scab

Attack of striking railroad workers on scab switchmen and brakeman during an 1888 strike against the Burlington and Quincy Railroad in Chicago. Black and white drawing of men throwing rocks and bricks at railroad workers aboard a train. Other men, armed with shotguns, are atop the train as well.

12 October 2021

[Update, 13 October 2021: paragraph about Ode to a Scab added.]

A scab is the growth that covers a wound to the skin. It is also a slang term for a strikebreaker in a labor dispute. But how did the word develop such different meanings?

Scab is from the Old English sceabb, which referred to a variety of skin diseases, including but not exclusively leprosy. In two old entries, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) splits the word into two, with shab coming from the Old English, and scab coming from an unattested Old Norse root, *skabbr. But the OED immediately calls this etymology into question. Not only is the Old Norse root unattested, but the earliest citation of the scab form is in a thirteenth-century Kentish dialect, and that dialect did not have significant Old Norse influence. It seems more likely the older OED entries are incorrect, and scab and shab are different forms of the same word, with the later scab form being influenced by the Latin scabies.

An example of the Old English is from the translation of Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, written in the late ninth century:

Soðlice se hæfð singalne sceabb se þe næfre ne blinð ungestæððignesse. Ðonne bi ðæm sceabbe swiðe ryhte sio hreofl getacnað ðæt wohhæmed. And ðonne bið se lichoma hreof, ðonne se bryne þe on ðæm innoðe bið utaflihð to ðære hyde. Swæ bið sio costung ærest on ðæm mode, & ðonne færeð utweardes to ðære hyde, oððæt hio utascieð on weorc.

(Truly, he has chronic scabbiness who never desists from sin. Then by the scabs very directly the scurf symbolizes that fornication. And when the body is scurfy, then the inflammation that is inside spreads to the skin. So is the temptation first in the mind, and then travels outward to the skin, until it bursts forth in action.)

The aforementioned thirteenth-century Kentish source is from a sermon:

Se leprus signefiez þo senuulle men. si lepre þo sennen. Þet scab bi tokned þo litle sennen. si lepre be tokned þo grete sennen þet biedh diadliche. Ase so is lecherie. spusbreche. Gauelinge. Roberie. þefte. Glutunie. drunkenesse. and alle þo sennen þurch wiche me liest þo luue of gode almichti and of alle his haleghen.

(The leprous signify the sinful men. The leprosy is their sins. That scab symbolizes their little sins. The leprosy symbolized their great sins that are deadly. So, leprosy is spouse-breaking, usury, robbery, theft, gluttony, drunkenness, and all those sins through which one loses the love of God almighty and all his saints.)

Note that in both these early uses, scab refers to a skin disease, and it’s metaphorically associated with sinfulness and bad action. The sense of scab referring to the growth that covers a wound to the skin appears by the late fourteenth century. It appears in a c.1380 translation of Lanfranc of Milan’s treatise on surgery in a section about how to heal ulcers of leprosy and ringworm:

If þere ben pustulis þat ben hote & ful of blood, & þe skyn be ful of humouris & neische, þanne it is good for to garce þat skyn, & þanne waische al his heed with þat blood hoot, & þanne hile his heed wiþ caule leuis. þanne aftirward anoynte al his heed wiþ oile of notis ouþer of camomil hoot, til al þe scabbis þerof be wel tobroke. & þanne bigynne for to drie with þese driynge medicyns.

(If there are pustules that are hot and full of blood, and the skin is full of humors and tender, then it is good to cut that skin and then wash all his head with that hot blood, and then heal his head with kale leaves. Then afterward anoint all his head with oil of nuts or hot camomile, till all the scabs thereof are well broken open. And then begin to dry with these drying medicines.)

By the late sixteenth century, a slang sense of scab had developed, meaning a scoundrel or low person. Skin diseases are not pleasant, and as we have seen, have been associated with bad behavior from the beginning, so it’s easy to see how the leap was made from the medical conditions to low character. We see this slang sense in Robert Wilson’s 1590 play The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London. In the play, three lords and their pages, Policy (page Wit), Pomp (page Wealth), and Pleasure (page Will) debate which of three London women is the right match for Policy:

Pom[pe]. Whom louest thou pleasure?

Plea[sure]. Hearke ye. Whisper in his eare.

Pom[pe]. Lush, ye lie.

