tit for tat

6 September 2022

Uncle Sam is standing on a “U.S. Home Market” wharf, stocked with commodities. On the right, on another wharf, is a German man next to a barrel of beet sugar; in the background, is a French man and a Belgian woman next to boxes of wine.

“The Grand Old Game of Tit for Tat.” An 1895 political cartoon critiquing U.S. tariffs by showing Uncle Sam refusing to accept imports from France and Germany because its home market is so large it does not need foreign trade.

Uncle Sam is standing on a wharf labeled the “U.S. Home Market” which is stocked with commodities. On the right, on another wharf, is a German man next to a barrel of beet sugar; in the background, on another wharf, is a French man and a Belgian woman next to boxes of wine.

Tit for tat is a reciprocal retaliation, a response equal in severity to the original injury. Both tit and tat literally refer to light blows or strokes. So, tit for tat is literally an equal exchange of blows. The terms and their association with one another date to the mid fifteenth century, and the idiom, in its familiar form of tit for tat, comes along a century later.

Tit originally appears as tip in a poem by Charles, Duke of Orleans. Charles was captured at the battle of Agincourt in 1415 and held as a prisoner in England for twenty-five years, during which time he wrote hundreds of poems, in both French and English. During the course of his imprisonment, he became quite skilled and fluent in English. (Like many high-ranking noble prisoners, his imprisonment was in relative luxury, and he was allowed a fair degree of movement and socializing with English nobles, but as the head of a political faction in France and one in line for the French throne, he was considered too dangerous to ransom back to France.) The poem, recorded c.1450, and bearing the modern title of “The Beginner,” is rather misogynistic and classist:

The marchaunt wijf/nay þe doughter of burgeys
With giftis grete to fresshe them in a-ray
So maist thou when ther fauoure best y gesse
But what a cherlis doughtir dawbid in clay
As strokis grete not tippe. nor tapp/do way
But loke who that most fowlist kan bigynne
The rewdisshe child so best lo shalle he wynne

(You may greet the merchant’s wife, undoubtedly the daughter of a burger, by surprising her with gifts of adornment when you correctly guess her disposition toward you, but what moves a churl’s daughter, daubed in clay, are great strokes, not tip, nor tap, but look to who the most foulest can best deceive the uncouth child, and lo shall he win.)

While Charles does not use the construction tip for tat, his wording hints that the idiom may have been in use this early, although we cannot say that for certain.

The idiom, however, is definitely in place a century later, with tit substituting for tat, reduplicating the consonant. Poet John Heywood uses it in a 1546 humorous dialogue containing many such phrases:

Mark ye, how she hitteth me on the thu[m]bs (quoth he)
And ye taunt me tyt ouer thumb (quoth she)
Sens tyt for tat (quoth I) on euen hand is set,
Set the hares head agaynst the goose ieblet.

(Mark you, how she hits me on the thumbs, said he
And you reproach me for a tit on the thumb, said she
Tit for tat means, said I, on equal terms,
Set the hare’s head against the goose’s giblet.)

The modern translation does not do justice to the word play in the passage. Sens can mean both the sensation of touch, in this case physical pain, as well as meaning. And Heywood’s use of euen hand relates to the thumbs as well as the reciprocal nature of tit for tat.

It appears in another poem by Heywood published in 1560, this one an epigram about a thief who has been hanged:

Of one hanged. 43.

What faute had he done that was hangde yesterday?
Of any faute done by him I can nought say.
Two or three two peny tryfles were layd to hym,
But, his fayre gay hangde house, man, did vndo hym.
Here is tyt for tat measure met very trym:
First he ha[n]gd his house, now his house hath hangd hym.

Like his earlier poem, the word play is opaque to the modern reader. Hanged, in sixteenth-century English, could mean adorned or decorated as well as a means of execution. The thief, in this case, had been discovered by spending too lavishly after his theft.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Charles d’Orleans. “The Beginner,” The English Poems of Charles of Orleans, vol. 1 of 2. Robert Steele, ed. Early English Text Society, O.S. 215. London: Oxford UP, 1941, lines 147–53, 6. ProQuest. London, British Library, Harley MS 682.

