United Nations

August 5, 2021

5 August 2021

The name of the international organization arose out of World War II, although there were precursor uses of the phrase united nations to refer to various real and proposed collective security arrangements before that. And there are many earlier simple co-locations of the two words referring to various informal groupings of countries.

Earlier precursor uses probably exist, but I stopped my searching when I found this use of united nations in the San Francisco Chronicle of 19 September 1935. It’s not clear if the writer is using the phrase to refer to the then-existing League of Nations or to another, proposed organization:

The policeman’s club is a weapon of peace, to quell the breakers of the peace. So, if their will to peace is “ferocious” enough, will the club of the united nations against the maker of separate national war.

But a month later we get this in an article in the Springfield Republican with a dateline of 26 October 1935 that uses united nations as a clear reference to the League of Nations:

The United States definitely refused today to join the League of Nation’s economic sanctions boycott on Italy, but expressed sympathy for any decision or action the 60 united nations of the world may take peacefully to settle the Italo-Ethiopian conflict.

A 5 February 1936 letter to the Richmond Times-Dispatch uses the capitalized United Nations to refer to the League of Nations, indicating that the term had become semi-official:

If Al Smith can bring this nation back to the Constitution with hoop skirts, bustles, birds of paradise, nature’s fertility of the soil, horse-and-buggy stability, demijohns, and laugh off our obligations like the foreign nations have done by us, he will have accomplished the seven wonders of the world, and should be sent to Geneva as co-ordinator of the United Nations.

And in 1935 John Francis Goldsmith penned a speculative fiction novel, President Randolph, As I Knew Him, about a world government called the United Nations. In the novel, set in 1957, the newly inaugurated U.S. President Randolph says:

What I plan, gentlemen, and what I shall propose next month, will be a federal, international government, called the United Nations of the World, with a World parliament, President, and Supreme Court, and with a Constitution, simple and classic like our own, that will preserve inviolate the rights of every nation and citizen of that union.

But back to the real world, with the world plunged into its second world war in as many decades the need for a collective security arrangement superior to that of the League of Nations was recognized. On 14 August 1941, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued the Atlantic Charter, which stated, among other things:

Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea, or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential.

Although it does not use the term, with this, preliminary work on the formation of what would become the present-day United Nations was begun.

After the United States entered World War II in December 1941, the Allied nations began using the formal appellation of United Nations. The name was suggested by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote of his 31 December 1941 meeting with Roosevelt and the coining of the name:

On my return to the White House all was ready for the signature of the United Nations Pact [....] The title of “United Nations” was substituted by the President for that of “Associated Powers.” I thought this a great improvement. I showed my friend the lines from Byron's Childe Harold:
Here, where the sword United Nations drew,
Our countrymen were warring on that day!
And this is much — and all — which will not pass away.

And on 3 January 1942, Churchill cabled his War Cabinet back in London:

President has chosen the title “United Nations” for all the Powers now working together. This is much better than “Alliance,” which places him in constitutional difficulties, or “Associated Powers,” which is flat.

From August to October 1944, the Big Four powers (the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the Republic of China) convened the Washington Conversations on International Peace and Security Organization, better known as the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, after the Dumbarton Oaks mansion in Washington, DC where it was held. The Big Four, joined by delegates from other Allied nations, hammered out the purpose and structure of the United Nations. The conference’s proposals were finalized on 7 October 1944, and the preamble to the proposals officially named the new organization:

There should be established an international organization under the title of The United Nations, the Charter of which should contain provisions necessary to give effect to the proposals which follow.

From April to June 1945, the United Nations Conference was held in San Francisco, and the United Nations officially came into existence.

To sum up, in the 1930s the phrase united nations began to be used to refer to the League of Nations or to similar proposed or fictional organizations. After the United States entered World War II in December 1941, the Allies took to calling themselves the United Nations, and that name for the victors in that war transferred over to the international organization that we know today.

