slang

Meme displaying the character of Philip J. Fry from the cartoon television series Futurama with the caption, “I swear English is the only language where 50% of the words are slang.”

10 October 2022

Despite one noted etymologist claiming that the origin of the term slang “is known!” (exclamation point in the original), the origin of the term is not. Like so many slang words, the word slang itself does not have a known origin.

And the issue with slang is not just the etymology; exactly what constitutes slang is also hotly debated. Perhaps the best definition of slang is given in J.E. Lighter’s Historical Dictionary of American Slang, which glosses it as:

An informal, nonstandard, nontechnical vocabulary composed chiefly of novel-sounding synonyms for standard words and phrases.

I’ll leave the definition at that. Debate it amongst yourselves if you will. On to what we know about its etymology.

Slang once meant a narrow strip of land. This sense goes back to at least 1610, when it appears in a translation of William Camden’s Britannia:

From thence the shore is drawne in, whereby there runneth forth into the sea a certaine shelfe or slang, like unto an out-thrust tongue, such as Englishmen in old once termed a File.

But how this older sense relates the language sense, if at all, is not clear.

As for the language sense, Green’s Dictionary of Slang records the following from Henry Fielding’s 1734 play Don Quixote in England as being the first use of slang to mean “illiterate, ‘low’ language.” The character of Squire Badger says:

Ay, Sir, and you wou’d have been merry, if you had been in such Company as I have been in. My Lord! ’Sbud! where's my Lord? ’Sbud! Sir Thomas, my Lord Slang is one of the merriest Men you ever knew in your Life; he has been telling me a Parcel of such Stories!

Badger uses Lord Slang three times in the play. The other two are:

Oons! what's the Matter with you all? Is the Devil in the Inn that you won’t let a Man sleep? I was as fast on the Table as if I had been in a Feather-bed.—’Sbud, what’s the matter? Where’s my Lord Slang?

And:

Sir, your Daughter, Sir, is a Son of a Whore, Sir. ’Sbud, I’ll go find my Lord Slang. A Fig for you and your Daughter too; I’ll have Satisfaction.

On its face, Lord Slang would seem to be a proper name of a fictitious character, but there is no such character in the play. Lord Slang seems to be a representation of colorful and salty language, especially as Badger’s speech is peppered with profanity, such as ‘Sbud (God’s blood). Green’s definition seems appropriate, although Fielding’s use of the word is not quite the same as our current use.

The word in the sense of the vocabulary of the underworld is first recorded in William Toldervy’s 1756 novel The History of Two Orphans:

Thomas Throw had been upon the town, knew the slang well; had often sate a flasher at M‑‑d‑‑g‑‑n’s, and understood every word in the scoundrel’s dictionary; had as much assurance as any fashionable fellow in London; for which he had been kicked out of all the houses from buttock of beef island, to the Brawn’s-Head: But, at this fortunate table, Tom found himself considered a man of damn’d good humour, and hellish high wit.

The phrase sate a flasher is a bit of a cipher. A flasher would be a hawker at a casino or gaming house, and sate refers to sitting, as in having as an occupation. So, Thomas had at one point served as a flasher, or worked the door at a gambling house, and therefore was well acquainted with the vocabulary of the underworld.

Etymologist Anatoly Liberman is the one who claims that the origin of slang has been discovered, but his explanation, while plausible, is speculative. In his 2008 Analytical Dictionary of English Etymology, Liberman resurrects an etymology that had been originally suggested at the turn of the twentieth century. This explanation would have slang coming from the narrow strip of land sense by way of those who travel about the land, especially traveling vendors, then moving on to the patter of vendors trying to make a sale, and then to low-class vocabulary in general.

The major problem with this proposed etiology is that slang meaning a seller of goods is not recorded until the nineteenth century, well after the informal vocabulary sense was well established. It seems more likely that the sales sense comes from the vocabulary sense rather than the reverse. Salesmen and hawkers used slang, therefore they started to be called slang. Of course, it’s possible that the sales sense was simply not recorded in published works. And Toldervy’s 1756 use in connection with flasher, hints that the two senses are related. But the evidence for Liberman’s explanation is tenuous.

