jinx

Playbill for a January 1891 Chicago production of Little Puck with the character Jinks Hoodoo

9 March 2021; minor update: 21 April 2021

A jinx is a person or thing that carries bad luck with it. The origin of the Americanism is not quite certain, but it most likely comes from the name of a character in a very popular play at the turn of the twentieth century. The major dictionaries, however, all give tentative etymologies relating to the bird known as the wryneck or jynx because of its use in magic and casting spells. But the avian etymology has significant problems, and there is a clear trail of lexical evidence leading from the play to the word jinx that has been uncovered by researcher Douglas Wilson.

The play is Little Puck, produced by and starring comic actor Frank Daniels and written by Archibald C. Gunter. It debuted in New York in 1888 and, although today it is all but forgotten, it was tremendously successful, with touring companies and revivals throughout the United States of the next two decades. Among the cast of characters was this role, originally played by actor Harry Mack:

Jinks Hoodoo, esq. a curse to everybody.....Harry Mack

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jinks was commonly used as the name of comical characters in theater and in jokes. And hoodoo, a variation on voodoo, was in use as a bringer or run of bad luck by 1882. Audiences of the day would instantly recognize a character named Jinks Hoodoo as a comical bringer of bad luck. And over the years, the meaning of hoodoo would shift onto the first element, jinks.

Jinks Hoodoo quickly caught on as a nickname for someone who brought bad luck. For example, an account in the Hawaiian Gazette with a dateline of 4 March 1895 tells of a “very nervous” passenger traveling on the steamer Australia bound for San Francisco who was certain the ship would sink before reaching port:

The officers of the vessel found that smoke was issuing from the main hatch. The supposition was that the coal was on fire, but happily it turned out that “back smoke” from the funnel was the cause of the trouble. But few of the passengers knew anything of the matter until it was over. At the time the smoke was discovered most of the male passengers were in the smoking room trying to “do” one another out of a dollar at the classic games of “cinch” When they heard of the ship’s escape the winners were glad and the losers declared that Mr. Ficke was a genuine “Jinks Hoodoo.”

And the Nevada State Journal of 4 April 1906 has this about Duncan B. Harrison, veteran of the Spanish-American War, dramatist, and actor, but who, as far as I can tell, had no connection with the play Little Puck—when the article says he is the only original, it means that misfortune has long dogged him, not that he played the part in the play’s debut:

Harrison is evidently a child of misfortune. He seems to be the only original “Jinks Hoodoo.” Wherever there is a brick house to fall, Harrison is there to furnish a cushion, but not to tumble. Wherever there is a cloudburst, Harrison does the wet-dog act. He probably owns an umbrella, but, whether he does or not you are going to find him under the downpour, whenever it rains.

The clipping and respelling to jinx appeared at just about this time. The word seems to have been a favorite of one or more sportswriters for the San Jose, California Evening News. There is this from 3 November 1906, which intriguingly uses jinx as a carrier of good luck:

Manager Mayer has hurled as startling defi at Danny Shay, the Stockton captain, stating that the latter can secure any baseball players in the world to play with his team. So confident has been Mayer’s tone that Shay and Moreing, the guiding stars of Stockton baseballdom, have lost their faith in their baseball Jinx.

And a few days later on 9 November 1906, the Evening News had this:

Mayer will carry along a Jinx with him for good luck.

At the beginning of the next season, on 4 May 1907, the paper ran this:

San Jose has a team of which she may well be proud this season. Not once have they been in danger of losing the coveted position at the head of the procession. The Jinx is certainly with the locals this year. Artie Mayer, son of Manager E. P. Mayer, is the mascot of the team, and he seems to have brought good luck to the San Jose club.

By mid-season, however, the San Jose team’s luck had changed, and the Evening News ran this article:

The Jinx that has been clinging onto the San Jose club for several weeks, was given the run Sunday afternoon, when the locals defeated the San Francisco team of the California League by a score of 5 to 3.

