son of a gun

November 22, 2021

22 November 2021

The epithet son of a gun is a euphemism for son of a whore or son of a bitch. It first appears in print in the opening years of the eighteenth century. There is this dialogue from the Observator of 27–31 January 1705 in which one interlocutor uses the phrase son of a whore, and the second euphemizes it to son of a gun:

Country-m[an]. Why can’t you let me Jest, you may talk in Earnest your self if you please; I was at a Coffee-House t’other Day, and there a Man was saying, that the Country-man, meaning my own Dear self, was become the Observators Jester; Aye says another, he’s the Observators Terræ Filius. What’s the meaning of that Cramp Name?
Obs[ervator]. A TerræFilius, is the University Merry-Andrew, the Fool in the Play, but the Genuine Signification of the Word is Son of a Whore.
Country-m. Did his Worship mean so? He’s a Son of a Gun for his Pains; and had I understood his Gibberish, I should have Rub’d down his Calves-hide for his Sauciness.

Why gun was chosen as the substitute for the offending word is unknown. It is probably just an arbitrary choice. But in this early use in the British Apollo of 7–9 July 1708, gun was chosen, at least in part, for the rhyme:

You Apollo’s Son,
You’r a Son of a Gun,
Made up with Bamboosle,
You directly I’le puzzel.
Pray how many Feet has a Louse.
Have recourse to your Head;
For there they were Bred;
You may look any where,
I believe they are there;
Let me have no shuffling Excuse.

There is this from the 1727 play La Parodia del Pastor Fido, a play that was performed in London in both Italian and in English. This passage is from a scene in which the characters are about to enter a cave in which Mirtello and his lover Amarilli are hiding. Mirtillo says:

Do not make so much Noise,
Mister Son of a Gun,
That here’s nothing mislaid.

The Italian version of the play reads fío d’una ditta, which literally means son of a business firm. Not being conversant in eighteenth-century Italian idiom, my best guess is that this is an idiom meaning son of a whore, as ditta is a feminine noun meaning firm or enterprise, in other words, a woman engaged in trade of a sort.

And this from Nicolas Babble’s 1757 edition of The Prater:

Before I turned the corner of the street I lodge in, I was overtaken by two rascally barbers boys, who jammed me between them, and besmeared me with powder; and while I was endeavoring to brush it off, a son of a gun of chimney sweeper covered one side of my coat with soot.

And this from John Dunton’s 1762 The Life, Travels, and Adventures of Christopher Wagstaff, Gentleman, in which the writer proposes that different classes and types of people be referred to as breeds of dog, such as “women’s men” and fops as lap-dogs, soldiers and sailors as bull-dogs, and lawyers as blood-hounds, thus confirming that in this case, at least, gun is a euphemism for bitch:

I will not needlessly detain the judicious reader with enumerating the many obvious uses and conveniences of such an arrangement as this; but will only add, that among the many considerable advantages this would not be the smallest—that hereby the use of sundry names and appellations, of which some are ridiculous, and others are at least equally odious, and at the same time of not one half the significance and pertinency as these dog-names, would for the future be happily superseded—such as sc--nd--l, v-ll--n, son of a wh-re, son of a gun, and son of a tin-tan-tinderbox. Upon the whole, it appears we cannot call names with any tolerable propriety and discretion but by some such method as that offered in this dissertation; and by consequence, it may follow that, whatever he may be besides, every mother’s son among us is a son of a b-tch.

Sometimes a false legend of a term’s origins has been around for years and writings and citations can be found, some quite old, that seem to bear out the legendary origin. Such is the case with the myth of a nautical origin of the phrase son of a gun. The nautical explanation is that in the age of sail, women—wives, mistresses, and sex workers—were frequently on-board ship when in port or sailing in home waters and occasionally children would be born aboard ship. Common sailors slept on the gun deck and when on board, their wives and mistresses would sleep there too. If a child was born on board, it would likely be born on the gun deck. If male, such a child was referred to as a son of a gun. But this explanation only dates back to the mid-19th century, well after son of a gun was in common use. Admiral William Henry Smyth wrote the following in his 1867 book, the Sailor’s Word-book, one of the primary sources for data on 19th century nautical lingo:

SON OF A GUN. An epithet conveying contempt in a slight degree, and originally applied to boys born afloat, when women were permitted to accompany their husbands to sea; one admiral declared he literally was thus cradled, under the breast of a gun-carriage.

It’s a neat story, but unfortunately, it’s not true. As we have seen, son of a gun is just a euphemism, nothing more.

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Sources:

Babble, Nicholas. The Prater, second edition. London: T. Lownds, 1757, 105. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

The British Apollo, or Curious Amusements for the Ingenious. No. 43, 7–9 July 1708, 5. Gale Primary Sources: Burney Newspapers Collection.

