piccaninny

14 February 2022

A piccaninny is a Black child. The word is offensive, especially when used by white people. Like many slurs, it began as a neutral term, but acquired its offensive connotation as it was used in offensive and condescending contexts. Piccaninny comes to English from a Portuguese-based West Indian creole. In Portuguese, a pequenino is a boy and pequeno means small. Piccaninny was first used in English by enslaved people in Barbados and other West Indian colonies, presumably brought there by Portuguese slavers or from Brazil.

The word appears in Richard Ligon’s 1653 A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados. From a passage about the daily life of enslaved women on the island:

At the time the wife is to be brought a bed, her husband removes his board, (which is his bed) to another room (for many severall divisions they have, in their little houses,) and none above sixe foot square) And leaves his wife to God, and her good fortune, in the room, and upon the board alone, and calls a neighbour to come to her, who gives little help to her deliverie, but when the child is borne, (which she calls her Pickaninnie) she helps to make a little fire nere her feet and that serves instead of Possets, Broaths, and Caudles. In a fortnight, this woman is at worke with her Pickaninny at her back, as merry a soule as any is there: If the overseer be discreet, shee is suffer’d to rest her selfe a little more then ordinary; but if not, shee is compelled to doe as others doe. Times they have of suckling their Children in the fields, and refreshing themselves; and good reason, for they carry burdens on their backs; and yet work too. Some women, whose Pickaninnies are three yeers old, will, as they worke at weeding, which is a stooping worke, suffer the hee Pickaninnie, to sit astride upon their backs, like St. George a horse back; and there spurre his mother with his heeles, and sings and crowes on her backe, clapping his hands, as if he meant to flye; which the mother is so pleas’d with, as shee continues her painfull stooping posture, longer then she would doe, rather than discompose her Joviall Pickaninnie of his pleasure, so glad she is to see him merry. The worke which the women doe, is most of it weeding, a stooping and painfull worke; at noon and night they are call’d home by the ring of a Bell, where they have two hours time for their repast at noone; and at night, they rest from sixe, till sixe a Clock next morning.

Piccaninny could also be used as an adjective for anything small, not necessarily a child, although this use has all but disappeared. From a 1707 description of the lives of enslaved people in the West Indies by Hans Sloane:

They have Saturdays in the Afternoon, and Sundays, with Christmas Holidays, Easter call’d little or Pigganinny, Christmas, and some other great Feasts allow’d them for the Culture of their own Plantations to feed themselves from Potatos, Yams, and Plantanes, &c. which they Plant in Ground allow’d them by their Masters, besides a small Plantain Walk they have by themselves.

By the early 19th century, the term had spread to Australia and New Zealand where it was used to refer to Aboriginal and Maori children. Here’s an example from the Sydney Gazette of 4 January 1817 in an article that references children in a residential school. When the Aborigine chief says the child “will make a good Settler” I don’t think the comment was actually meant in gratitude and pleasure:

The chiefs were then again called together to observe the examination of the children as to their progress in learning, and to the civilized habits of life.—Several of the little ones read, and it was grateful to the bosom of sensibility to trace the degrees of pleasure which the chiefs manifested on this occasion.—Some clapped the children on the head, and one in particular turning around towards the GOVERNOR, with extraordinary emotion, exclaimed “GOVERNOR,—that will make a good Settler—that’s my Pickaninny!”—and some of the females were observed to shed tears of sympathetic affection at seeing the infant and helpless offspring of their deceased so happily sheltered and protected by British benevolence.

Racism knows no bounds.

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Sources:

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, s.v. piccaninny, n.

Ligon, Richard. A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (1653). London: Humphrey Moseley, 1657, 47–48. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2006, s.v. piccaninny n. and adj.

Sloane, Hans. A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, vol. 1 of 2. London: 1707, lii. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

“Sydney.” Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Observer, 4 January 1817, 2. Trove.

