Missouri

10 August 2021

(13 December 2022: Added note about the transcription of the Marquette map and references to the two McCafferty journal articles.)

Detail of a 1673 map by Jacques Marquette that identifies the territory of the Missouri people. This portion of the map contains the name ȣmissouri along the southern bank of what is now called the Des Moines River, near its confluence with the Mississippi River, in what is now northeastern Missouri.

The name Missouri, both a U.S. state and river, comes from the Miami-Illinois weemeehsoorita (one who has a canoe), an ethnonym for a Siouan people who once lived in what is now the northeastern portion of the state. The Miami word breaks down into wi- (third-person possessive marker) + -mihs- (wood) + -oor- (boat) + -i- (inanimate noun) + -t- (third-person animate transitive participle marker) -a- (third-person animate transitive participle ending).

The written name first appears as ȣmissouri on Jacques Marquette’s 1673 French map of the Mississippi. The < ȣ > is an < ou > ligature, a character used by early French missionaries to represent the / w / sound in Indigenous words.

The name appears in English by 1698, when it appears in a translation of Louis Hennepin’s 1697 Nouvelle Découverte d'un Très Grand Pays Situé dans l'Amérique. Hennepin had accompanied René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle on his 1679–80 expedition. In this translation, the Missouri people are referred to as Messorites:

We shook Hands, to seal these Promises; and after Prayers, imbark’d in our Canow the 8th of March, 1680. The Ice which came down from the North, gave us a great deal of trouble; but we were so careful, that our Canow receiv’d no hurt; and after six Hours rowing, we came to the River of a Nation call’d Osages, who live toward the Messorites. That River comes from the Westward, and seems as big as the Meschasipi; but the Water is so muddy, that ’tis almost impossible to drink of it.

The Issati, who inhabit toward the Source of the Meschasipi, come sometimes in their Excursions to the Place where I was then; and I understood afterwards from them, having learn’d their Language, that this River of the Osages and Messorites is form’d from several other Rivers, which spring from a Mountain about twelves Day’s Journey from its Mouth.

Later on, Hennepin’s translator writes:

We left the Akansas upon the 24th of April, having presented them with several little Toys, which they receiv’d with an extraordinary Joy; and during sixty Leagues, saw no Savage neither of the Nation of Chikacha, or Messorite, which made us believe that they were gone a Hunting with their Families, or else fled away for fear of the Savages of Tintonha, that is to say, inhabiting the Meadows, who are their irreconcileable Enemies.

This made our Voyage the more easie, for our Men landed several times to kill some Fowls and other Game, with which the Banks of the Meschasipi are plentifully stock’d; however, before we came to the Mouth of the River of the Illinois, we discover’d several Messorites, who came down all along the River; but as they had no Pyrogues with them, we cross’d to the other side; and to avoid any surprize during the Night, we made no Fire; and the reb y theSavages [sic] could not discover whereabout we were; for doubtless they would have murther’d us, thinking we were their Enemies.

The Missouri spelling is in place in English at the turn of the eighteenth century. From a 1703 translation of Louis Armond de Lahontan’s Nouveaux Voyages dans l’Amerique, which uses the name to refer both to the river and the people:

I took leave of ’em the next day, which was the 13th, and in four days time, by the help of the Current and our Oars, made the River of the Missouris. This done, we run up against the Stream of that River, which was at least as rapid as the Missisipi was at that time; and arriv’d on the 18th at the first Village of the Missouris, where I only stop’d to make the People some Presents that procur’d me a hundred Turkeys, with which that People are wonderfully well stock’d.

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Sources:

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

Hennepin, Louis. A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America. London: M. Bentley, et al. 1698, 150–51, 168–69. Early English Books Online (EEBO). (There are two separate printings of this book from 1698, which are indistinguishable from their title pages. I am citing from the earlier printing, which has narrower and more pages and many more printer’s errors, as can be seen in the passage quoted. The OED errs in quoting from the later printing but citing the page numbers of the earlier.)

de Lahontan, Louis Armond. New Voyages to North-America, vol 1 of 2. London: H. Bonwicke, et al., 1703, 130. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Marquette, Jacques. Map of the New Discovery Made by the Jesuit Fathers in 1672 and Continued by Father Jacques Marquette, from the Same Group, Accompanied by a Few Frenchmen in the Year 1673, Named “Manitounie.” 1673. National Library of France. Digital image from the Library of Congress, LCCN 2021668635.

