smoking gun

Undated photograph of US President Richard Nixon and Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman conversing in the Oval Office. Nixon, seated behind his desk, is talking with Haldeman, who is standing nearby. On 23 June 1972 in a conversation with Haldeman like this one, Nixon ordered the cover-up of the break-in to the Democratic national headquarters at the Watergate office complex.

17 November 2021

The phrases smoking gun or smoking pistol refer to incontrovertible evidence of guilt. Smoking gun gained notoriety during the 1974 investigation into the Watergate affair, when one of the White House tapes showed that President Richard Nixon had ordered the cover-up of the break-in to the Democratic national headquarters, but the phrase is much older.

Literal use of smoking pistol dates to at least 9 November 1832, when it appears in a news story in the Baltimore Gazette about a suicide:

The porter at the hotel heard the explosion, and upon bursting open the door, the unfortunate youth was found extended on the bed, one arm resting on the ground, and the yet smoking pistol at some paces from him.

And use of the phrase to refer to incontrovertible evidence, in this case still literally a pistol, dates to at least 1850 and reporting on an attempt to assassinate the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV:

The constables and bystanders rushed upon the culprit, felled him to the ground, and tore from his hand the still smoking pistol.

The form smoking gun, also appears around this time, but the early uses are all references to military weaponry, usually artillery. But a humorous story about a wife peppering her husband with birdshot that uses the phrase, still literal but in the sense of criminal evidence, appears in the 20 November 1879 Reno Evening Gazette:

The two explosions were almost simultaneous, and Lou bounded in the air like a roebuck. When he came down the silent woods resounded with a blasphemy boom which frightened the game for miles around. Mrs. W. handed the reporter the gun, and when her husband came fuming back to the crowd, assured him that
SHE HADN’T FIRED THE SHOT.
The circumstantial evidence against the reporter, with a smoking gun in his hand, was so strong that he was obliged to run for his life.

Metaphorical use of smoking gun dates to at least 5 November 1886, when it appears in an extended metaphor, comparing a political battle to a military one, in the Kansas City Times. Again, the metaphorical gun is an artillery piece, not a small arm:

The survivors of Tuesday’s political battle have scarcely recovered from their bewilderment, but they are surveying the battlefield with dazed interest and trying to make up a list of the killed, wounded and missing. The victor sits on the carriage of his smoking gun rubbing his head and wondering whether he or the enemy lost the more men and what the three cornered scrimmage meant after all.

But what cemented smoking gun into the public consciousness was its use in the Watergate affair nearly a century later. Nixon’s supporters began using the phrase as metaphor for the evidence needed to impeach the president. From the New York Times of 14 July 1974:

The big question asked over the last few weeks in and around the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing room by committee members who are uncertain about how they felt about impeachment was, “Where’s the smoking gun?” In large measure, that question was a tribute to the defense strategy of James D. St. Clair, President Nixon’s lawyer. He has argued that the President can be impeached only if it is found that he committed a serious crime.

In a unanimous decision, the US Supreme Court ordered Nixon to hand over the White House tapes on 24 July 1974. Nixon complied on 5 August, and one of the tapes proved damning, showing that Nixon had ordered the cover-up of the break-in to the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate office complex. Republican Representative Barber Conable, who had been a supporter of the president, described the tape as a smoking gun. From the Boston Globe of 6 August 1974:

Rep. Barber B. Conable Jr. (R–N.Y.), chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee said, “I guess we have found the smoking gun, haven’t we?” in reference to statements months ago by GOP stalwarts that they would not turn against the President until they found him holding a “smoking gun” in his hand.

The so-called smoking-gun tape, recorded on 23 June 1972, records a conversation between Nixon and Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman. The transcript reads, in part:

HALDEMAN: That the way to handle this now is for us to have [Deputy CIA Director] Walters call [FBI Director] Pat Gray and just say, “Stay the hell out of this...this is ah, business here we don’t want you to go any further on it.” That’s not an unusual development,...

PRESIDENT: Um huh.

HALDEMAN: ...and, uh, that would take care of it.

[…]

NIXON:  Well, not sure of their analysis, I’m not going to get that involved. I’m (unintelligible).

HALDEMAN:  No, sir. We don’t want you to.