And no, slang is not a contraction of short language.

In the end we’re left with “origin unknown.” Usually, such a conclusion is unsatisfying, but for slang, it is rather appropriate.

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Sources:

Camden, William. Britain, or a Chorographicall Description of the Most Flourishing Kingdomes. Philemon Holland, trans. London: George Bishop and John Norton, 1610, 715. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Fielding, Henry. Don Quixote in England, a Comedy. London: J. Watts, 1734, 47, 57, and 59. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

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

Liberman, Anatoly. An Analytical Dictionary of English Etymology. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 2008, 189–96.

———. “The Origin of the Word ‘Slang’ Is Known!” OUPBlog, 28 September 2016.

Lighter, J.E. Historical Dictionary of American Slang, A–G, vol. 1 of 2. New York: Random House: 1994, xi.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. slang, n.2, slang, n.3, slang, adj. (and adv.).

Toldervy, William. The History of Two Orphans, vol. 1 of 4. London: William Owen, 1756, 68. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Image credit: imgflip, 2022.

eggcorn

An example of an eggcorn. A café chalkboard where the French term prix fixe (fixed price) has been altered to prefixed.

7 October 2022

An eggcorn is an example of a type of folk etymology where the listener re-analyzes an unfamiliar word or phrase by changing it to something similar that is more familiar sounding. It is the alteration of a word or phrase to make it seem more sensical. Hence acorn becomes eggcorn or asparagus becomes sparrow-grass.

The linguistic term eggcorn, as opposed to the folk-etymology eggcorn for acorn, was coined by linguist Geoffrey Pullum in response to a 23 September 2003 post by Mark Liberman on the Language Log blog:

Chris Potts has told me about a case in which a woman wrote “egg corns” for “acorns.” This might be taken to be a folk etymology, like “Jerusalem” for “girasole” in “Jerusalem artichoke” (a kind of sunflower). But it might also be treated as something like a mondegreen […] the kind of “slip of the ear” that is especially common in learning songs and poems. Finally, it's also something like a malapropism, where a word is mistakenly substituted for one of similar sound shape.

Although the example is somewhat like each of these three named categories of errors, it's not exactly any of them. Can anyone suggest a better term?

Within a week, Pullum had suggested that they be called simply eggcorns. The name stuck.

As for the folk etymology, people have been calling acorns eggcorns since at least 1844, when a line from a 16 June 1844 letter by an S.G. McMahan reads:

I hope you are harty as you ust to be that you have plenty of egg corn bread which I cann not get her and I hope to help you eat some of it soon.

Other examples of eggcorns include:

• Old-timer’s disease for Alzheimer’s disease

• Cold slaw for cole slaw

• Mute point for moot point

• One fowl swoop for one fell swoop

Cf. crash blossom.

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Sources:

Liberman, Mark. “Egg Corns: Folk Etymology, Malapropism, Mondegreen, ???.” Language Log (blog), 23 September 2003, updated 30 September 2003.

McMahan, S.G. Extract from a 16 June 1844 letter. In Albert L. Hurtado. John Sutter: A Life on the North American Frontier. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2006, 130.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, November 2010, s.v. eggcorn, n.

Photo credit: Desultrix, 2011. Licensed by a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

sandwich

A chicken salad sandwich. Chopped chicken breast tossed with almonds, celery, and tarragon, topped with romaine, and served between two slices of brown bread on a white plate.

5 October 2022

Sandwich is the word that introduced me to etymology. I read an account of the oft-repeated story of the word’s origin while in elementary school. There is reason, though, to question that story’s veracity—it may or may not be true. First what we know for a fact.

