served.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Angell, Roger. “File 13.” Brief, 26 June 1945, 18. Google Books.

Associated Press. “Transit Association Ships a Street Car to Shelter Family of ‘Kilroy Was Here.’” New York Times, 24 December 1946, 18. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

French, William F. “Who is Kilroy?” Saturday Evening Post, 20 October 1945, 6. EBSCOhost Academic Search Ultimate.

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

“How Mr. Chad was born.” Daily Mirror (London), 10 September 1945, 7. Gale Primary Sources: Mirror Historical Archive.

Kaplan, Ben Z. “Tojo Doesn’t Live Here Any More.” Free World, 10.6, December 1945, 36. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Mahaffay, Robert. “Kilroy ‘Gets Around’ at Fort Lawton.” The Seattle Times, 29 July 1945, 14. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Mr. Chad is 20 Years Old.” Daily Mirror (London), 30 January 1946, 1. Gale Primary Sources.

O’Brien, Robert. “San Francisco.” San Francisco Chronicle, 24 November 1945, 9. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, Kilroy, n.

Shapiro, Fred. “More Precise Information on Antedating of ‘Kilroy.’” ADS-L, 1 April 2016.

“Squadron T.” Sheppard Field Texacts (Texas), 21 April 1945, 9. NewspaperArchive.com.

“Times Crossword Puzzle No. 3,552.” The Times (London), 14 July 1941, 6. Gale Primary Sources: Times Digital Archive.

“To-Day’s Gossip.” Gloucestershire Echo, 6 September 1945, 3. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Image credits: WWII Memorial engraving: Luis Rubio, 2006, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license; Jack Greenall, “Useless Eustace, Daily Mirror, 11 December 1937, 8. Gale Primary Sources: Mirror Historical Archive. Fair use of a copyrighted image to illustrate a point under discussion.

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.