NIXON:  You call them in. Good. Good deal! Play it tough. That’s the way they play it and that’s the way we are going to play it.

Nixon resigned on 8 August 1974, just three days after the tape was made public.

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Sources:

“The First Debt.” Baltimore Gazette and Daily Advertiser, 9 November 1832, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Lou Walker’s Ranch. He Shoots a Rabbit While His Wife Shoots Him.” Reno Evening Gazette (Nevada), 20 November 1879, 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. smoking, adj.

“Prussia. Attempt to Assassinate the King.” The Scotsman (Edinburgh), 29 May 1850. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“The Smoking Gun Tape,” 23 June 1972. Watergate.info.

“Was Blaine Behind It?” Kansas City Times (Missouri), 5 November 1886, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Wermiel, Stephen. “President’s Support Eroding.” Boston Globe, 6 August 1974, 6. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Wilkins, Roger. “The Evidence for Impeachment.” New York Times, 14 July 1974, Section 4, 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: unknown photographer, White House photo. Public domain image.

southpaw

16 November 2021

1848 pro-Democratic political cartoon in which Democratic candidate Lewis Cass is boxing Whig candidate Zachary Taylor. Democratic vice-presidential candidate Samuel Butler looks on, while defeated candidates lie about: a Black character representing abolition, Martin Van Buren, and Millard Fillmore. The latter is saying “Curse the Old hoss wot a south paw he has given me!”

A southpaw is a left-handed person. The term is most often heard in baseball, in reference to left-handed pitchers. The paw is obviously a reference to the hand, but south poses a bit of mystery. It clearly is a reference to the fact that, for most people, the left is the less useful or dexterous hand. The choice of south is probably not due to any literal spatial direction but is rather probably a metaphor. South and north are opposites and in our culture we tend to orient things spatially in reference to the north; something that is the opposite of the norm is south.

The earliest known use of southpaw is from a 30 June 1813 article in Philadelphia’s the Tickler newspaper. The Tickler was a one-page broadsheet consisting mostly of advertisements and satirical “news” stories. Southpaw’s appearance is in a letter to the paper:

Being in a room the other night where HONEST BOB happened to come in contact with a late number of your useful paper, his Irish eye in the general glance over it chanced to rest on “Bow, Vow, Vow,” when the Pat-riot in the fulness of his HONEST heart, exclaimed, “Arrah, by my shoal, these Yaunkees are the divils boys at spaking V for W, so much that by the hill o’hoath their very dogs have pecked it up, for instead of barking, Bow, Wow, Wow, as they ought it’s——it’s——(growing impatient)—arrah luk here mon and convince yourself,” said he, holding up the Tickler, in the right paw, between the ceiling and the floor, and with the south paw pointing to the “bow, vow, vow.”

Picture a man holding up the 2 June paper in his right hand and pointing to an article that uses “Bow vow, vow!” with his left hand, or southpaw. The context is confusing, but it is in reference to this piece that appeared in the Tickler on 2 June 1813:

Bow vow, vow!

Any CURIOUS Lady, either at the helm of VIRTUE or of VICE, who, in seeking the gratification of her Curiosity by a peep into another person’s window,---especially while some of the children are undergoing discipline,-----should chance to be ‘kratz’d,’ by a favourite Dog, that may be too uncourteous to relish peeping, she may hear of a person well skilled in the art of murdering Dogs, by applying to Mr. Kratz!——More anon!

The bit about Mr. Kratz murdering dogs seems to have been a running, anti-Semitic joke, the context of which has been lost to the ages.

Southpaw doesn’t seem to appear in print again until 1848, when it appears in a political cartoon by Edwin Durang. The cartoon features Democratic presidential candidate Lewis Cass boxing Whig candidate Zachary Taylor. Whig vice-presidential candidate Millard Fillmore lies on the ground with a black eye, saying:

Curse the Old hoss wot a south paw he has given me!

There is an 1851 instance of a person being nicknamed South Paw. It appears in a story in the sporting newspaper the Spirit of the Times on 5 April 1851. The context is hunting in Texas. Presumably, the person so nicknamed is left-handed, but that’s not made explicit in the text:

“Come on, ‘South Paw’ I’ve got him.”

“Now,” thought I to myself, “somebody has got it into his head to call me by that name.” I did not get angry, however, but went up to him.

