narc / nark

A Japanese poster advertising the 2002 movie Narc, directed by Joe Carnahan and starring Jason Patric and Ray Liotta. The fact that the only word not in Japanese is narc shows the global ubiquity of the word. The image on the poster is a photo of two men from the waists down. Both are carrying guns.

27 May 2021

In current use, narc or narco refers to a law enforcement agent who investigates illegal drug use or to a police informer. Narc is also a verb meaning to inform on someone. These senses are typically analyzed as a clipping of narcotics. But there is an older, mid nineteenth-century slang term, nark, which also means an informer, and the origin of this older nark is not so clear. In the 1950s, the urge to clip narcotics to narc found an existing term already there. So, the current use of narc has its origins in both the older term and the relatively more recent clipping.

One possibility is that this older nark comes from the Romani nak, meaning nose. The use of nose to mean an informer dates to the eighteenth century. The 1789 first edition of George Parker’s Life's Painter of Variegated Characters in Public and Private Life defines a nose as a “snitch.” And James Hardy Vaux’s 1819 Vocabulary of the Flash Language has these entries:

NOSE, a thief who becomes an evidence against his accomplices; also, a person who seeing one or more suspicious characters in the streets, makes a point of watching them in order to frustrate any attempt they may make, or to cause their apprehension; also, a spy or informer of any description.

NOSE, to nose, is to pry into any person’s proceedings in an impertinent manner. To nose upon any one, is to tell of any thing he has said or done with a view to injure him, or to benefit yourself.

On its face, it is reasonable to think that Roma criminals in England adopted nak as a calque for the slang sense of nose, and in turn nak made its way back into English criminal slang as nark. But there are two problems with this explanation. The first is that the shift from a short /o/ or /a/ in nak to the /aɹ/ in nark is unusual—not impossible, but odd. The second is that the earliest uses of nark in English are those of a miserly or otherwise unpleasant person. Given that dates of appearance of slang terms in print is at best only a fuzzy indication of when they were actually coined in speech, this does not rule out an origin in Romani, but it does cast doubt on it.  

The sense of nark meaning an unpleasant person is in place by the 1840s. From Swell’s Night Guide of 1849, an underground guidebook to bordellos and other disreputable establishments of London:

But since these mendedicity coves has come up—they are so down on us kids that its almost a gooser vith us. They are the rankest narks vot ever God put guts into, or ever farted in a kickses case; vell, so I’ve just come to beat this ere walk a bit.

TOTTY.—O! you’ll find a decent pad or two in this valk. But vot ever you does, don’t doss at that ere Trav’ler’s Rest—they calls it The Trav’ler’s Rest. Vhy, thunder my groggy! if any trav’ler gets rest there—why it is a reglar bug trap and a jumper valk and chat hutch, and stinks of crap and cag like a dunniken, and the donna of the ken is a dead crab, and a nark. I doss’d there von night—and send I may live, if I dropped my ogle slums once, and I couldn’t stall a paddle, coss they dubs the jigger, and scarpers with the screw. O she’s a thundering nark!

(Both the Oxford English Dictionary and Green’s Dictionary of Slang date this passage to 1846. They may have access to an earlier edition than I have. Green’s includes this passage under the definition of police informant, but the context is clearly that of a bad person, a thief.)

This sense of an unpleasant person is still in use in Australia & New Zealand.

Nark could also be used more specifically to mean a miser. From Henry Mayhew’s 1851 London Labour and the London Poor in a list of charitable people whom beggars could ask for money with reasonable chance of success:

Mrs. Taggart, Bayswater (her husband is a Unitarian minister, not so good as she, but he’ll stand a “bob” if you look straight at him and keep to one story.)

Archdeacon Sinclair, at Kensington (but not as good as Archdeacon Pott, as was there afore him; he was a good man; he couldn’t refuse a dog, much more a Christian; but he had a butler, a regular “knark,” who was a b— and a half, good weight.)

Lady Cottenham used to be good, but she is “coopered” (spoilt) now, without you has a “slum,” any one as she knows, and then she won’t stand above a “bull” (five shillings).

The spelling here of knark hints that it may be a borrowing from Danish, where knark also once meant miser, although it could just be a spelling variant; slang terms often have multiple and fanciful spellings in their early years. From Berthelson’s 1754 English-Danish dictionary:

SNUDGE, Sub. gammel knark.

Snudge had been English slang for a miser since the sixteenth century, and gammel is Danish for old. In present-day Danish, however, knark is slang for narcotics, showing that the same conflation of words happened in that that language too.

It’s a small step from underground slang for an unpleasant person to police informant, and the informer sense of nark is in place by the end of the 1850s. Here is an entry from Ducange Anglicus’s 1859 The Vulgar Tongue. He spells it nard, however, and whether that is an error on his or the printer’s part, or whether it reflects an actual pronunciation is uncertain:

NARD, n. A person who obtains information under seal of confidence, and afterwards breaks faith.

