2 March 2022
The two-page spread in the March 1937 Harper’s Bazaar that launched the present-day sense of pizazz. Watercolor images of female models showing off the latest fashion accompanying a short article titled “This Thing Called Pizazz.”
Pizazz, as it is commonly used today, is a slang term for zest, energy, vitality, and glamor. It’s commonly found in reference to show business or fashion, but it can be used in just about any context. The origin of the term is unknown, but it is a bit odd in that in its early uses, in the phrase on the pizazz, it meant something quite the opposite, that is on the outs, an undesirable state. The origin is unknown, but it’s likely a nonsense word, similar to and possibly influenced by the earlier razzmatazz and like words.
There is an early, anomalous use of pizzazz in an article about a magic show in the 17 January 1898 issue of the Saint Paul Globe:
Two petite and shapely young women and two active and enthusiastic colored boys constituted Mr. Dixey’s only visible assistants. One of the colored boys, whom Dixey has christened “Pizzazzes,” borrowed the rings, watches and handkerchiefs from the audience, and the shapely young women in page costumes adorned the stage in the first part, and obediently and mysteriously vanished in mid-air upon subsequent occasions.
This use may be a one-off use, unconnected to the later slang term.
The phrase on the pizazz, often spelled on the pazazz, makes its appearance a decade later. From an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer of 15 November 1907 about a play titled The Chorus Lady:
The first act shows Patricia returning home from a tour of “imitation towns” with the “Moonlight Maids.” She explains that the manager “got chilblains” in the box office and that the show has gone on the “pazazz.”
And Rose Stahl, who played the character of Patricia O’Brien in The Chorus Lady in its London run is quoted using the phrase to refer to periods in her own career. From Vancouver, British Columbia’s Daily Province of 19 June 1909:
I started as a leading lady, and while I have had my ups and downs, while I have known what it is to be “on the pazazz” (out of work, stranded) as “Patricia O’Brien” would say, I have been a leading lady ever since.
A year earlier, on the pazazz is applied to a very different situation, a practical joke. From the Trenton Evening Times of 8 June 1908:
A water bomb will do the very trick. When I think of that fellow getting a douse of cold water on a freezing morning like this, it makes me larf already. Do you remember how we put that glee club’s practice on the pazazz that night below our window—gee, they never knew what struck them!
That next year, we see on the pazazz applied to the prospects of baseball teams. From the Nashville Tennessean of 31 May 1909:
At this stage of the milling the western clubs, Cleveland, St. Louis and Chicago, touted as Detroit’s most formidable foes, are all strictly on the pazazz and swiftly veering out of the running.
And later that year, the mayor of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania jocularly bans the wearing of straw hats after Labor Day, claiming that anyone who commits such a fashion faux pas is on the pazazz. From the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader of 14 September 1909:
WHERAS, Hay lids and straw hats are beginning to look like last year’s birdsnests, not to say what is technically known among good dressers as being “on the pazazz.”
And an “interview” with a chicken at a poultry show in Washington, DC’s Evening Star of 19 January 1912 has this:
“Cluck, cluck,” said a big barred Plymouth Rock, “this show business is on the pizazz. I have been caged up here three days, deprived of the society of my own dear wives and others, kept awake by staring people and street cars, and all I get out of it is that,” said the rooster, pointing with his bill to a bit of blue ribbon on the cage.
Being on the pizzazz enters the world of prescriptive linguistics in a tongue-in-cheek article in Ohio’s Mansfield News about the Clean Language League of America:
The Clean Language League of America, which is plum nuts about being dead set against slang, cuss words, risque stories, purple ragtime and wriggly cabaret shindigs—not because it cares a whoop, but because such things always sound like heck to strangers—held a wild-eyed jamboree in Chicago recently and, according to the New York Telegraph, cooked up plans for a grand hallelujah campaign to induce everybody to climb into the pure words wagon and swear off on throwing the lowbrow lingo. Quite a considerable bunch of language bugs took the splurge and the enthusiasm was all to the velvet.