Over the next few years, other sportswriters picked up the word, but used it in the Jinks Hoodoo sense of bad luck. And by 1912 the sports pages of America’s newspapers are filled with jinxes.

The Oxford English Dictionary, in an entry from 1933, says jinx is “apparently” from jynx, an alternative name for the wryneck bird. The American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster follow suit. The bird has traditionally been linked to magic, from its supposed use in spells or charms, and the OED includes a 1693 citation of jynges meaning a charm or spell. But there are nearly two centuries and an ocean between this association and the word’s appearance in the name of the character of Jinks Hoodoo. It is possible the A. C. Gunter took his cue in naming the character from this old association, but it is far more likely that he was relying on the then-current tradition of labeling characters in jokes with the name Jinks.

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Sources:

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

“Harrison Again in Evidence.” Nevada State Journal (Reno), 4 April 1906, 8. NewspaperArchive.com.

“The Injured Innocents Leary.” Hawaiian Gazette (Honolulu), 19 March 1895, 2. NewspaperArchive.com.

“Jinx Has Been Given the Run.” The Evening News (San Jose, California), 29 July 1907, 7. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Merriam-Webster.com, accessed 7 February 2021, s.v. jinx, noun.

“Music—The Drama.” New-York Daily Tribune, 18 January 1888, 4. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Oakland Ball Players Coming.” The Evening News (San Jose, California), 4 May 1907, 4. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. jinx, n., jynx, n., hoodoo, n. and adj.

“Pennant Race to End.” The Evening News (San Jose, California), 3 November 1906, 7. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Sportorial.” The Evening News (San Jose, California), 9 November 1906, 7. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Wilson, Douglas G. “‘Jinx’ etymology #3.” ADS-L, 10 January 2004.

Photo credit: Chicago Public Library, public domain image.

lollygag

The Wordorigins.org staff lollygagging on the balcony instead of working. From front to back: Charles, Lila, and Erik.

16 April 2021

Lollygag is originally an Americanism, and today it is generally used to mean to dawdle, move slowly or engage in idle play when something needs to be done. But it has a second meaning, less common but still found today, meaning to flirt, neck, snog, or otherwise engage in lovemaking. In early use, it is often spelled lallygag, but that spelling has all but vanished today.

The word appears in the mid nineteenth century, but other than the date the origin is not known for certain. There are several possibilities, however. Loll in northern English dialect relates to the tongue (Cf. lollipop) and can be used as a verb meaning to embrace or neck. The verb loll can also mean to droop, dangle, rest idly, or thrust out the tongue. This last can be seen in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, one of his later plays written sometime before his death in 1616:

No blame be to you sir, for all was lost,
But that the heauens fought: The King himselfe
Of his wings destitute, the Army broken,
And but the backes of Britaines seene, all flying
Through a strait Lane, the Enemy full-hearted,
Lolling the Tongue with slaught'ring: having worke
More plentifull then Tooles to doo't: strooke downe
Some mortally, some slightly touch’d, some falling
Meerely through feare, that the strait passe was damm’d
With deadmen, hurt behinde, and Cowards liuing
To dye with length’ned shame.

The gag in lollygag may also relate to the mouth, or it may relate to the sense of a joke or idle amusement.

Whether or exactly how loll and gag came together isn’t known, but one can easily see the relationship between the tongue and snogging or hanging about idly, amusing oneself rather than doing work.

The earliest appearance of the word seems seems to have the meaning of no worth, nonsense, foolery. From a poem about a dead milk cow that appears in the Sparta Democrat on 14 September 1859:

22 Kwarts of milck she give,
As true as Eye dew liv,
but now er 12 Kwart bag
Aint wuth a lallygag,
Poor old thyng!

The senses of snogging and dawdling both appear in print at about the same time, so we cannot say which came first. The dawdling sense appears in Harper’s Magazine in August 1862:

Over the door was stretched a line of letters, reader “RESTERANT;” while below the counter a label fluttered in the breeze, bearing on it, “1000 able-bodied men wanted immediately, to drink Swingle’s Lager Beer. Non but those having the spondulix need apply.” It was before this place that Mr. Biggs paused and turned the flesh of the succulent lobster over with his finger. The gentleman inside addressed him:

“Well now, bossy, what kin I do for you? Try er lobstaw, bossy?”