But we have the nark spelling the following year. From Hotten’s 1860 slang dictionary, entries that parallel Vaux’s earlier ones for nose:

NARK, a person in the pay of the police; a common informer; one who gets his living by laying traps for publicans, &c.

NARK, to watch, or look after, “NARK the titter;” watch the girl.

This informant sense of nark continues to the present day. It appears in a 1914 draft of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, in a scene where Eliza Doolittle fears being arrested:

THE FLOWER GIRL Oh, sir, dont let him charge me. You dunno what it means to me. Theyll take away my character and drive me on the streets for speaking to gentlemen. They—

THE NOTE TAKER (coming forward on her right, the rest crowding after him) There, there, there, there! whos hurting you, you silly girl? What do you take me for?

THE BYSTANDER. It's all right: hes a gentleman: look at his boots. (Explaining to the note taker) She thought you was a copper's nark, sir.

THE NOTE TAKER (with quick interest) Whats a copper's nark?

THE BYSTANDER (inapt at definition) It's a—well, it's a copper's nark, as you might say. What else would you call it? A sort of informer.

There are later uses this sense of nark to be found, but as one proceeds into the latter half of the twentieth century, it becomes unclear where the older term gives way to the newer, narcotics one. And this older nark never gained a firm foothold in North America, being confined chiefly to Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.

The use of narco to mean drugs, a straightforward clipping of narcotics, appears by the 1950s. In a letter of 12 January 1954 James Blake describes the police interrogating him:

They brought him in, someone I hardly knew, a wild-eyed savage hurling accusations of homosexual orgies spiced with all manner of narco. In the face of such a shocking and unexpected onslaught, I was commendably cool.

That same decade, narco would also come to mean a police narcotics officer. From an article about the beat poets by John Ciardi, published in the Saturday Review on 6 February 1960:

The G.I. generation had its potential rebellion largely blurred by army restrictions and could do little more than grumble or go AWOL on a binge, but that much at least they did manage regularly enough. The Beat Generation has marihuana and the ritual of dodging the “narcos”—the narcotics squad.

By the mid-1960s narco had been clipped even further to narc or nark. (The occasional <k> spelling is not necessarily connected to the older term; as mentioned, slang spelling, particularly in the early years of a term seeing print, is highly variable.) Timothy Leary uses it in his 1965 The Politics of Ecstasy, and here it is unclear if Leary is using the term to refer to law enforcement officers or paid informers:

Big power struggle over control of drugs in Washington. The narcotics bureau of the Treasury Department wanted to keep all drugs illegal, to step up law enforcement, add thousands of T-men, G-men and narks to the payroll. On the other hand, the medics and scientists in the government wanted the FDA to handle all drugs, including heroin, pot, LSD. Make it a medical matter.

And narc makes an appearance in the 1970 novel Shaft by Ernest Tidyman:

He was frightened and he wasn’t sure why. The police didn’t frighten him. The Narcs didn't frighten him. His own customers (who were capable of killing a man for a lot less than he usually carried) didn’t frighten him either. But Ben Buford did.

The shift from police officer to police informer, all in the context of illegal drugs, is definitely in place by the end of the 1970s. From the 1979 Angel Dust: An Ethnographic Study of PCP Users:

They start taking me to the police car and instantly, just like that, I just kind of came down. I came to and I was coherent. Wow, what's going on? Wow, you're going to arrest me. Gee, thanks for stopping me. God, I was thanking the guy, shaking his hand and all this stuff. He said I can see you're kind of back to normal now. He asked were drugs involved here tonight? Oh yeah, yeah, drugs were involved. In fact, we were smoking PCP. Here let me go and get it for you. Ran back into the house, had a gram of dust, gave it to him, handed it to him. And he was asking me, are you a dealer or do you sell? I said no, no, no. Hey now, we just buy it for our own personal use. So he says, OK this one is on me. He took the dust and left. Well he asked me if I wanted to be a narc or an informer or all that bullshit.

Whether this informer sense of narc was influenced by the older, British sense of nark meaning an informant is unknown. On the one hand, the clipping of narcotics to narco to narc is both documented and a completely ordinary pattern of morphological development. On the other hand, nark meaning an informer was already present in criminal slang. And it may be that North American use of narc and narco is utterly unrelated to the older term, where use in Britain is influenced by it. But to what degree the older term influenced the newer one is unknown and likely never to be determined.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Anglicus, Ducange. The Vulgar Tongue. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1859, 23. Google Books.

Berthelson, Andreas. An English and Danish Dictionary. London: John Haberkorn, 1754. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Blake, James. “Letter” (12 January 1954). The Joint. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1971, 59. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Ciardi, John. “Epitaph for the Dead Beats.” Saturday Review, 6 February 1960, 11. The Unz Review.

Feldman, Harvey W., Michael H. Agar, and George M. Beschner, eds. Angel Dust: An Ethnographic Study of PCP Users. Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1979, 146. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. narc, n., narc, v., nark, n.1, nark, v.1, narco, n.

