Puerto Rico

April 14, 2021

14 April 2021

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States in the Caribbean. Part of the Greater Antilles island chain, Puerto Rico consists of the eponymous main island and several smaller islands.

The Taino name for the island was *bo-rĩ-kẽ (land of the home people), and the island and its people are still occasionally referred to by the Spanish derivatives of that name, Boriquén and Boricua.

European contact with the island began when Columbus landed there in 1493, during his second voyage. He dubbed the island San Juan Bautista (St. John the Baptist) and the bay now known as Bahía de San Juan as Puerto Rico (Rich Port). Over time the name San Juan became associated with the island’s capital and the name Puerto Rico, became associated with the entire island.

Puerto Rico starts appearing in English by 1580, when it appears in a translation of Nicolás Monardes’s Ioyfull Newes Out of the Newfound World (Historia Medicinal de las Cosas que se Traen de Nuestras Indias Occidentales que Sirven en Medicina), a botanical reference work:

A little whiles past, certaine wild people going in their Bootes to S. Iohn De puerto Rico, to shoote at India[n]s, or Spaniards, if that they might find the[m], came to a place and killed certain Indians, & Spaniards, & did hurt many, & as by chaunce there was no Sublimatum at that place to heale them, they remembred to lay vpon the wounds the Ioyce of the Tabaco, & the leaues stamped. And God would, that laying it vpon the hurtes, the griefs, madnes, & accidents wherwith they dyed, were mittigated, and in such sort they were deliuered of that euill, that the strength of the Uenom was taken away, and the wounds were healed, of the which there was greate admiration.

The island remained a colony of Spain until 11 April 1899 when it was ceded to the United States during the settlement of the Spanish-American War.

Porto Rico was a common spelling in both English and Spanish and until 1932 the official name of the U.S. territory. One can still see that spelling today, although usually only in material from earlier in the twentieth century or earlier.

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Sources:

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

Granberry, Julian and Gary S. Vescelius. Languages of the Pre-Columbian Antilles. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama Press, 2004, 9, 69–70. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Monardes, Nicolás. Ioyfull Newes Out of the Newfound World Wherein Are Declared the Rare and Singular Vertues of Diuers and Sundrie Herbs, Trees, Oyles, Plants, [and] Stones (Historia Medicinal de las Cosas que se Traen de Nuestras Indias Occidentales que Sirven en Medicina). John Frampton, trans. London: Thomas Dawson for William Norton, 1580, fol. 36v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2020, s.v. Puerto Rican, n. and adj.

Photo credit: Francisco Jose Carrera Campos, 2009. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

lock and load

April 13, 2021

A WWII-era M1 Garand rifle being loaded; photo of a hand inserting a clip of ammunition into the rifle

13 April 2021

To lock and load literally means to ready a firearm for firing, and the phrase is often used as a command to do so. The exact phrasing of lock and load dates to just prior to the United States’ entry into World War II, but earlier uses of the command reverse the order, making it load and lock, the order of the actions depending on the type of weapon used. The phrase lock and load is also used figuratively to mean prepare for confrontation or trouble, a sense whose popularity is due, in part, to actor John Wayne.

The use of the words locked and loaded in reference to firearms dates to the eighteenth century, but the imperative form isn’t nearly that old. A 1793 reference to muskets being ready to fire can be found in documents relating to the community at Maugerville, New Brunswick in Canada:

Afterwards Carvell brought in two musquets and justice Hubbard asked him if the guns were well locked and loaded Caswell replied “One of them is.” Mr. Hubbard then says you ought to have bayonets.

The command, however, doesn’t appear until the end of the nineteenth century in the form load and lock. From a 17 June 1899 account of an incident in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War:

As the line was advancing a number of men in white suits of clothing began darting through the thicket in front of my right flank; the officer in command of the company on that flank asked permission to fire, which was refused, being uncertain as to who they were. The line was under strong long-range fire and the order was given to load and lock pieces; investigation proved that the white objects seen were the marines returning to their ship. I understand that the ship was the Helena. I recommend that the marines do not again appear in white clothing in front of the firing line.

The account doesn’t specify what type of weapon the soldiers were armed with, but it was probably an M1896 Krag-Jørgensen rifle, or one of its later variants, which was the standard rifle used by the U. S. Army during that war. A soldier would load up to five rounds—the Krag had a unique side-loading system—and then work the bolt to lock a round into the chamber.