“Ain’t got no money,” said Mr. Biggs, still fingering the morsels.

“Oh, come now, none o’ that ere lallygag,” responded the gentleman. “Go in, bossy!”

Mr. Biggs raised a morsel to his lips, tasted, smacked them, and swallowed it. He gazed a moment on the dish and then turned away.

In the above passage, lallygag would seem to mean hanging about, loitering, but the context of tasting a succulent piece of lobster is not completely divorced from oral activity and the tongue. The shopkeeper is telling Biggs to either stop loitering or not taste the food.

Another early use that on its face means to dawdle, but whose phrasing hints at snogging, is this from Iowa’s Northern Vindicator newspaper of 19 February 1870. The denotation here is clearly that of winter dawdling and refusing to give way to spring, but lollygag in the lap also conjures up the image of someone reclining next to their lover. We also see the < o > spelling in this passage:

The weather once more is “salubrious” and balmy, and indicates that winter will not lollygag in the lap of spring.

By 1879 we see the dawdle sense with no implication of lovemaking. From the Kalamazoo, Michigan Daily Gazette of 27 December 1879:

“When I worked on a farm,” said a young man, “one old farmer, when he drove his team would exclaim to his horses in this manner: ‘Wheet! (whistle) you old cow! wheet, you old cow!’ as he rattled the lines over their backs. Another would hurry his horses with this epithet: ‘Hate (haste, probably), you old lallygag! hate, you old lallygag!’ Another encouraged his horses with a little profanity, in this style: ‘Gee-up you darned old h—llyon!” The last, an impatient old man who hated to swear would remind his horses of the slowness by sneering: ‘Just look at ye now! just look at ye now!’ So when I drove a team I put all these together and rattled it off in this manner:

Hate, you old lallygag,
   Wheet, you old cow,
You darned old h    llyon.
   Just look at you now;

which so astonished my horses that they sprung into a gallop whenever they heard it.

We also see the sexual sense appearing in the 1860s. This next example uses lallygag as a fictional street name, but the context is of the birds and the bees and unwanted pregnancies. From the New York Atlas of 15 November 1862:

Although experience an Mrs. B. hev somewhat shaken his belief, yet I think I’ll hev to go back tu it, bein convinced that the Doctors do bring babies, and also that it aint alwus sartin where they belong: an I’ll tell you why. It wur on a butiful skylight evenin that a dubble ring wur herd in our boardin-hous, in Lallygag Place, (no number on the house) an when Bridget went tu the door about an hour after, she diskivered on the stoup a baskit containin a large amount of cry.

And in a 15 July 1867 police blotter in the Savannah Daily Republican, lallygag is connected with prostitution. The use of Frank as a name for a woman seems quite odd to us today, but, while never exactly common, in the nineteenth century a woman using that name wasn’t so unusual as to attract notice:

Frank Benn is a rather pretty quadroon girl, who trips the light fantastic toe of a moonlight eve, through the parks, and catches time as it flies. She is a noted lallygag, and was caught talking to the men. We pitied Fanny, for she is pretty enough to be a better girl. His Honor instructed the police to arrest any notorious women in the streets, after nightfall, talking to men. We are glad to see our suggestions are being carried out. The detectives know these girls well, and they will be watched and arrested.

And in another piece from the Northern Vindicator of 30 December 1868, there is no dancing about:

The lacivious [sic], lolly-gagging lumps of licentiousness who disgrace the common decencies of life by their lovesick fawnings at our public dances, wol’d better subserve the purposes for which nature designed them, by placing themselves in some drug establishment to fill prescriptions requiring emetics.