Texas

Replica of the 1690 Mission San Francisco de los Tejas constructed in 1935 by the Civilian Conservation Corps and located in the Mission Tejas State Park. A building in a wooded area, constructed of logs and mortar with a small steeple with a cross mounted on it.

11 February 2022

The name Texas comes from the Caddo word /táyšʔ/ meaning friend, ally. The terminal /s/ in the Spanish and English spelling represents the Spanish plural. The name was applied by the Spanish to the people of the Hasinai Confederacy, a Caddo-speaking nation, when the Spanish founded the Mission San Francisco de los Tejas near what is now Weches, Texas in 1690.

Other indigenous people who dwelled in what is now Texas prior to European contact included the Alabama, Apache, Atakapan, Bidai, Aranama, Comanche, Choctaw, Coushatta, Jumano, Karankawa, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Tonkawa, and Wichita.

The Spanish began exploring and claiming what is now Texas starting in 1528, but permanent European settlement did not begin until the closing years of the seventeenth century. Mexico, including Texas, gained independence from Spain in 1821. In 1836, Texas seceded from Mexico, and after a brief period of independence became the twenty-eighth state of the United States in 1845.

The earliest use of the name Texas that I have found in an English-language text is in a 1759 translation of Miguel Venegas’s A Natural and Civil History of California. The use here, however, is not yet Anglicized:

It is true, that this was in some measures impeded by two conquests, which the government of Mexico had undertaken with great vigour: the first was the garrison of Panzacola, on the Gulf of Mexico, in the province of Florida [...] The second was that of the province of Los Tezas, lying North of New Mexico, in 95 degrees west longitude, or in 265 eastern longitude, from the same common meridian; and in 38 degrees north latitude. In the first conquest, above a million of dollars was expended in the 1700, only Panzacola might not fall into the hands of other nations. Great advantages were also expected from the conquest of Los Texas, which was carried on without any regard to the expence.

The name is fully Anglicized by the end of the eighteenth century. For example, Texas appears in Jedidiah Morse’s 1797 The American Gazetteer, both on a frontispieces map and in an entry for San Antonio:

ANTONIO, ST. a town in New-Mexico, on the W. side of Rio Bravo River, below St. Gregoria. Also, the name of a town on the river Hondo, which falls into the Gulf of Mexico, N.E. of Rio de Brava; and on the eastern side of the river, S. by W. from Texas.

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Sources:

Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.

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

Morse, Jedidiah. The American Gazetteer. Boston: S. Hall, et al. 1797. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Venegas, Miguel. A Natural and Civil History of California, vol. 1 of 2. London: James Rivington and James Fletcher, 1759, 275–76. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Photo credit: Larry D. Moore, 2014. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

phony / phoney

Image of the Phony War at the start of WWII in Europe from September 1939 to May 1940 when there was little actually fighting on the western front. Two British soldiers sitting beside two French airmen outside a dugout labeled “10 Downing Street.”

10 February 2022

Phony, also commonly spelled phoney, means something not genuine, a fake, a sham. It is an Americanism, dating to the end of the nineteenth century, but it has its origin in the Irish fáin(n)e, meaning ring, as in a piece of jewelry.

The journey from jewelry to a false article is by way of a confidence game, the fawney-rig, that started to be practiced in the late eighteenth century. George Parker’s 1781 A View of Society and Manners in High and Low Life describes the scam:

THE FAWNEY RIG.

A RING-DROPPER; a fellow has gotten a woman’s pocket, with a scissars [sic], some thread, a thimble, and a housewife with a ring in it, which he drops for some credulous person to pick up.

As soon as he has got some gudgeon to bite at his hook and to pick up his pocket, he claims halves for being present, and they begin to examine it.

The Fawney says, “I dare say some poor woman has lost her pocket. Good gracious! here’s a ring, and her wedding-ring too, for here’s a poesy;” then reads, “Love me and leave me not,” or some such thing.

He then comes the stale story of, “If you will give me eight or nine shillings for my share, you shall have the whole.”