Dunton, John. The Life, Travels, and Adventures of Christopher Wagstaff, Gentleman, vol. 1, London: J. Hinxman, 1762, 117–18. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Observator, 3.83, 27–31 January 1705, 1. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.

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

La Parodia del Pastor Fido: A Comick Opera. London: T. King, 1727, 38–39. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Smyth, William Henry. The Sailor’s Word-Book. London: 1867, 638. Algrove Publishing—Classic Reprint Series, 2004.

Image credit: Gold West Photoplay Company and William Sherry Service, 1919. Public domain image.

Thanks to Elisa Brilli for assistance in the Italian translation.

Soho

November 19, 2021

19 November 2021

Soho is the name of neighborhoods in two major cities, London and New York. The names, however, have very different etymologies, although the name of New York’s Soho was undoubtedly influenced and popularized by the name of the London district.

Surprising as it may seem, London’s Soho takes its name from an Anglo-Norman hunting cry, given when releasing the hounds to alert the dogs to the presence of the rabbit or hare (cf. tallyho) The district, now very urbanized, was once a hunting ground for nobility living in London.

The cry first appears on a Scottish seal from 1307 that bears an image of a hare with the motto Sohou Sohou. And a manuscript on hunting from c.1420 by William Twiti, chief huntsman for King Edward II, and later amplified and extended, probably by John Giffard, has this to say about the cry:

And if ye hounte at the hare, ye shalle sey atte vncouplyng, hors de couple, avaunt!, and after, iij tymes, So-how, so-how, so-how! And ye shalle seye, Sa, sa, cy avaunt, so-how!
(And if you hunt the hare, you must say when uncoupling the hounds, uncouple forward!, and after three times, Soho, soho, soho! And you must say, Here, here, come on, soho!)

By the late seventeenth century, Soho had become the name for the district, a legacy from its former use as a hunting ground. A 1675 broadsheet advertisement for a riding academy, interestingly one that used mechanical horses, gives the academy’s location as:

In the MILITARY GROUND between LEICESTER-HOUSE and the SOHOE.

And in 1677, a biography of the thief Thomas Sadler, who gained infamy and was hanged for stealing the ceremonial mace from the Lord High Chancellor’s home while that eminence was asleep, refers to the district as Soe-hoe:

This is certain, That when he became Capable of Working, he was put forth to the Honest Laborious Trade of Brickmaking; which he followed for two or three years after the Dreadful Fire in Sixty Six, both at Knights-bridge, Soe-hoe, and other places neer the Town, and had gain'd the Creditable Repute of a Civil Industrious Youngman; till happening into the unhappy Acquaintance of a Lewd Woman in St. Gileses, she seduc'd him to the Expence of his Money, and neglect of his business; and brought him acquainted with a Gang of thieves.

2013 street map of New York City’s Soho district

New York’s Soho, on the other hand, has a much more prosaic origin. It’s an acronym for South of Houston Street. (Which, by the way, is pronounced /haʊ stən/, unlike like the city in Texas, which is /hju stən/. The street is named for William Houstoun, who spelled his name in various ways and represented Georgia in the Continental Congress and at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. The Texas city, in contrast, is named for General Sam Houston, the first president of an independent Texas.) The district, the South Houston Industrial/Study Area was defined in the early 1960s when it was proposed as a neighborhood ripe for demolition, to be replaced by expressways and middle-income housing, despite it being a thriving neighborhood of businesses and Black and Puerto Rican housing. The New York Times of 2 June 1963, describes the district, but does not yet use the acronym Soho:

The City Planning Commission, in its report to the Mayor, asserts the section—known as the South Houston Study Area—should be preserved for the 651 business establishments it says are flourishing there.
[...]
However, the Middle Income Cooperators of Greenwich Village, a citizens’ housing group that claims 5,000 members, is putting heavy pressure on the city to demolish the 12-block area and put up middle-income housing.
[...]
The Planning Commission’s staff found 60 per cent of the workers in the area to be Negro and Puerto Rican. These groups have a high unemployment rate in the city.
The report asserts that between 1954 and 1958 about 62,000 production jobs were eliminated in Manhattan and 12,000 more in other boroughs through attrition of industrial space. It cites the consequent increased unemployment and welfare expenses.
The South Houston Industrial Area extends from Houston Street south to Broome Street between Broadway and West Broadway. The commission says it is a thriving business community. Major rehabilitation, it adds, would result in rent increases that the businesses could not afford.