McCafferty, Michael. Native American Place-Names of Indiana. Urbana: U of Illinois Press, 2008, 192n.

———. “On the Birthday and Etymology of the Placename Missouri.” Names, 51.2, June 2003, 111–25.

———. “Returning to Missouri.” Names, 60.2, June 2012, 105–06.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2002, modified June 2021, s.v. Missouri, n. and adj.

Image credit: Jacques Marquette, 1673. Original at the National Library of France. Digital image from the Library of Congress, LCCN 2021668635.

muckety-muck

Potlatch dancers in Klinkwan, Alaska, c.1904

9 December 2022

A muckety-muck is an important person, and the term often appears as high muckety-muck. As it’s used in English, the term often carries a somewhat derogatory connotation; it’s not a word you apply to someone whom you wish to accord respect.

The word comes into English from Chinook Jargon, a language that originated as a pidgin or contact language of the Pacific Northwest in the nineteenth century, originally in what is now Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, but eventually spreading as far as Alaska, California, and Montana. Chinook Jargon is a blend of French, English, and Native-American languages. In places the pidgin developed into a fully-fledged creole language, and it has several hundred speakers today.

Muck-a-muck is recorded in a Chinook Jargon lexicon appearing in Joel Palmer’s 1847 Journal of Travels Over the Rocky Mountains:

Muck-a-muck
Provisions, eat

The language that Chinook Jargon acquired the term from is uncertain, but the term may come from the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) ma·ḥo·ma(q-), meaning choice whale meat. And the addition of high did not originally reflect the English word, but instead comes from the Chinook Jargon hiyu muckamuck (plenty of food), which probably comes from the Nuu-chah-nulth word hayu, literally meaning ten but figuratively meaning plenty or much. In English, the hiyu was remodeled via folk etymology into high.

Muck-a-muck, in the sense of food, makes its recorded appearance in English a few years later. The New York Herald of 9 December 1852 reported this from the Oregon Territory:

On Saturday last, the Rev. George Blanchet, presented us a head of cabbage, grown in the garden of Father Ricard, weighing twenty-five pounds, and measuring four feet seven inches in circumference, perfectly solid; and it makes a splendid muck-a-muck[.] Who says the soil of northern Oregon is unproductive?

And the Daily Alta California, a San Francisco newspaper, has this about the price of food in Oregon in its 12 January 1853 edition:

HIGH PRICES.—Flour is selling at 18 and 20 dollars per 100 lbs. here. Our millers are paying six and seven dollars per bushel for wheat, and there is very little to be obtained at that price. Potatoes command $2 50 per bushel; beef and pork is worth 18 and 25 cents per lb.; butter, $1 per lb.; eggs, $1 to $1 50 per dozen, and nearly everything else in the muck-a-muck line is in proportion.

Muck-a-muck was being used in English in reference to important people by 1856. Sacramento’s Daily Democratic State Journal of 1 November 1856 has this passage in a report on a proposed union of the American Party (a.k.a., the Know Nothings) and the Republican Party in California:

Finally, on Friday night last, a candidate of the Republican party for the State Senate, at one of their meetings, after Judge Tracy’s speech was over, stated that propositions for fusion had been made by the two dexterous professors of Dark Lanternism above named, who are high “Muck-a-Mucks” in the County Council.

[…]

Saturday brought the two distinguished professors, and all day long they labored and belabored each other, each trying to place the onus upon the other, the Democracy the while, with broad grins, enjoying the scene, unable to count the accessions to their party, which were hourly made. The professors—the high “Muck-a-Mucks”—tried fusion, and produced confusion. They put their feet in it.