The Krag would be replaced in U. S. service by the M1903 Springfield rifle, which was used during World War I and remained in use by training units during World War II. Loading a Springfield followed a similar load-then-lock order as the Krag, only the cartridges were top-loaded in a five-round clip. Here is a description of firing range procedures from the U. S. Marine Corps magazine Leatherneck from February 1934:

For this problem it is highly essential that men on the firing line adhere to the ancient byword of the rifle range, “Load and lock.” In this problem the sections fire at a moving target at a distance of three hundred yards, from the prone position, and then advance to the two hundred yard line, where the position is offhand.

The Springfield would be replaced in combat use in World War II by the M1 Garand rifle. Here is an account of a New York Times reporter participating in a U. S. Army firing range exercise from 19 November 1940 that explains the different procedures for the Garand as opposed to the Springfield:

Major Gen. William N. Haskell, commanding the Twenty-seventh, permitted your correspondent to fire the Garand to gain some general observations which might be of interest to draftees and the men who went into real battle overseas with the Springfield and the British Lee-Enfield.
The first impression was of the safety factor. Last Thursday, when the correspondent made the first of three trips to the range, Lieut. Col. Joseph T. Hart, range officer, boomed through his microphone, “Lock and Load.” That seemed a slip of the tongue. It had always been “load and lock” with the Springfield, the soldier pushing in his clip of five cartridges and snapping the safety catch.
Sergeant David Paye of Company A quickly pointed out to a Garand novice the safety catch cut into the trigger guard of this rifle, which puts the firing pin out of operation before the cartridges go in. At the moment of fire it is released by a forward push of the trigger finger.

And the commands given at Army firing ranges would vary depending on which weapon was being used. From a 1941 Army training manual:

The instructor announces the range and position. He then commands: 1. With dummy cartridges LOAD (or LOCK AND LOAD). 2. Ready on the right. 3. Ready on the left. 4. READY ON THE FIRING LINE. 5 CEASE FIRING. 6. UNLOAD. At the fourth command the pieces, which have been locked, are unlocked. As the targets are exposed each man takes position rapidly and simulates firing of 10 rounds (16 for the M1). Any cartridges remaining after cessation of fire are unloaded or cleared at command. Bolts are left open and sights laid.

Like its predecessor load and lock, the command lock and load was not limited to firing ranges, but was also used in combat situations. For safety reasons, soldiers would not typically have a rounds in the chambers until shooting was imminent, at which point the command would be given to lock and load. Here is an account of the landing on Iwo Jima in 1944 in Allen Matthews’s 1947 memoir, The Assault:

“Some tanks are on the beach!”
I stood again and looked and I saw that they were indeed and it appeared to me that they had even succeeded in scaling the first terrace which lay close to the water's edge. But I wasn't certain and before I could determine if this were so Turlo motioned for me to get down and I sat on my mortar case again.
“Don’t you think we ought to load now, Turlo?” Boudrie yelled. Turlo failed to hear but, in a matter of seconds, he shouted:
“Everybody lock and load!”
We peeled the covers off our weapons and I took a clip of ammunition from the side of my cartridge belt, tapped the black-tipped projectile ends on my rifle butt to make certain the bullets were aligned evenly in the clip, stripped back the operating rod handle, pressed the clip down on the follower and slide, and smashed the bolt home with a blow on the operating rod handle from the heel of my palm. I clicked on the safety and placed the rifle, butt down, between my knees, the muzzle pointing directly into the air.

And the phrase lock and load would be iconically used in the 1949 film Sands of Iwo Jima, starring John Wayne. The phrase is used three times in the movie. The first time is by a lieutenant ordering his men as they are about to hit the beach on Tarawa atoll:

We're crossing the line of departure. Lock and load!

It’s used again in an exchange between Wayne’s character, Sergeant Stryker and a private in front of a bar. Here lock and load is being used figuratively, meaning prepare to booze it up:

PRIVATE: Buy you a drink?
STRYKER: Lock and load, boy, lock and load.

The third time is in the scene depicting the landing on Iwo Jima, where Wayne’s character says:

All right! Line of departure! Get down! Lock and load! Drop those lifebelts when we hit the beach!