Lallygag appeared in the context of billiards in a New York World piece from 24 November 1870, but even here it is equated with a kiss:

In Dion’s seventh inning—as rapid and exquisite playing as ever seen at our American exhibitions—he scored the enormous run of 372, during which he made four double shots in succession, playing the balls alternately in the two lower corners of the table. He had the balls in good condition still, but by a kiss, or “lallygag,” as he expressed it, the cue ball failed to carom.

And there is this piece that appeared in the Pittsburgh Daily Post on 9 January 1872. From its tone and style, it appears to be fiction (it was not unusual for newspapers of the day to print poems and short fiction), but it’s presented as if it were a news story from England. Lloyd Fletcher was falsely convicted of the murder of Charles Lancaster, and here he is being visited by the wife of the man he supposedly murdered. Just prior to this passage he had just been visited by his wife, and they had embraced, the turnkey describing them as “a pair of cooing doves.” So, the sense of lallygagging here is clearly in the sexual one. I apologize for the length, but the melodramatic plot twist is worth it. The passage opens with the jailor speaking to Fletcher:

“I’ve brought another gal to see you this time, Fletcher. It’s very probable she won’t be so agreeable-like as t’other one, but will do you as much good, I reckon.”

A woman in black stood before the bed on which Fletcher reclined. He recognized Mrs. Lancaster, the wife of the murdered man.

“Ah, this does me good,” said she, taking a step nearer and shaking her clenched fist in his face. “It does not pay to take a fellow creature’s life, does it? Don’t you speak to me, you villain—dont dare to open your mouth. I came here to gloat over your misery, and see how the prospect of leaving your wife and babies affected you. Oh, you tremble! I have found the tender chord. My husband’s wife and children were nothing—oh no! Wretch, villain! may the law be fully justified!

The woman, to all appearance, exasperated beyond the power of further utterance, stepped nearer, and, with a sly movement, hid one of her gloves under the pillow of the bewildered man.

“Have you finished, ma’am,” inquired the turnkey, with his hand on the door.

“Now, really, Fletcher, dont you rather prefer an interview of this kind to one of those lallygagging sort you have had so many of lately? ‘Twill do you more good—ten to one. What are you doing now?”

“Giving him one more look, that is all. Murderer! robber! wretch! I want to engrave his picture on my brain so indelibly that I can never forget a single feature.”

“By the crown, you old man must have had a Tartar! Oh, ho, ho, ho! and the fat turnkey shook his fat sides with laughter. “I don’t believe he’s got it much better where his is staying now than he had with you. It takes a woman to use up the King’s English. I always said so, no I know it.

Mrs. Lancaster drew her veil over her face, and quietly left the prison. As soon as he dared, with trembling fingers, Lloyd drew forth the glove. In it was a vial containing a mixture of chloroform or ether, a small sharp instrument to file his shackles, and a note. It read thus:

You are not the man, and I cannot allow you to be hung. Overpower the keeper, take his clothes, and leave Go to the old rookery. No.—first floor where a disguise awaits you, and then God help you, for you must conceal yourself.

Fletcher does escape, the real murderer eventually found, and Fletcher is vindicated.

There is this from the 18 July 1875 issue of Philadelphia’s Sunday Dispatch that uses the phrase lallygag rhymes to refer to songs with licentious lyrics:

Now over to the other side—“sentimental” sketches and lallygag rhymes: “Sonnet to a Sick Stepmother;” “Ode to Despair;” “How She Jilted Him;” “My Ugly Old Wife and my Pretty Young Housekeeper;” Thrice Divorced;” The Seducer’s Victim;” “How is That for High?” “Nasty, but Nice!” and quite a considerable of similar continuation, far too foul for repetition.