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Sources:

Churchill, Winston. The Grand Alliance. The Second World War, vol. 3 of 6. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950, 682–83, 685. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Goldsmith, John Francis. President Randolph as I Knew Him. Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1935, 184.

Jeffery, W.H. “Another Critic of Smith” (letter). Richmond Times-Dispatch (Virginia), 5 February 1936, 8. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2015, modified September 2019, s.v. United Nations, n.

Roosevelt, Franklin and Winston Churchill. The Atlantic Charter, 14 August 1941.

Rowell, Chester H. “Peace Worth Fighting For.” San Francisco Chronicle, 19 September 1935, 14. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Separate Move for Peace Given as American Way” (26 October 1935). Springfield Republican (Illinois), 27 October 1935, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“The United Nations. Dumbarton Oaks Proposals for a General International Organization.” 7 October 1944. U.S. Department of State Publication 2297, Conference Series 66, Washington, DC, 1945.

“A Wellsian Fantasy.” New York Times Book Review, 22 December 1935, 7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Basil D. Soufi, 2011. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

under the weather

August 4, 2021

4 August 2021

To be under the weather is to be ill or otherwise indisposed. The phrase originated as an Americanism, but it has its roots in an older, British nautical term. To be under the sea or under the weather is to ride out a storm in some protected anchorage. The later American sense is a metaphor for resting quietly until conditions improve.

Under the sea appears by the early seventeenth century. It can be found in a nautical handbook written by John Smith, of Virginia settler-colonist fame. His An Accidence or The Path-Way to Experience Necessary for All Young Sea-Men was published in 1627 and has this:

a storme, hull, lash sure the helme a ley, lye to try our drift, how capes the ship, cun the ship, spoune before the winde, she lusts, she lyes vnder the Sea, trie her with a crose-jacke, bowse it vp with the out looker, she will founder in the Sea

That passage makes little sense to a landlubber (and perhaps even to a sailor). But the following year, in his Sea Grammar, Smith makes it more clear:

When that will not serue then Try the mizen, if that split, or the storme grow so great she cannot beare it; then hull, which is to beare no saile, but to strike a hull is when they would lie obscurely in the Sea, or stay for some consort, lash sure the helme a lee, and so a good ship will lie at ease vnder the Sea as wee terme it.

The phrase under the weather appears by 1786 in an article about a shipwreck in the English Channel that appeared in the New York Daily Advertiser of 17 April 1786:

Had they been fortunate enough to drove clear of that Head Land, they would have got into Swanage or Strickland Bay, where they might have had safe anchorage under the weather.

Metaphorical use of under the weather appears by 1803, but not in the sense of illness as we use it today; rather it is in the sense of being out of touch, not being the middle of the storm. It appears in the context of a rhetorical war between two rival Philadelphia newspapers, the Daily Gazette and the Aurora. Philadelphia was suffering through a yellow fever outbreak, and the editor of the Aurora accused the editor of the Daily Gazette of promulgating false medical information. The Daily Gazette fired back in defense, using a few nautical terms. And in return the Aurora’s editor penned this reply on 17 June 1803, filled to the brim with nautical phrases, including under the weather:

In the Philadelphia Gazette of last evening, the Board of Health have found a champion who enters into their quarrel with great spirit [...] And as to this salt water Quixotte, if instead of playing off his Billingsgate artillery, he had slack’d sail a bit, and taken a correct observation before he run out all his canvas, he might have discovered that he was going out of his course—That in running foul of the Aurora’s hawser, he must bring himself up, in such a lubber-like fashion, as to expose him to a raking fore and aft. But as he may have been half sea over, when he made sail, or mayhap been under the weather for some time, he may without any great sin for a sailor, be excused for being so kind hearted as to suppose that his sea lingo was the least return he ought to make for his release from quarantine.