Lock and load remains the firing-range command in the U. S. Army to this day.

John Wayne used lock and load figuratively in the 1949 movie, and this figurative sense of prepare for action, be it in drinking or warfare, is still in use. For example, there is this from the New Yorker of 29 March 1993 about nuclear tensions between Pakistan and India:

Eventually, the intelligence community picked up a frightening sight, the analyst recalled. “They had F-16s pre-positioned and armed for delivery—on full alert with pilots in the aircraft. I believed that they were ready to launch on command and that that message had been clearly conveyed to the Indians. We’re saying, ‘Oh, shit.’ We’ve been watching the revolution in Kashmir, the internal problems in India, and we look at the Pakistani pre-positioning. These guys have don everything that will lead you to believe that they are locked and loaded.”

But the phrase isn’t limited to imminent combat. There is this from a 3 February 2021 Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. earnings call:

And then obviously, as we are able to lock and load on new initiatives, we'll share that with you guys. We're still in the phase of making sure we've got the equipment rolled out everywhere. And we're feeling really good about the training we're going to do around quesadilla. So more to come on that front.

Quite a distance from marines hitting the beach.

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Sources:

Baldwin, John A. Letter (17 June 1899). Annual Reports of the War Department for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1900: Report of the Lieutenant-General Commanding the Army, part 3 of 7. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1900. 337. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Brown, Harry and James Edward Grant. The Sands of Iwo Jima (film). Alan Dwan, dir. John Wayne, actor. Republic Pictures, 1949, 33:50, 1:04:15, and 1:13:20.

“Documents of Old Congregational Church at Maugerville” (1793). Collections of the New Brunswick Historical Society, vol. 1. Saint John, New Brunswick: Daily Telegraph Steam Book and Job Printers, 1894, 147. Archive.org.

“Event Brief of Q4 2020 Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc Earnings Call—Final.” Fair Disclosure Wire, 3 February 2021.

Haensler, Phil. “Adventures of the Cuban Battalion.” Leatherneck, 17.2, February 1934, 44. ProQuest Trade Journals.

Hersh, Seymour M. “A Reporter At Large: On the Nuclear Edge.” The New Yorker, 29 March 1993, 65.

Leviero, Anthony H. “Men of the 27th Hail the Garand Rifle After Its First Use on the Range.” New York Times, 19 November 1940, 12. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Lighter, J. E., ed. Random House Dictionary of Historical Slang, vol. 2 of 2. New York: Random House, 1997, s. v. lock and load, 455.

Matthews, Allen R. The Assault. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1947, 34. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2021, s. v. lock, v.1.

U. S. Army. Infantry Drill Regulations and Rifle Training. Washington, D. C.: P. S. Bond, 1941, 108. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Anonymous photographer, 2015. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Tijuana bible

April 12, 2021

12 April 2021

A Tijuana bible is a palm-sized, pornographic comic book, a genre that was popular from the 1930s into the 1950s. The name Tijuana comes from the fact that they were often printed in Mexico and then smuggled across the border into the United States, the bible is a jocular usage. Many Tijuana bibles were pornographic parodies of mainstream comics or featured luridly drawn sexual escapades of Hollywood stars. Production quality varied, from crudely to skillfully drawn.

The folklorist and journalist Ed Cray documented a use of the term from 1947 in the journal Western Folklore:

Tijuana Bible—pornographic comic books, in a three-inch by five-inch format, parodying well known comic strips. These are most often purchased over the California-Baja California border. (Los Angeles, 1947)

Unfortunately, Cray did not record a full citation of his find. (He was fourteen years old in 1947, so perhaps it is a memory from his teenage years in Los Angeles, which would make the exact date somewhat suspect—if that is the case it should have been labeled “circa.”) But we have confirmed evidence of the term from 18 June 1955, when Tijuana bibles were described in a U. S. Senate hearing on juvenile delinquency. The following exchange is between James H. Bobo, a senate staffer, and Phillip Barnes, a Los Angeles police officer assigned to the vice division:

MR. BOBO. In the investigation of cases involving pornographic literature, what is the type that is most prevalent in the hands of those of juvenile age?
MR. BARNES. I would say the most prevalent would be the type known to us, or in the language of the people who deal in it, as the Tijuana Bible, which is a small booklet about 2 by 3 inches, of a cartoon type, that is very lewd and very obscene in its character.
MR. BOBO. It shows all types of sexual perversions?
MR. BARNES. Yes; it does.

