nerd

1952 cartoon of a bald, middle-aged man broadcasting a radio commercial, saying, “You’ll get a large charge from Hoffman’s Teen-Age Clothes. So get on the stick with these real fat, real cool, really crazy clothes. Don’t be a Party-Pooper or a nerd. Yes, everybody is bashing ears about Hoffman’s Teen-Age Clothes....”

8 June 2021

A nerd is a socially inept, often highly intelligent—particularly within a narrow technical field—and otherwise thoroughly conventional person. The slang term makes its appearance in the United States during the early 1950s, but its origin is otherwise mysterious. We simply don’t know where it comes from.

The earliest known use in print is from an article on teen slang in the weekly (physical/paper) news magazine Newsweek from 8 October 1951:

Nerds and Scurves: In Detroit, someone who once would be called a drip or a square is now, regrettably, a nerd, or in a less severe case, a scurve.

The next known appearance is a few days later in a Melbourne, Australia newspaper. But this appearance is again in an article about U.S. teen slang, and the Australian article appears to be heavily cribbed from the Newsweek piece. So, this appearance doesn’t add anything new and doesn’t represent the word having made it Down Under:

“Corny,” “solid,” and “in the groove” are out today. That is they’re “real nothing.”

Teenagers in New York, Chicago, New Orleans, and Los Angeles who resort to such passe expressions are mere peasants or “nerds.”

Another early appearance is in a cartoon in Collier’s magazine from 2 February 1952. In the cartoon by John Norment, a radio announcer uses nerd in advertising copy for teen clothing:

You’ll get a large charge from Hoffman’s Teen-Age Clothes. So get on the stick with these real fat, real cool, really crazy clothes. Don’t be a Party-Pooper or a nerd. Yes, everybody is bashing ears about Hoffman’s Teen-Age Clothes. They’re Frampton. They’re pash-pie. They’re Most! [...] The geetafrate is reasonable and we’ll make it Chili for you. Remember, don’t be an odd ball. The name is Hoffman’s Teen-Age Clothes.

We don’t know where nerd comes from, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t hypotheses and speculations about its origin. One of the more plausible, but still probably wrong, ones is that nerd appears as a nonsense name for a strange creature in the 1950 children’s book If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel). The idea is that this nonsense word wormed its way into teen-age consciousness and was assigned its present meaning there. The passage from the book reads:

The page from Dr. Seuss’s 1950 children’s book If I Ran the Zoo, that contains the word nerd, as well as a drawing of a Seussian nerd and of other fanciful creatures

And then, just to show them, I’ll sail to Ka-Troo / And / Bring / Back / an IT-KUTCH / a PREEP / and a PROO / a NERKLE / a NERD / and a SEERSUCKER, too!

But this hypothesis is questionable at best. Seuss’s nerd has no semantic connection to the slang term. And given that the first print use is in the thoroughly conventional Newsweek a year later, it is likely that nerd had already been in oral use by teens for several years when Seuss published this book. It is more likely that Seuss picked a word that he had heard in use and unconsciously registered it rather than that teens acquired it from his book—a book that most teens in 1950 hadn’t read as it was intended for much younger children. And even more likely is that Seuss’s use of nerd is entirely coincidental.

Another hypothesis is that nerd is a variation on the name Mortimer Snerd, one of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s puppets. But Snerd was a hillbilly character of low intelligence, so the character doesn’t fit with the early senses of nerd.

Other proffered explanations run afoul of the spelling. It is often suggested that nerd is a play on turd. This is plausible, but the early spellings are overwhelmingly with an <e>, which works against this idea. Similarly, some contend that nerd is a respelling of drunk backwards. Again, there are no early spellings of the word as knurd, nor are any of the early uses associated with alcohol.

The earlier slang exclamation nertz! or nerts! is sometimes pointed to as a possible origin, but again, there is no logical or semantic connection.

One explanation that we can dismiss outright is that nerd is an acronym for Northern Electric Research and Development Laboratories in Ontario. There is a logical connection in that one would expect a lab to be full of nerds, but one should always be suspicious of proposed acronymic origins, and in this case Northern Electric (now Nortel) didn’t establish their R&D labs until 1959, well after nerd was firmly ensconced in the slang lexicon.