If you accede to this and swallow his bait, you have the ring and pocket, worth about sixpence; for tho’ the ring itself cost as much, yet the intrinsic value of it is not a halfpenny.

Queer as this rig may appear, there is a large shop in London were these kind of rings are sold, for the purpose of going on the Fawney.

Someone who practiced this con might also be called a fawney-dropper or fawney-bouncer.

The shift to the <ph-> spelling occurred when the word crossed the Atlantic. As a name for the confidence game, the term did not gain a purchase on American soil, but the more general sense of not genuine or fake did. Phony, in the sense we know it today, is clearly in place by the 1890s, but there are a few ambiguous early uses.

The OED has a citation from an 1862 US Civil War letter that reads:

They keep skirmishing along the line. I will tell you of a phoney scrape and also a serious one, too.

But phoney here may be a variant spelling of funny.

Another ambiguous use is from the Detroit Plaindealer of 4 April 1890, in an article telling of two telephone operators who were married to each other over the telephone. The phoney marriage is clearly a play on telephone, but what is not clear is whether the sense of not genuine is also there as half of a double entendre:

Minnie Worley, aged 22, Telephone Exchange operator at South Bend, and Frank Middleton, aged 25, in a like position at Michigan City, became acquainted over the wires during their night watches. Finally Middleton proposed in fun that they get married by telephone, and Minnie consented. A Michigan City justice was called in and performed a legal ceremony, but without the necessary state license. It was passed off as quite a “phoney” joke; but it grows serious, when eminent legal council pronounce it valid and that Justice Dibble who performed the ceremony is liable to imprisonment for doing so without the necessary license.

But there is an unambiguous use of phony in a description of a baseball game in Washington, DC’s Evening Star of 7 May 1892:

Chamberlain’s home run that won the 7 to 2 game for the Cinncinnatis from Washington was a little on the phony order. Ordinarily it would have been a rattling good single, but Donovan, in left, knew that a single meant a run, and he took a dying chance to get it. He jumped forward to get it upon the fly, but it hit right in front of him and went on clear down to the hand ball court and four runs were scored.

That’s the genuine origin.

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Sources:

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, s.v. phoney, n.1.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2006, s.v. phoney, adj. and n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. fawney, n.

“Quite ‘Phoney.’” Plaindealer (Detroit), 4 April 1890, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Parker, George. A View of Society and Manners in High and Low Life, vol. 2. London: 1781, 166–67. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

“Weekly Ball Talk.” Evening Star (Washington, DC), 7 May 1892, 12. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Geoffrey Keating, War Office photographer, 28 November 1939. Imperial War Museum (IWM O 344). Public domain image.

Iowa

Detail of an 1844 map of Iowa

9 February 2022

Iowa originally referred to an Indigenous people who spoke Chiwere, a Siouan language. The name was applied to the Iowa River and subsequently to the surrounding territory. The origin of the name Iowa is uncertain, but like the names of many North American Indigenous peoples, it was probably first applied to them by outsiders and then adopted by the people themselves. It may come from ayúba, meaning sleepy ones in the Santee Dakota, another Siouan dialect, or it may come from an Algonquian form such as the Miami-Illinois /aayohoowia/. The Iowa people today often use the spelling Ioway in reference to themselves to differentiate themselves from the state, although their official name remains Iowa.

The first Europeans to explore the area that is now the state of Iowa were Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette in 1673. Originally claimed by France, the territory was ceded to Spain in 1762 by the Treaty of Fontainebleau following the end of hostilities in the French and Indian War. France regained the territory from Spain in the 1800 Treaty of San Ildefonso, in which Napoleon traded territory in Tuscany for Louisiana—Napoleon was trying to re-establish French power in North America. But following the collapse of the French attempt to re-establish control of what had been the economic powerhouse of French colonies in the Americas, Saint-Domingue (Haiti), Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803. The United States formally established the territory of Iowa in 1838, and it became the twenty-ninth state in 1846.