Of such is the soul-debasing stuff dealt out to soft men, silly women, apothecaries’ apprentices, schoolboys, developing girls, and giddy factory-hands, in city, town, village, hamlet, or homestead, over length and breadth of the land! Fathers and mothers, much too pious to admit a “novel” within their doors, will subscribe for and supply to their children unending duplication of such Press Gang muck!

And this from Ohio’s Democratic Northwest of 30 March 1882:

Those “pot-wrestlers” are far more wealthy than the silk arrayed and diamond decked parrot miss with whom you were lollagagging a short time ago at your employer’s show-case. What could you do to support her or any other woman?

Finally, we get sex and politics in Oklahoma’s Daily Leader of 28 January 1894:

There was a Republican love feast at the city hall last evening, and the way the advocates of the g. o. piseh[?] lolly-gagged and entwined their arms about each other’s neck, was a caution.

(The Newspaperarchive.com scan of this paper is not the best. While it is possible to read the words that use standard spelling, g. o. piseh (or whatever) defeated me. It’s clearly meant to be a jocular variant of G.O.P., but exactly how the editors are spelling it can’t be determined from the digital scan.)

Both senses of lollygag continue through to the present-day, in my experience the dawdling sense is the more common one today, but one can still find examples of the snogging or sexual sense.

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Sources:

“Along the Wharves.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 25.147, August 1862, 324.

“Billiard Entertainment.” The World (New York), 24 November 1870, 5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“The Blowhard Papers.” New York Atlas, 15 November 1862, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Davies, Mark. The NOW Corpus (News on the Web), 2021.

Diggs, Sharp. “Snap-Short Sermons of an Uncalled Preacher.” Sunday Dispatch (Philadelphia), 18 July 1875, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. lallygag, v., lallygag, n., lallygag, adj.  

Hewitt, Hallet H. “Swearing at Horses.” Daily Gazette (Kalamazoo, Michigan), 27 December 1879, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Local Jottings.” Savannah Daily Republican (Georgia), 15 July 1867, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“A Narrow Escape.” The Daily Post (Pittsburgh), 9 January 1872, 3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Northern Vindicator (Estherville, Iowa), 19 February 1870, 3. Newspaperarchive.com.

———, 30 December 1868, 3. Newspaperarchive.com.

“Our Young Man Around Town.” Democratic Northwest (Napoleon, Ohio), 30 March 1882. 1. Newspaperarchive.com.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989 (updated December 2020), s.v. lallygag, v.

“Poetry.” Sparta Democrat (Wisconsin), 14 September 1859, 1. Newspaperarchive.com.

“Republican Love Feast.” The Daily Leader (Guthrie, Oklahoma), 28 January 1894, 1. Newspaperarchive.com.

Shakespeare, William. Cymbeline, 5.3. In Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (First Folio, State Library of New South Wales). London: William Jaggard, et al., 1623, 392.

Wright, Joseph. The English Dialect Dictionary, vol. 3 of 6. Oxford: Henry Frowde, 1905, 643.

Photo credit: David Wilton, 2020.

Ramadan

A new moon. Ramadan, like all months of the Islamic calendar, begins with the first sighting of the new moon

16 April 2021; minor update on 21 April 2021

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and in that religious tradition is given over to fasting between sunrise and sunset and to acts of charity. Unlike the Christian season of Lent, which—in Roman Catholicism and many other Christian traditions—focuses on personal suffering and atonement, Ramadan is intended as a period of spiritual reflection and community, with the meals before and after the daily fast being times of conviviality and sharing. There are liberal dispensations for those who cannot fast, and if one cannot fast on a day, one can add an additional day at the end or give alms to the poor to make up for it.

Since the Islamic calendar is a lunar one, in the solar calendar Ramadan falls eleven days earlier each year, taking thirty-three years to pass through all the seasons.