Heywood, John. A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue Compacte in a Matter Concernyng Two Maner of Mariages. London: Thomas Berthelet, 1546, G4r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

———. A Fourth Hundred of Epygrams, Newly Inuented and Made by John Heywood. London: Thomas Berthelet, 1560, sig. B2r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. tippe, n.(2).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, January 2018, s.v. tit for tat, n., adv, and adj., tit, n.3; second edition, 1989, s.v. tip, n.2.

Image credit: Louis Dalrymple, 1895. Library of Congress. Public domain image.

tenterhooks

Cloth being stretched on a wooden tenter with the tenterhooks visible. An undyed cloth suspended on a wooden frame by small hooks.

Cloth being stretched on a wooden tenter with the tenterhooks visible. An undyed cloth suspended on a wooden frame by small hooks.

5 September 2022

To be on tenterhooks is to be strained, waiting impatiently. But what the heck is a tenterhook? The word is obviously a compound of tenter + hook, and hook is easy enough, but it’s the tenter that stumps most people, and the word is often misspelled tenderhook, in what is known to linguists as an eggcorn, a form of folk etymology where an unfamiliar word is re-analyzed and changed to something that seems familiar (e.g., acorn becomes eggcorn or tenter becomes tender).

A tenter is a framework used to stretch cloth for drying. The word appears in English in the late fourteenth century and is of uncertain origin, with no completely satisfactory Anglo-Norman or Anglo-Latin root available. But there are two main possibilities. The first is that it is a variation on the Latin tendere (to stretch)—it is from this root that we get the word tent, a shelter of stretched cloth or canvas—but the problem with connecting it to tenter is that there are no extant intermediate forms, such as *tentorem (stretcher). The other possibility is that is from the Anglo-Norman teint (dye), as dyers would have a need to stretch cloth for drying, but in this case the variety of vowel sounds used in different dialects resist associating tenter with teint.

There is, however, at least one Anglo-Latin use of tentum to mean a tenter. It appears in a will by a Norwich shopkeeper that is dated 23 September 1290:

Georgius de Jeluerton, in testamento suo, legauit Nicholao fratri suo totam seldam suam in Caligaria Norwyci et forcipes et cistam cum atilio ad eandem pertinenti, et legauit similiter eidem Nicholao totam tentam suam et placeam cum atilio eiusdem tente.

George de Yelverton, in his will, left to Nicholas his brother his shop in the bootmakers’ quarter of Norwich and his tongs and chest of tools, and all his tenter and place with the tools belonging to the tenter.

It’s not clear, though, whether this is an example of a Latin word that would eventually become Anglicized, or whether it is a Latinization of an existing English word. It predates any known English use by a century, and while that points to the first being the case, a gap of a century in medieval texts is not an insurmountable one.

In any case, tenter appears in English by about 1390, when it is used in The Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost, which despite its title is a devotional treatise and not a legal document. The passage also illustrates the antisemitic bias that is present in many medieval European texts:

And whon þe lewes hedden þus nayled Crist on þe cros as men doþ cloþ on a teytur, þei reisede him vp fro pe grounde to sette þe rode faste in a morteys þat was maad for þe nones.

(And when the Jews had thus nailed Christ on the cross as men do cloth on a tenter, they raised him up from the ground to set the cross fast in a mortise that had been made for the occasion.)

And we get tenterhook about a century after that. It appears in the 1480 Wardrobe Accounts of King Edward the Fourth in an inventory:

Tapethokes, D.
Tentourhokes, CC.
Clovehamer, j.

(Tapestry hooks, 500.
Tenterhooks, 200.
Claw hammer, 1.)

Half a century later we see tenterhooks being used metaphorically to depict suffering, in this case the suffering of Christ on the cross. From Thomas More’s 1532 Confutacion of Frere Barnes Church:

And by this meane ye church is in the treasureys of our lord without spotte or & wryncle. And than if the place she is without spotte or wrinkle be there, what thing shall we praye for whyle we be there? That we may obtain pardon of our sinnes. What god doeth the pardon? It taketh out the spot, and he that forgueth stretcheth oute the wrinkle. And where is our wrinkle stretched out as it wer in the presse or te[n]terhokes of a stro[n]g fuller & upon ye crosse, that is to witte, upon that stretcher or tenter hookes, he shed out his blood for us. And ye o faithful people, know what witness ye beare unto the blood which ye have receiued.