The best explanation for nerd that I have heard comes from linguist Arnold Zwicky, as quoted by Ben Zimmer. Zwicky says that words like nerd “don't necessarily have a historical source of the ordinary sort.” They can be “distant echoes of an assortment of existing words.” In other words, a bit of nertz, a dash of Snerd, a whiff of turd, and you end up with nerd.

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Sources:

Geisel, Theodore (Dr. Seuss). If I Ran the Zoo. New York: Random House, 1950.

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

“Jelly Tot, Square Bear-Man!” Newsweek, 38.15, 8 October 1951, 28. ProQuest Magazines.

Norment, John, Cartoon. Collier’s Weekly, 2 February 1952. The Unz Review.

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

“U.S. Teen-Agers Talk a ‘Cool, Shafty’ Language. The Age (Melbourne, Australia), 11 October 1951, 4. Google News.

Zimmer, Ben. “Birth of the Nerd: The Word; the Mysterious Origins of a Familiar Character.” Boston Globe, 28 August 2011, K2. ProQuest Newspapers.

Image credits: John Norment, Collier’s Weekly, 2 February 1952, 39. Theodore Geisel, 1950, If I Rand the Zoo. Fair use of a copyrighted images to illustrate the topic under discussion.

neck of the woods

Sign posted at the entrance to Maine’s Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park. A wooden sign giving the park’s name in the foreground with trees in the background.

7 June 2021

The word neck, like the common name of many body parts, can be traced back to Old English, that is the language as it was spoken prior to the Norman Conquest. In this case, the Old English word is hnecca. Here is the word as it is used in the Old English translation of Pope Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care. The Old English text dates to the late tenth century:

Be ðæm wæs suiðe wel gecueden ðurh ðone witgan: Wa ðæm ðe willað under ælcne elnbogan lecggean pyle & bolster under ælcne hneccan menn mid to gefonne. Se legeð pyle under ælces monnes elnbogan, se ðe mid to gefonne. Se legeð pyle under ælces monnes elnbogan, se ðe mid liðum oliccungum wile læcnian ða men ðe sigað on ðisses middangeardes lufan, oððæt hie afeallað of hiera ryhtwisnessum.

(Of that was very well spoken through the prophet: “Woe to those who wish to lay a pillow under every person’s elbow and a bolster under each neck to ensnare people with.” He lays a pillow under every person’s elbow who with soft flatteries wishes to heal who sink into love of this world, until they fall from their righteousness.)

Gregory’s original Latin reads sub capite (below the head).

In the fourteenth century, neck began to be used metaphorically for things that are narrow or tapering, especially a narrow passage or channel. Here is a passage from John Trevisa’s late fourteenth-century translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum (On the Properties of Things) that uses neck in reference to a bottle:

Fiola haþ þe name of glas, for glas hatte fila in gru and is a litel vessel wiþ a brood botme and a smal nekke.

(Fiola has the name glass, for a glass is fila in Greek and is a little vessel with a broad bottom and small neck.)

Another example is neck being used to refer the narrow part of a stringed instrument, like a violin. From Randle Cotgrave’s 1611 French-English dictionary:

Manche: m. The haft, belue, or handle of a toole; also, the necke of a musicall Instrument; also, a mans toole.

Note the French word is also slang for a different body part.

By the eighteenth century, neck started to be used for narrow bits of terrain. Here is an August 1707 article from the London Gazette describing the fighting during the War of the Spanish Succession that used neck to refer to a mountain pass:

Their Cannon did great Execution; and Fort Louis was so shatter’d, that it could not hold out four Days longer. Those Letters add, That Monsieur Medavi, with what Troops he could get together, was to advance towards the Neck of the Mountains at Cuers; and that Prince Eugene had march’d from the Camp with a Detachment of 3000 Horse and 2000 Grenadiers upon some important Design.

Daniel Defoe used neck to refer to a strait or narrow body of water in his 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe:

When I came down from my Apartment in the Tree, I look’d about me again, and the first thing I found was the Boat, which lay as the Wind and the Sea had toss’d her up upon the Land, about two Miles on my right Hand, I walk’d as far as I could upon the Shore to have got to her, but found a Neck or Inlet of Water between me and the Boat, which was about half a Mile broad, so I came back for the present, being more intent upon getting at the Ship, where I hop’d to find something for my present Subsistence.