As one might expect, the word is an Arabic one, derived from رَمِضَ (ramidha) meaning scorching heat. The name of month predates Islam, and since pre-Islamic Arab culture used a solar calendar Ramadan would have consistently fallen in the summer, hence the name.

Ramadan appears in English by the late fifteenth-century. The first known appearance is in a translation of Alain Chartier's Le Traité de l’Esperance (The Treatise of Hope). The passage gives a rather unflattering portrait of Islam:

Moreouir this fals prophete gadred owt of the two Testamentis certeyn abstinences of mete and drynke and lyeng with women in certayn dayes till the sonne war down, which he callid the Fastes of the Moneþe of Ramaȝan.

Chartier’s original French is de mois Ramazan, and his use is one of the first in that language too.

Many of the early appearances in English (and French) use the spelling Ramazan. In Iran and Turkey, the Arabic letter ض (Ḍād) is pronounced as /z/, which indicates the proximate source for those early appearances is probably Persian, perhaps as it was spoken in Turkey, rather than a direct borrowing from classical Arabic.

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Sources:

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

Blayney, Margaret S. Fifteenth-Century English Translations of Alain Chartier's Le Traité de l’Esperance and Le Quadrilogue Invectif, vol. 1 of 2. Early English Text Society 270. London: Oxford UP, 1974, 92. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson A.338

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

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

Photo credit: Ronnie Robertson, 2016. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

lock, stock, and barrel

A Springfield model 1822 musket with its principal parts labeled, including lock, stock, and barrel

14 April 2021

Lock, stock, and barrel is a slang expression meaning the whole or entirety of something. The underlying etiology of the phrase is that of a musket, of which the lock (i.e., firing mechanism), stock, and barrel are the principal parts. While one can find combinations of the three words literally referring to firearms going back earlier, the use as a slang phrase arose in North America around the turn of the nineteenth century, and it may in fact be based on an older Scottish adage, although that adage isn’t recorded until the same time.

In early use, the order of the words is stock, lock, and barrel, and the present-day order seems to have become fixed in the mid nineteenth century. The earliest hint that the phrase was in use dates to 16 January 1811, when it appears in the Philadelphia newspaper Aurora for the Country:

In the hands of a company of the United States rifle men, stationed at Fort Columbus he found some arms of a construction most complete, they were of the short pattern of about 2 feet 3 inches from the breach to muzzle, not only handsome to the eye, but the workmanship “stock, lock, and barrel” were excellent; and upon the proof—no weapon could be more easily managed nor more effective.

This is a literal reference to a firearm, but the use of quotation marks around the phrase indicates that the slang sense of whole was already in use and the writer intended both the literal and metaphorical meaning. And indeed, we see a use of the phrase that is utterly divorced from the context of firearms about a month later, in the Middlesex Gazette of 21 February 1811:

The whole of the southern states, including the city of Baltimore, own 344,336 tons and 15[?] ninety-fifths. So that the tonnage of the state of Massachusetts alone, exceeds that of the whole southern states put together, “stock, lock, and barrel,” 118,708 tons and 68 ninety fifths.

The earliest use of the phrase recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary is in a letter by Walter Scott dated 29 October 1817, but this would seem to be a coincidental use, unconnected to the American phrase. In the letter, Scott writes:

I do not believe I should save £100 by retaining Mrs. Redford, by the time she was raised, altered, and beautified, for, like the Highlander’s gun, she wants stock, lock, and barrel, to put here into repair. In the mean time, “the cabin is convenient.”

One needs to know the background to understand the references. Scott is writing about the renovations of his home Abbotsford. “Mrs. Redford” is not a person, but rather the original farmhouse that stood on the property, no doubt so-called after its former tenant. And the “Highlander’s gun” is a reference to a recently published poem by William Jerdan, “The Highlandman’s Pistol,” which opens with the epigraph:

“It wants a new stock, a new lock, and a new barrel, like the Highlandman’s pistol.”—Old Scottish Saying.