The earliest known use of the word sandwich to describe a dish consisting of slices of meat served between two slices of bread is in the journal of historian Edward Gibbon for 27 July 1762. On that day, Gibbon writes of a late-night meal at the Cocoa Tree coffeehouse:

We went thence to the play (the Spanish Friar); and when it was over, returned to the Cocoa Tree. That respectable body, of which I have the honour of being a member, affords every evening a sight truly English. Twenty or thirty, perhaps, of the first men in the kingdom, in point of fashion and fortune, supping at little tables covered with a napkin, in the middle of a coffee-room, upon a bit of cold meat, or a Sandwich, and drinking a glass of punch.

It's clear from this passage that the word was already established by 1762, at least among the fashionable London set that Gibbon was a part of. With that factual basis established, let’s look at the popular story.

Allegedly, the sandwich is named for John Montagu (1718–92), the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, who, as the story goes, was an inveterate gambler who could not be bothered to leave the gaming table to eat, so he would have the dish served to him, hence the name. It’s very likely that the sandwich is indeed named for Montagu—there is no other plausible explanation for how the dish got its name. The bit about gambling and not leaving the gaming table, however, is questionable, but it may indeed turn out to be true. We just don’t know.

1783 Gainsborough portrait of John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich. A man in eighteenth-century dress, a blue suit with gold trim and a powdered wig, standing and holding a roll of paper with the title “Infirmary.”

That gambling story is based on a single account by the French travel writer Pierre-Jean Grosley, who visited London in 1765, while Montagu was serving as the First Lord of the Admiralty. Grosley writes in his 1779 Londres:

Les Anglois profonds, violens, outrés dans toutes leurs passions, portent celle du jeu á l’extrême: on nomme plusieurs lords trés-riches qui s’y sont absolument ruinés: d’autres prennent sur les affaires, sur le repos, sur leur santé le temps qu’ils lui donnent. Un minister d’Etat passa 24 heures dans un jeu public, toujours occupé au pointe que, pendant ces 24 heures, il ne vécut que de quelques tranches de bœuf grillé, qu’il se faisoit servir entre deux rôties de pain & qu’il mangeoit sans quitter le jeu. Ce nouveau mets prit faveur pendant mon séjour à Londres: on le baptisa du nom du minister qui l’avoit imaginé, pour économiser le temps.

(The English, deep, violent, excessive in all their passions, carry that for gaming to the extreme; several wealthy lords are named whom it brought to absolute ruin; others take from the business, from the rest, from their health the time they give to it. A Minister of State spent 24 hours in a gaming house, always busy to the point that, during these 24 hours, he subsisted only on a few slices of grilled beef, that he had served to him between two toasted pieces of bread & that he ate without leaving the game. This new dish took favor during my stay in London: it was baptized with the name of the minister who had imagined it, to save time.)

Grosley doesn’t specifically name Montagu, but given that the dish was called a sandwich, it’s pretty obvious who he is referring to. But this is a rather sensational story, which, given that Gibbon had casually used the word two years earlier, was written several years after the term’s coinage. It is more likely that Grosley is repeating old gossip. Given Gibbon’s earlier use of the word, Grosley is mistaken when he says the word had been newly coined upon his arrival in London.

Furthermore, Montagu’s biographer, N.A.M. Rodger, points out that while the earl, like most of contemporaries of his class and station, did gamble, he was far from an inveterate gambler. What other accounts we have of his activities at the gaming tables describe a man who whose betting was rather restrained and who did so primarily for the social and professional connections, much like a present-day businessman might take up golf.

Instead, Rodger postulates that Montagu’s connection to the invention of the sandwich instead comes from his habit of eating meals at his desk while working. This explanation, however, runs into a problem of dates. Rodger points out that Grosley’s 1765 visit to London coincides with one of Montagu’s stints as a cabinet minister. A busy government official might indeed have a habit of eating at his desk. But evidently Rodger was unaware of Gibbon’s 1762 use of sandwich and the fact that Grosley was relaying an old bit of gossip. Montagu was not in government in 1762, and one has to go back to 1751 to find a time when he was. And indeed, Rodger writes:

In 1751, however, Sandwich had no work to do. The collapse of his career and his marriage more or less simultaneously seems to have robbed him of personal as well as financial stability. Up to 1751 he was often cited as a model of respectability, and throughout his life he lived frugally, but once out of office he began to acquire the reputation of a libertine which never left him. It is clear that it was not altogether unjustified.