And we get neck of wood, referring to a narrow strip of forest, in Arthur Young’s 1780 A Tour of Ireland. Here he described the grounds of Castle Caldwell, in County Fermanagh in what is now Northern Ireland:

This wood is perfectly a deep shade, and has an admirable effect. At the other end it joins another woody promontory, in which the lawn opens beautifully among the scattered trees, and just admits a partial view of the house half obscured; carrying your eye a little more to the left, you see three other necks of wood, which stretch into the lake, generally giving a deep shade, but here and there admitting the water behind the stems and through the branches of the trees; all of this bounded by cultivated hills, and those backed by distant mountains.

And in nineteenth-century America, we see the phrase neck of the woods expand metaphorically again, referring to a neighborhood, area, or region. From the horseracing paper the Spirit of the Times of 15 June 1839, where a correspondent uses neck of the woods in this way, claiming that it is a phrase common in Indiana (i.e., the Hoosier State):

Many of your valuable hints to race course proprietors have been practised upon by Col. Oliver, and he seems to have imbibed a goodly portion of your “Spirit,” besides bringing into requisition the genuine essence of his own. He is emphatically, as they say in Arkansas, (I ask Pete’s pardon,) the “supreme alligator” of everything that savors the advance. If yourself and Oliver don’t make folks open their eyes in this neck of woods (as we say in the Hooshier State), it will be because they have none to open.

That’s how a thousand-year-old word for a body part came to refer to one’s neighborhood.

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Sources:

Cotgrave, Randle. A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. London: Adam Islip, 1611, s.v. Manche. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. London: W. Taylor, 1719, 46. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. hnecca.

London Gazette, 18–21 August 1707, 1. NewspaperArchive.com.

“Louisville (Ky.) Spring Races” (6 June 1839). The Spirit of the Times, 15 June 1839, 175. American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 3.

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

Sweet, Henry, ed. King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care. Early English Text Society 45. London: N. Trübner, 1871, 143. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 20.

Trevisa, John. On the Properties of Things, vol. 2 of 3. M.C. Seymour, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, Book 19, 1376. London, British Library, MS Additional 27944.

Young, Arthur. A Tour in Ireland, vol. 1 of 2. Dublin: George Bonham, 1780, 266. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Photo credit: Daveynin, 2015. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

potato

A baked potato with butter

4 June 2021

Potato has a mostly straightforward etymology with one element that is not adequately explained. The English word is a borrowing from the Spanish patata, which in turn is from the Taino batata. Diccionario de la Lengua Española says that the Spanish word is a blend of the Taino word and papa, the Quechua word for the tuber, which can explain the shift from /b/ to /p/. Although both /b/ and /p/ are frequently swapped (they’re both bilabial plosives, and it’s easy to say one when one intends to say the other), so there really isn’t a need to introduce a second word to explain the shift.

The real mystery is the change in the final vowel from the /a/ in Spanish to a diphthong in English, either /əʊ/ (British) or /oʊ/ (North American), and the resulting spelling shift from <a> to <o>. Such a shift to a diphthong rarely happens in a terminal vowel. My best guess is that since the <o> spelling is present in the earliest English examples of the word it is a result of the initial English interlocuters mishearing the Spanish vowel. The English sailors, who were the first to encounter the Spanish/Taino word, were not, as a rule, careful recorders of language. And, given that English spelling in the period was not standardized, it shouldn’t be a surprise that they wrote an <o> and that spelling caught on. A similar diphthongization occurs with tobacco, although there the Spanish spelling is with a terminal <o> too.

The earliest recorded use of potato in English is a reference to the sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas. It is from 1565, found in John Sparke’s account of John Hawkins’s 1564–65 expedition to the Americas. The Oxford English Dictionary credits Hawkins as the author, but Sparke, who accompanied Hawkins on the voyage, is actually the author of the account:

Also they brought downe to vs which we bought for beades, pewter whistles, glasses, kniues, and other trifles, Hennes, Potatoes and pines. These potatoes be the most delicate rootes that may be eaten, and doe far exceede their passeneps or carets.