The sense of being ill is in place by 1815. This passage from an article in Kentucky’s Western Monitor of 31 March of that year uses it in reference to the economy of New England, which had stagnated under the British blockade during the War of 1812, but which was recovering now the war was over:

The whole machinery of commerce is ere this in that country repaired, and in no long time the rust it had contracted will be worn off, and its usefulness and beauty be totally restored. On such a restoration the liberal spirit of Kentucky would dwell with pleasure even if she herself were not to be benefitted. To this pleasure may be added the satisfaction such as a brother feels when by a sudden turn of things, a brother, who had been under the weather, rises into usefulness and independence, able to stand of himself, and to impart as well as receive assistance.

It's often the case that claimed nautical origins for English words and idioms turn out to be false, but this is one case where those who claim a nautical origin are correct.

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Sources:

“Communicated.” Western Monitor (Lexington, Kentucky), 31 March 1815, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“London, Jan. 10.” The Daily Advertiser (New York), 27 April 1786, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Lubbers Ahoi!” Aurora (Philadelphia), 17 June 1803, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. weather, n, under, prep.

Smith, John. An Accidence or The Path-Way to Experience Necessary for All Young Sea-Men. London: Jonas Man and Benjamin Fisher, 1627, 28–29. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

———. A Sea Grammar. London: John Haviland, 1627, 40. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Image credit: Nicolas Cammillieri, early nineteenth century. Public domain image.

white / that's white of you

August 3, 2021

3 August 2021

The color white has long been associated with purity and goodness, and in the latter half of the nineteenth century a slang use of white began to be used to mean honest and gentlemanly. To be treated white was to be treated well and fairly. And by 1900, the phrase that’s white of you was in place to acknowledge such treatment. But along the way, these senses, especially the slang ones, acquired a racial connotation. Fair, honest, and gentlemanly treatment was white, as opposed the assumed behavior of people of color.

The use of white as a metaphor for purity and sinlessness in English dates to the Old English period. For example, there is this from one of Ælfric’s homilies, written in the closing years of the tenth century:

þæt gedafenað toforan eallum oþrum þingum þæt ælces mannes heorte beo wið ealle leahtras hwit & clæne, swaswa ge gewilnigeað þæt ge to ciercean becumen mid hwitum reafum & mid clænum
(That it is fitting above all other things that the heart of each man be white and clean of all sins, so that it both strives for it and comes to the church with white and clean garments.)

Of course, such early uses had no racial connotation. That would come later, but exactly when is debatable. But by the later Middle Ages, skin color began to be used as a metaphor for purity and goodness. For example, the romance The King of Tars (c.1330) has a Muslim sultan converting to Christianity and having his skin color change from black to white as a result. And the modern conception of race, based on skin color, came with the Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a justification for the enslavement of Africans. It’s often difficult to determine if any particular usage was and is deliberately intended to be racist, or if it just reflected the racism that has been endemic throughout European and American society. But there is no doubt that by the nineteenth century, if not earlier, the association of the word white with racist ideas was widespread and deeply and inextricably embedded.

There is this from London’s Bell’s Weekly Messenger of 11 December 1836, which echoes Ælfric’s duality of white heart and white clothing:

Your conduct must vite there, my fine fellows—no blackguards admitted there; and not only must your conduct be vite, but your neck-handkerchief must vite too, on ball nights.

And in the United States, there is account from Timothy Cooley’s 1837 Sketches of the Life and Character of the Rev. Lemuel Haynes:

There is a man of my acquaintance who feels that he owes much, under God, to the preaching of Mr. Haynes while at Torrington. He was disaffected that the church should employ him, and neglected meeting for a time. At length curiosity conquered prejudice so far that he went to the house of God. He took his seat in the crowded assembly, and, from designed disrespect, sat with his hat on. Mr. Haynes gave out his text, and began with his usual impassioned earnestness, as if unconscious of any thing amiss in the congregation. 'The preacher had not proceeded far in his sermon,' said the man, “before I thought him the whitest man I ever saw. My hat was instantly taken off and thrown under the seat, and I found myself listening with the most profound attention.”