“Well, South,” said he, “dad burn my skin if it ain’t the poorest deer that ever this child killed.”

[...]

“Now, C——,” said I. “you have got into a way, lately, of calling me ‘South Paw,’ and as being as you have killed such a poor deer, I will call you ‘Poor Doe.’”

“’Greed!” said he, “I’d just as leave be called that as anything else.”

Finally, we get a baseball use of the southpaw in the New York Atlas of 12 September 1858. This is also the first known use of the term clearly being used to refer to a left-handed person, as opposed to one’s left hand itself or a blow from a left hand:

Hallock, a “south paw,” let fly a good ball into the right field, which was well stopped by Harrold, but not in time to put the striker out before reaching the first base.

And we get this use in the context of a boxing match, as opposed to a political street fight, in the New York Herald of 27 June 1860:

Ninth round—Davy was the first one on hand, and Mike came slowly up. The first named made several feints, and, evidently pitying his opponent, dealt rather mildly with him. After some sparring he planted his “south paw” under Mike’s chin, laying him out as flat as a pancake.

The earliest use of northpaw that I have found is from the Chicago Press and Tribune of 27 July 1859, in an article about US President James Buchanan shaking hands with citizens:

Men, women, and children crowded about the venerable Chief Magistrate, and the continual wagging of his north paw, together with the excessive heat, almost exhausted him.

It’s not surprising that northpaw comes later and is far less frequent than southpaw. It’s common for exceptional things to be marked linguistically, while the norm goes unmarked. Left-handed people are less common, so a term is coined to refer to them.

There is a tale that circulates in baseball circles that southpaw arose because of the “fact” that nineteenth-century baseball diamonds were often arranged so the batters would face east, to avoid looking into the afternoon sun. The pitcher’s left hand, or paw, would therefore be on the southern side. But as we’ve seen, southpaw did not originate in baseball, so that cannot be the origin.

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Sources:

“Adventures in Texas.” Spirit of the Times, 5 April 1851, 81. ProQuest.

“Base Ball Match Between the Manhattan and Independent Clubs.” New York Atlas, 12 September 1858, 5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Bow vow, vow!” The Tickler (Philadelphia), 2 June 1813, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Durang, Edwin Forrest. “Who Says Gas? Or the Democratic B-Hoy” (political cartoon). Abel and Durang, 1848. Library of Congress.

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

Letter. The Tickler (Philadelphia), 30 June 1813, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2011, modified September 2019, s.v. southpaw, n. and adj.; December 2003, modified June 2021, s.v. north, adv., adj., and n.

“The President Shaking Hands in the Whisky District. Chicago Press and Tribune, 27 July 1859, 3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“The Ring. Prize Fight at Hunter’s Point for Fifty Dollars a Side.” New York Herald, 27 June 1860, 8. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Image credit: Edwin Durang, 1848. Public domain image.

crocodile tears

1882 cartoon depicting former US President Ulysses S. Grant weeping over the persecution of Jews in Russia in a ploy to garner Jewish votes for his party in the 1884 presidential election. Grant is depicted dressed in a crocodile’s skin and holding a notice for a meeting in support of Russian Jews, while in the background is a reminder of his 1862 order excluding Jews from service in the U.S. Army.

12 November 2021

[13 November 2021: added reference to the French text of Mandeville. 15 November 2021: added reference to Latini.]

Crocodile tears are an insincere display of sadness or compassion. The phrase comes from the false belief that crocodiles either shed tears in mourning for their victims or that they use tears to lure prey to them. This belief appears in the medieval period but probably dates back into antiquity, although the phrase crocodile tears is more recent. While by no means restricted to women, over the centuries the idea of crocodile tears has often been used misogynistically to brand women as using feigned emotions to deceive men.

The notion of a creature shedding tears for its prey dates to at least the turn of the eleventh century when it appears in De rebus in Oriente miribilibus (The Wonders of the East). The anecdote appears in two manuscripts. One, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B.v., contains the story in both Anglo-Latin and Old English. The second is the Beowulf manuscript, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A.xv., where a slightly older Old English version appears. From Tiberius B.v.:

Itaque insula est in rubro mari in qua hominum genus est quod apud nos appellatur donestre, quasi divine a capite usque: ad umbilicum, quasi homines reliquo corpore similitudine humana, nationum omnium linguis loquentes cum alieni generis hominem uiderint, ipsius lingua appellabunt eum & parentum eius & cognatorum nomina, blandientes sermone ut decipiant eos & perdant. Cumque conprehenerint eos perdunt eos & comedunt, & postea conprehendunt caput ipsius hominis quem commederunt [sic] & super ipsum plorant.