The name Iowa appears in English in 1797 as the name of the Iowa River. From Jedidiah Morse’s The American Gazetteer of that year:

IOWA, a river of Louisiana, which runs south-eastward into the Mishiippi, in N. lat. 41° 5´, 61 miles above the Iowa Rapids, where the E. side of the river is the Lower Iowa Town, which 20 years ago could furnish 300 warriors. The Upper Iowa Town is about 15 miles below the mouth of the river, also on the E. side of the Missisippi, and could formerly furnish 400 warriors.

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Sources:

“About Us.” The Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. Accessed 31 December 2021.

Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004, s.v. Iowa.

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

Morse, Jedidiah. The American Gazetteer. Boston: S. Hall and Thomas and Andrews, 1797, s.v. Iowa. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Image credit: J. Calvin Smith (John Calvin), 1844. Library of Congress. Public domain image.

peloton / platoon

A peloton of bicyclists. A pack of cyclists on a leg of the 2005 Tour de France. Lance Armstrong is in the center of the photo, wearing the yellow jersey. Armstrong would win the tour, his seventh victory in the race, only to later have the title stripped from him because of doping.

8 February 2022

A platoon is a small unit of soldiers. In early English use, it referred to a detachment of musketeers that could be used to strengthen weak points in a defense, but in current use platoon refers to an infantry unit, which in the US Army consists of about thirty-five soldiers, divided into three squads, and led by a lieutenant. In non-infantry units, a platoon is a similarly sized unit; an artillery platoon, for example, might consist of three howitzers and their crews, and an armor platoon might consist of four tanks and their crews.

Like many military terms, platoon comes into English from French, specifically the French peloton, literally meaning a little ball. The literal sense of peloton appears in Middle French by 1417, and by 1572 the variant ploton was being used to refer to a unit of soldiers, a small “ball” of soldiers. Both forms were borrowed into English, and ploton was further transformed into platoon.

Platoon, with the spelling platton, appears in English by 1547 when Edward Seymour, lord protector of England during the minority of his nephew King Edward VI, used it in a description of military organization:

These Squadrons make up a Brigade, to be drawn up as followeth, viz. Ten Corporalships of Musqueteers being 34 Rots, divided into five Plattons, every Platton being nine or so in front, led by a Major, and every division by a sufficient Commander.

The platoon spelling is in place by the beginning of the eighteenth century when it, along with peloton, appears in a 1702 military dictionary:

Platoon, or rather Peloton. A small square Body of Musketiers, such as is us’d to be drawn out of a Batallion of Foot, when they form the hollow Square to strengthen the Angles. The Granadiers are generally thus posted. Peloton is the French Word, from which we took it, and the vulgar corruption has brought it to be pronounc’d Platoon.

Military use of peloton faded away in favor of platoon, but the French word was reintroduced into English via the world of cycling, where it refers to the main pack of cyclists in a race, a metaphorical “ball” of racers. This use appears by 1893 when it is used in a description of a bicycle race in Paris:

No sooner, however, had the pacemakers, Girardot and Willaume on their tandem, taken the lead, than the pace was quickened, and Stéphane, Huzelstein, and Lumsden led the “peloton” round the third lap in 31 1-5sec.

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Sources:

“Cycling in Paris.” New York Herald (European Edition, Paris), 25 September 1893, 3. Gale Primary Sources: International Herald Tribune Historical Archive, 1887–2013.

A Military Dictionary. Explaining All Difficult Terms in Martial Discipline, Fortification, and Gunnery. London: J. Nutt, 1702, s.v. platoon. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2005, s.v. peloton, n.; June 2006, platoon, n.

Seymour, Edward (1547). In David Lloyd. State-Worthies, or, the States-Men and Favourites of England Since the Reformation. London: Thomas Milbourne for Samuel Speed, 1670, 174. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Photo credit: anonymous photographer, 2005. Public domain photo.