This application to people probably originated in Chinook Jargon too, referring to a high-status host of a potlatch, a ceremonial feast and gift-giving ceremony, a tradition among Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest.

Over the next few decades, the terms muck-a-muck and high muck-a-muck spread beyond the territories where Chinook Jargon was spoken, and in so doing the pronunciation began to shift. For instance, we have this from the Evening News of Indianapolis on 7 December 1875:

When I was a Councilman from the Seventh Ward and was high muckey-muck in city politics I used to think I was a pretty big man, but when they came to spread me out over a whole Congressional District I found I was damn thin.

And we get the form muckety-muck by 1882. The Oxford English Dictionary has this citation from the Argonaut of January of that year:

Very soon it will be in as good form to be a little pill homoeopath, as it is now to be a H.M.M* in laparotomy.

The footnote reads:

High Muckety Muck.

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Sources:

“The Journal’s Washington special…” Evening News (Indianapolis), 7 December 1875, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Later from Oregon.” Daily Alta California (San Francisco), 12 January 1853, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“More About the Bargain and Corruption” (31 October 1856). Daily Democratic State Journal (Sacramento, California), 1 November 1856, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Northern Oregon—Progress of Settlement.” New York Herald, 9 December 1852, 15. NewspaperArchive.com.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2014, high muck-a-muck, n., high muckety-muck, n.; March 2003, s.v. muckamuck, n.1, muckamuck, n.2, muckety-muck, n.

Palmer, Joel. “Words Used in the Chinook Jargon.” Journal of Travels Over the Rocky Mountains (1847). Fairfield, Washington: Ye Galleon Press, 1983, 133. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Underwood and Underwood, c.1904. Library of Congress. Public domain image.

legislature

The US House of Representatives on 18 December 2019 during the vote to impeach President Donald Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress

7 December 2022

[A longer version of this post, containing information about how the definition of legislature is relevant to an important case before the US Supreme Court in December 2022 is available through my Substack.]

As we use the term today, legislature refers to a deliberative body, usually elected, that is empowered to make, change, or repeal laws, that is, a parliament or congress. The legislature of a state is distinct from the executive or judicial branches of a government. But that is not the original meaning of the word.

Legislature, along with related words like legislative and legislator, was formed in English based on the Latin root legis, the singular genitive of lex, meaning law and latus, the perfect and future form of fero, meaning to carry or to make, so legislature is literally the making of laws. Cognate words appear in European languages at about the same time and undoubtedly influenced one another.

The original sense of legislature was that of power to make laws and was not related to any particular governing entity. We see this sense appear in a 19 December 1659 letter by John Jones, a royalist officer, to Hardress Waller, who opposed the restoration of the monarchy after Cromwell’s death and had instigated a rebellion in Limerick against the English:

The sense I have of [the] ruine and desolation w[hich] the English Interest and people will inevitably be brought unto, by that Rash Action lately comitted [sic] By those how yo[u] have comissioned [sic] for [that] end, Which tends to the Engaging of [the] English fforces in Ireland, one against another, The casting off the English Governm[ent] & Parliamentary Authority in this nation, and by yo[ur] assuming a Power of Legislature to Command the fforces as Major Gen[erall] of [the] Army.

And we see it again in Gilbert Burnet’s Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time, written sometime before the Scottish cleric’s death in 1715. Burnet uses legislature to refer to the power to make canon law:

He told all those who loved Presbytery, or that did not much favour the Bishops, that it was necessary to keep them under, by making them depend absolutely on the King: This was indeed a transferring the whole legislature, as to the matters of the Church, from the Parliament, and vesting it singly in the King.

In the eighteenth century, dictionaries started to include the word, and we start to see the sense of the entity that makes laws appear. Benjamin Defoe’s 1735 New English Dictionary defines legislature as follows:

LEGISLATURE, the making of Laws, or Power which makes them.

Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary has a very similar definition:

The power that makes laws.