It appears, however, that Montagu’s indiscretions were more often of an amorous rather than a wagering variety. But by 1765, Montagu’s recent re-entry into government may have provided the reason for the old gossip being newly re-circulating during Grosley’s visit. So, the story of the gambling earl cannot be easily dismissed. While there is some reason to question it, there really isn’t a good alternative for how the sandwich came to be named for the earl.

The verb to sandwich, meaning to place something between two other things, like meat between slices of bread, is in place by the early-to-mid nineteenth century. From a letter published in the New York Daily Express on 9 August 1837 that rhapsodizes about the beauty of the Susquehanna River valley:

Cooper lives above me at the head waters of the river, and mayhap will send me a flower of fancy by a Hindoo post, and below me eighty miles, is poetic Wyoming—what I call a pretty parenthesis. I would willingly take chance for immortality sandwiched between Cooper and Campbell.

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Sources:

Gibbon Edward. Journal, 27 July 1762. Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, vol. 1 of 2. London: A. Strahan, et al., 1796, 110. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Grosley, Pierre-Jean. Londres, vol. 1. Lausanne: 1770, 262. Google Books.

Letter. New York Daily Express, 9 August 1837, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. sandwich, n.2.

Rodger, N.A.M. The Insatiable Earl: A Life of John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich, 1718–1792. London: HarperCollins, 1993, 76–81.

Tréguer, Pascal. “History of the Word ‘Sandwich.’” Wordhistories.net. 23 March 2017.

Image credits: Chicken salad sandwich: Lara604, 2012, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Earl of Sandwich: Thomas Gainsborough, 1783. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.

fudge

Trays containing variety of fudges on display in a shop, including whisky fudge, mint fudge, and Baileys truffle

3 October 2022

Fudge has a number of meanings. It can be a verb meaning to make something fit, to “cook the books,” or to lie. It can be an interjection of contempt or disgust. And it can be a type of easy-to-make, (usually) chocolate confection. It is also a word that has a clear semantic connection back to Old English but whose modern form cannot be accounted for by any usual phonetic changes. There is a something of a mystery in its etymology.

The semantic throughline is the sense of making something fit, of cobbling something together. The earliest from is the Old English verb fegan, meaning to join, unite, fit. We see it in one of the riddles found in the Exeter Book, a collection of poems that includes some ninety-plus riddles, the exact number being a subject of debate because it’s not always clear when one riddle ends and the next begins. But the one traditionally labeled number twenty-five reads:

Ic eom wunderlicu wiht,     wifum on hyhte,
neahbuendum nyt;      nængum sceþþe
burgsittendra,      nymþe bonan anum.
Staþol min is steapheah,      stonde ic on bedde,
neoþan ruh nathwær.      Neþeð hwilum
ful cyrtenu     ceorles dohtor,
modwlonc meowle,      þæt heo on mec gripeð,
ræseð mec on reodne,     reafað min heafod,
fegeð me on fæstan.      Feleþ sona
mines gemotes,      seo þe mec nearwað,
wif wundenlocc.      Wæt bið þæt eage.

(I am a strange creature, what a woman hopes for, of use to neighbors, harmful to no city-dwellers, except the one who kills me. My shaft is straight up, I stand on a bed, underneath somewhat hairy. Sometimes a very beautiful churl’s daughter, a haughty maiden, dares so that she grasps me, rushes me to redness, ravages my head, fits me into an enclosed place. She soon feels the encounter with me, she who confines me, the woman with braided locks. One eye will be wet.)