Hotten, John Camden. A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words. London: 1860, 179. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Leary, Timothy. The Politics of Ecstasy (1965). New York: G.P. Putnam, 1968, 283. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor, vol 1 of 3. London: G. Newbold, 1851, 351. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2020, s.v. narc, n., nark, n.; June 2019, s.v. nark, v.; June 2018, s.v. narco, n.; March 2021, nose, n.; second edition, 1989, snudge, n.

“Padding Kens.” Swell’s Night Guide. London: H. Smith, 1849, 68. London Low Life, Adam Matthew.

Shaw, George Bernard. Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts. Rough Proof—Unpublished. London: Constable, 1914, 5–6.

Tidyman, Ernest. Shaft (1970). Mt. Laurel, New Jersey: Dynamite Entertainment, 2016, 55. Kindle.

Vaux, James Hardy. “A Vocabulary of the Flash Language.” Memoirs, vol. 2 of 2. London: W. Clowes, 1819, 192. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Paramount Pictures, 2002. Fair use of a low-resolution copy of a copyrighted image to illustrate a point under discussion.

fritz, on the / on the blink

26 May 2021

When something is on the fritz or on the blink it is out of order or otherwise in unsatisfactory condition. The two phrases are Americanisms and start appearing around the turn of the twentieth century, but otherwise the origins of both are obscure.

The two leading hypotheses for the origins are, first, that on the fritz comes from the German pet name Fritz, short for Friedrich. Specifically, the cartoon characters the Katzenjammer Kids, Hans and Fritz, are often put forward as inspiration for the phrase. But there is no evidentiary trail linking the phrase with anyone named Fritz or even anyone of German extraction in general. Plus, there is no clear motivation for associating that name with some kind of mechanical failure. The second is that fritz is echoic of the sound a machine makes while failing, or that blink represents the light going out in a device. While this second explanation sounds plausible, there is, again, no evidentiary trail. None of the early uses are found in engineering circles or refer to mechanical failures.

What we do know is that on the blink is recorded before on the fritz, although the dates are close enough that we can’t tell which came first in oral use. On the blink appeared in an 1898 story by Paul Gardiner in a passage about traveling through Kentucky:

I began to think that my train had crossed the border into some unfrequented and uninhabited country. In the places at which we stopped, nothing was to be seen in the way of busy streets and well kept lawns and fences, but on the contrary, to use a slang expression, things were “on the blink.”

Railroad stations were uninviting. The name of the stop on the signboard could scarcely be read. Men stood about in slouched felt hats, their dirty jean trousers tucked into their boot tops, beards un-kempt, round, stoop shouldered, their hands pushed down into their pockets.

George V. Hobart, writing under the pseudonym Hugh McHugh, used on the blink in his 1901 book John Henry:

He'll forget it, and day after to-morrow he'll flash the intelligence on me that he has invented a strangle-hold line of business that will put Looey Harrison on the blink.

And Robert Chambers used it in his 1918 The Restless Sex. The person named Steve in this passage is a woman:

For the background of familiar things framed her so naturally and so convincingly and seemed so obviously devised for her in this mellow old household, where everything had its particular place in an orderly ensemble, that when she actually departed for college, the routine became dislocated, jarring everything above and below stairs, and leaving two dismayed and extremely restless men.

“Steve's going off like this has put the whole house on the blink,” protested Jim, intensely surprised to discover the fact.

The earliest recorded instances of on the fritz are found in New York prison slang, although what significance this may have, if any, is uncertain. They are all found in the Star of Hope, a prison newspaper that started at Ossining (Sing Sing) prison, but which quickly expanded to include articles and literary items from prisoners in other New York penitentiaries. The earliest is from the 25 August 1900 issue of the paper:

Now you tell me “to lend you my ears.” Now all dis kind of talk is on de fritz, see? And if you want me to rap to you, you've got to talk plain English, Sing Sing English. See?

And a few months later, on 28 October 1900, a prisoner in the Auburn, New York prison contributed this on the subject of marriage:

I sez to him, sez I, “Chack, if youse take de wall-eyed push collectively an’ not indoowiduals youse’ll fin’ dat marridge is not a failure, perwiding de game’s played on de level, wid no table or sleeve hold-outs. It’s dese yer hold-outs wot queers de game an’ puts de marridge institootin on de fritz.”

That’s what we know about the two phrases. Without further evidence, anything more is speculative. Sometimes “origin unknown” is the correct, if unsatisfying, answer.

But before I leave it, I should mention that researcher Stephen Goranson connects on the fritz with uses of friz, a dialectal spelling of freeze or froze. But I find his hypothesis unconvincing.

It is true that friz is commonly found in late nineteenth-century writing as a dialectal spelling of freeze. Goranson makes the connection with on the fritz through two citations. The first is in a story, “‘Jimmy the Bunco's’ Thanksgiving Dinner,” that appears in the New York Herald on 20 November 1892:

“Lemon water ice?” reiterated the “Bunco,” with a mystified air; “made o’ lemons and water?”

“I dunno’ as I cares on the friz,” murmured the “Bunco” thoughtfully. The word bore too close a resemblance to his general state of being.