Wil. If my maister were a souldier, that word wold haue the stab.

Wit. Wel Wil, stil you'll be a saucie Scab.

This use was likely preceded by John Lyly’s use of the slang sense of scab in his play Endymion. The play was probably written in the 1580s, but was not published until 1591. Furthermore, the 1591 printing omits the portion that includes scab. The word appears in a song that ends Act 4, Scene 2, but the song is mentioned as a stage direction, but the words are not reproduced in that early printing. The song isn’t printed until a 1632 edition:

Watch[men]. Stand! Who goes there?
We charge you appeare
Fore our Constable here.
(In the name of the Man in the Moon)
To vs Bilmen relate,
Why you stagger so late.
And how you come drunke so soone.

Pages. What are yee (scabs?)

Watch. The Watch:
This the Constable.

Pages. A Patch.

Const. Knockʼem down unlesse they all stand
If any run away,
Tis the old Watchmans play,
To reach him a Bill of his hand.

We cannot know if scab appeared in the Lyly’s original version of the play. The song lyrics may have changed between the 1580s and 1632.

The sense of a low, disreputable person is applied to strikebreakers in labor disputes by the latter half of the eighteenth century. The OED has this citation from Bonner & Middleton’s Bristol Journal of 5 July 1777:

To the Public. Whereas the Master Cordwainers have gloried, that there has been a Demur amongst the Men's and Women's Men;—we have the Pleasure to inform them, that Matters are amicably settled. [...] The Conflict would not been [sic] so sharp had not there been so many dirty Scabs; no Doubt but timely Notice will be taken of them.

And another early use of the strikebreaker sense appears in the Articles of the Friendly and United Society of Cordwainers (shoemakers) of 4 June 1792:

Some of the Articles make mention of scabs. And what is a scab? He is to his trade what a traitor is to his country; though both may be useful to one party in troublesome times, when peace returns they are detested alike by all. When help is wanted, he is the last to contribute assistance, and the first to grasp a benefit he never laboured to procure. He cares but for himself, but he sees not beyond the extent of a day, and for a momentary and worthless approbation, would betray friends, family and country. In short, he is a traitor on a small scale. He first sells the journeymen, and is himself afterwards sold in his turn by the masters, till at last he is despised by both and deserted by all. He is an enemy to himself, to the present age and to posterity.

That’s how pustules on the skin were transformed into strikebreakers.

Note: a piece titled Ode to a Scab, about strikebreakers, is frequently credited to Jack London, but there is no evidence that he wrote it. The piece dates to at least 1912, when it is circulated anonymously in a number of trade-union journals. London’s name becomes attached to it by 1950, long after the writer’s death.

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Sources:

Aspinall, A., ed. “Articles of the Friendly and United Society of Cordwainers” (4 June 1792). Early English Trade Unions. London: Batchworth Press, 1949, 84. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Fleischhaker, Robert, ed. Lanfrank’s “Science of Cirurgie.” Early English Text Society OS 102. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1894, 185. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 1396.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. scab, n.1.

Hall, Joseph. “Dominica tercia post octavam epiphanie” (The Third Sunday After the Eighth Epiphany). Selections from Early Middle English 1130–1250, vol. 1 of 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920, 218. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 471.

Latham, R.E., D.R. Howlett, and R.K. Ashdowne. Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013, s.v. scabies. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1879, s.v. scabies. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Lyly, John. Endimion, The Man in the Moone. London: I. Charlewood for the Widow Broome, 1591, sig. G2r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

———. “Endimion.” Sixe Court Comedies. London: William Stansby for Edward Blount, 1632, sig. E2r–v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. scab(be n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. scab, n., shab, n.

Sweet, Henry, ed. King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, vol. 1 of 2. Early English Text Society OS 45. London: N. Trübner, 1871, 70. HathiTrust Digital Archive. London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B.11.

Wilson, Robert. The Pleasant and Stately Morall, of the Three Lordes and Three Ladies of London. London: R. Jhones, 1590, sig. Bv. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Image credit: J. Anderson, 1888. In Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 7 April 1888. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Public Domain Image.

Sam Hill

Illustration by Gustave Doré for Canto 15 of Dante’s Inferno, where Brunetto Latini accosts Dante, while Virgil, Dante’s guide, looks on. Black and white image of a hellscape, raining fire and brimstone, where a naked man accosts a laurel-wreathed man, while another laurel-wreathed man watches. Around the three central figures are naked, suffering men.