In the latter half of the nineteenth century the verb phrases to be white and to treat white in reference to persons started to appear. These formulations clearly express a racially stratified society where white people are socially superior to people of color. One of their earliest appearances is in a glossary of West Point cadet slang that accompanied the 1878 autobiography of Henry Ossian Flipper. Born into slavery, Flipper was the first Black graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Flipper gave no indication that the terms were overtly racist, but the fact that he included them in his autobiography is telling:

“To be white,” “To treat white.”—To be polite, courteous, and gentlemanly.

The verb phrases were not limited to West Point, as can be seen in an article in the National Police Gazette of 3 May 1890:

When the home had been turned inside out, the two robbers held a whispered conversation, and then turning to Bradrick asked: “Say, are you certain you have no more cash?” An affirmative response was received and one of the wretches said: “Lookey here pardner, we’re goin’ now, and if you squeal we’ll come back and do you up. We’ve treated you d—d white I think.” This opinion was too much even for the solemn occasion, and Bradrick could not repress a smile as he responded: “I am under many obligations for this courteous treatment. I should like to meet both of you again, but next time I would prefer you call at some more appropriate hour.”

And we seen a clearly racial use of the word white in the obituary of Peter Jackson, the Black championship boxer from Australia in the Sydney Sportsman of 17 July 1901:

He was black in skin, but a whiter man than Peter Jackson never lived.

And there is this passage form Chauncey M’Govern’s 1907 account of serving as an American soldier in the Philippines that expresses surprise that Filipinos could treat someone white:

Well, sir, they treated us white did them gu-gus in that pueblo. They didn't spare neither the rice or the fish and the cocoanut oil. They even boiled up half a dozen manuks for me and Clarke, and laid out the bottles of red beno as if it was as common as mud on the back of a carabao.

The phrase that’s white of you is recorded by 1900, although it is undoubtedly older. From David Dwight Wells’s 1900 His Lordship’s Leopard:

“I tell you what it is, Marchmont, that subeditorship is still vacant, and if you put this through, the place is yours.”
The reporter grasped his chiefs hand.
“That's white of you, boss,” he said, “and I'll do it no matter what it costs or who gets hurt in the process.”

And the next year, from Hamlin Garland’s Her Mountain Lover:

Hastings himself developed much admiration for the mountaineer. “You must let me see you in London,” he said several times. “I’ll put you down at my Club; and then, the governor will want to see you in the country.”
Jim had no idea of what was involved in being put down at a Club, but he consented. “That s mighty white of you, old man, but I don t know where I shall make down.”

Of course, there are many non-racist uses of white. But that cannot be said for phrases like to treat white or that’s white of you. Even if the speaker has no deliberate racist intent, such phrasings arise out of a racist context. Any use of white as metaphor for purity and goodness must be interrogated, and in many cases a better metaphor should be sought and used.

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Sources:

Brotanek, Rudolf, ed. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Altenenglischen Literatur und Kirchengeschichte. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1913, 19. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Paris, Bibliothèque National MS lat 943, fol.165v–166r.

Cooley, Timothy Mather. Sketches of the Life and Character of the Rev. Lemuel Haynes. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1837, 73. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Flipper, Henry Ossian. The Colored Cadet at West Point. New York: Homer Lee, 1878. Johnson Reprint, 1968, 54. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Footpads on Deck.” National Police Gazette, 3 May 1890, 6. ProQuest Magazines.

Garland, Hamlin. Her Mountain Lover. London: William Heinemann, 1901, 38. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. white, adv., white, adj.

M’Govern, Chauncey. By Bolo and Krag. Manila: Escolta Press, c.1907, 50. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2015, modified June 2021, s.v. white, adj. (and adv.) and n., white man, n.