A more lurid, but short of obscene, description of Tijuana bibles can be found in writer Bernard Wolfe’s 1972 autobiography, Memoirs of a Not Altogether Sly Pornographer:

“I'll explain it to you, Tijuana Bible's a nickname for a certain type funnies, like so.” The thing he took from his desk drawer to pass across was a comic book, in full color, on paper that upped five or six grades could have been used for Kleenex. All the characters, I saw as I leafed through, were known American ones, but their words as captured in the balloons over their heads were all in Spanish, more, they'd all lost their clothes, every last button and string, and were heel-kick-ingly happy about it, judging from the shrapnel they all were generating—ripples, shimmers, shooting stars, pows, bams and exclamation points, judging further from the interpersonal antics they were engaged in with all portions of their bared anatomies. These carefree cutups didn't have any problem relating to others, they were relating in every way the epidermis allows, variously coupling, tripleting, communing, nosing, mouthing, fingering, backbending, splitting, three-decker-sandwiching. Moon Mullins was ringmaster for a tightly interwoven daisy chain that Dagwood was working hard to unravel. (Thanatos forever trying to undo Eros's best work, where will it end.) Mickey Mouse had had a knockdown fight with Minnie Mouse. He’d decided to cut all troublemaking females out of his life and go it on his own. Just now he was exploring the insertive possibilities in a slab of Swiss cheese while over on the far side, unknown to him, Minnie was energetically reaping the benefits of his probes. The Katzenjammer Kids were here revealing themselves as powerhouse-jammers. The object of their ramrod affections was none other than Little Orphan Annie. Aided and abetted by a slavering Daddy Warbucks, they were using that diminutive Brillo-haired lady as a human pincushion, entering her at every passageway as though to make the point, long before Sartre, about there being no exits. I took no pleasure in what was being done to that little slip of a girl though I’d always thought she was too big for her britches (now missing) and needed to be taken down a few pegs for her protofascist leanings.

In his 2001 Pornography and Sexual Representation: A Reference Guide, Joseph Slade gives a synopsis of the history of the genre:

In his Introduction [to Sex Comics Classics], Raymond says that dirty comics originated in California. By contrast, Maurice Horn in Sex in the Comics argues less persuasively that the eight-pagers owe their beginnings to semipolitical Cuban examples; then, transformed by American cultural imperatives, they began to parody mainstream cartoon characters. Horn is more accurate when he notes that by 1950 “the eight-pagers had become tired and repetitive, every character and every situation had been milked to the fullest, and there were few sexual variations left to explore. The booklets finally petered out in the fifties (when cheap and heavily censored versions were advertised for sale through the mails, in contrast to the real items, which were generally sold under the counter). When the more permissive era of the sixties opened up new fields for the graphic depiction of sex, they simply became objects of curiosity and even nostalgia.” Raymond points out that sadomasochism is not common in Tijuana bibles, which almost always depict garden-variety sex, albeit with humorous or ironic twists.

While Tijuana bible technically refers to the specific genre of pornography, in later years use of the term sometimes widened to include any type of pornography. For instance, there is this definition for Bruce Rodgers’s 1972 The Queen’s Vernacular: A Gay Lexicon:

Tijuana Bible really putrid pornography “I’m wallpapering my den in Tijuana Bible.”

Pornographic comics still exist as a genre, especially common is the manga sub-genre of hentai, that is pornographic comics drawn in the Japanese style, but the Tijuana bible itself is a thing of the past.

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Sources:

Cray, Ed. “Ethnic and Place Names as Derisive Adjectives.” Western Folklore, 21.1, January 1962, 34. JSTOR.

Eisiminger, Sterling. “Glossary of Ethnic Slurs in American English.” Maledicta, 3.2, Winter 1979, 167.