11 October 2021

Sam Hill is a North American euphemism for hell or the devil. The origin is not known for certain, but it is most likely just a variation on the word hell, with a bit of personification of the devil thrown in for good measure, ala the names Old Nick, Ned, or Scratch. The phrase seems to have arisen in the 1820s.

The earliest use of Sam Hill that I have found is in a letter to the Providence, Rhode Island Independent Inquirer that was published on 12 February 1830. The letter is allegedly written by a Frenchman named Jean-Jacques Grenouille asking about the origin of the phrase. The letter and Monsieur Grenouille, himself, are almost certainly fictions invented by the paper’s editor. But even though it’s fictional, the letter shows that Sam Hill was in common use at the time—its use seems to have been something of a fad—but also was probably a relatively recent coinage. The letter reads in part:

When I walk on the deck, I see one sailor man have one wheel, which he turn round first au droit, to the right, then turn him to the left, and I speak him, “Why for what you so moch labor always?”—and he say, “Sair, the dam ship steer like Sam Hill.” Well I not can understand, and then I go down in my chamber cabin, and I look in [line indistinct] not find Sam, but I ask the captain, and he laugh and say, “Sam one man’s name;” so I look and find Hill, one little mountain, but still I not understand what was Sam Hill.

Well, in three four day more, one night, the ship rock very moch, and the captain ask our officier, “What wether is on deck?” and he say, “it blow like Sam Hill.” Some four day more the ship go in New-York, and I walk on the land and stay for short time, and then I go in one batiment de vapeur, one steam-boat, and go at Providence. By and by one man what was not never been before in one steam-boat, he was look in the water, and he say, “I snum, she foam at the mouth like Sam Hill!” Ma foi! more Sam Hill.

[...]

Monsieur le Prentair, if you can discover what is Sam Hill, or any of your correspondent, will you make me oblige in write one letter to me?

The elided section contains many more instances of the writer encountering people, from all strata of American society, using the phrase Sam Hill.

Another plausible explanation for Sam Hill was proffered by A.E. Sokol in a 1940 article in the journal American Speech. Sokol points out that Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz premiered in America in 1825, the first Continental opera to play in the States. That opera features a demon named Samiel, and Sokol suggested that Sam Hill is a variation on that name. Samiel could easily become Sam Hill, and the dates work—at least until someone unearths a use that antedates 1825—but Occam’s razor suggests that a variation on hell is a more parsimonious explanation.

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Sources:

American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2020, s.v. sam hill, n.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. Sam Hill, n.

Grenouille, Jean-Jacques. Letter. Independent Inquirer (Providence, Rhode Island), 12 February 1830, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers. (The database’s metadata is incorrect, giving an 1829 date, so use that year if you search for this source.)

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. Sam Hill, n.

Sokol, A.E. “What the Sam Hill?” American Speech, 15.1, February 1940, 106–09. JSTOR.

Image credit: Gustave Doré, 1861. Public domain image.

werewolf

8 October 2021

Woodcut, c. 1685. Three men, armed with clubs and a pitchfork, drive a wolf into well. On the left, of the scene the wolf, dressed in human clothing, is hung. In the background are the villages of Neuses and Eschenbach. The German caption reads: “Great Incident! With an outlawed wolf, who in 1685 in the Margraviate of Ansbach carried away and ate a number of children, was finally caught in a well on 9 October at Neuses near Eschenbach, and later hung.”

As most people know, a werewolf is a fictional monster, a person who changes into a wolf. In the most common English-language form of the legend, this transformation takes place at the full moon. Werewolf is a word with a very straightforward etymology, but with some interesting side notes. It is a compound of the Old English words wer (man) + wulf (wolf). So, a werewolf is literally a man-wolf. (Cf. man / woman / wife.)

But the word appears either only once or three times in the extant Old English corpus, depending on how you count it. The three passages in which it appears are by the same writer, repeated three times with slightly different wording/scribal variations. The writer is, coincidentally, Wulfstan (literally “wolf-stone”), the archbishop of York. In his writing, Wulfstan liked to play with the word wulf, and he doesn’t use werewolf in the sense we’re familiar with today. He uses it as a metaphor for Satan, a “wolf” that preys on humans. The passage as it appears in the first law code of Cnut (c.1020) reads as follows:

Þonne moton þa hyrdas beon swyðe wacore & geornlice clypigende, þe wið þone þeodsceaðan folce sceolan scyldan: þæt syndan bisceopas & mæssepreostas, þe godcunde heorda bewarian & bewerian sceolan mid wislican laran, þæt se wod freca werewulf to swyðe ne slite, ne to fela ne abite of godcunde heorde.