The use of the word to refer to the common potato, Solanum tuberosum, comes a few decades later. It appears in a 1597 botany text by John Gerard:

Virginia Potatoes hath many hollowe flexible branches, trailing vppon the grounde, three square, vneuen, knotted or kneed in sundry places at certaine distances [...] The roote is thicke, fat, and tuberous; not much differeing either in shape, colour or taste from the common Potatoes, sauing that the rootes hereof are not so great nor long; some of them round as a ball, some ouall or egge fashion, some longer, and others shorter: which knobbie rootes are fastened vnto the stalkes with an infinite number of threddie strings.

Although Gerard calls them “Virginia potatoes,” they, like the sweet potato, are native to the tropical Americas, although by the time European explorers encountered them, indigenous people of North America were also cultivating them—trade routes existed in pre-Columbian America and the potato had moved northward along them. The name Virginia potato may reflect where the English first encountered the tuber.

Cf. spud

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Sources:

Diccionario de la Lengua Española. Real Academia Española, 2020, s.v. patata.

Gerard, John. “Of Potatoes of Virginia.” The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes. London: John Norton, 1597, 781. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

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

Sparke, John. “The Voyage Made by the Worshipful M. Iohn Hawkins” (1565). The Hawkins’ Voyages. Clements R. Markham, ed. Hakluyt Society, 1878. New York: Burt Franklin, 27. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Renee Comet, 1994, U.S. National Institutes of Health. Public domain image.

install / installation

Stalls in the choir of St. Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, Ireland. A block of ornately carved, semi-enclosed, wooden seats.

3 June 2021

The verb to install and the noun installation are early-modern coinages based on the medieval Anglo-Latin verb installare. The Anglo-Latin verb was an ecclesiastical one, referring to placement into office of a bishop or other religious authority. But the word has expanded in meaning since its inception, to encompass not only the creation of ecclesiastical authority, but also the placement of machinery and artwork, as well as being a term for military and naval bases.

The verb was created in Anglo-Latin, but it has an Old English root. The Old English noun steall meant generally a place or position, and more specifically it could also mean an animal stall in a barn or stable. So, to install is to put someone or something into its place or position.

The Anglo-Latin verb appears as early as c.1120–c.1134 in the collection of church records from the diocese of Llandaff, Wales known as the Liber Landavensis (Book of Llandaff)

Nos auctoritate archidiaconi Cantuariensis in hac parte nobis commissa vos reuerendum patrem dominum Nicholaum in presentem ecclesiam Landauensem in episcopum admittimus.

Et vos [quo]que prefatum patrem eadem auctoritate installamus.

(We, by the authority of the archdeacon of Canterbury committed to us in this role, admit you the reverend father lord Nicholas, into the present church of Llandaff as bishop.

And you, the aforementioned priest, by same authority are installed.)

While the verb was probably not formed with animals in mind—the uses of the Old English steall in the general sense of a place or position far outweigh those in the animal sense—the image of an animal stall would undoubtedly be brought to mind by the enclosed seats commonly found in church choirs or monastery chapterhouses and used by various orders of nobility, such as the Order of the Garter. And the Anglo-Latin verb was also used to refer to putting cattle in the stable. Here is an example from a manorial record from Dippenhall, Surrey, England in 1287:

Et inveniet unum hominem in hieme ad portandum foragium extra Boveriam cum boves domini debeant installari in Boveria.

(And it is provided for one person in winter for carrying additional fodder to the barn when the cattle of the lord should be installed in the barn.)

While there are numerous uses of the verb installare in medieval Anglo-Latin, the English verb isn’t recorded until the early sixteenth century. Here is an early example from a 1530 fable, that uses the verb to install in the original sense of to elevate a person, or in this case a fawn, to a position of ecclesiastical authority:

Of the lyon that bylded an Abbay
Dialogo .xcii.