And another, less well known, 1755 dictionary gives a similar definition, but also makes a specific reference to how that power is executed in England. In his revision of Nathan Bailey’s New Universal Etymological English Dictionary, Joseph Nicol Scott refers to three parts of the legislature but does not specify what those parts are. Presumably he expected his readers to know:

LEGISLA´TURE (of latura legis, Lat.) the authority of making laws, the power that makes laws. Consent of all three parts of the legislature. Hale.

But Scott was not the first to refer to the three parts of the English legislature. In his History of the Common Law of England, Matthew Hale makes a point of saying that they are the two houses of parliament and the crown. The book was written sometime before Hale’s death in 1676, but wasn’t published until 1713:

Those laws therefore that I call Leges Scripæ, or written Laws, are such as are usually called Statute Laws, or Acts of Parliament, which are originally reduced into Writing before they are enacted, or receive any binding Power, every such Law being in the first Instance formally drawn up in Writing, and made, as it were, a Tripartite Indenture, between the King, the Lords and the Commons; for without the concurrent Consent of all those Three Parts of the Legislature, no such Law is, or can be made: But the Kings of this Realm, with the Advice and Consent of both Houses of Parliament, have the Power to make New Laws, or to alter, repeal, or enforce the Old. And this has been done in all Succession of Ages.

But legislature could also refer to just parliament. In a 6 February 1716 political essay, Joseph Addison gives a cynical description of the Tory party’s view of the legitimacy of the opposing Whig part, saying the Tories believe:

That the Legislature, when there is a majority of Whigs in it, has not power to make laws.

Finally, bringing it to the other side of the Atlantic, Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines legislature broadly, including the executive, be it monarch, president, or governor within the bounds of the term:

LEĠ´ISLATE, v. i. (L. lex, legis, law, and fero, latum, to give, pass or enact.)
To make or enact a law or laws. It is a question whether it is expedient to legislate at present on the subject. Let us not legislate, when we have no power to enforce our laws.
LEĠISLA´TION, n. (Fr.) The act of passing a law or laws; the enacting of laws.
Pythagoras joined legislation to his philosophy. Littleton.
LEĠ´ISLATIVE, a. (Fr. legislatif.) Giving or enacting laws; as a legislative body.
2. Capable of enacting laws; as a legislative power.
3. Pertaining to the enacting of laws; suitable to laws; as the legislative style.
4. Done by enacting; as a legislative act.
(Note. In this word, and in legislator, legislatrix, legislature, the accent is nearly equal on the first and third syllables, and a, in the third, as its first or long sound.)
LEĠISLA´TOR, n. (L.) A lawgiver; one who makes laws for a state or community. This word is limited in its use to a supreme lawgiver, the lawgiver of a sovereign state or kingdom, and is not applied to men that make the by-laws of a subordinate corporation.
LEĠISLA´TORSHIP, n. The office of a legislator. (Not in use.) Halifax.
LEĠISLA´TRESS / LEĠISLA´TRIX, n. A female who makes laws. Tooke.
LEĠISLA´TURE, n. [Sp. legislatura.] The body of men in a state or kingdom, invested with power to make and repeal laws; the supreme power of a state. The legislature of Great Britain consists of the house of lords and the house of commons with the king, whose sanction is necessary to every bill before it becomes a law. The legislatures of most of the states in America, consist of two houses or branches, but the sanction of the governor is required to give their acts the force of law, or a concurrence of two thirds of the two houses, after he has declined and assigned his objections.

We can clearly see that while in the late eighteenth century one might have used legislature to refer to the congress or parliament alone, it was more usually understood to include all who had a part in making laws, including the executive functions of government. The original sense of the power or function of making laws would not survive the eighteenth century, and the narrowing of the meaning of legislature to include only congress or parliament would happen in the nineteenth century.

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Sources:

Addison, Joseph. “No. 14, The Political Creed of a Tory Malecontent.” The Freeholder, 6 February 1716, 85. HathiTrust Digital Library. https://www.hathitrust.org/

“Brief for Petitioners.” Moore v. Harper, Supreme Court of the United States, no. 21-1271, 29 August 2022.

Burnet, Gilbert. Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time, vol. 1 (before 1715). The Hague?: 1724, 330–31. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Constitution of the United States: A Transcription. US National Archives, 16 August 2022.