The “general state of being” of on the friz could be a precursor to the more specific defective state of on the fritz. But it seems to me that friz here refers to carbonation, and “I dunno’ as I cares on the friz” means that Bunco doesn’t like fizzy drinks. The slang frizzle, meaning champagne, is attested from the middle of the nineteenth century.

The connection to freezing is made through the poem “Suppose” by prisoner Auburn 23,669 published in the November 1902 issue of Star of Hope:

What would the little acorn do
If it had no place to grow?
Would Santa Claus be on the "fritz"
If we never had any snow?

There is a context of winter and snow, but by 1902 the phrase was well established in Auburn prison slang, and this appears to be just another use of on the fritz, with any connection to temperature being coincidental.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Chambers, Robert W. The Restless Sex. New York: A.L. Burt, 1918, 104. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Gardiner, A. Paul. “I Kicked Your Dog.” A Drummer’s Parlor Stories. New York: A.P. Gardiner, 1898, 86. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Goranson, Stephen. “‘On the Fritz’ at Sing Sing.” Language Log, 18 March 2018.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. fritz, n.2., blink, n.1., frizzle, n.

“The Hard Man: Makes a Few Observations on the Subject of Marriage.” Cincinnati Enquirer (Ohio), 28 October 1900, 26. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Hotten, John Camden. The Slang Dictionary. London: Hotten, 1864, 138. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“‘Jimmy the Bunco's’ Thanksgiving Dinner.” New York Herald, 20 November 1892, 13. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

McHugh, Hugh (pseudonym of George V. Hobart). John Henry. New York: G.W. Dillingham, 1901, 80–81. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2019, s.v. fritz, n.2; second edition, 1989, s.v. blink, n.2.

mulligan

25 May 2021

Cartoon by sportswriter Bozeman Bulger illustrating the fictional Swat Milligan’s 1,278 RBI hit. A stick-figure man in baseball uniform hitting a line drive into a sign on the outfield fence.

Mulligan is golf jargon for an extra stroke allowed after a bad shot in a friendly game. Since mulligans are not permitted in tournament golf, when and how often they may be taken varies widely, but typically, one mulligan is allowed per round. And sometimes, mulligans are only allowed on drives from the tee. As to the word’s origin, there are a number of stories about golfers named Mulligan who gave their name to the practice, but none of these tales have any solid evidence in support, and it seems that mulligan actually made its way into golf from baseball, after a fictional long-ball hitter named Swat Milligan or Mulligan. It eventually came to mean a hard-hit ball, like one Milligan would hit. From there, it moved into golf, where it originally referred to a long drive from the tee. And from there, a second chance to hit a mulligan from the tee after a muffed drive.

The etymology of mulligan was unearthed by Peter Reitan and published in his blog in 2017. What I present here is mostly the fruits of his work.

Swat Milligan was the creation of New York Evening World sportswriter Bozeman Bulger in 1908. Milligan was the stuff of tall tales, a Paul Bunyan or John Henry of baseball. The earliest appearance of Milligan in the Evening World that I have found is from 26 May 1908:

I will say, however, that Milligan was regarded as the most scientific place hitter of the age. His marvellous [sic] ability can best be explained by recalling an incident in his career just after he quit the Willow Swamps and signed with the Poison Oaks. So many balls had been lost on Swat’s long drives that the club was almost in bankruptcy. Balls cost $1.25 each, you know. Something had to be done to curtail this expense or Milligan’s career would necessarily end.

The club finally hit upon the plan of having Swat hit all of his balls into the same spot and then corral them.

Two weeks later, on 8 June 1908, Bulger was telling this tale that illustrates Milligan’s prowess with a bat:

Bozeman Bulger,
Sporting Department, Evening World:
The fans out this way may want to know how many pairs of shoes Swat Milligan received for that wallop that brought in 1,278 runs? How many shoes did he wear out in running the bases, &c.f.
ADAM RENAL,
No. 165 West Sixtieth st.

It is easy to observe, Adam, that you have are of a statistical turn of mind. For your information in that respect I will relate an incident that occurred on the first day of Swat’s arrival in fast company.

Milligan had just come up from Hitchingpost Hollow to join the Poison Oaks. He was practically unknown. As he entered the park on the morning before the game he noticed a sign offering a pair of shoes for every home run [....] They understood the rule that allowed a hitter to make as many runs as possible while the fielders were chasing the ball, but as no runner had ever scored over two runs at one time they had no fears [....]

The shoe wagons arrived on the grounds in the seventh inning, and as the bases were full Milligan was sent up with his big stick. Look carefully over the field he again saw the shoe sign. Just in the middle of it was a period painted green and about the size of a baseball. That steely glint came into the great batter’s eye and fandom knew that his mind was fixed.

Turning around like a whirling Dervish, Swat landed an awful rap, and the ball went whistling like a bullet straight to the shoe sign. It caught the punctuation mark as squarely as a die, and went tearing through it. So great was the force of the shot that it made no more noise than a bullet going through a door. The fielders rushed to the sign, but could see no trace of the ball. As the period was painted green they could see the green of the trees through the hole and [sic] though it was still there. Four hours later they gave up the search. But Swat—oh where was he?