Rodgers, Bruce. The Queen’s Vernacular: A Gay Lexicon. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1972, 197. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Slade, Joseph W. Pornography and Sexual Representation: A Reference Guide, vol. 3 of 3. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001, 933–34. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Testimony of Phillip I. Barnes, Police Officer, City of Los Angeles, Attached to the Administrative Vice Division, Pornographic Detail” (18 June 1955). Hearing Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency. Committee on the Judiciary, U. S. Senate, 84th Congress, 1st Session. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1956, 374. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Wolfe, Bernard. Memoirs of a Not Altogether Sly Pornographer. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1972, 18–19. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Unknown artist. From: Adelman, Bob. Tijuana Bibles: Art and Wit in America’s Forbidden Funnies, 1930s–1950s. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1997, 39. Fair use of a copyrighted image to illustrate the topic under discussion.

life of Riley

April 9, 2021

9 April 2021

To live the life of Riley (or Reilly) is to have a carefree and luxurious existence. But the Riley to which the phrase refers is a bit of mystery. We don’t know who he was or if it even refers to a specific person. There is one candidate who stands out from the rest, but his connection to the phrase is tenuous.

What we know for sure is that the phrase was well established by December 1911, the first time it appears in print, or that’s at least the earliest anyone has found as of this writing. It appears in the pages of the Hartford Courant on 6 December 1911 in a story about a stray cow who had been living it up on the produce in farmers’ fields for a year before it met an untimely demise:

The famous wild cow of Cromwell is no more. After “living the life of Riley” for over a year, successfully evading the pitchforks and the bullets of the farmers, whose fields were ravaged in all four seasons, the cow today fell a victim to a masterfully arranged trap, and tonight lies skinned and torn into quarters at the home of Jesse Canfield in Rocky Hill.

Poor cow, but it’s better to die free than live as slaves, I guess.

There are a number of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century candidates for the position of Riley, both real and fictional. The name appears in any number of music-hall ballads, but only one has any evidence linking him to the phrase. A few years before the Cromwell cow went renegade, the phrase living the life of Willie Reilly appears in a letter sent to the Bridgemen’s Magazine, a journal of a labor union of bridge and iron workers, which was published in August 1909:

Paddy O’Malley is living the life of Willie Reilly. He has his Colleen Bawn out on a farm, half of which is planted with potatoes, the other half acre with cabbage, and in the left corner is a little sty, with two runts in it. This little crop, Paddy says, will last until next summer, and if he has any left he will give it to the steel car manufacturers, as the poor fellows have a hard struggle trying to lick the dagoes.

Of course, you can’t have an early twentieth century phrase without some racism.

But who was Willie Reilly? He is a pseudo-historical figure who supposedly lived in Ireland c. 1790. There are various versions of his story, but he is generally supposed to have been a minor, Catholic landowner who eloped with a Helen Ffolliott, the daughter of a local, Anglo-Irish squire. He was tried for abducting Helen but acquitted after she professed her love for him. In some versions the woman is named Caillin ban or Colleen Bawn, which simply means young girl, white.

Whether or not any of this actually transpired doesn’t matter as far as the phrase is concerned because the story was immortalized in a number of ballads, the earliest being titled Riley and Colinband and published c. 1795. But that ballad, as well as most of the others, does not use the phrase life of Riley.

One version of the story, however, does use the phrase, or at least that co-location of words, for in the song the phrase doesn’t denote a life of leisure. In this passage, Riley is on trial, facing execution if convicted, and the speakers are his defense counsel, Fox, and Squire Ffolliott, Helen’s father. The ballad is published as the preface to William Carleton’s 1855 telling of Reilly’s story:

Then out bespoke the noble Fox, at the table he stood by,
“Oh, gentlemen, consider on this extremity,
To hang a man for love is murder you may see,
So spare the life of Reilly, let him leave this countrie.”
“Good my lord, he stole from her her diamonds and her rings,
Gold watch and silver buckles, and many precious things,
Which cost me in bright guineas more than five hundred pounds,
I’ll have the life of Reilly should I lose ten thousand pounds.”

Here the life of Reilly refers to his execution, and the ballad says nothing about his living happily ever after, although one may presume he did by the ballad’s silence on the matter.

The story was still familiar to Americans in the opening years of the twentieth century. The following exchange of letters appears in the Jersey Journal in December 1912, just over a year after the Cromwell cow incident. The letters show that both the phrase and the story of William Reilly were well known at the time. First from a letter printed in the journal on 13 December:

“LIFE OF REILLY”
Editor Jersey Journal:
Sir:—Am in this country nearly fifteen years and many things puzzle me. I hear very often about the “Life of Reilly.” Who was Reilly, and kind of life did he lead? Please tell me if they have the “Life of Reilly” at the Free Public Library, and oblige,
Your constant reader,
Arthur Gilson.