Ðonne is sum ealand on þære readan sæ, þær is mon cynn þæt is mid us donestre genemned, þa syndon geweaxene swa frihteras fram þam heafde oð ðone nafelan, & se oðer dæl bið mannerlice ge lic & hi cunnon eall mennisc gereord. Þonne hi fremdes kynnes mann geseoð [þo]nne nemnað hi hine & his magas cuþra manna naman & mid leaslicum wordum hine beswicað & hine onfoð & þænne æfter þan hi hine fretað ealne buton his heafde & þonne sittað & wepað ofer ðam heafde.

(There is a an island in the Red Sea in which a type of human which is called by us Donestre, as if divine from the head to the navel, as if humans in the rest of the body in the likeness of humans, they speak in the languages of all nations; when they see a person of a foreign race, they will call upon them in their and language and the names of their parents and kin, flattering with language so that they are deceived and killed; and when they seize them, they kill and eat them, and afterward they take the head of the person whom they have eaten and cry over it.)

Illustration from De rebus in Oriente miribilibus depicting the Donestre. The three-part image shows a Donestre conversing with a man, then attacking and devouring him, and then weeping over the man’s head.

But the Donestre were not crocodiles. The legend attaches to the reptiles by c.1265 when it is mentioned in Brunetto Latini’s Li Livres dou Treasure. About a hundred years later it appears in Mandeville’s Travels. Sir John Mandeville was a fictitious English knight who supposedly traveled the world recording the wondrous things and people he saw. In actuality, the author, whoever that was, probably never traveled, assembling the text from various traveler’s tales and legends and from their own imagination. Appearing in the late fourteenth century, first in French and then English, the text was enormously popular, appearing in over 250 extant manuscripts in various languages:

En ceo pays et par toute Ynde y ad grant foisoun des cocodrilles, c’est une manere des longes serpentz si qe jeo vous ay dit cea en ariere, et par nuyt elles habitent en l’eawe, et par jour sur terre en roches et en caves, et ne mangent point par tout l’yver, ancis gisent en agone si come font les serpentz. Ceste serpent occist les gentz et les mangent en plorant.

In þat contre & be all ynde ben gret plentee of COKODRILLES, þat is in a maner of a long serpent as I have seyd before. And in the nyght þei dwellen in the water & on the day vpon the lond in roches & in Caues. And þei ete no mete in all the wynter, but þei lyȝn as in a drem, as don the serpentes. Þeise serpentes slen men & þei eten hem wepynge.

(In that country & and in all India is a great plenty of crocodiles, that are like the long serpent that I have mentioned before. And in the night they dwell in the water & in the day upon the land in rocks and in caves. And they eat no food in all the winter, but they lie as if in a dream, as do the serpents. These serpents slay men & they eat them weeping.)

The version where the crocodile lures its prey to it by feigning sadness and pity is recorded in Richard Hakluyt’s 1589 Principall Navigations. The anecdote appears in the account of John Hawkins’s 1564 expedition to the Americas:

In this riuer we saw many crocodils of sundry bignesses, but some as big as a boat, with 4. feet, a long broad mouth, & a long taile, whose skin is so hard, that a sword wil not pierce it. His nature is to liue out of the water as a frog doth, but he is a great deuouer, & spareth neither fish, which is his common food, nor beasts, nor men, if he take them, as the proofe thereof was knowen by a Negroe, who as he was filling water in the riuer was by one of them caried cleane away, and neuer seene after. His nature is euer when he would haue his praie, to crie, and sobbe like a christian bodie, to prouoke them to come come to him, and then hee snatcheth at them, and thereupon came this prouerbe that is applied unto women when they weep Lachrymaæ Crocodili, the meaning whereof is, that as the Crocadile when he crieth, goeth then about most to deceiue, so doth a woman most commonly when she weepeth.