AN excellent Abbaye bylded the lyon for the redempcyon of his own sowle and of his frendes / in the which he ordeyned many beastis to be vnder rule / and gaue to the[m] a rule and a fourme of lyuynge / and made Eleccyon of a priowre and he was the Fawne / which is the sonne of the harte / as sayth papye / and he is dyuers of Colowre / and the Lyon beleuyd that he wolde be a goode and a relygyows cloysterer. Hianulus[?] this Fawne was variable both in colowre and co[n]dicions. For he set his bredren at dyuysion / and cawsyd them to take partyes / and ordeyned officers / and with in a whyle dischargid them / and ordeynyd other. And they that were put owte of office grutchid agayne him and the other helde with him. and thus he dyd oftyntymes malycyouslye. In somoche / that all they conspirid agayne him / and were agayne him all hoole. at laste ye bredren armyd them self / wyllynge to fighte for ther quarell. But a sadde palfray which was olde and wise and had bene longe there spake and sayde. Cece Bredren / for it is not good to stryue or fighte. yit is it bettir to voyde this wycked pryowre / and to install an other that is pesible. These woordis pleasyd amonge the bredren and all they with oon consent put hym down and sayde thus.

Concorde and loue is euer to be holde.
amonge bredren specyally that partayn to oon foolde

(Of the Lion who Built an Abbey
Dialogue 92

The lion built an excellent abbey for the redemption of his own soul and [those] of his friends, in which he ordained many beasts to be under rule and gave to them a rule and a form of living and made an election of a prior and he was the fawn, who is the son of the hart, as says the pope, and he is diverse of color, and the lion believed that he would be a good and religious cloisterer. Hianulus[?] this fawn was variable in color and conditions. For he set his brothers at division, and caused them to take parts, and ordained officers, and in a short while discharged them, and ordained others. And they that were put out of office complained against him and the others stayed with him. And these things he often did maliciously. So much so that they all conspired against him and were against him unanimously. At last the brothers armed themselves, willing to fight for their quarrel. But a thoughtful palfrey who was old and wise and had been there long spoke and said: Cease brothers, for it is not good to strive and fight. It is better to discharge this wicked prior, and to install another who is peaceable. These words pleased the brothers and with unanimous consent removed him and said this:

Concord and love are ever to be held
among brothers, specially those that pertain to one fold

But in English, the verb’s meaning expanded to include elevating a person to a position of secular authority. Here is an example from a 1555 account of Philip II of Spain’s induction into the Order of the Garter:

And cumming in at the west end of the town, they came, with two swerdes borne before the[m], streight way towardes the churche weste dore, wher with procession they were receaued by my lord Chaunceller, where also the lord Stewarde of Englande reuested the king with the robe of the order of the garter, and the Quenes magestie put the collar of the same order aboute hys necke: whiche being done they bothe proceded vnder a Canapy towardes the quere, ye lordes of the order going beefore them in their robes and collars also. And after that the kyng was there installed, and Te deum song and ended, they came out at the same dore of the quere where they entred.

(And coming in at the west end of the town, they came, with two swords born before them, straightaway towards the church’s west door, where with a procession they were received by my lord Chancellor, where also the lord Steward of England revested the king with the robe of the order of the garter, and the Queen’s majesty put the collar of the same order about his neck: which being done they both proceeded under a canopy towards the choir, the lords of the order going before them in their robes and collars also. And after that the king was there installed, and Te deum sung and ended, they came out the same door of the choir where they entered.)

About this same time, the noun installation starts appearing, like the verb at first referring to elevation to ecclesiastical authority. From John Harding’s 1543 metrical chronicle:

Which Ethelbald in Mers, one & fourtye yere
Had reigned hole, and diuerse abbeys founded
In Mers lande, at Crouland one full clere
Of Monkes blacke, within the fennes grou[n]ded
To whiche Turketyll his chaunceler founded
Gaue sixe maniers, to theyr foundacion
And abbot there was made by installacion

(Æthelbald [of Mercia] in the Fenlands, who all together reigned one and forty years and founded various abbeys in the Fenlands. At Crowland one cloister full of Black Monks [i.e., Benedictines], was established in the fens, which Turketul, his chancellor, founded, gave six manors to their foundation, and was made abbot there by installation.)