It is unlikely, but not impossible, that Scott was aware of the American slang phrase. More likely is that the American phrase is connected to the older Scottish saying—although we have no evidence of the existence of that Scottish saying before the 1817 poem. Jerdan may very well have invented it.

A curious use of lock, stock, and barrel, and one of the first to use that order of words, appears in a letter published in the Connecticut Herald on 20 January 1824. The letter is in the voice of a musket, allegedly used in the American Revolution, that had been on sale for ten dollars. But the phrase’s use is not in the sense of the whole or entirety, rather lock, stock, and barrel is used as a verb meaning to refurbish the weapon:

I appeal to your mercy and judgment to say if this is not wrong—and if you have any pity for my perishing condition, I wish you to represent my case to the General Committee for such relief as the case demands—for I vow, by my caliber and breech-pin, I should never kill a Turk, though you were to new lock, stock, and barrel me.

Another curious use is in John Neal’s 1823 Randolph, A Novel. The use appears in a passage in which a character, a Mr. Grenville, is telling of his visit to the armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). But interspersed with his discussion of the firearms manufacturing techniques there, is his account of trying to swim in the Shenandoah River there. “Jefferson’s Rock” is a well-known rock formation overlooking the river at Harper’s Ferry:

“O, speaking of General Harper," said Mr. Grenville, “that reminds me of Harper's Ferry—ever there?—I was—always mention it—travelling for pleasure—went to the armoury—some notion of being comfortable—thought it was about time to begin to think about getting married—after a wife—know of any? Manage to make the pot boil, may be. Jefferson's rock's mighty dangerous—names carved to the brink—most curious thing—like to a'been washed away in a—hem—mill race. “Durst thou Cassius,” said I, leap with me, &c.—and in I went—Lord!—it took my breath away—scarified me—whizzed and whirled me about, like soap-suds in a gutter. I would'nt recommend to you to bathe in a mill race (you will recollect that women only were present) bad place to learn to swim in—ahem—the most curious thing that I saw, was a turning lathe—just invented—turns gun-stocks whole—“lock, stock and barrel”—‘Twas’nt exactly the wisest thing that ever was done, I confess;—I might have been drowned—but I never lose my presence of mind, at such moments, I mean—nay, women themselves do not—there was an iron mould made in the shape of a gun-stock—upon this, a number of instruments were graduated; corresponding exactly with others, above—ahem—those at the top had edges—those below had none—the wheel revolved, the chips flew, and out came a gun-stock!—ahem—wonderful contrivance very curious indeed—revolutions are naturally in a circle—you would think it difficult to turn an oval—a hectagon—a square—but this machine does more—all at once; many ovals—capable of universal application—very simple, the principle! What a people we are! for invention, and improvement!—emphatically our national character.

Neal is using the phrase in the context of firearms, but again, his placing it in quotation marks indicates that he is aware of the metaphorical sense.

And by 1829 we see the familiar order of words and the metaphorical sense unrelated to firearms. From the Yankee; and Boston Literary Gazette of July 1829:

You complained a moment ago, that you had no money. Come, Sir, fix your own price for your horse- and-sleigh, and if you are not very extravagant, I'll buy them of you——

One hundred and fifty dollars, if you dare?

No—but I will say one hundred, if you dare.

One-twenty-five, and they are yours, lock, stock and barrel, as they stand.

Done—there's your money.

But the order of words was still variable, as we can see from Thomas Chandler Haliburton’s 1838 novel The Clockmaker:

Yes, a horse like “Old Clay” is worth the whole seed, breed and generation of them Amherst beasts put together. He’s a horse, every inch of him, stock, lock, and barrel, is old Clay.

After about 1840, the order of lock, stock, and barrel becomes the fixed idiom.

So, despite the first citation in the OED being from a famous British writer, the phrase would appear to be North American in origin—although perhaps based on an older, unattested, Scottish adage. In many ways, lock, stock, and barrel follows the standard path from literal to metaphorical to idiom. At first it refers the parts of a gun, then to the entirety of something, and then fossilizes into a fixed idiom. But its history also diverts into any number of tempting side paths.