Defoe, Benjamin Norton. A New English Dictionary. Westminster: John Brindley, et al. 1735, s.v. legislature. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Hale, Matthew. The History of the Common Law of England (before 1676). London: J. Nutt, 1713, 2. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Johnson, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language, vol. 2 of 2. London: W. Strahan, 1755, s.v. legislature. Johnson’s Dictionary Online.

Jones, John. Letter to Hardress Waller, 19 December 1659. In Joseph Mayer. “Inedited Letters of Cromwell, Colonel Jones, Bradshaw, and other Regicides.” Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, New Series, vol. 1. Liverpool: Adam Holden, 1861, 292–93. HathiTrust Digital Library. https://www.hathitrust.org/

Lancashire, Ian, ed. Lexicons of Early Modern English, 2021.

Millhiser, Ian. “The Deranged Supreme Court Case that Threatens US Democracy, Explained.” Vox.com, 4 December 2022.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2016, s.v. legislature, n.

Scott, Joseph Nicol and Nathan Bailey. A New Universal Etymological English Dictionary. London: T. Osborne, et al., 1755. s.v. legislature. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Webster, Noah. An American Dictionary of the English Language, vol. 2 of 2. New York: S. Converse, 1828. Internet Archive.

Image credit: Clerk of the US House of Representatives, 2019. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

polka / polka dot

1847 lithograph of a couple dancing a polka. The colored lithograph is titled “The Bohemian Polka.”

5 December 2022

[6-7 December 2022: verified the date of and expanded the transcription of the Holley letter, added the alternative etymology, & made other minor edits and corrections]

Where did this name for round spots of dye on clothing originate? And what, if anything, does it have to do with the dance in 2/4 time of the same name?

Polka is a Czech word for a Polish woman, and the common explanation is that the dance originated in Bohemia in the 1830s and is named in honor of the Polish military cadets who unsuccessfully rose up against their Russian occupiers in 1830-31. But militating against this origin story is that the polka appears in the titles of 2/4 time musical works as early as 1825. It appears as a title for a musical composition in 2/4 time in Pierre L. Duport’s 1825 Miss George Anna Reinagle Music Book for Fancy Tunes, a manuscript of dance tunes taught by Duport, who was a dance instructor in the United States. It seems likely that the word originated in Bohemia, but the dedication to the Polish cadets is after-the-fact.

An alternative explanation, labeled as “now discredited” by the Oxford English Dictionary for mysterious reasons, is that the name of the dance comes from the Czech pulka, meaning half, as in half-step.

The dance as we know it today was a popular sensation in Britain and the United States in the 1840s. The following appears in the London Times of 5 October 1843:

The band of the 1st Life Guards performed the following pieces of music during the banquet yesterday evening:—Overture, Scotch medley, Waddell; Pot Pourri, Russian airs, Labisky; Waltzer “Londoner Sarxon[?],” Labitsky; German air and pas redouble, composed by Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent; Serenade (Don Pasquale), Donizetti; Selections from Alma, Costa; Quadrilles (Les Druids), Dufrene; Polka, Labitsky.

Elizabeth Barrett (later to be married to Robert Browning) wrote the following in a letter dated 31 December 1843:

Harriet Martineau is quite well, “trudging miles together in the snow,” when the snow was, and in great spirits. Wordsworth is to be in London in the spring. Tennyson is dancing the polka and smoking cloud upon cloud at Cheltenham. Robert Browning is meditating a new poem, and an excursion on the Continent. Miss Mitford came to spend a day with me some ten days ago; sprinkled, as to the soul, with meadow dews. Am I at the end of my account? I think so.

And in the United States, Mary Austin Holley, an early Anglo settler of Texas, wrote the following in a 5 July 1846 letter referring to festivities at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans. (The OED incorrectly dates this letter to 1837.) The letter connects the dance with Poland, not Bohemia, but whether that is correct or if it is Holley’s assumption based on the dance’s name is unclear:

Judge Carlton & his daughter, Mrs. Hunt, & her children & some other devoted mothers ditto danced polkas—Colonel Tucker a hornpipe. […] As before everybody was at St. Charles.