(Thus, the shepherds, who must protect the people against this ravager of the people must be very vigilant and zealously cry out: these are the bishops and priests who must defend and protect the divine flock with wise teaching, so that the mad, gluttonous werewolf does not rend nor bite too many of the divine flock.)

The Consiliatio Cnuti, a twelfth-century translation of Cnut’s law code into Latin, uses the word virlupus (literally man-wolf), which is a nonce calque of the English.

Given that Wulfstan’s uses of the word are in a different sense than that of the legendary monster, and that they are isolated by several centuries from the next uses of the word, later uses of the word to mean a lycanthrope may represent an independent coinage. When werewolf reappears in the late twelfth century, wer was still in common use and could produce compounds.

Werewolf stories became extremely popular in England at that time. The most famous is probably Marie de France’s lai of Bisclavret, written in the late twelfth / early thirteenth century. Marie wrote in Anglo-Norman, the dialect of French spoken by the English nobility at the time. Bisclavret opens with the lines:

Quant de lais faire m’entrement,
Ne voil ublier Bisclaveret.
Bisclaveret ad nun en bretan,
Garwaf l’apelent li Norman.

(Since I have undertaken to compose lais,
I don’t want to forget Bisclavret.
Bisclavret is the name in Breton;
the Normans call it Garwaf.

Garwaf and its variant spellings, which are found elsewhere in the lai, do not appear in Anglo-Norman other than in this text. Garwaf appears to be an Anglo-French speaker’s pronunciation of the English werewolf.

But while garwaf or variations thereof do not appear in French, there is one instance in Latin that refers to the French word. In c.1212, around the same time Marie de France was writing, Gervase of Tilbury, an Englishman, wrote Otia Imperialia (Recreation for the Emperor) for the Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV. It is a book of marvels and includes the following passage:

Vidimus enim frequenter in Anglia, per lunationes homines in lupos mutari, quod hominum genus gerulfos Galli nominant, Angli vero Werewlf, dicunt. Were enim Anglice virum sonat, Wlf lupum.

(For we have often seen in England that men are changed into wolves by the phases of the moon, that type of men the French name gerulfos, the English, in truth, call werewolf. For in English were expresses virum, wolf lupum.)

This is the only known appearance of gerulfus in a Latin text, and would seem to be another instance of garwaf, this time by an Englishman Latinizing the Anglo-Norman word with its Francophone pronunciation of the English werewolf. Normally we speak of English borrowing words from Anglo-Norman, but werewolf is a case of the transfer going in the other direction.

One last note, in medieval usage werewolf could also mean a man-eating wolf. We see that use in The Master of Game, a book about hunting written c.1410 and found in several manuscripts, the preferred one being London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian B.12:

Ther ben some that eten children or men and ete noon oþere flessh fro þe tyme þat þei be acherned with mennys flessh, for rather þei wolde be dede, and þei ben cleped werwolfes for men shuld be “ware” of hem.

(There are some that eat children or men and eat no other flesh after the time when they are blooded with men’s flesh, for they would rather be dead, and they are called werewolves because men should be “wary” of them.)

From this passage, it would seem that by the early fifteenth century the first element in the compound, wer, was no longer understood, and the false etymology of a wolf to be wary of had developed. It seems the practice of making up plausible sounding folk etymologies is not just a modern one.

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Sources:

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

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2008, s.v. garulf.

Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, 2009.

Gervase of Tilbury. “Otia Imperialia.” In Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz. Scriptores rerum Bunsvicensium. Hannover: Förster, 1707, 895. Google Books.

Libermann, Felix. Die Gesetze Der Angelsachsen, vol. 1 of 3. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1903. 1 Cnut § 26.3 (c.1020), 306–307. London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.1, fols. 3r–41r.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. wer-wolf, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. werewolf, n.

Waters, Claire M. “Bisclavret.” The Lais of Marie de France. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2018, 144–45. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Wulfstan. Old English Legal Writings: Wulfstan. Andrew Rabin, ed. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 66. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2020, 252–53.