Being ambitious in those days Swat tore around the bases so fast on the first twenty runs that he wore out a pair of shoes every two laps, and the shoe dealers began to open up the boxes. Relays of shoes were placed at first and third bases, and as Swat would wear out a pair he would jump into another, and keep on his wild career.

But Swat Milligan was too big a character to be confined to the pages of the Evening World. By 6 August 1908 sportswriters of the Trenton Evening Times in New Jersey were writing about his visiting and watching the Trenton team play, but the name was switched to Mulligan, either through error or to avoid potential copyright infringement:

To decide a bet will James Carmody state whether he had rubber in his hand when the fly bounded out of his grub hook in the early part of the game or was it just an ordinary glove. Swat Mulligan, who was a guest of Robert Bonham, says it would be impossible for a ball to bound off an ordinary glove in such a lively manner. Other well informed persons did not hesitate to make the statement that nothing ever got away from any reporter as fast as that ball bounced off Carmody’s hands.

And two days later the Trenton paper was calling batters who hit well in a game by the name:

Who is “Swat Mulligan?”
———
Magoon.
———
How many hits did Trenton get yesterday?
———
Five.
———
Who got four of ‘em?
———
Magoon.
———
Guess Magoon is “Swat Mulligan,” all right.
———
Perhaps you don’t know the story of “Swat Mulligan”?
———
Ask Bob Bonham, he tells it in his sleep.

And by the end of that baseball season, on 22 November 1908, the Duluth News-Tribune was giving Mulligan a mythic (and by today’s standards very politically incorrect) origin among the prehistoric Moundbuilders in what is now the American Midwest:

Those who have seen fit to doubt the existence of either Swat Milligan, the Peerless Poison Oaks or the Willow Swamp league, may put their fears at rest [....]

It is recorded that a man named Swat Mulligan, a paleface, appeared in the line-up of the Indiana Mound Builders on a certain bright day in June. At that time only 50 players were allowed on a side. It was in the seventh inning that Mulligan came to bat, and he mounted one of the mounds that all might see him work. An Indian pitcher by the name of Man-Afraid-His-Ribs-Might-Cave-In began to wind up with the wooden ball. He finally shot one over and Mulligan smashed it so clean that it looked like a broken clay pigeon. The fielders immediately began gathering up the splinters to use for firewood and the umpire tossed Man-Afraid-His-Ribs-Might-Cave-In another ball. This pitcher was called “Mana” for short by the fans. Again Mulligan tore the sphere to splinters.

Within a few years, Swat Mulligan memorabilia was available for sale. The Tacoma Times of 7 July 1911 ran this advertisement:

Swat Mulligan Dolls that you can’t break. Choice . . 98c

This was the “dead-ball era” of baseball. So, while Milligan’s power with the bat seems hyperbolically absurd today, it was even more so back then, when home runs were a rare occurrence. While the stories of Swat Mulligan are all but forgotten today, he was huge in his day, he was Babe Ruth before there was Babe Ruth.

And by the end of the decade, mulligan was being used to mean a hard-hit ball. On 12 April 1919, the Colorado Springs Gazette ran a story that compared baseball and cricket. It used mulligan to mean a hard-hit ball in cricket, but since there are few, if any, uses of mulligan in that sport, this particular instance probably reflects baseball slang of the era:

There is little about cricket that calls for brain work. An Englishman does not care for games that make any demand upon his mental faculties. At the bat he rarely figures “what is coming.” If it is a good ball “on the wicket” liable to knock the wickets down. If he misses it, he will carefully poke out his bat and just stop the ball. A fielder picks it up and returns it to the bowler. No running. And so on.

If it is a bad ball, “off the wicket,” he may take a “mulligan” at it and knock it over the fence, “out of bounds” they call it.

The term jumps to golf later that year with a pair of articles by sportswriter William Abbott in the Evening World in which he dubs two different golfers as the Swat Mulligan of the links. The first is on 13 June 1919 and refers to golfer Walter Hagen:

Famous as a long driver, a favorite Hagen trick is to let opponents lead him from the tee to the point where they start pressing in anxiety to rub it in. Then the Detroit wizard simply lets out a few kinks and its good night for the foolish golfer who thought he could outdistance the Swat Mulligan of the links.

The second, from 22 August 1919, refers to Dave Herron:

Woody Platt of Philadelphia came in for luncheon four holes down to Dave Herron of the Home club. The former, a newcomer to tournament golf, failed to get his strokes working in good shape against the long hitting Herron, who is the real Swat Mulligan of the links.

And the term is applied to the real-life Swat Mulligan, Babe Ruth, in the Evening World of 13 March 1920. The article refers to Ruth’s ability to hit a long ball in both baseball and golf in this headline:

LONG-RANGE HIT RECORD FOR BASEBALL AND GOLF RUTH’S CHIEF AMBITION

Famous “Babe” Has Natural Form for Walloping Home Runs, but on Links He’s Developed Special Style That Drives the Little Ball Over 300 Yards—Yankee Star Confident of Flashing New Swat Mulligan Stuff This Year in Both Baseball and Golf.