[…]

It was announced that a Mr. Karponky & his scholars would dance the grand Polka. He is a Pole—has taught 3000 persons the Polka in these U.S.

[…]

Mr. Stuart told me he danced the Polka with Mrs. Mouton, she is a Washington lady & she [?] is beautiful, at Mrs. Busks [?] ball. The rage for that dance is wonderful. Mrs. Stuart says that the Polka teacher in London, also a Pole, makes more money than any body—that young & old learn. What a curious thing is fashion.

In an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the dance, any number of products and fashions were dubbed polka in the 1840s, including the polka hats, the polka pelisse, and the polka jacket, a tight-fitting women’s jacket popular in the nineteenth century. William Thackeray makes note of this style of jacket in this antisemitic passage:

Last Sunday I saw an Israelitish family of distinction ensconced in the poor little carriage—the ladies with the most flaming polkas, and flounces all the way up; the gent. in velvet waistcoat, with pins in his breast big enough once to have surmounted the door of his native pawnbroker’s shop, and a complement of hook-nosed children, magnificent in their attire. Their number and magnificence did not break the carriage down; the little postilion bumped up and down as usual, as the old horse when his usual pace.

Polka dots appear as part of this polka craze. The earliest references to polka dots that I have found are in newspaper advertisements. This one appeared in the Louisville Daily Journal on 18 April 1851:

JUST Received—
Paris printed Bareges;
 Do     do       Silk Muslins;
Polka dot Tarleton;
 Do     do Swiss;
Printed Jaconet and Organdie Muslins.

The do is short for ditto, and indicates the words above should be repeated on this line.

And this ad appears in Philadelphia’s Public Ledger on 29 October 1852:

12½ CENT MOUS. DE LAINES.---J.
ARCHAMBAULT & SON, Northwest corner of
TWELFTH and MARKET Sts., will open, this morning—
100 pieces Polka Dot De Laines, at 12½, worth 25 cents.
100 pieces Paramattas, all colors, from 25 to 75 cents.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Special thanks to K.T. Schwarz for finding the original Holley letter in the University of Louisville archives.

Advertisement. Louisville Daily Journal (Kentucky), 18 April 1851, 2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Advertisement. Public Ledger (Philadelphia), 29 October 1852, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett.Letter (31 December 1843). The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, vol. 1 of 2. Frederic G Kenyon, ed. London: Smith, Elder, 1897, 161. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Court Circular.” Times (London), 5 October 1843, 4. Gale Primary Sources: The Times Digital Archive.

Hatcher, Mattie Austin. Letters of an Early American Traveller: Mary Austin Holley, Her Life and Her Works, 1784–1846. Dallas: Southwest Press, 1933, 86. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Holley, Mary Austin. Letter, 5 December 1846. University of Louisville Libraries: Archives & Special Collections, MAH-1846-07-05.

O’Conner, Patricia and Stewart Kellerman. “The Polka in Polka Dots.” Grammarphobia (blog), 2 October 2020.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2006, s.v. polka, n., polka, v., polka dot, n.

Thackeray, William (writing as “Punch’s” Commissioner). “Brighton.” Punch (London), 11 October 1845, 158.

Image credit: J. Brandard, 1847. Public domain image. Wikimedia Commons.

politically correct / PC

Two black-and-white photos. Top: A February 1897 photo of the St. Petersburg chapter of the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class. Seven men gathered around a table with Lenin seated in the center. Over his right shoulder stands Alexander Malchenko. Bottom: The same photo with Malchenko airbrushed out. Malchenko was arrested in 1929 and executed in 1930. He was rehabilitated in 1958 and restored to subsequent reprints of the photo.