The editor responded:

Many men named Reilly have become famous, and the query is one sure to provoke discussion from the intelligent readers of this column. We recall now three heroes named Reilly, and perhaps one of them is responsible for the rattling in Mr. Gilson’s knowledge box. There was Willie Reilly who, when his troubles were ended, lived happy ever with the Colleen Bawn. Then there was the famous gentleman asked about in the song, “Is That Mr. Reilly That Keeps the Hotel.” The third Reilly was also celebrated in song by his chum, who no matter what he had, “Handed It Over to Reilly.” We do not think they have the “Life of Reilly” at the Public Library, but if there is such a life J. Pierpont Morgan must have it.
—Ed.

And the next week, on 17 December 1912, the following letter appeared:

Dear Sir—Your very clever answer to Mr. Gilson’s inquiry about the “Life of Riley” nearly caused a riot in our hitherto peaceful home. To your three famous Reillys, allow me to add an entry. I refer to the famous Reilly we used to sing about in the ditty, “I Won’t Go Out With Reilly Any More.” If Mr. J. P. Morgan has not the life of Reilly, Andrew Carnegie surely has—and he can be induced to part with it.
Tom Gannon.

The reference to J. Pierpont Morgan is undoubtedly to the Morgan Library in New York City, and Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropy funded public libraries around the world.

So, Willie Reilly is the leading contender for being the inspiration for the life of Riley, at least people at the turn of the twentieth century thought he was. But the evidence is too thin for us to declare it so with confidence.

Discuss this post

Sources:

“Bullet Ends Life of Famous Wild Cow” (5 December 1911). Hartford Courant (Connecticut), 6 December 1911, 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Carleton, William. Willy Reilly and His Dear Coleen Bawn. New York: George Munro’s Sons, 1855, 5. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Kelley, J. L. Letter. The Bridgemen’s Magazine, 9.8, August 1909, 486. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2020, s. v. Riley, n.

“Queries and Letters Sent to the Editor.” Jersey Journal (Jersey City, New Jersey), 13 December 1912, 20; 17 December 1912, 14. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Riley and Colinband. c. 1795. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Image credit: First National Pictures, 1927, public domain image.

hunky dory

April 8, 2021

8 April 2021

Hunky dory is an Americanism meaning satisfactory, fine. The term appears in the 1860s, and while its origin isn’t known for certain, we have a pretty good idea how it came about. It most likely is an expansion of the older slang term hunk, meaning safe, in a good position, which in turn is from the Frisian honcke or honck, a refuge, safe place, home, which appears in children’s games in New Amsterdam and later in New York before entering adult slang in the nineteenth century.

Hunk appears in the phrase to get hunk, meaning to be made whole after a loss, in a 24 May 1845 article in The Spirit of the Times about a horse race:

It is not a little singular that in one instance only did the favorite win! Those who lost their money on Fashion, had two or three chances to “get hunk,” especially on the last day.

And it appears regarding bank reserves in an article in New York’s Weekly Day Book with a dateline of 12 August 1853:

The great peculiarity of these institutions is, that they have plenty of money when everybody else has, and none when others have none. Just at the time when the merchants want money the most, and when, to carry one their business properly and successfully, they absolutely need it, the banks are short—haven’t a cent—can’t discount a dollar—“are absolutely borrowing to keep all hunk.”

And it’s recorded in the 1859 second edition of Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms:

HUNK. [...] 2. (Dutch, honk.) Place, post, home. A word descended from the Dutch children, and much used by New York boys in their play. “To be hunk,” or “all hunk,” is to have reached the goal or place of meeting without being intercepted by one of the opposite party, to be all safe.
This word has also made its way into political life. In a debate of the Board of Aldermen of New York (December, 1856), on the purchase of certain grounds on the East River for a market site, Alderman Ely said:
Mr. L—— had filled in and made this ground in the waters of the East River without authority; and now he felt himself all hunk, and wanted to get this enormous sum out of the city. — N.Y. Tribune, Dec. 30, 1856.