Ruth was not the only baseball player to take up golf in his spare time. And in the Detroit Free Press of 13 October 1931, we see mulligan applied to a do-over golf stroke for the first time. The passage is about New York Yankee Sammy Byrd playing in a pro-am golf tournament:

All were waiting to see what Byrd would do on the 290-yard 18th, with a creek in front of the well-elevated green. His first drive barely missed carrying the creek and he was given a “mulligan” just for fun. The second not only was over the creek on the fly but was within a few inches of the elevated green. That’s some poke!

Note that the general use here is that of a long drive from the tee, but the particular context is that of a handicap of a free stroke, so this is a transitional use of the word. Despite relying on a mulligan in this pro-am tournament, Byrd was an exceptional golfer who didn’t need the handicap. He would go on to win six PGA tournaments after he retired from baseball.

This appearance of mulligan in the sense of a do-over stroke antedates the earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary by several years. The one in the OED is from the Texas Big Spring Daily Herald of 5 May 1936 in an article about a staffer for President Franklin Roosevelt playing golf:

Following McIntyre around a few holes of golf frequently rewards the gallery with such irate remarks as “Nuts, I’ve had 10 strokes on this hole already; I’ll pick up.” He seems to find new hop on the next tee—that is, until his tee shot.

Another McIntyre-ism is the use of the “mulligan”—links-ology for a second shot employed after a previously dubbed shot. Most McIntyre “mulligans” are worse dubbed that the initial shot, however—which seems to serve as a psychological encouragement to the presidential attache.

So, that’s where golf’s mulligan comes from. It evolved from the name of fictional long-ball hitter in baseball, came to mean a hard-hit ball, and then transferred over from baseball to golf. From its initial golfing meaning of a long tee-shot, it came to mean a second chance to hit a long ball after muffing a drive. In other words, a golfer who screws up is given another chance to hit a mulligan.

I can’t leave the subject, however, without mention of the two golfers who are most often said to have lent their name to the mulligan. Both claimed to have been the originators, but only many decades after the fact.

Hotelier David Mulligan claimed to have coined it after taking a second shot in a regular game with his regular foursome at the Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, New York. But he didn’t start playing with this particular foursome until 1932, a year after the term is recorded to mean a do-over stroke in golf. Furthermore, he didn’t claim to have originated it until 1952. Memories are malleable, and it is likely he mis-remembered an incident where the then-new slang term was used in jocular reference to his surname.

The second is John A. “Buddy” Mulligan, who worked as a locker-room attendant at the Essex Fells Country Club in New Jersey in the 1930s. He would occasionally be called upon to fill out a foursome and was given a free second shot as a handicap. He dates his claim, with no confirmable evidence, from the “mid-1930s,” again too late to be the origin. And he didn’t start making his claim until the 1970s, so his story shares that problem with David Mulligan’s. And in both of these claims it seems highly unlikely that a slang term from a handful of amateur golfers would quickly spread throughout the entire golfing world.

In contrast, the New York Evening World origin comes with verifiable citations charting the term’s development, a wide readership, imitations by other sportswriters, and a Swat Mulligan fad of large proportions, all firmly establishing the connection between mulligan and a hard-hit ball, before it ever comes close to a golf course.

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Sources:

Abbott, William. “Jones is Leading Fownes by Single Hole in Golf Play.” Evening World (New York), 22 August 1919, 2. Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historical American Newspapers.

Abbott, William. “Walter Hagen Enters British Open Tourney Scheduled Next Spring.” Evening World (New York), 13 June 1919, 22. Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historical American Newspapers.

Bulger, Bozeman. “Scientific Batter! You Bet; Swat Milligan Was Real One.” Evening World (New York), 26 May 1908, 12. Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.

Bulger, Bozeman. “Swat Milligan Put the Shoe Stores Out of Business with Home-Run Hit.” Evening World (New York), 8 June 1908, 8. Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.

Drukenbrod, M. F. “Beaupres Step Some.” Detroit Free Press, 13 October 1931, 16. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Edgren, Robert. “Long-Range Hit Record for Baseball and Golf Ruth’s Chief Ambition.” Evening World (New York) 13 March 1920, 8. Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historical American Newspapers.

“Golfers Try to Lower Marks.” Big Spring Daily Herald (Texas), 5 May 1936, 4. Newspaperarchive.com.

“The Man in the Grand Stand.” Trenton Evening Times (New Jersey), 6 August 1908, 11. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“The Man in the Grand Stand.” Trenton Evening Times (New Jersey), 8 August 1908, 11. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2019, s.v. mulligan, n.2.

Reitan, Peter (a.k.a. Peter Jensen Brown). “Hey Mulligan Man! — a Second Shot at the History of Taking a “Mulligan.” Early Sports and Pop Culture History Blog, 8 May 2017.