And Henry Cockeram’s 1623 English dictionary includes a description of the crocodile that sounds an awful lot like the early medieval description of the Donestre:

Crocodile, a beast hatched of an egge, yet some of them grow to a great bignesse, as 10. 20. or 30. foot in length: it hath cruell teeth and scaly back, with very sharpe clawes on his feete: if it see a man afraid of him, it will eagerly pursue him, but on the contrary, if he be assaulted he wil shun him. Hauing eate[n] the body of a man, it will weepe ouer the head, but in fine eate the head also: thence came the Prouerb, he shed. Crocodile teares, viz. fayned teares.

The phrase crocodile tears itself appears by 1563, when it is used by Edmund Grindal, bishop of London, in reference to a man who had been excommunicated:

And yet I assure your Lordship, I doubt much of his Zeal. For now after so long Trial, and good Observation of his Proceedings herein, I begin to fear, lest his Humility in Words be a counterfeit Humility, and his Tears, Crocodile Tears, altho’ I my self was much moved with them at the first.

And while he never used the phrase itself, Shakespeare made reference to the notion of crocodile tears in several of his plays, perhaps most notably in his 1603 Othello, Act 4, Scene 1, where Othello dismisses Desdemona’s weeping as false:

Oh diuell, diuell:
If that the Earth could teeme with womans teares,
Each drop she falls, would proue a Crocodile.

Shakespeare’s references to crocodile tears have undoubtedly helped keep the idea and phrase in the popular imagination.

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Sources:

Cockayne, Oswald, ed. “De rebus in oriente mirabilibus.” Narratiunculae Anglice Conscriptae. London: John R. Smith, 1861, 65. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Cockeram, Henry. The English Dictionarie. London: Eliot’s Court Press for Edmund Weaver, 1623, part 3, unnumbered 1–2. Early English Books Online.

Fulk, R.D., ed. The Beowulf Manuscript. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 3. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2010, 24. London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A.xv, fol. 96v–106v.

Hakluyt, Richard. The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation. London: George Bishop and Ralph Newberie, 1589, 534–35. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Hamelius, P. Mandeville’s Travels, vol. 1 of 2. Early English Text Society, OS 153. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1919, 192. HathTrust Digital Archive. London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus C.16.

Latini, Brunetto. The Book of the Treasure—Li Livres dou Tresor. Paul Barrette and Spurgeon Baldwin, trans. Garland Library of Medieval Literature 90. Series B. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Mandeville, Jean De. Le Livre des Merveilles du Monde. Deluz, Christiane, ed. Sources d’Histoire Médiévale. Paris: CNRS 31, 2000, 452.

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

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

De rebus in Oriente miribilibus (The Wonders of the East). London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B.v., fol. 83r–v.

Shakespeare, William. Othello. Mr. William Shakespeares Comedie, Histories, & Tragedies (First Folio, New South Wales). London: Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623, 4.1, 330.

Strype, John. The History of the Life and Acts of the Most Reverend Father in God, Edmund Grindal. London: John Hartley, 1710, 78. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Image credits: Bernard Gillam, 1882, Puck magazine. Public domain image.

De rebus in Oriente miribilibus (The Wonders of the East). London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B.v., fol. 83v.

sleep tight

Erik (top) and Charles (bottom) sleeping tight. Two gray and white cats asleep atop a cat tree.

15 November 2021

People often say good night, sleep tight to those who are retiring for the evening, but why sleep tight? The meaning is obvious from the context, to sleep soundly and well, but tight usually means constricted or securely closed, and it’s not generally used adverbially. Fortunately, a look at the history of the word provides the answers. It comes out of an older adverbial use of tight with influence from the old miasma theory of disease.

Tightly in the sense of soundly or well dates to the turn of the seventeenth century. We see it in Ben Jonson’s play Every Man in His Humor, which was first performed in 1598, although the published script comes from 1601. In this passage the character of Giuliano is deploring his brother’s bad behavior, and when he says he shall heare on't, and that tightly too, that means he will give his brother a good talking to:

These are my brothers consorts these, these are his Cumrades, his walking mates, hees a gallant, a Caueliero too, right hangman cut, God let me not liue, and I could not finde in my hart to swinge the whole nest of them, one after another, and begin with him first, I am grieu'd it should be said he is my brother, and take these courses, well he shall heare on't, and that tightly too, and I liue Ifaith.