2 December 2022

The term politically correct carries a different value depending on who is saying or hearing the term, but the Oxford English Dictionary gives a solid, objective definition:

(a) appropriate to the prevailing political or social circumstances (in early use not as a fixed collocation); (b) spec. (originally U.S., sometimes depreciative) conforming to a body of liberal or radical opinion, esp. on social matters, usually characterized by the advocacy of approved causes or views, and often by the rejection of language, behaviour, etc., considered discriminatory or offensive (cf. correct adj. Additions); abbreviated PC.

The first definition is the older one, dating to the late eighteenth century. And as the OED notes, politically correct is often simply a collocation of words rather than a fixed lexical item. A good example of such an early collocation is the earliest use that I know of, in the 1793 US Supreme Court opinion by Justice James Wilson in Chisholm v. Georgia:

Sentiments and expressions of this inaccurate kind prevail in our common, even in our convivial, language. Is a toast asked? “The United States,” instead of the “People of the United States,” is the toast given. This is not politically correct. The toast is meant to present to view the first great object in the Union: It presents only the second: It presents only the artificial person, instead of the natural persons, who spoke it into existence.

The second definition, the one we most often hear today, is much more recent, appearing in the twentieth century. Early uses of this sense are overwhelmingly found in Marxist writing, but the earliest instance I have found is not in a communist context. Also, in early use the phrase is used approvingly; it is only later that it acquires a negative connotation. The phrase appears in the Christian Science Monitor of 4 September 1919 and is in reference to the policies of the recently defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire:

Mr. Svarc charged that just as the Magyars would allow no priest to serve in Slovakia unless he were “politically correct,” in being which he had to become a traitor to those of his own blood and a slave to the Magyars, so the Magyar Government had issued orders to the bishops to cooperate with Austro-Hungarian consuls in this country to get “right conditions” in the United States.

Marxist use of politically correct and political correctness follow shortly after, so it may be that the term was in use by those on the left wing, just not published in English texts, in 1919. The Russian Revolution had already happened by the time this article was published, so it would be no surprise if earlier, Marxist uses turn up.

But there is no doubt that politically correct had become a term of art in Marxist circles by the middle of the 1920s. A statement by the Executive Committee of the Communist International on a general strike in Britain, published in the American Daily Worker on 20 July 1926 reads, in part:

It is characteristic that the remarkable historical process to the left of the British workers proceeded before all and first of all thru the trade unions. Hence it was not an accident but a fully legitimate and politically correct step of the British Communist Party to issue the slogan: “All power to the general council of the trade unions.”

And there is this from the pages of the Militant of 15 October 1929 about schisms in the Russian Communist Party:

In the form of a struggle against Philistinism he casts suspicion on the sincerity of the struggle against the Right deviation. Schatzkin believes that the victory over the Right was not achieved thanks to the politically correct line of the Party and its energetic defense against the Right opportunists, but thanks to the inertia and emptiness of the Party philistine.

By the mid 1930s, politically correct was appearing in non-Marxist writing, but in reference to restrictions on speech in the Soviet Union, and it is here that the term starts to acquire its negative valence. From the San Antonio Light of 6 May 1935:

Russians do not emigrate and bring the truth with them simply because they cannot leave. To get a visa, a Russian must be “politically correct” and pay $400 fee in gold. The owner of so many rubles couldn’t be “politically correct.”

We can see from these uses that left-wing writing placed a positive valence on political correctness, and the mainstream press in the United States viewed the term negatively. This split would continue through to today, although until the 1970s, references to political correctness were primarily in the context of the Soviet Union, China, and other Marxist governments.

In the 1970s, progressive—not necessarily Marxist—movements in the United States picked up the term. In the process, the term softens from hardline Marxist dogma to a call for inclusion and being mindful and respectful of voices and views that had traditionally been suppressed or ignored. We see the start of this new sense in an article on the feminist movement in the July 1973 issue of Esquire magazine. But that article stops short of using the term itself, merely collocating correct and political:

The mood of the original feminists has changed utterly. The anger is gone, and in its place there seems a blend of sadness, softness, compassion and exhaustion. There is also humor—some of it unconscious—when people recount the rise and fall of groups, the setting up and toppling of “correct political lines,” the purges and counterpurges.