The answer to the riddle is, of course, an onion. If you thought it was something else, shame on you.

Actually, a number of the Old English riddles contain sexual double entendres.

The verb, in the from feien, continued to be used into the Middle English period. But in the mid-sixteenth century, we see the verb to fadge, meaning to fit or to be suitable. Here is a 1566 translation of Seneca’s Octavia:

Be not dismayde, Madame, for such like paine,
The quéene of Gods was forced to sustaine,
When to eche pleasaunt shape the heauenly guyde,
And syre of Gods yturnde, from skyes dyd glyde.
The swannes white wings, to se how they could fadge
He did on him, and cuckoldes bullysh badge.

How the ending / -ɪn / became / -adʒ / is the mystery. There are no typical sound changes that could account for it, but a word with the same initial phoneme / f / and meaning the same thing arising de novo does not seem likely either.

A less mysterious sound change is the shift of the first vowel from / a / to / ʌ /, and by 1700 we get the form fudge, meaning to clumsily fit something, to cook an account, to lie. From the anonymous Remarks Upon the Navy of that year:

There was, Sir, in our Time, one Captain Fudge Commander of a Merchant-man, who upon his Return from a Voyage, how ill fraught soever his Ship was, always brought home his Owners a good Cargo of Lies, insomuch that now aboard Ship the Sailors, when they hear a great Lye told, cry out, you fudge it.

And by the middle of the eighteenth century we see fudge being used as an interjection expressing contempt or displeasure. From Oliver Goldsmith’s 1766 novel The Vicar of Wakefield:

But previously I should have mentioned the very impolite behavior of Mr. Burchell; who, during this discourse, sate with his face turned to the fire, and at the conclusion of every sentence would cry out Fudge, and expression which displeased us all, and in some measure damped the rising spirit of the conversation.

Of course, the interjection is a euphemism for fuck.

As for the name of the confection, that comes from the fact that fudge is a sweet that is easy to cobble together. This sense of the word arose in the United States at the close of the nineteenth century. Here is a rather condescending account from Vassar, then a women’s only school, that appeared in the Boston Journal on 24 January 1894:

“A FUDGE PARTY.”

“Fudges,” a chocolate sweetie that is a cross between a bonbon and a cakelet, are very dear to the soul of the Vassar girl. “Fudge” parties are common in that well known institution, and there is a dark suspicion that the moral sense of a “Freshie”—only a Freshie, let us hope—is blunted when the ways and means to provide materials for an impromptu “fudge” are being considered. Chocolate and sugar, the two principal ingredients, can be kept on hand, but milk and butter, which are also needed, are perishable articles and have to be provided on the instant. But a Vassar Freshman knows a thing or two, even if she has not been at college very long. And if she is suddenly attacked an hour after supper with pangs of hunger, of course she must go down to the refectory and beg for a glass of milk and a piece of bread and butter to mitigate her distress. And equally, of course, the sympathetic head of that department was never known to refuse so natural a request. Two or three hungry (?) girls are all that are needed for a sizable party, and if the bread is discarded and only the milk and butter utilized, why Vassar dormitories tell no tales, and “fudges” are too good to be lightly dispensed with.

And here is a recipe for fudge that appeared in the American Kitchen Magazine of July 1899 that shows how easy it is to make:

FUDGE.
Three cups sugar, one-fourth pound chocolate, one cup milk, two ounces butter. Vanilla. Boil ten minutes or until it makes a soft ball when tried in cold water. Then set kettle into pan of cold water and beat until creamy. Pour into pan and cut into squares when cold.

WALNUT FUDGE.
Stir in a cupful of coarsely chopped walnut meats just before pouring into the pan.

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Sources:

Dictionary of Old English: A to I, University of Toronto, 2018, s.v. fegan, v.