In 1861, humorist Charles Farrar Browne, writing in the voice of a character named Artemus Ward, began using hunkey or hunky to mean good, manly, and especially in the phrase hunkey boy, often used to describe soldiers with the sense of brave, noble. From a Vanity Fair piece by him on 15 June 1861:

“Ha! do me eyes deceive me earsight? Is it some dreams? No, I reckon not! That frame! them store clothes! those nose! Yes, it is me own, me only Moses!”
He (Moses) folded her to his hart, with the remark that he was “a hunkey boy.”

In a 19 November 1862 piece about Artemus Ward visiting Canada and writing about the fall of Quebec to British forces in 1759:

Quebeck has seen lively times in a warlike way. The French and Britishers had a set-to there in 1759. Jim Wolfe commanded the latters, and Jo Moncalm the formers. Both were hunky boys, and fit nobly. But Wolfe had too many mesales[?] for Montcalm, and the French were slew’d.

Ward even used it in an 1862 romance:

Her tears fell fast. I too wept. I mixed my sobs with her’n. “Fly with me!” I cried.
Her lips met mine. I held her in my arms. I felt her breath upon my cheek! It was Hunkey.

And he used it describe a good watch in a 30 July 1863 piece:

The fair maid, who was Floyd’s Neece, had hookt it while reposing on me weskit. It was a hunky watch—a family hair loom, I wouldn’t have parted with it for a dollar and sixty nine cents.

Ward wasn’t the only writer to use hunky, though. Two pieces that appeared in Vanity Fair, a magazine that frequently published Ward’s work, also make use of it. There is this racist piece from 9 November 1861, where it appears in the mouth of a Native American character:

“They shall be free!” cried WO-NO-SHE, his knife leaping from his belt as he spoke; “WO-NO-SHE swears it!”
“Hunkey boy!” said WOSHY-BOSHY.

There is more on Artemus Ward and the Native-American connection in a bit.

And in a piece extolling naval commander John Rogers from 20 November 1861:

VANITY FAIR desists for a moment from the flip-flap of joy to shake metaphorically by the hand Capt. John Rogers, commander of the sloop-of-war Flag in the Port Royal Fleet. Not, indeed, that we should not like to so present our respects to every one of the “hunkey boys” who had a finger in the Beaufort pie and helped spoil its “crust.” But to Capt. John Rogers we feel individually indebted.

The -dory is added by 1864. The origin of this element is not known for certain, but it is most likely simply reduplication, as in hotsy-totsy, hootchy-cootchy, or hoity-toity. The earliest use of hunky-dory that can be reliably dated is by Henry Warren Howe, a Union soldier in the Civil War. On 3 November 1864, Howe wrote in a letter to his family:

Fran., if you can obtain the use of a good piano I will hire it for you, with pleasure, and, perhaps, purchase it, and let it remain in the family until I get a “bonnie guid wife.” Captains Johnston and Ferris are in the hospital at Annapolis, Maryland, and doing well. I send you a sprig of cedar. Mr. B. goes in the morning, and it is late, so I will close. I am “Hunkey Dora.”

Several days later, on 14 November 1864, he wrote:

Here I am in quarters “Hunkey Dora,” writing you; position, astride a cracker box; time, 8 o’clock in the evening; candle light, volumes of letter matter paraded. On my left, Comrade Barker, ditto. First, a description of my house: a pig-pen made of fence rails banked with dirt, a piece of canvas for a roof, and what completes the arrangement which constitutes the application “Hunkey Dora.” is a short chimney, built a la Southern style, fire-place inside, and there you have me, I reckon!

And he uses the adjective hunkey in a 30 November 1864 letter:

I am well and “hunkey.”

Around this time, hunky-dory also appears in a song by the blackface performers Christy’s Minstrels, but the published song is not dated, but is most likely from 1865 (based on the advertisements for other songbooks included in the paratext). Titled Hunkey Dorey, the opening verse of the song reads:

One of the boys am I,
   That always am in clover;
With spirits light and high,
   ‘Tis well I’m known all over.
I am always to be found,
   A singing in my glory;
With your smiling faces round,
   ‘Tis then I’m hunkey dorey.

While we don’t know the precise date of this song, it is one of the earliest known appearances.