“Ryner Malstrom” (advertisement). Tacoma Times (Washington), 7 July 1911, 6. Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historical American Newspapers.

Sheridan, J. B. “Why Our Baseball Is Better Than British Cricket.” Colorado Springs Gazette, 19 April 1919, 12. Readex: America’s Historic Newspapers.

“Swat Mulligan Played on Moundbuilders’ Team.” Duluth News-Tribune (Minnesota), 22 November 1908, 4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Image credit: Bozeman Bulger, The Evening World (New York), 8 June 1908, 8. Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Public domain image.

mortgage

A house with a “For Sale” sign posted in front of it

24 May 2021

A reader wrote me asking about mortgage. It seems she was conversing with someone from Holland and upon telling him that her husband was a mortgage broker, the Dutchman assumed he was a mortician. She wanted to know where the word mortgage came from and if it was etymologically related to mortician and mortuary. The short answer is that it is.

A mortgage is a debt secured with lien on property; in present-day use the word is usually applied to real estate transactions. It is a compound found in Anglo-Norman, from mort (dead) + gage (pledge). The French word is modeled after the medieval Latin phrase mortuum vadium, which also means dead pledge. Dead would seem to be a strange term to apply to a loan, but it is “dead” for two reasons: the property is forfeit or dead to the borrower if the loan is not repaid, and the pledge itself is dead if the loan is repaid.

The Anglo-Norman word is recorded in a legal document from 1293, during the reign of Edward I:

Un Adam bayla a B. une tere en morgage pur un soume de deners.

(One Adam delivered to B. a piece of land in mortgage for a sum of money.)

In English, the earliest extant use of mortgage is in a figurative sense, referring to a marriage vow. John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (The Lover’s Confession), written sometime before 1393, includes this passage:

Forthi scholde every good man knowe
And thenke, hou that in mariage
His trouthe plight lith in morgage,
Which if he breke, it is falshode,
And that descordeth to manhode,
And namely toward the grete,
Wherof the bokes alle trete.

(Therefore, every good man should know
And think, how that in marriage
His sworn vow lies in mortgage,
Which if he breaks, it is a falsehood,
And that is at odds with manhood,
And namely toward the sorrow,
Of which the books all discuss.)

The legal sense of the word may have been in English use prior to this, but perhaps not. In the fourteenth century, most English legal documents would have been written in Anglo-Norman, or perhaps Latin, and Gower, who wrote poetry in Latin, French, and English, may have been the first to take this word across the linguistic boundary between the languages. In any case, the legal sense in English is recorded from c.1400, shortly after Gower wrote that poem.

The English legal sense appears in the Book of Vices and Virtues, written c.1400, in a section about the evils of usury:

Suche folke doþ moche harm, for bi cause of terme of payment þat þei ȝyueþ, þei destroieþ þe peple, and namely pore knyȝtes and squyers, and also grete lordes þat ben ȝong and gon to iustynge & turnemens, and ouuer pe grete see and in-to Prus; for þei taken hem ofte here londes and rentes and grete heritages in wedde and in dede wedde, as morgage, and bi lettres of sale, þat ben lost for euere-more, for þei mowe not quyte hem at þe terme.

(Such folk do much harm, because of the terms of payment that they give; they destroy the people, namely poor knights and squires, and also great lords who are young and to joustings and tournaments over the great sea and into Prussia, for they often take from them their lands and rents and great heritages in surety and in dead surety, as in a mortgage, and by letters of sale that are lost for evermore, for they cannot pay them at the term.)

The monk and poet John Lydgate uses the term c. 1435 in a poetic letter to the Duke of Gloucester. The letter is a complaint to the purse, a common medieval genre of poetry in which the poet begs money from a wealthy patron. Unlike Gower, in this poem Lydgate is using the word in the legal sense:

Harde to likke hony out of a marbil stoon,
For ther is nouthir licour nor moisture;
An ernest grote, whan it is dronke and goon,
Bargeyn of marchauntys, stant in aventure;
My purs and I be callyd to the lure
Off indigence, our stuff leyd in morgage.
But ye, my Lord, may al our soor recure,
With a receyt of plate and of coignage.

(It is hard to lick honey out of a marble stone,
For there is neither liquor nor moisture;
An earnest coin, when it is drunk and gone,
A merchant’s deal, is lost;
My purse and I are called to the lure
Of indigence, our possessions laid in mortgage,
But you my lord, may heal all our sores,
With a sum of plate and coinage.)

The < t > starts being added, morgage becoming mortgage, in the mid sixteenth century in imitation of the Latin. It was common in the Early Modern period to alter the spelling of words to better match the Latin roots.

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Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2012, s.v. morgage.

Francis, W. Nelson, ed. Book of Vices and Virtues. Early English Text Society O.S. 217. London: Humphrey Milford, 1942, 31–32. HathiTrust Digital Archive. San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 147.

Gower, John. Confessio Amantis, vol. 3 of 3. Russell A. Peck, ed. Andrew Galloway, trans. 7.4226–32. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 3. 