Goldsmith, Oliver. The Vicar of Wakefield, vol. 1 of 2. Corke: Eugene Swiney, 1766, 93. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Lincoln (Mrs.). “From Day to Day.” The American Kitchen Magazine, 9.4, July 1899, 147. Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO). (The metadata incorrectly lists the title of the journal as Everyday Housekeeping.)

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. feien, v.(1).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. fudge, int. and n., fudge, v., fadge, v., fay, v.1.

Remarks Upon the Navy. The Second Part. London: 1700, 1–2. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“Riddle Twenty-Five.” The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry, vol. 1 of 2. Bernard J. Muir, ed. Exeter: U of Exeter Press, 1994, 303. Exeter, Cathedral Library, MS 3501, fol. 106v–107r.

Seneca. The Ninth Tragedie of Lucius Anneus Seneca called Octauia. London: Henry Denham, 1566, sig. C2. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“The Women’s Corner.” Boston Journal (Massachusetts), 24 January 1894, 5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Daniela Kloth, 2018. Licensed under a GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.

flea market

Black and white photo of the Marché aux Puces (Flea Market) in Montreuil, Paris, 1928. In the foreground a woman sits in a stall selling used clothing while a man glances at her wares. Other vendors’ stalls and customers milling about the street are in the background.

30 September 2022

A flea market is an open-air market for the sale of second-hand products. The phrase appears to be a calque, or literal translation, of the French marché aux puces, the name given to just such a market in Montreuil, on the outskirts of Paris. The market was so-called because the products sold there had a reputation, deserved or not, for being infested with the pests. The Montreuil market opened its stalls in 1860 and continued operation well into the twentieth century. But while this French market is the most likely source, the English phrase may not have been borrowed directly from French.

The reason to question the direct French origin is the earliest known use of flea market in English, which was uncovered by Pascal Tréguer. That use appears in reference to just such a market in Copenhagen that was mentioned in the New York Sun on 29 May 1887:

From a Copenhagen Letter.

Yesterday was the last day of the flea market. The fifty-two old women who have sat haggling over their uncanny wares in the square by the Government pawn shop until the queer band had become part of the familiar physiognomy of the city, [sic] had been told that their time was up at 3 P.M. sharp, and that the flea market would then be a thing of the past. They had appealed in vain to the Mayor, to the Minister of the Interior, and, as a last resort, by deputation to the King, praying that in consideration of their great age they might keep their stands or move them elsewhere until they could drop out together, as it were. They were told that there was no room for sentiment in in their case. Perhaps the fleas had killed it. Their mixed stock of second-hand clothes, old rags, felt shoes, and crockery certainly harbored a fair share. But, then, it was a very cheap market—so cheap that that others than the poor sought it for bargains. No matter; they must all go together. Customers had come from far and near to the closing sale until the square was black. So brisk a trade the flea market had never known. In spite of it more than one aged face was wet with bitter tears as the hands of the old tower clock pointed to 3 and the word to move on was given. There was very little left to move that was worth it; nothing more worn or shaky than the old market women themselves. As they flied [sic] out with their bundles, casting stolen glances behind them, one of the characteristic traditions of this old city when out with them and became a thing of the past.

This article bears the marks of being a translation from the Danish by someone who did not have mastery of English idiom; note until they could drop out together, as it were and until the square was black, which are unusual constructions in English. The flea market here may be a calque of the Danish loppemarked, loppe (flea) + marked (market). The Danish word may itself be a calque of the French; it may come from the German flohmarkt; or the compound may have arisen within Danish. If this use of flea market is indeed a calque of the Danish by a Dane, then the phrase flea market may not have yet had currency in English in 1887.

But the Paris marché aux puces was without a doubt the most famous of the flea markets and it is most likely the source for these other European terms. In English, with the exception of this reference to the Copenhagen market, all the early references to flea markets are to the Parisian one. Flea market appears again in English-language newspapers in a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer of 28 July 1891:

Paris, July 27.—At the place near the Barriere de Montreuil, at the extreme east end of Paris, popularly known as the “Flea Market,” Madame Packard, an aged woman, bought yesterday an ancient, dilapidated mattress. Upon cutting it open she discovered a leather bag containing fourteen thousand francs in gold. As the bedding had passed through a number of hands it was useless to attempt to find an owner, hence the national Treasury claims the property.