Marke loe howe the churche is made without spot or wrinclele. She is stretched out in the stretcher or tenter hookes of the crosse, as a churche well washed and cleansed.

(And by this means, the church is in the treasuries of our Lord without spot or wrinkle. And then if her place is without spot or wrinkle, what thing shall we pray for while we are there? That we may obtain pardon for our sins. What good does that pardon do? It takes out the spot, and he who forgives us stretches out the wrinkle. And where is our wrinkle stretched out, as if it were in the press or tenterhooks of a strong clothmaker, and upon the cross, that is, to wit, upon the stretcher or tenterhooks he shed out his blook for us. And you, o faithful people, know what witness you bear unto the blood you have received.

Mark, lo, how the church is made without spot or wrinkle. She is stretched out in the stretcher or tenterhooks of the cross, as a church that is well washed and cleansed.)

And the sense of waiting impatiently, being held in suspense—a specific type of suffering—is in place by the mid eighteenth century. From Tobias Smollet’s 1748 novel The Adventures of Roderick Random:

Upon which he stared in my face for some time, and then asked if I was an Englishman.—I answered in the negative.—“You are from Ireland then, Sir, I presume, (said he.)” I made the same reply. “O! perhaps (said he) you was born in one of our settlements abroad.”—I still answered no.—He seemed very much surprized, and said, he was sure I was not a foreigner. I made no reply, but left him on the tenter-hooks of impatient uncertainty.

Being on tenterhooks is, therefore, a fossilized survivor. We know what the phrase means from the context in which it appears, even if we have no clue as to what a tenterhook is.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Anglo Norman Dictionary, 1992, s.v. teint.

“The Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost.” Yorkshire Writers, vol. 1 of 2. Horstmann, Carl., ed. London: S. Sonnenschein, 1895, 361. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Eng. poet. a.1 (Vernon). HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, 2013, s.v. tenta (tentum), n. Database of Latin Dictionaries, Brepols.

“Item 24, 23 September 1290.” The Records of the City of Norwich, vol. 2 of 2. John Cottingham Tingey, ed. Norwich: Jarrold and Sons, 1910, 14. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. tentour, n.(2).

More, Thomas. “The Confutacion of Frere Barnes Church” (1532). The Workes of Sire Thomas More, Knight. London: John Cawod, John Waly, and Richard Tottell, 1557, 797. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. tenterhook, n., tenter, n.1.

Smollett, Tobias George. The Adventures of Roderick Random, vol. 2 of 2. London: J. Osborn, 1748, 94. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (EEBO).

“The Wardrobe Accounts of King Edward the Fourth” (1480). Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York. Nicolas Harris Nicolas, ed. London: William Pickering, 1830, 139. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Chiome-gold, 2016. Public domain image.

swashbuckler

Illustration depicting d’Artagnan and the three musketeers from an 1894 edition of Alexandre Dumas's novel. Four soldiers in early seventeenth-century dress walking arm-in-arm down a street, one holding four swords aloft.

Illustration depicting d’Artagnan and the three musketeers from an 1894 edition of Alexandre Dumas's novel. Four soldiers in early seventeenth-century dress walking arm-in-arm down a street, one holding four swords aloft.

2 September 2022

Today we associate swashbuckling with the exploits of Elizabethan sea heroes, like Francis Drake, and pirates plundering the Spanish Main, especially as they are portrayed in Hollywood films by the likes of Errol Flynn and Johnny Depp. But exactly what is a swashbuckler?

A swashbuckler is not merely a swordsman, but one full of swagger and braggadocio. In later use, after swords and bucklers fell out of fashion, it came to mean any braggart or bully. The word is literally a compound of swash + buckler. A swash is a swordsman, and the verb to swash is to make a sound like a sword beating on a shield, and a buckler is a small shield, one favored by swordsmen to ward off the blows of their enemies while being light and small enough so as not to impede their own sword strokes.