Horwood, Alfred J., ed. Year Books of the Reign of King Edward the First. Years 21 and 22. London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyker, 1866, 17. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd.7.14.

Lydgate, John. “Lydgate’s Letter to Gloucester.” The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, vol. 2 of 2. Henry N. MacCracken, ed. Early English Text Society O.S. 192. London: Humphrey Milford, 1934, 666. HathiTrust Digital Archive. London, British Library, MS Harley 2255.

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

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2021, s.v. mortage, n.; December 2020, s.v. mortgage, v.

Photo credit: Philippe Giabbanelli, 2009. licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Carolina, North and South / Roanoke

Detail of 1590 map of a region that would become part of North Carolina, showing Roanoke island (spelled Roanoac on the map)

21 May 2021

The states of North Carolina and South Carolina have been, at various times, named after three different kings named Charles—Carolus being the Latin form of that name. As such colonies are constructs of the European colonists, there are no indigenous names for the entire territory that would become the colonies and states, but the English colonists did adopt an indigenous toponym, Roanoke, for their first colony in what would become the Carolinas.

The first of the kings to give his name to Carolina was King Charles IX of France. In 1562, French explorer and colonizer Jean Ribault established a short-lived settlement, Charlesfort, on what is now Parris Island, South Carolina. The colonists abandoned the settlement the following year. The site was later occupied by the Spanish, who dubbed their settlement Santa Elena. The French settlement is documented in Samuel Purchas’s 1625 anthology of accounts of the exploration of the Americas:

With another Parcoussy they saw one old Father blind with age, but liuing, and of his loines sixe generations descended, all present, so that the Sonne of the eldest was supposed two hundred and fiftie yeeres old. They planted themselues on this Riuer of May, and there built a Fort which they called Carolina of their King Charles.

The first attempt at colonization by the English in North America was the ill-fated Roanoke colony, established on the island of that name. There were actually two Roanoke colonies. The first was established by Ralph Lane in 1585, but that was abandoned the following year and the colonists returned to England. The second, more famous, colony was established by Walter Raleigh in 1587. A resupply mission the following year was aborted due to war with Spain (i.e., the Spanish Armada), and when a relief expedition was made in 1590, it found the colonists had disappeared. To this day their fate is unknown, but they most likely were assimilated into the indigenous population.

Roanoke is an Algonquian place name, probably derivative of rawranoke, a word meaning shells or beads made from shells, presumably because shells were found or turned into beads on the island. In his 1624 history of Virginia, John Smith documents the native origin of the name:

With so much as we could carry we returned to our bote, kindly requiting this kinde king and all his kinde people. The cause of this discovery was to search this mine, of which Newport did assure vs that those small baggs (we had giuen him) in England he had tryed to hold halfe siluer; but all we got proued of no value: also to search what furrs, the best whereof is at Cuscarawaoke, where is made so much Rawranoke or white beads that occasion as much dissention among the the Salvages [sic], as gold and siluer amongst Christians.

Cuscarawaoke may be the actual indigenous toponym for island where rawranoke was acquired or manufactured.

The second king who lent his name to the future states was Charles I of England. In 1629, he granted a patent to Robert Heath to form a colony named after himself:

Know that we of our free grace certain knowledge & meere motion doe thinke fit to erect the sayd Region Territory & Isles into a Province & by the fulnes of our power & Kingly Authority for us our heires & successors, we doe erect & incorporate them into a province & name the same Carolina or the province of Carolina & the foresaid Isles the Carolarns Islands & soe we will that in all times hereafter they shall be named.

Charles I, of course, lost his head in the English Civil War, and following Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, his son, Charles II, granted a new charter for the colony in 1663, naming it for himself, the third King Charles in our story:

And that the country, thus by us granted and described, may be dignified by us with as large titles and priviledges as any other part of our dominions and territories in that region, Know ye, that we of our further grace, certain knowledge, and meer motion, have thought fit to erect the same tract of ground, county, and island, into a province, and out of the fulness of our royal power and prerogative, we do, for us, our heirs and successors, erect, incorporate and ordain the same into a province, and call it the Province of Carolina, and so from henceforth will have it called.

The colony was divided into North Carolina and South Carolina in 1729.

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Sources:

Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004, s.v. Roanoke.

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

Purchas, Samuel. Purchas His Pilgrimes, vol. 4 of 5. London: William Stansby for Henrie Fetherstone, 1625, 1603–04. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Saunders, William L., ed. “The First Charter Granted by King Charles the Second, to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina” (24 March 1663). The Colonial Records of North Carolina, vol. 1 of 10. Raleigh: P.M. Hale, Printer to the State, 1886, 23. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

———. “Sir Robert Heath’s Patent, 5 Charles 1st” (30 October 1629). The Colonial Records of North Carolina, vol. 1 of 10. Raleigh: P.M. Hale, Printer to the State, 1886, 7. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Smith, John. The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. London: John Dawson and John Haviland for Michael Sparkes, 1624, 58. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Image credit: Theodor de Bry, 1590. Library of Congress. Public domain image.