“Peter Jackson ‘Outed.’” Sydney Sportsman, 17 July 1901, 1. Trove.

Wells, David Dwight. His Lordship’s Leopard. New York: Henry Holt, 1900, 15. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Colorado

August 2, 2021

2 August 2021

Indigenous peoples living in what is now the state of Colorado include the Arapaho, Apache, Cheyenne, Pueblo, Shoshone, Ute, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Navajo. Since the state of Colorado is a settler-colonist creation, there is, of course, no Indigenous name that corresponds to the region. But there are many Indigenous names for specific places in Colorado. One of the most prominent is Tavakiev (sun mountain), the Tabeguache name given to the mountain settler-colonists call Pike’s Peak. The Tabeguache are a band of the Northern Ute tribe. Tava is the Ute word for sun.

The name Colorado comes from the Spanish colorado (red). The Spanish word has referred to red since c.1300, but earlier, since at least 1215, it meant colored. It comes from the classical Latin coloratus (colored).

The state’s name comes from the name of the river, in Spanish Rio Colorado, so called because of the color of the sediment in the river. English adopted the Spanish name for the river, and it appears in English writing from at least 1721, where it can be found in Bernard and Collier’s appendix to Morery’s encyclopedic dictionary. The river’s name appears in the entry for California (i.e., what is now called Baja California, Mexico):

CALIFORNIA, a Peninsula in Northern America, upon the South Sea: It lies to the West of New Mexico, from whence ’tis parted only by the river Colorado.

What is now the state of Colorado was originally claimed by Spain. France acquired the eastern portion in 1802 and the next year sold it to the United States as part of the Louisiana purchase. The western portion passed from Spain to Mexico and was annexed by the United States in 1848 in the wake of the Mexican-American War. The Colorado Territory was organized in 1861, and in 1876 Colorado became the thirty-eighth state.

When it comes to U.S. territorial names, it is common to see a name applied to different areas prior to the formal organization of the territory, and such is the case with Colorado. We can see just such an early use in this article in the Massachusetts Ploughman of 24 August 1850. The area described an unofficial territory that included what is now Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico:

Colorado Territory, is that section of country bounded upon the lower west portion by the lower eastern boundary of California and the Colorado river, and the south by the dividing line between Mexico and the United States, on the East by the Sierra Madre, or Western limits of Mexico, and on the North by the curved ridge or 37th degree of latitude, which constitutes the southern boundary of Utah, until the line extends to the 42d degree of longitude, and is farther bounded North by the same.

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Sources:

Bernard, Jacques and Jeremy Collier. An Appendix to the Three English Volumes in Folio of Morery's Great Historical, Geographical, Genealogical and Poetical Dictionary. London: George James, 1721. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

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

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2011, modified March 2019, s.v. Colorado, n.2; modified June 2021, s.v. colorado, n.1.

“The Territories of the U.S.” Massachusetts Ploughman (Boston), 24 August 1850, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Image credit: Shannon1, 2018. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

tail wagging the dog / wag the dog

July 30, 2021

Actor E.A. Sothern as Lord Dundreary in the original 1858 cast of *Our American Cousin*. A monocled man with long, bushy sideburns and wearing a frock coat.

30 July 2021 (8 August: paragraph on the 1997 film Wag the Dog added)

The tail wagging the dog is a metaphorical expression for a minor part directing the actions of the whole. The metaphor is rather obvious, but unlike many such expressions, this one has a definitive origin. It comes from Tom Taylor’s play Our American Cousin, which was first performed in New York on 15 October 1858. The play was enormously popular in its day. So that it gave birth to a popular expression should be no surprise. But today the play is chiefly remembered for being the one that Abraham Lincoln was watching at Ford’s Theater when he was assassinated on 14 April 1865.