Image credit: Unknown artist, c.1685. Public domain image.

salad / salad days

7 October 2021

A recipe for salad set down by the chief cook for King Richard II of England, c.1390. The recipe, transcribed below, follows the rubricated word Salat.

Salads actually take their name from the dressing, not the primary components. Salad comes from the Old French salade, whose root is from the Latin sal, or salt—the name is from the seasonings applied to the primary ingredients.

Salad makes its English debut toward the end of the fourteenth century. The oldest known recipe for a salad is one used by c.1390 by the master cook of Richard II of England, found in a collection of medieval recipes with the title The Forme of Cury. The manuscript in which it’s found dates to c.1425:

Salat.
Take persel, sawge, garlec, chibolles, onyouns, leek, borage, myntes, porrettes, fenel and toun cressis, rew, rosemarye, purslarye, laue, and waische hem clene, pike hem, pluk hem small wiþ þyn honde and myng hem well with rawe oile. Lay on vyneger and salt. And serue it forth.

(Salad. Take parsley, sage, garlic, scallions, onions, leek, borage mints, young leeks, fennel, and garden cresses, rue, rosemary, pusrlane, lave and wash them clean, pick them, pluck them into small pieces with your hand, and mix them well with raw oil. Lay on vinegar and salt. And serve it forth.)

The phrase salad days is a play on the metaphor of green symbolizing young plant growth, and the phrase originally meant youth and naivete. The origin of this one is quite straightforward. It’s from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, Act 1, Scene 5, in which Cleopatra chalks up her past statements of love for Julius Caesar as indiscretions of her youth, or salad days:

Alex. I, Madam, twenty seuerall Messengers.
Why do you send so thicke?

Cleo. Who’s borne that day, when I forget to send to Anthonie, shall dye a begger. Inke and paper Charmian. Welcome my good Alexas. Did I Charmian, euer loue Cæsar so?

Char. O that braue Cæsar!

Cleo. Be choak’d with such another Emphasis,
Say the braue Anthony.

Char. The valiant Cæsar.

Cleo. By Isis, I will giue thee bloody teeth,
If thou with Cæsar Parago nagaine [sic]:
My man of men.

Char. By your most gracious pardon,
I sing but after you.

Cleo. My sallad dayes,
When I was greene in iudgment, cold in blood,
To say, as I saide then. But come, away,
Get me Inke and Paper,
he shall haue euery day a seuerall greeting, or Ile vnpeople Egypt.

Parago nagaine is a printing error in the First Folio. The line should read Paragon againe.

But in recent decades, the phrase has shifted in meaning, referring instead to a period when a person was in their prime, at the peak of their abilities. For instance, the following headline appeared in the Los Angeles Times on 2 March 1970 over an article about how recruitment for the US Army Reserve was past its peak:

Salad Days Over for Army’s Reserve
Draft Lottery, Manpower Cuts Shrink Waiting Lists

Salad days being over, we’ve all been there.

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Sources:

The Forme of Cury. London: J. Nichols, 1780, 41–42. HathiTrust Digital Archive. London, British Library, Add. MS 5016, fol. 6r.

Freeman, Jan. “Salad Says Aren’t What They Used to Be.” Boston Globe, 15 April 2001, third edition, D5. ProQuest.

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

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. salad, n.

Rawitch, Robert. “Salad Days Over for Army’s Reserve.” Los Angeles Times, 2 March 1970, B1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra, 1.5. Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (First Folio, Brandeis University). London: Isaac Jaggrd and Edward Blount, 1623, 344–45.

Image credit: London, British Library, Add. MS 5016, fol. 6r. Public domain image as a brief section of a mechanical reproduction of a work in the public domain.

sabotage

An Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) stickerette or “silent agitator” from 1915. A drawing of a wooden shoe crushing a top-hatted capitalist, coins spilling out of his pockets. In the background are silhouettes of industrial buildings. The IWW logo is above, shining like the sun. The caption is quotation from IWW official W.D. Haywood, “Sabotage means to push back, pull out or break off the fangs of Capitalism.”

6 October 2021

Sabotage, as one might guess from the word’s ending, is a borrowing from French, and that borrowing occurred in the opening years of the twentieth century. The root, sabot, literally means a wooden shoe or clog. The route from shoe to malicious damage is not clear on its face and has spawned at least one myth regarding the origin of the latter meaning, but when one looks at the use of the word in French, how it came to mean malicious damage becomes clear.