This story was widely reprinted in many papers over the next year or so, making the French market known to large numbers of English speakers. Depending on which version you read, the woman’s name is variously given as Packard, Pacaud, or Pacard, and in some versions she gets to keep the cash.

And there is one that appeared in London’s Daily Telegraph on 20 September 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World War I that was also reprinted in American papers:

A few housewives whose “hommes” have a weakness for the “green devil” bought packets at the price of one penny. An old man, with a long white beard of patriarchal length, posed as an infallible pedicure. He was willing to remove the corns of any one for half a franc, and even less, but for a Prussian he would charge double. There were the usual crowds at the historic “Marché aux Puces,” or “Flea Market.” Here customers and vendors ignored the fact that the German armies were still within striking distance of Paris.

It isn’t until after World War I that, with the exception of the Copenhagen letter, we start to see flea market used as a generic term for such second-hand markets. It seems likely that the repeated references to the Montreuil market, plus probable visits to the place by numerous British and American soldiers during the war, cemented the phrase in English. Also militating against the idea that flea market had currency as a generic term prior to World War I is that the two words often appear co-located in reference to the market for fleas for use in flea circuses, which was evidently a thriving, if niche, business at the time.

The first such generic use of flea market that I’m aware of is in Juliet Bredon’s 1920 Peking: A Historical and Intimate Description of Its Chief Places of Interest:

It is strange that all these luxuries lie within a stone’s throw of the worst slums of the capital. Long before the haunts of prosperity open their doors, the side, sewery lanes a little to the east of them are filled to overflowing with a poverty more pitiful for its proximity to luxury. Before dawn the Thieves’ Market is held here by torchlight. The Flea Market opens a little later. Wares are spread on the street itself, but they are generally of such a character that dirt and indiscriminate handling can do them no harm. Old bottles, broken door-knobs, bent nails lie side by side with frayed foreign collars, dilapidated tennis rackets, rusty corsets or even threadbare evening slippers that have been thrown into the waste basket of some European house and gathered up by the assiduous rag pickers who classify the refuse of Peking for this fair.

And there is this that appeared in the Atlanta Journal on 27 April 1924 in reference to a flea market in Algiers:

From the cemetery, we went to the Arabian flea market, which marks the entrance to the famous Kasba or Arab quarter. The flea market, more deserving of its name than you people at home can realize, is an open, sunny place crowded with dirty natives. Squatting on their heels and staring vacantly before them they crouch untiringly, their old broken and worn-out wares spread around them on the ground. Cracked bits of china, old brass, fragments of rugs, carved wormy wood, worn-out shoes and garments, kitchen utensils and all the endless odds and ends.

This Algerian use also lends some strength to the French origin as Algeria was a French colony at the time.

It is probable that the French marché aux puces is the source for all these flea markets, but we cannot be sure of that. And as for the English phrase, we cannot pin down with any certainty which European language it is borrowed from, and the fact that calques appear in a number of European languages hints that it may be borrowed from more than one. But it is certain that it was the Parisian Marché aux Puces that inspired the term’s widespread use.

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Sources:

“A Fortune in an Old Mattress.” Philadelphia Inquirer, 28 July 1891, 2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Bredon, Juliet. Peking: A Historical and Intimate Description of Its Chief Places of Interest. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1920, 405. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Last Day of the Flea Market.” The Sun (New York), 29 May 1887, 9. Library of Congress: Chronicling America Historic American Newspapers.

Massengale, Margaret. “Atlanta Girl Sees Arabian Flea Market.” Atlanta Journal (Georgia), 27 April 1924, Magazine 11. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

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Photo credit: Agnece de presse Meurisse, 1928; Gallica, Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Public domain image.