For another three centuries, little changed. To install and installation continued to be used, but only in the context of induction to an office of authority. But with the industrial revolution, install began to be used to mean the placement of industrial equipment. From W. Warington Smyth’s 1867 book on coal mining:

But, as respects their introduction throughout the workings of a pit, the question is somewhat complex. It is apt to be the case, that if one precautionary measure be fully installed, another is neglected,—that when safety lamps are adopted for the entire operations of a mine, the ventilation is no longer a subject of the same attention

And in the latter half of the nineteenth century we have the noun installation used in the same way. From a 10 August 1882 article in London’s Morning Post:

The directors had visited several of the chief towns proposed to be served by the company, and had been well and favourably received, but they found that however well disposed the authorities might be towards electric lighting they were not disposed to take action until the bill before Parliament became law. They had carried out a large installation at Parkston Bay, near Harwich, for the Great Eastern Railway Company, and he believed that it would only be the forerunner of more important work there.

By World War I, we start seeing military and naval installations, referring to locations where military equipment is emplaced. From a 5 January 1915 article in the Irish Times about the German navy bombarding English coastal towns:

A Berlin telegram says:—The Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung controverts the reproach that the bombardment of the Hartlepools, Scarborough, and Whitby was contrary to International Law, those being open places which were bombarded without preliminary notice, causing the death of many civilians.

The only treaty coming into consideration, says the journal, is the Ninth Hague Treaty of October 18, 1907, which has not been ratified by all the belligerents, and, therefore, according to paragraph eight, is not binding on the signatory Powers.

Nevertheless Germany has strictly observed its stipulations. According to paragraphs one and two, any protected place or military installation in unprotected places may be bombarded.

The English language text of Convention (IX) Concerning Bombardment by Naval Forces in Time of War, The Hague, 18 October 1907 does not use the word installation; instead, it refers to “military or naval establishments.”

And by the middle of the twentieth century, we start to see art installations appearing. This article from the 14 March 1950 issue of the Gloucester Citizen demonstrates the transition occurring. It is literally about installing equipment, to wit display cases, in a museum:

Twenty new showcases are being purchased with the aid of a grant from the Carnegie United Kingdom Trustees and will replace existing showcases. They are being made by a local firm and, when installed, will enable the museum collections to be shown under the best possible conditions

They will also make it possible for collections of small articles which so fare have not been available for inspection by the general public to be put on view. It is hoped that the installation of the first of these new cases will take place at the end of this month.

And three years later, in the 28 May 1953 issue of The Listener, we see installation used to refer to the placement of pieces of art themselves:

To add to this embarrassment of riches, the month of May has seen the installation, on buildings in the West End of London, of works by our two most celebrated sculptors which in both cases have turned out to be their most successfully realized public commission.

And by 1962, we have art installations themselves. From the New York Herald Tribune of 4 April 1962:

Along with the Brancusis, the museum offers a revised installation of its sculptures, which include an important group by Duchamp-Villon, Lipschitz’s bust of Gertrude Stein, and outstanding examples of Gonzalez, Giacometti and Richier.

From medieval bishops to busts of Gertrude Stein, that’s a rather long and circuitous journey.

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Sources:

An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online, Joseph Bosworth, Thomas Northcote Toller, Christ Sean, Ondřej Tichy, eds. Prague: Faculty of Arts, Charles University, 2014, s.v. steall.

Ashbery, John. 3,500 Years of Mexican Art, and Brancusi.” New York Herald Tribune (European edition, Paris), 4 April 1962, 6, 13. Gale Primary Sources: International Herald Tribune Historical Archive.

Baigent, Francis Joseph, ed. A Collection of Records and Documents Relating to the Hundred and Manor of Crondal in the County of Southampton. London: Simpkin and Co., 1891, 102.

Convention (IX) Concerning Bombardment by Naval Forces in Time of War. The Hague, 18 October 1907. Treaties, States Parties and Commentaries. International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Dialoges of Creatures Moralysed. Antwerp: Jan van Doesborch[?], 1530, sig. HH.4v. Early English Books Online (EEBO)

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013, s.v. installare. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Elder, John. The Copie of a Letter Sent in to Scotlande of the Arivall and Landynge, and Moste Noble Marryage of the Moste Illustre Philippe, Prynce of Spaine to the Most Excellente Princes Marye Quene of England Solemnisated in the Citie of Winchester. London: John Waylande, 1555, sig. B.4v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Evans, J. Gwenoguryn and John Rhys, eds. The Text of the Book of Llan Dâv. Gloucester: John Bellows, 1893, 295. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS 17110E (Liber Landavensis).