Also in 1865, hunky-dory makes is used as the name of a Native-American character in Dan Bryant’s minstrel show. The name Hun-Kee-Do-Ree appears in advertisements for the show in January 1865. The show also featured Artemus Ward, or at least readings from his works. From an ad in the New York Atlas of 14 January 1865:

BRYANTS’ MINSTRELS.—
Mechanics’ Hall, 472 Broadway
Monday, Jan. 16th, and during the week.
CROWDED HOUSES     ANOTHER NOVELTY!
                          THE LIVE INJUN.
HUN-KEE-DO-REE. .(the Live Ingin)...DAN BRYANT
ARTEMUS WARD AMONG THE MORMANS.
TAMING A BUTTERFLY.     HAUNTED HOUSE.
THE MISERABLES.     THE CHALLENGE DANCE.
Fife and Drum Major.     Tinpanonion.
                     Pillywillywink Band.
Parquette, 50 cts; Gallery, 90 cts; Commence at 7½.

It also is used as a Native-American name by comic A. M. Griswold. From a notice in the Troy Daily Times (New York) of 8 February 1865:

—A. M. Griswold, a comic writer, well known to newspaper readers at the West, as the “Fat Contributor,” is in the lecture field with a new lecture entitled “Hun-ki-do-ri.”

And on 1 October 1866 it appears in the magazine The Galaxy:

I cannot conceive on any theory of etymology that I ever studied why anything that is “hunkee doree,” or “ hefty,” or “ kindy dusty,” should be so admirable

So, it seems hunky-dory developed from the slang word hunky, meaning good, with the second element being added as reduplication. It doesn’t have a precise origin, but seems to have simulataneously appeared in both U.S. Civil War soldiers’ slang and in minstrel/comic acts and writing in the early 1860s.

It is often claimed that hunky-dory has its origins in Western sailors visiting Yokohama, Japan. One of the streets in Yokohama is named Honchodori, and in the mid nineteenth centuries it was lined with bars and brothels, just the place for sailors arriving in port after a long sea voyage. The chronology of this explanation works—Japan opened up to foreign trade in the 1850s. If this explanation is correct, the American adoption of the term would likely have been a combination of sailors bringing tales of the place home and the older slang term hunky. Unfortunately for this explanation, however, it is just conjecture. There is no evidence linking American use of hunky-dory to Japan. None of the early uses are by sailors or in nautical contexts. So, while the explanation is chronologically plausible, the lack of evidence makes it unlikely.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Advertisement. New York Atlas, 14 January 1865, 8. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Bartlett, John Russell. Dictionary of Americanisms, second edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1859, 208. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Capt. John Rogers.” Vanity Fair, 30 November 1861, 242. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Christy’s Bones and Banjo Melodist. New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, n.d., 54. Harvard University’s copy bound with George Christy’s Essence of Old Kentucky. New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, 1862. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Commercial and Money Matters” (12 August 1853). The Weekly Day Book (New York), 13 August 1853, 8. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Fashion Again a Winner!” The Spirit of the Times, 24 May 1845, 146. American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 3.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. hunky-dory, adj.

Howe, Henry Warren. Passages from the Life of Henry Warren Howe, Consisting of Diary and Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861–1865. Lowell, Massachusetts: Courier-Citizen Co., 1899, 174, 179. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Live Metaphors.” The Galaxy, 1 October 1866, 275. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, s.v. hunky, adj.1, hunk, n.2 and adj.

“Personal.” Troy Daily Times (New York), 8 February 1865, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Ward, Artemus (Charles Farrar Browne). “Artemus Ward in Virginia.” St. Albans Daily Messenger (Vermont), 30 July 1863, 2. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

———. “A. Ward in Canada.” Crisis (Columbus, Ohio), 19 November 1862, 8. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

———. “Marion, a Romance of the French School.” Artemus Ward: His Book. New York: Carleton, 1862, 237. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

———. “Moses, the Sassy; or the Disguised Duke.” Vanity Fair, 15 June 1861, 273. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Woshy-Boshy, or the Prestidigitating Squaw of the Snakeheads.” Vanity Fair, 9 November 1861, 209.

Thanks to Ben Zimmer for pointing out the hun-kee-do-ree and hun-ki-do-ri spellings.