By the late eighteenth century, we see tight being used adverbially in the same sense. From James Fisher’s 1790 poem The Ale Wife’s Dying Advice:

When they grew doited wi’ the drink,
An’ scarce could either gang or wink,
But lie or tumble o’er a bink,
           I charg’d them tight,
An’ gart them pay o’ lawing clink,
           Mair than was right.

(When they grew impaired with the drink, and scarcely could either go or sleep, but lie or tumble over a bench, I charged them tight, and made them pay more coin than was owed for the boozing.)

The phrase sleep tight, meaning sleep soundly, pops up in North America in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The earliest use that I know of is in a 15 May 1866 diary entry by Susan Bradford Eppes:

All is ready and we leave as soon as breakfast is over. Goodbye little Diary. “Sleep tight and wake bright,” for I will need you when I return.

Another early use is in an 1873 poem titled G’anpa’s Nap, about an old man pretending to be asleep on his front porch while his grandchildren play around him:

“G’anpa, see! we’ve got some posies—
Nicest ones you ever saw!
Mamma gave us all these roses;
Why don’t you wake up, G’anpa?”

“Guess he’s sleep tight,” whispered Gracie;
So they sat down side by side,
Softly playing there, till Daisey
Clapped her little hands and cried.”

And the next year we get this letter, purporting to be from Scottish heather to American trailing arbutus, printed in the Iowa State Register of 5 June 1874:

An’ noo we mann bid ye a lang fareweel while ye tak’ yer summer rest. May ye sleep tight an’ ha’e money happy dreams.

Since plants don’t write letters to one another, this is clearly a fiction invented by the newspaper editors, and one should not read the faux Scottish dialect as being any kind of clue as to the phrase’s origin.

The origin of sleep tight is really quite straightforward. It only seems odd because, other than this phrase, we don’t use tight in this adverbial sense anymore. Sleep tight probably only survives because of the rhyme with good night.

But there is one twist that probably influenced the use of sleep tight, and that is the miasma theory of disease. Prior to the advent of the germ theory of disease, it was commonly thought that many diseases were caused by bad or foul air, miasma. This belief was popular well into the nineteenth century. In her 1860 Notes on Nursing, Florence Nightingale advises parents not to keep the nursery tight shut up. This advice is repeated, often verbatim, many times throughout the latter half of that century:

That which, however, above all, is known to injure children seriously is foul air, and the most seriously at night. Keeping rooms where they sleep tight shut up is destruction to them.

Of course, here the word tight is modifying shut up, but it could easily be re-analyzed as modifying sleep. While not the direct origin of the phrase sleep tight, repeated reading of the two words side-by-side probably had an influence on the phrase’s coinage and popularity.

Finally, the notion, often spread by tour guides of Elizabethan houses and frequently seen on the internet, that sleep tight comes from the fact that Elizabethan beds had a foundation consisting of a rope net, and when the bed began to sag, one would tighten the net, is simply not true. Beds were once made this way, but that has nothing to do with the phrase, which comes along centuries later.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Eppes, Susan Bradford. Through Some Eventful Years. Macon, Georgia: J.W. Burke, 1926, 328. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Fisher, James. “The Ale Wife’s Dying Advice.” Poems on Various Subjects. Dumfries (Scotland): Robert Jackson, 1790, 61. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Jonson, Ben. Every Man in His Humor (1598). London: Walter Burre, 1601, 1.4, sig. D2v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“A Letter from the Heather of Scotland to the Trailing Arbutus of America.” Iowa State Register, 5 June 1874, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Nightingale, Florence. Notes on Nursing. Boston: William Carter, 1860, 96. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Olmes, Elizabeth. “‘G’anpa’s’ Nap.” Zion’s Advocate (Portland, Maine), 17 December 1873, 4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. tight, adj. adv. and n.2, tightly, adv.

Martin, Gary. “Sleep Tight.” The Phrase Finder, n.d.