“German Defence of the Coast Raid.” Irish Times, 5 January 1915, 5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Hardyng, John. The Chronicle of Ihon Hardyng in Metre. London: Richard Grafton, 1543, fol. 100r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“Joint-Stock Companies.” Morning Post (London), 10 August 1882, 8. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. install, v.1, installation, n.; third edition, December 2020, s.v. stall, n.1.

Smyth, Warington W. A Treatise on Coal and Coal-Mining. London: Virtue Brothers, 1867, 201. HathTrust Digital Archive.

Sylvester, David. “Round the London Galleries.” The Listener (London), 28 May 1953, 890. Gale Primary Sources: The Listener Historical Archive.

“24,000 Visitors a Year; More Expected.” Gloucester Citizen (England), 14 March 1950, 4. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Image credit: Andreas F. Borchert, 2007. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

misogynoir

2 June 2021

Misogynoir was coined in 2010 by Black feminist scholar and activist Moya Bailey as a term for misogyny that is unique to or specifically directed at Black women. The word is an English-French blend of misogyn[y] + noir (black).

In a 14 March 2010 article for the Crunk Feminist Collective Bailey wrote:

My reorientation to the misogynoir* ruling the radio took place when I tried to make the argument that “All the Way Turnt Up” was a great song because it didn’t objectify women. This was something I could get behind; a song simply extolling the youthful value of keeping the bass bumping in your vehicle. That was until I read the lyrics and found the choice lyric “three dike bitches, and they all wanna swallow.”

And her note reads:

Word I made up to describe the particular brand of hatred directed at black women in American visual & popular culture.

A somewhat more precise and expansive definition was given by Tamura Lomax in her 2018 book Jezebel Unhinged:

“Misogynoir,” a term coined by black queer feminist Moya Bailey, highlights the intersectionality and particularity of oppressive structures, forces, and ideas that are race-, sex-, gender-, and class-specific. It gives voice to an explicit brand of misogyny that overwhelmingly and intentionally attacks black women and girls.

Also, in 2018 Bailey commented on why she coined the word, giving examples of misogynoir, and noting that misogynoir not only comes from white men but rather is systemic, coming from Black men and even from feminists too:

I had concerns about the ways cis and trans Black women are represented in contemporary media. I was troubled by the way straight Black men talked about Black women online and in music. It seemed that straight Black men were always instructing Black women about what to do with their bodies. So much of what was presented as the ways Black men and women relate to each other was an assumed heterosexual cis desire, and about how Black women were failing at being desirable. For me, naming misogynoir was about noting both an historical anti-Black misogyny and a problematic intraracial gender dynamic that had wider implications in popular culture. Misogynoir can come from Black men, white men and women, and even other Black women. The Onion “jokingly” calling Quvenzhané Wallis a cunt, or the way that Raven-Symoné dismissed Black girls with “ghetto names,” or even the way white feminist writers tried to frame Nicki Minaj’s rightful call out of industry inequities, Black women and girls are being treated in a uniquely terrible way because of how societal ideas about race and gender intersect.

Since its coining, other writers have sometimes expanded the definition of misogynoir to include women of color generally. But Bailey is on the record as objecting to this more general definition, contending that it is important that “the term is used to describe the unique ways in which Black women are pathologized in popular culture.” While coiners of words do not have control over how those words are used and changed, she does have a valid point in that the experience of Black women is very often not the same as that of other women of color and that misogynoir is a more valuable term when its use is restricted to the context of Black women and girls.

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Sources:

Bailey, Moya. “They Aren’t Talking About Me...” Crunk Feminist Collective, 14 March 2010.

Bailey, Moya and Trudy. “On Misogynoir: Citation, Erasure, and Plagiarism.” Feminist Media Studies, 18.4, 2018, 762–68. DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2018.1447395.  

Lomax, Tamura. Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture. Durham, North Carolina: Duke UP, 2018, 213. HathiTrust Digital Archive.