Swash is an echoic word that appears in writing about the same time as the full swashbuckler, that is the mid sixteenth century. We see it in a 1549 translation of Erasmus’s The Praise of Folie:

But Counsaile in warres (saie they) is of great importaunce, and as for that I sticke not muche, that counsaile in a capitaine is requisite, so it be warlyke, and not philosophicall. For commenly thei that bringe any valiant feate to passe, are good blouddes, venturers, compaignions, swasshes, dispatchers, bankrowtes, with suche lyke, and none of these Philosophers candel wasters.

And it appears twice in a 1556 translation of Rudolf Gwalther’s Antichrist, a tract about the corruption of the Church:

And the roofe of the churche maketh a dynne, wyth their synging & organe pyping: so that if a man marke euery one of their knackes þ[e] right kynde, all their god seruice is rather like the ruffling and ioyly swashing of a princes courte, than the forme of religion.

And:

I speake not now of mytred bishoppes, and swashing abbottes, which wilbe called and regarded as princes, and kepe astate as if they were Lordes.

Buckler dates to the fourteenth century. For instance, the General Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales says of the miller, in line 558, “a swerd and a bokeler bar he by his syde.”

The word swashbuckler itself is in place by 1562, when it appears in James Pilkington’s Aggeus and Abdias Prophetes:

God hath geuen man all hys creatures to serue for hys necessary vse: But too be a dronkarde, a hore hunter, a gamner, a swashebuckeler, a ruffin too waste hys money in proude apparel, or in haukinge, hunting, tennyes or in suche other vnprofitable pastimes, but onely for necessarie refreshinge of the witte after greate study or trauayle in weghty affayres, he hathe I saye not alowed thee one mite.

Another early use, this one from John Booker’s 1646 A Bloody Irish Almanack, is in the context of the Royalist forces during the English Civil War:

Gods Providence hath made those words true, for did we not first take Bristoll, then beleaguer Exceter, and now this present March have we not in Cornwall unhorsed these pure Swash-buckling Cavaliers, so that now they may see these words to their shame and Gods glory fulfilled.

Swashbuckling, as can be seen from these examples, was not considered an admirable trait.

But by the end of the nineteenth century the negative connotation had lessened considerably, and swashbuckling was being applied to romantic stories containing dashing feats of heroism. For instance, this theater review in the 6 December 1896 Philadelphia Inquirer says:

The success with which Mr. Stephens has caught the spirit of those romantic times is evident from the first. There is a “swashbuckling” scene in the second act, as I recall it[?], which could be entirely eliminted [sic] from the play to advantage, but it is easy to imagine that such scenes, too, were within the range of frequent occurrence at that time. Certainly Mr. Sothern’s conception of the hero has ample warrant in many of the characters of that age. The use of the sword was then the province of the gentleman as well as of the professional soldier, and was often the badge of his social rank. So that there is nothing inconsistent in the fact that a man of the hero’s rare and beautiful sentiment should at the same time be quick to quarrel.

And three weeks later, on 10 December 1896, the Colorado Springs Gazette gives a premature obituary to this literary genre:

A WANING FASHION

Is the “Swashbuckler Romance” Losing its Grip on the Public?

New swashbuckler romance is waning in favor in America. At last accounts it was losing ground in England too, for in November Marie Corelli’s latest novel was selling better than the spirited “Under the Red Robe” and “The Sowers.”

Of course, any diminishment in the popularity of the genre was temporary, and swashbuckling epics have graced literature and the silver screen to this day.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Booker, John. A Bloody Irish Almanack. London: John Partridge, 1646, sig. A.4r. Early English Texts Online (EEBO).

Chaucer Geoffrey. “General Prologue.” The Canterbury Tales. Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website.

Erasmus, Desiderius. The Praise of Folie. Thomas Chaloner, trans. London: Thomas Berthelet, 1549, sig. D3v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Gwalther, Rudolf. Antichrist. J. Olde, trans. London (Southwark): Christopher Trutheall, 1556, 138v, 147r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, swashbuckler, n., swashbuckling, adj.

Pilkington, James. Aggeus and Abdias Prophetes. London: William Seres, 1562, sig. S2v. Early English Texts Online (EEBO).