In addition to the sense of a shoe, the French word became associated with shoddy workmanship, with bungling on the job. Here’s a series of entries from a 1906 French-English dictionary:

sabot sa´bo m. sabot, wooden shoe; horse’s hoof; clog, turban-shell; socket (of furniture); child’s top; wretched fiddle; (of ships) old tub; dormir comme un sabot, sleep like a top.

sabotage sabɔ´ta:ʒ m. manufacture of wooden shoes.

saboter sabɔ´te intr. spin a top; clatter with one’s shoes; turn out poor work. — tr. bungle, make a botch of.

saboteur sabɔ´tə:r m. bungler.

The association with bungling comes from the fact that sabots were primarily worn by agricultural workers and may stem from the idea that when such workers came to the city and manufacturing jobs, they were unskilled and tended to produce shoddy products. Alternatively, it could come from the more straightforward, but still stereotypical, association with rural yokels being foolish and inept.

In the hands of the burgeoning labor movement of the era, however, sabotage, meaning a bungled job, took on a more deliberate connotation. Workers would deliberately bungle as form of labor protest. The word first appears in English in this sense in labor and socialist publications. The following, which appears in the Daily People of 15 July 1906, describes the tactics of the French labor unionists:

No useless riots in the streets; the old romantic Blanquist tactics are forgotten, but the use of what they name “action direct” (direct action), which I will try to describe as follows:

First—In case of strike—use violent picketing, knock down scabs, and go as far as burning down the shop. (In Fresseneville they burnt down the shop and the house of the boass, who had a narrow escape in an automobile). If the scabs, when going to work, are protected by soldiers, they did not bother about picketing, and went to the houses of the scabs and “saw” them there.

Second—In case of work—use “sabotage”: I try to translate that word as “go-canny.” For instance, bakery workers threatened to put ovens out of use by pouring petroleum on the dead-plate. This (does not poison the bread, but it makes bread ill-smelling). Ways of using “sabotage” are countless: when properly used, they will be terrible and deadly weapons.

There are two things of note here. First, the word has not yet been Anglicized; it appears in quotation marks, a definition is given, and it is being used in the context of France. Second, sabotage is not being used in the current sense of malicious damage—that would be the actions described in the first case. Rather, it is being used in the sense of sly and inventive means to produce shoddy products.

But within a few years sabotage would become fully Anglicized and integrated into English. The Coal Trade Bulletin of September 1914, for example, uses both sabotage and direct action, seen and defined in the above quotation, as English words without need of explanation. The WF of M is the Western Federation of Miners, and the IWW is the Industrial Workers of the World, a.k.a. the Wobblies, a more radical, general union that favored direct action:

All because a large number of misguided dupes listened and were led astray by the ideas of a few impossibilists who wanted nothing else than the opportunity of ruling the W.F. of M. and then turning them over to that aggregation of self-appointed labor saviors who preach direct action (except where it’s on syndicalism), sabotage, etc., the I.W.W.

And the verb to sabotage is recorded a few years later. Here it is in an article from the Nottingham Evening Post of 15 August 1918 about the impending collapse of Germany in the closing days of WWI. It is also being used in a more general, metaphorical sense, rather than the specific sense of destruction of property:

The newspaper mentioned [i.e., the National Zeitung (Berne)] understands that the German disaster has unpleasantly surprised official Austrian circles and caused consternation among the population. “The Austrian social organisation is bankrupt, and the war is being sabotaged,” adds this newspaper.

The aforementioned myth is that sabotage comes from protesting workers throwing their wooden shoes into machinery, thereby damaging the equipment and halting production. The myth is an old one, but got a boost in 1991 when it was repeated in the movie Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. But tossing shoes in the gears, as we have seen, is not the phrase’s origin. The actual origin, at least in my opinion, is one of the many cases where the real origin is more interesting than the mythical one.

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Sources:

“The Coming Collapse of Germany.” Nottingham Evening Post (England), 15 August 1918, 1. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Bruckere, A. “The French Labor Movement.” Daily People (New York), 15 July 1906, 4. Readex: America’s Historic Newspapers.

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Image credit: Unknown artist. Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), 1915. Public domain image.