The relevant scene in the play goes as follows, a conversation between the characters of Lord Dundreary and Florence:

Dun     Well, I'll tell you—a draught. Now, I've got a better one than that: When is a dog's tail not a dog's tail? (FLORENCE repeats. During this FLORENCE, Mrs. M. and DUNDREARY are down stage.)
Dun      Yeth, that's a stunner. You've got to give that up.
Flo     Yes, and willingly.
Dun    When it's a cart. (They look at him enquiringly.[)]
Flo     Why, what on earth has a dog's tail to do with a cart?
Dun    When it moves about, you know. A horse makes a cart move, so does a dog make his tail move.
Flo     Oh, I see what you mean—when it's a wagon. (Wags the letter in her hand.[)]
Dun     Well, a wagon and a cart are the same thing, ain't they? That's the idea—it's the same thing.
Flo     They are not the same. In the case of your conundrum there's a very great difference.
Dun     Now I've got another. Why does a dog waggle his tail!
Flo     Upon my word, I never inquired.
Dun     Because the tail can't waggle the dog. Ha! ha!

The metaphorical expression, with waggle shortened to wag, appears in print within five years of the play’s premiere. From the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel of 15 August 1863:

It would be wrong to speak of its owner as a man with a nose, or of his face as having a nose to it. It was a nose with a face and a man attached to it. So far from the nose pertaining to the man—the man and all his specialties pertained to the nose.—The man followed the nose on the same principle that a dog wags his tail—because the dog is stronger than the tail, for if he were not the tail would wag the dog.

Another early use, from Burlington Vermont’s Free Press of 15 September 1866 obliquely references the play as the origin. The mention of Dundreary’s dog shows that the writer expected the readers to know the play:

The Reason Why.—“What makes you think,” asked a “conservative” of a Republican, “that the new party will still be controlled by the Democratic party, and that we shall be called upon to support Democratic nominations this fall?” “For the same reason,” was the reply, “that Dundreary’s dog wagged his tail—because the tail isn’t big enough to wag the dog!”—New Haven Palladium.

Early uses of the phrase are often in discussion of politics, as this one from New Orleans’s Daily Picayune of 19 July 1872 shows:

Though Mr. Darwin says this disappearance is forever, we fear he is mistaken. Certain signs are abroad that seem to indicate the danger of a caudal revival. The vague aspirations of the Dolly Varden girl of the period for reversing the decaudalization process, are followed by some ominous symptoms in a small and superfluous political denomination—a superfetation, so to speak, of a sickly and disjointed time—self-named the Liberal party[.] For practical purposes, this association of politicians can hope to be nothing save as an appendage to some other party. But, having heard of the ambitious tail that insisted on wagging the dog, it peremptorily demands to wag the Democratic and Reform combination in this State.
With this exception, the opposition elements are well organized on a footing of intelligent accord. The only obstacle is this little faction that madly dreams of fastening itself to the organization of Democrats and Reformers simply for the purpose of managing it. But the thing is against nature and against logical fitness. The tail can never wag the dog.

The phrase wag the dog got a boost in popularity from the 1997 film of that name (Barry Levinson, Director; David Mamet, Screenplay; starring Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, and Anne Heche) about a plan to fabricate a fictional war between the United States and Albania to cover up a presidential sex scandal. The film was released a month before the Clinton-Lewinsky sex scandal became public. The subsequent bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, alleged by the United States to be producing nerve agent for the terrorist group al-Qaeda, was believed by many to be just such a wag-the-dog operation.

It is perhaps fitting that the work that gave birth to the tail wagging the dog is chiefly remembered for an event it is associated with rather than for itself.

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Sources:

“About Tails.” Daily Picayune (New Orleans), 19 July 1872, 4.

“City Matters. Milwaukee Daily Sentinel (Wisconsin), 15 August 1863, 1. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.

The Free Press (Burlington, Vermont), 15 September 1866, 4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. tail, n.1.

Taylor, Tom. Our American Cousin. 1869, 7–8. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image Credit: Jefferson, Joseph. The Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1889, 200–201. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Public domain image.