“Theatres.” Philadelphia Inquirer, 6 December 1896, 20. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“A Waning Fashion.” Colorado Springs Gazette, 20 December 1896, 10. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Image credit: Jules Huyot (engraving) and Maurice Leloir (drawing), 1894. Public domain image. Gallica Digital Library.

skin of one's teeth

A set of adult human teeth. Photo of the lower part of a person’s face with the mouth open and displaying the teeth.

A set of adult human teeth. Photo of the lower part of a person’s face with the mouth open and displaying the teeth.

31 August 2022

To escape by the skin of one’s teeth is to narrowly avoid some hazard. It’s an idiom, which by definition makes no literal sense; teeth, of course, don’t have skin. It’s an example of what happens when one attempts to translate an idiom word for word from one language to another.

Unlike many other idioms, however, we know its origin and how it became a fixture in the English language. The phrase is the result of overly literal Biblical translation. It first appears in the 1560 Geneva Bible in Job 19:20. This verse appears in the midst of a passage where Job is complaining about his trials and tribulations:

My bone cleaueth to my skin & to my flesh, and I haue escaped with the skinne of my tethe.

The phrasing was repeated, with one minor change, in the 1611 Authorized or King James Version:

My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.

Its place in this translation is what secured its place as an idiom.

But, as I said, it is an overly literal translation. The original Hebrew is בְּעוֹר שִׁנָּי (bĕʿōr šinnāi, with the skin of my teeth). The exact meaning of this Hebrew passage has been subject to much commentary and debate, but most scholars agree that it has nothing to do with escaping or avoiding hazards. The Latin Vulgate gives a different translation, which, regardless of whether or not it is an accurate rendition of the original Hebrew meaning, has the virtues of making sense and being internally consistent with the rest of the passage. Job 19:20 in that translation reads:

pelli meae consumptis carnibus adhesit os meum et derelicta sunt tantummodo labia circa dentes meos

(The flesh being consumed, my bone has adhered to my skin, and nothing but lips are left about my teeth)

Discuss this post

Sources:

The Bible: Authorized King James Version (1611). Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997, Job 19:20.

The Bible and Holy Scriptures Conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament. Geneva: Rouland Hall, 1560, Job 19:20. Early English Books Online.

Biblia Sacra Vulgata, fifth edition. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007, Job 19:20.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, s.v. skin, n.

Photo credit: Tomas Gunnarsson, 2006, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

scram

A button on a control panel of the Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1 (EBR-1) at the Idaho National Laboratory’s Atomic Museum that is labeled: “Scram. Reactor Shut Down.” The reactor was in operation from 1951–63.

A button on a control panel of the Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1 (EBR-1) at the Idaho National Laboratory’s Atomic Museum that is labeled: “Scram. Reactor Shut Down.” The reactor was in operation from 1951–63.

29 August 2022

To scram is to depart quickly from a place, and it frequently appears in the imperative. The etymology, like that of most slang terms, is not known for certain, but it is probably a clipping of the verb to scramble, perhaps influenced by the German verb schrammen, meaning to run away.

The earliest use of scram that I have found is in the form to scram and scrow, in a column by Walter Winchell that appeared in Variety on 20 April 1927. (The column probably appeared several weeks earlier in the New York Evening Graphic, the paper for which Winchell primarily wrote at the time, but I don’t have access to that archive.) The voice is that of Joe Zilch, one of Winchell’s fictional characters:

Well, anyway, honey started to cry, like she always cries, and I thought maybe she would scram and scrow on me back to her mother, who don’t like me because I’m an atheist.

Scrow has many different senses in various English and Scottish dialects, most commonly used to refer to a commotion or state of disorder, but the sense that seems to fit the context is its use as a verb meaning to scatter.

The following year Winchell would credit one of his Broadway sources, Jack Conway, with the coinage of scram, but I have been unable to find any instances where Conway is quoted using the word. We have no reason to doubt that Conway was Winchell’s source for the word, but he was probably just the conduit, not the actual coiner.