The proposed demolition never happened, but the gentrification did, with the industrial spaces turned into artist lofts before the artists were driven out by rising rents. The acronym Soho is in place by 1970. From the New York Post of 1 April 1970:

With the recent influx of galleries in the south of Houston St. area (now dubbed “Soho”), general interest in lofts is up again. And non-artists, charmed by the relative low rents and generous spaces, are now competing for the little space that’s left. This added to the area’s new-found glamor has started to raise the rents to uptown levels.

While the name of the New York City neighborhood does not directly come from the name of its London counterpart, its coinage and continued use was undoubtedly influenced by London’s Soho.

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Sources:

Academy. By the Kings Priviledge. London: John Wells, 1675. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Bain, Joseph, ed. “Seals Connected with Scotland, Unattached to Documents or Only to Fragments.” Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland, vol. 2 of 5. Edinburgh: H.M. General Register House, 1884, 539. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Burnham, Alexander. “Housing Dispute Put up to Mayor.” New York Times, 2 June 1963, 46. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. so-hou, int.

Mills, A. D. A Dictionary of London Place-Names, second ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010, Oxfordreference.com.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. Soho, n.2, soho, int. and n.1.

Sadler’s Memoirs: or, the History of the Life and Death of that Famous Thief Thomas Sadler. London: P. Brooksby, 1677, 3–5 (pages misnumbered, there is no page 4). Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Scott-McNabb, David. The Middle English Text of The Art of Hunting by William Twiti. Heidelberg: Winter, 2009, 17, 64. London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B.xii.

Solochek, Beverly. “The Lofty Approach to Living.” New York Post, 1 April 1970, 50 (Magazine page 6). Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Wright, Thomas and James Orchard Halliwell. “Le Venery de Twety.” Reliquiæ Antiquæ, vol. 1. London: John Russell Smith, 1845, 152. HathiTrust Digital Archive. London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian B.xii.

Image credit: Peter Fitzgerald, 2009, OpenStreetMap. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

soccer

November 18, 2021

18 November 2021

The sport known as football throughout most of the world is dubbed soccer in North America, where the word is used to differentiate the game from American-style football. In Britain and elsewhere, soccer is also occasionally used, but its use is rarer.

Soccer is a variation on Association football. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, two styles of football dominated, rugby football and Association football, the latter played professionally under the aegis of the Football Association, which codified the game’s rules. To differentiate the two styles, first university students then the population at large began to call them rugby or rugger and soccer. Eventually, as Association football achieved dominance, it became simply football in the UK, except when a term was needed to differentiate from rugby, in which case soccer would be used.

Varieties of football have been played since antiquity, but the modern game of Association football can be traced to 1863 and the founding of the Football Association in London. The term Association football appears by 1866, when it is used a name for the type of ball used in the game. From a 17 November 1866 advertisement in Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle:

FOOTBALLS and the LAWS.—JOHN LILLYWHITE has now ON VIEW a very large STOCK of the Rugby and Association FOOTBALLS, which are warranted to be of the best manufacture. The Association Laws (published by authority) price 6d, per post 7d; on cardboard for the use in the pavillion 1s, per post is 2d.

I have found a use of Association football referring to the game itself from 1871, although I’m sure antedatings can be found. It’s in a version of the rules of the game published in the United States that year. The rulebook, edited by Charles Alcock, the head of the Football Association, was intended to proselytize the game to American universities:

I will merely therefore remark that to play with the feet is the main object of Association Football. Hands should not and must not be used. Difficult at first it may seem, but the abolition of handling and patting the ball will be found in every sense conducive to a better and more scientific game.

Soccer, spelled socker, appears by 1885, at first in school slang. From a letter published in the Oldhallian, the journal of the Old Hall School, Wellington, Shropshire from December 1885 about the game as it is played at Oxford University:

The ’Varsity played Aston Villa and were beaten after a very exciting game; this was pre-eminently the most important “Socker” game played in Oxford this term.

Another early use of socker is from the Boys’ Own Paper of 6 April 1889:

In ’Varsity patois Rugby is yclept “Rugger,” while Association has for its synonym “Socker.”

The soccer spelling is in place by 1891.

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Sources:

Advertisement. Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle (London), 17 November 1866, 2. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.

Alcock, Charles W., ed. The Book of Rules of the Game of Foot Ball, as Adopted and Played by the English Football Associations. New York: Peck and Snyder, 1871, 13. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Letter. The Oldhallian, 5.6, December 1885, 171. Google Books.

“Our Open Column. Football at Oxford.” The Boys’ Own Paper (London), 6 April 1889, 431. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2016, modified March 2021, s.v. soccer, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. association, n.

Photo credit: Rick Dikeman, 1996. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

smoking gun

November 17, 2021

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.

Discuss this post

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

November 16, 2021

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.

Discuss this post

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.