According to the dope that was passed out by one of the high moguls, Tommy Russell, the main doings was to pick out a publicity gang which would have the job of throwing this line of bull into every state in the union, being particularly strong on the schools and colleges and not passing up the educational hang-outs for skirts. The side show of the movement will be to go after the kind of music that you hear in the all-night dumps and at public hog-rassles. Brother Russell declared, bo, that his crowd had already framed it up with some of the big guys in the music world to put the kibosh on this line of junk, and that it was only a question of time before they would have such pieces as “When I Get You Alone Tonight” completely on the pizzazz.
Use of on the pazazz extends into the 1930s. From the San Francisco Examiner of 24 February 1934 in an article about the opera Tannhauser:
The Lordly Landgrave plans a singing match, pledging Elizabeth to be the catch of him who shall intone the noblest lay. Toward Tannhauser the lady’s heart doth sway; but, while the others songs of virtue sing, our hero does a rather awful thing—he loudly shouts an air of ribald jazz that promptly puts the show on the pazazz!
But these early uses are all in the negative. Being on the pizazz is a bad thing. But around 1915, a positive meaning of pizzazz starts to develop. It first appears with the meaning of an expert or prime example. An article in the 16 August 1915 Kansas City Star has this headline about newspaper columnist George Ade, who was famed for his use of slang:
The Main Pazazz of the Quick and Ready Chatter Holds Up His Right Wing and Warbles “Never Again!”
We also see a reference to a racehorse named Pizazz in the San Francisco Chronicle of 9 October 1934. It is not uncommon for slang terms to make early appearances in the names of racehorses. The problem with these names, however, is that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to know what was intended by the use of the name. But racehorse names almost always carry positive connotations, and a sense of vitality and energy is plausible speculation.
But the earliest definitive use of pizzazz in print in its current sense is in the March 1937 issue of Harper’s Bazaar. It appears in a two-page spread advertising stylish fashions from various designers.
This thing called Pizazz
Pizazz, to quote the editor of the Harvard Lampoon, is an indefinable quality, the je ne sais quoi of function; as, for instance, adding Scotch puts the pizazz into a drink. Certain clothes have it, too.
No one has been able to locate a use of the word in the Harvard Lampoon, and the reference may be to a something spoken by one of its editors. The Harper’s Bazaar piece was widely quoted in newspapers, and immediately following, this sense of pizzazz starts appearing in print with great frequency. It’s clear that the Harper’s Bazaar piece put pizzazz on the map.
Sources:
“Actress Tells of First Success.” Daily Province (Vancouver, British Columbia), 19 June 1909, 5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“As Fowls See It.” Evening Star (Washington, DC), 19 January 1912, 10. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“At the Theaters.” Saint Paul Globe (Minnesota), 17 January 1898, 4. Library of Congress: Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, pizzazz, n. https://greensdictofslang.com/
“Jamaica Racing News.” San Francisco Chronicle, 9 October 1934, 18H. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Nix on the Slang Stuff .” Kansas City Star (Missouri), 16 August 1915, 14. NewspaperArchive.com.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2006, s.v. pizzazz, n. and adj.
“Proclamation.” Wilkes-Barre Times Leader (Pennsylvania), 14 September 1909, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Rice, Grantland. “Sportograms.” Nashville Tennessean, 31 May 1909, 10. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“Stageland Gossip.” Cincinnati Enquirer (Ohio), 15 November 1907, 9. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“Stories of the Town and Times” Mansfield News (Ohio), 7 December 1912, 8. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“‘Tannhauser’ in Entirety Broadcast by Metropolitan Opera Stars Today.” San Francisco Examiner, 24 February 1934, 8. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“This Thing Called Pizazz.” Harper’s Bazaar, 70.2693, March 1937, 116–117. ProQuest Magazines.
“Water Cure Put Peddler to Rout.” Trenton Evening Times (New Jersey), 8 June 1908, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Image credit: Harper’s Bazaar, March 1937. Fair use of a copyrighted image to illustrate the topic under discussion.