Scram and scrow make another appearance in Variety a year later on 14 March 1928, this time in an advertisement for the play Dressed to Kill:

They pull a job at a fur store which woulda worked but for the skirt, who is got a load of S.A., and she’s carrying’ a torch for some sap. But she is a ham and can’t go thru with it. The answer is that the mob is got to scram and scrow before the oppercays ankle along and in the end the big shot gets knocked off because the mob figures he crossed them on account of this femme, for whom he’s got a letch.

We see plain old scram in the comic strip J. Disraeli (Dizzy) Dugan, penned by Irving S. Knickerbocker, on 28 July 1928, in which Dugan, charged with keeping people off a private beach, tells a man to leave:

Say, Shrimp!—Don’t you believe in signs?!! Sneak! Scram!! On your way!

A four-panel, black-and-white Dizzy Dugan comic strip from July 1928 in which the main character uses the verb “scram” to order a man to leave a private beach, only to find the man is larger and more intimidating than he had thought.

A four-panel, black-and-white Dizzy Dugan comic strip from July 1928 in which the main character uses the verb “scram” to order a man to leave a private beach, only to find the man is larger and more intimidating than he had thought. He ends up walking away and letting the man stay on the beach.

With the dawn of the nuclear age in the 1940s, scram took on a new meaning, that of conducting an emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor. This sense is first recorded in the February 1950 issue of the journal American Speech:

One of the most interesting applications of all is the combination of the verb to scram with the noun level into scram-level, meaning the point of neutron intensity at which the reactor is “scrammed”—shut down, automatically or otherwise.

And later that year, this sense of scram began appearing in newspapers. From an Associated Press piece from 17 July 1950:

The reactor has a safety valve. This comprises two handles set on the wall. They are not electronic. They can be moved by human hands. They will dump a load of shot down a hole into the middle of the reactor.

This is no ordinary shot. It is boron-steel and the boron absorbs neutrons, atomic sparks which make the atomic heat chain reaction. The boron shot quenches the neutrons like water on a fire and just as fast.

The handles are named “scram control,” meaning the sort of danger that makes you want to run. This reactor cannot possibly explode, but it can melt, and that would cost millions of dollars, plus a risk of radioactive contamination at the site.

But oral use of this nuclear sense probably dates to the very first nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago in December 1942. An article on nuclear terminology written by Francois Kertesz in September 1968 for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory tells the story and gives the reason why such a shutdown is called a scram:

Another, still widely used term became part of the technical language at the birth of the atomic age. During the experiment that culminated on December 2, 1942 in the accomplishment of the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, a safety rod was held by a rope running through the pile and weighted at the opposite end. The young physicist in charge was told to watch the indicator; if it exceeded a certain value, he was to cut the rope and scram. Since then the term scram is used to designate the emergency shutdown of a reactor. Today the urgency is lost and the word scram indicates simply a fast-shutdown operation.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Blakeslee, Howard W. “New Atomic Plant Is Ready to Work” (Associated Press). Jackson Sun (Tennessee), 17 July 1950, 7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, s.v. scram, v.

Kertesz, Francois. The Language of Nuclear Science (pdf). Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL-TM-2367), 17 September 1968, 21.

Knickerbocker, Irving S. “J. Disraeli (Dizzy) Dugan.” Newspaper Enterprise Association. Sacramento Bee, 28 July 1928, comic section 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Lockard, E.N. “Fertile Virgins and Fissile Breeders: Nuclear Neologisms.” American Speech, 25.1, February 1950, 27. JSTOR.

“Overheard at the Double-Crossroads of the Underworld” (advertisement). Variety, 14 March 1928, 17. Variety Archives.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. scram, v.2, scram, v.3.; draft additions, 1993, s.v. scrow, n.

Winchell, Walter. “Walter Winchell and Joe Zilch” (2–4 April 1927). Variety, 20 April 1927, 31. Variety Archives.

Wright, Joseph. The English Dialect Dictionary, vol. 5 of 6. Oxford: Henry Frowde, 1905, 287–89, s.v. scrow(e, sb. and v., scroo, v. and sb., scrow, sb. and v.

Image credits: Scram button: Alan Levine, 2011, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license; Dizzy Dugan comic: Irving S. Knickerbocker, 1928, public domain image.