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Sources:

“Facts—Stubborn Facts.” Middlesex Gazette (Middletown, Connecticut), 21 February 1811, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Haliburton, Thomas Chandler. The Clockmaker: or The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville, fourth edition, London: Richard Bentley, 1838, 176. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Jerdan, William. “The Highlandman’s Pistol.” Morning Post (London), 1 March 1817, 4. Gale Primary Sources.

Letter. Connecticut Herald (New Haven), 20 January 1824, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Live Yankees.” The Yankee; and Boston Literary Gazette, July 1829, 36. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Military Establishment.” Aurora for the Country (Philadelphia), 16 January 1811, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Neal, John. Randolph, A Novel, vol. 1 of 2. Baltimore?: 1823, 241. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2021, s. v. lock, n.2.

Scott, Walter. Letter to Daniel Terry, 29 October 1817. The Letters of Sir Walter Scott, vol 5 of 12. H. J. C. Grierson, et al., eds. London: Constable and Co., 1933, 4.

Tréguer, Pascal. “Origin of ‘Lock, Stock and Barrel’ (i.e. ‘Completely’).” Wordhistories.net, 18 March 2018.

Image credit: Anonymous, 2011. Public domain image.

Guam / Mariana Islands

1697 map of the East Indies including the island of Guam

14 April 2021

Guam is a territory of the United States in the Pacific Ocean, the largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands. The name comes from the Chamorro name for the island, Guåhån (ours).

Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese explorer sailing under the Spanish flag, led the first European expedition to set foot on the island in 1521. Magellan dubbed the Mariana Islands Islas dos Ladrões (Islands of the Thieves) because the Chamorro inhabitants stole supplies from the expedition. Spanish Jesuits renamed the islands Islas Marianas in the late seventeenth century, after Mariana of Austria, then queen regent of Spain.

Spain took control of the islands in 1667, ruling them for nearly two and half centuries. Spain ceded Guam to the United States on 11 April 1899 as part of the settlement of the Spanish-American War.

The name Guam appears in English by 1697, when William Dampier uses it in his A New Voyage Round the World. That book uses the name in its subtitle:

Describing particularly the Isthmus of America, Several Coasts and Islands in the West Indies, the Isles of Cape Verd, the passage by Terra del Fuego, the South Sea coasts of Chili, Peru, and Mexico; the Isle of Guam one of the Ladrones, Mindanao, and other Philippine and East-India islands near Cambodia, China, Formosa, Luconia, Celebes, &c., New Holland, Sumatra, Nicobar Isles, the Cape of Good Hope, and Santa Hellena

And the passage about Dampier’s sighting of Guam reads:

The 20th day of May, our Bark being about 3 leagues a head of our Ship, sailed over a rocky shole, on which there was but 4 fathom water and abundance of Fish swimming about the Rocks. They imagind by this that the Land was not far off; so they clapt on a Wind with the Barks head to the North, and being past the Shole lay by for us. When we came up with them, Captain Teat came aboard us, and related what he had seen. We were then in lat. 12 d. 55 m. steering West. The Island Guam is laid down in Lat. 13 d. N. by the Spaniards, who are Masters of it, keeping it as a baiting place as they go to the Philippine Islands. Therefore we clapt on a Wind and stood to Northward, being somewhat troubled and doubtful whither we were right, because there is no Shole laid down in the Spanish drafts about the Island Guam. At 4 a clock, to our great joy, we saw the Island Guam, at about 8 leagues distance.

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Sources:

Dampier, William. A New Voyage Round the World. London: James Knapton, 1697, 283. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

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

Image credit: Unknown cartographer. Map appears in William Dampier’s 1697 A New Voyage Round the World between pages 282 and 283. Public domain image.