By the mid 1980s, the abbreviation PC starts to appear. From the Tribune of Blackpool, England of 6 April 1984:

AT LAST—a video game which does not encourage mindless militarism. An American company, PC (Politically Correct) Games has just marketed a game called “Defend Nicaragua” which is about defeating the American-backed Contras.

The name of the game company hints that the abbreviation was in already use by this point. And a few months later a KNT News Wire piece on political differences on college campuses uses the abbreviation in a piece about Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania:

“The campus,” said Drew Clark, sophomore philosophy major and opinion editor of the school paper, The Phoenix, “is divided into the athletic and the P.C. side of campus.”

P.C.?

“The politically correct side of campus. The people who are progressive, the pro-Mondale people, the Latin American studies group, the feminist group. Those are the core opposition groups.”

And there is this from the San Francisco Examiner of 11 November 1990:

The term “politically correct,” with its suggestion of Stalinist orthodoxy, is spoken more with irony and disapproval than with reverence.

But across the country the term PC, as it is commonly abbreviated, is being heard more and more in debates over what should be taught at universities. There are even initials—PCP—to designate a politically correct person.

So, the current debate over political correctness has been raging for decades with little progress on either side. An editorial in the Vancouver Sun of 30 October 1993 sums it up aptly:

However, is [Canadian Supreme Court Justice John Sopinka] not aware that pointing a finger at groups and accusing them of being purveyors of political correctness is itself a way of suppressing freedom of speech? Accord to a news report of his speech he criticized some feminists, homosexuals and visible minorities for the insistence that “contrary views be suppressed.” Somehow, those are the groups that are consistently attacked for cracking the whip of political correctness to keep public debate in line with their viewpoints. Yet they hardly have a monopoly on censorship wishes. Just about everyone wants to shut up somebody else, ranging from the prim citizenry who would ban Margaret Laurence’s books from school bookshelves to crooked executives who would fire whistleblowers.

The problem with sneering at the familiar roll call of feminists, gays and visible minorities for fostering PC attitudes is that they may keep quiet and their legitimate concerns may go unaddressed.

In any event, just who has been muzzled? People seem to be saying nastier things than ever before about their fellow Canadians. In fact, they often attempt to deflect criticism by prefacing their ugly statements with “This probably isn’t politically correct, but….”

Labelling people or ideas can be a means of belittling them. The judge should take care lest his irritation over political correctness makes him deaf to some people’s voices.

(Note: In my 2004 book Word Myths, I dated the newer sense to the 1970s. Subsequent discovery of the earlier uses showed this to be wrong.)

Discuss this post

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Sources:

“Alleged Magyar Campaign Exposed.” Christian Science Monitor, 4 September 1919, 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Bernstein, Richard. “Academe and Orthodoxy.” San Francisco Examiner, 11 November 1990, This World 17. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“British General Strike Gives Lessons to Labor Movement, Is View of Comintern Executive.” Daily Worker, 20 July 1926, 4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Davidson, Sara. “Foremothers.” Esquire, 80.1, July 1973, 74. Esquire Magazine Archive.

Flannery, Mary (KNT News Wire). “Football Players in a Minority at Swarthmore.” Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania), 1 November 1984, C11. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“New Opposition Among the Russian Youth.” The Militant, 15 October 1929, 5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2006, s.v. politically, adv.; March 2005, s.v. P, n.; Draft Additions, 1997, s.v. correct, adj.

“Political Correctness All in the Name” (editorial). Vancouver Sun (British Columbia), 30 October 1993, A16. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Sanger, R.H. “Web Holds Enslaved Reds.” San Antonio Light (Texas), 6 May 1935, 7-A. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Street, John. “John Street’s Diary: Never Trust a Tory to Recognize a Free Election.” Tribune (Blackpool, England), 6 April 1984, 4.

Wilson, James. Chisholm, Ex’r. v. Georgia. 2 U.S. 419, Supreme Court of the United States, 1 February 1793. Thomson Reuters Westlaw.

Photo credit: Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, 1897. Public domain image. Wikipedia Commons. Original. Airbrushed.