Image credit: David Wilton, 2021. Licensable under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Montana

A Gros Ventre Indian encampment on the Fort Belknap Reservation, Montana showing a woman seated in front of a hearth, man on horseback, an American flag, and tipis

12 November 2021

A number of Indigenous people dwell or have dwelled in the state that is now called Montana. These include the Blackfeet, Crow, Confederated Salish and Kootenai, Assiniboine, Gros Ventre, Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, Chippewa-Cree, and Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa. Additionally, peoples who have historically dwelled on the land include the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikira, Nez Perce, and Shoshone. This list is not all-inclusive.

As with many states, there is no single Indigenous name for the territory that is now known as Montana, which is a settler-colonist creation. The name Montana comes from the Spanish montaña (mountain), which in turn is from the Latin montanus, an adjective meaning mountainous. In Latin, montana could also function as a noun meaning mountainous region. The Spanish used the name montaña del norte to refer to the northern portion of the Rocky Mountains.

The name Montana first crops up in English use as a proposed name for what would eventually become the Idaho Territory (Cf. Idaho). From the Albany Journal of 12 February 1863:

The House proceeded to the consideration of the bill reported from the Committee on Territories, to provide for the temporary government of the Territory of Montana, contiguous to the State of Oregon and the Territory of Washington.

But within a month the Senate would change the proposed name to Idaho. From the Buffalo Morning Express of 4 March 1863:

The House concurred in the Senate’s amendments to the bill establishing the territorial government of Montana, changing its name to Idaho.

And the following year, Montana was again proposed, this time for the new territory that the was being organized out of a portion of the Idaho territory. From the Milwaukee Sentinel of 24 February 1864:

MONTANA—The new territory of Montana, which the present Congress is organizing, embraces all that portion of the Idaho territory east of the Rocky mountains.

It is this territory that became the state of Montana in 1889.

Of note is the US Senate debate of 31 March 1864 on organization and naming of the Montana Territory. The senators conclude that the name Montana is from Latin. Their conclusion is incorrect, but their discussion sheds light on attitudes toward naming places. Of particular note is the desire to appropriate an Indigenous name, creating the semblance of historical continuity between the Indigenous and settler-colonist and legitimacy for the latter. The debate also ignores the Spanish history of the name and region:

Mr. SUMNER. The name of this new Territory—Montana—strikes me as very peculiar. I wish to ask the chairman of the committee what has suggested that name? It seems to me it must have been borrowed from some novel or other. I do not know how it originated.

Mr. WADE. I cannot tell anything about that I do not know but that it may have been borrowed from a novel. I would rather borrow from the Indians, if I could find any proper Indian name.

Mr. SUMNER. I was going to suggest that in giving a name to this Territory, which is to be hereafter the name of a State of the Union, I would rather take the name from the soil, a good Indian name.

Mr. WADE. Suggest one and I will agree to it[.]

Mr. SUMNER. I am not familiar enough with the country to do so.

Mr. HOWARD. I will say to the Senator from Massachusetts that I was equally puzzled when I saw the name in the bill, and I labored under the same difficulty which my honorable friend from Massachusetts seems to be in. I was obliged to turn to my old Latin dictionary to see if there was any meaning to the word Montana, and I found there was.

Mr. SUMNER. What was it?

Mr. HOWARD. It is a very classical word, pure Latin. It means mountainous region, a mountainous country.

Mr. WADE: Then the name is well adapted to the Territory.

Mr. HOWARD: You will find it is used by Livy and some of the other Latin historians, which is no small praise.

Mr. WADE: I do not care anything about the name. If there was none in Latin or in Indian I suppose we have a right to make a name; certainly just as good a right to make it as anybody else. It is a good name enough.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

“By Telegraph.” Buffalo Morning Express (New York), 4 March 1863, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

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

“House of Representatives.” Albany Journal (New York), 12 February 1863, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1933, s.v. montanus, adj.

Malone, Michael P. and Richard B. Roeder. Montana: A History of Two Centuries. Seattle: U of Washington Press, 1976, 95–96. Google Books.

Milwaukee Sentinel (Wisconsin), 24 February 1864, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Montana Indians Their History and Location.” Montana Office of Public Instruction, Division of Indian Education, April 2009.

“Territory of Montana,” 31 March 1864. The Congressional Globe, Thirty-Eighth Congress, First Session, 1 April 1864, 1362.

Image credit: Unknown photographer, Detroit Publishing Co., 1906. Library of Congress. Public domain image.