sweeps

1958 photo of a family watching television

16 December 2022

It used to be that four times a year, American television viewers were subjected to sweeps periods. The sweeps were when the A.C. Nielsen Company measured the audiences in all 210 US television markets. Nielsen continuously measured national programming, but local audiences were only measured in November, February, May, and July. The ratings gathered during these periods were used to set advertising rates and to make decisions about local programming. During sweeps months, the networks scheduled new episodes of programs, specials, original productions, and other shows that were likely to draw a larger-than-ordinary audience. In non-sweeps months, viewers got a lot of reruns.

Nielsen began the quarterly sweeps in the 1950s, but the term didn’t start appearing in the mainstream press until the late 1960s. Here are a pair of early mentions from the Houston Chronicle. The first is from 15 October 1967:

Among local stations, though, the most significant ratings are Nielsen’s “big November sweeps,” the ones to be taken Oct. 26 through Nov. 22, as part of the firm’s important November sampling of the national scene.

Another big one is Nielsen’s “March sweep,” taken in late February and early March, and also part of periodic [sic] in-depth national survey.

And this one from 5 February 1968:

The big winner will be revealed in the “February Sweeps” Nielsen, which starts its statistical sampling of local viewer preferences on Feb. 14, and winds up in mid-March.

With the rise of cable and streaming television, the sweeps periods started to lose their significance, although for a long while they remained important as the sweeps periods determined advertising rates for local stations and programs, especially local news. In 2018, Nielsen switched to twelve monthly periods, surveying local markets twelve times throughout the year, negating the importance of the traditional sweeps months.

There are a couple of competing explanations for why the ratings periods were labeled sweeps. The most likely is that it simply comes from sweeping up or gathering the data. An oft-repeated, variant on the general metaphor has it that in the 1950s, Nielsen would collect the paper diaries starting on the east coast and then sweep west collecting them. While this more specific imagery is evocative, there is no evidence to support it, and it has the ring of a post-hoc rationalization.

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Sources:

Hodges, Ann. “News Teams Reshuffled as Nielsens Loom. Houston Chronicle (Texas), 5 February 1968, 13. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

———. “Wasn’t Even Much of a Rasslin’ Match.” Houston Chronicle, 15 October 1967, Zest–9. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, draft additions 1993, s.v. sweep, n.

Photo credit: Evert F. Baumgardner, 1958. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

paparazzi

A grainy, 1963, black-and-white photograph of actor Mickey Hargitay assaulting paparazzo Rino Barillari on the Via Veneto in Rome

14 December 2022

A paparazzo is a freelance photographer who snaps shots of celebrities for sale to media outlets. Paparazzi are known for being aggressive and transgressive in getting their money shot. The name comes from just such a character in Federico Fellini’s 1960 film La Dolce Vita named Paparazzo, played by Walter Santesso.

Paparazzo is an Italian surname, so naming a character that would not be unusual. Fellini claimed that he took the name from an opera libretto and that to him the name suggested a biting insect, a pest. But his co-writer Ennio Flaiano claimed to have contributed the name, and that his inspiration came from its use in George Gissing’s 1901 novel By the Ionian Sea, where it was the name of a hotelier. Gissing’s novel was translated into Italian in 1957, and presumably Flaiano had recently read it. It has also been suggested that paparazzo means clam in the Abruzzi dialect, from which Flaiano hails, and is a metaphor for the opening and closing of a camera shutter.

In Italian, paparazzo is the singular form of the word and paparazzi the plural, but that distinction has not been consistently observed in English, which commonly uses paparazzi for both singular and plural. The earliest use of the word to refer to a freelance photographer (other than the character in the film) that I’m aware of is in Time magazine from 14 April 1961. Time does make the distinction between singular and plural forms:

Trouble that can be shot with a camera is Kroscenko’s business. A three-block stretch of the Via Veneto, cascading from the Aurelian Wall to the U.S. embassy is his favorite hunting ground. Here, in the glittering array of hotels, smart shops and open-air cafés, throng Kroscenko’s picturesque prey. He is a paparazzo,* one of a ravenous wolf pack of freelance photographers who stalk big names for a living and fire with flash guns at point-blank range.

Shot from a Box. The paparazzi are a small crew—a couple of dozen at most—and they are more bullyboys than news photographers. They lounge beneath lampposts, lips leaking cigarettes, cameras drawn like automatics. “Come esce lo faccio secco [When he comes out, I’ll drill him],” they snarl, while waiting for their quarry to open a nightclub door. Then the paparazzi attack.

The footnote reads:

* A name coined by Movie Director Federico Fellini for a freelance photographer in La Dolce Vita, his gamy study of Roman café society. “Paparazzo,” says Fellini, “suggests to me a buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging.”

But just a year later, a United Press International article from 13 May 1962 uses paparazzi as both singular and plural. The singular use appears in a quote by the aforementioned Ivan Kroscenco (different spelling in the UPI piece). The quote is at a crossroads between multiple languages. Kroscenco was Russian born and living in Italy, but the quote is rendered in English. This is exactly the type of situation where one would expect strict distinctions between singular and plural forms to be blurred:

Russian-born Ivan Kroscenco is the unofficial “king of the paparazzi.”

A squat man of 32—and always dressed in a black leather jacket—Kroscenco explained that “anybody can take regular photographs. But we want the ones that nobody else can take.

“You’ve got to be fast with a camera, get the instant. Zot, like that,” he said, indicating a fast shot from the hip.

* * *

“Now, everybody claims to be a paparazzi. But I started it and there are only half a dozen of us. The best are just hangers on. But they don’t get much anyway. They don’t know how to operate.”

But a few months later we see the singular paparazzi in an all-English context when the Philadelphia Daily News of 20 September 1962 ran a headline that read, “Ingrid Pops A Paparazzi.” The article is about actor Ingrid Bergman slapping a photographer who was pestering her while she was shopping with her daughters.

Bergman would not be the last celebrity to slug a paparazzi. There is this that appeared in Washington, D.C.’s Evening Star on 7 September 1964:

Peter O’Toole’s telling punch at a paparazzi in Rome has all the Hollywood stars cheering. The pesky flies (literal translation) make life miserable for any foreign celebrity on the Via Veneto. It takes an Italian to take it all in stride—as Rosanno Brazzi did when we were driving with some of his guests out of the Excelsior driveway and the photographers descended like locusts. Rosanno grabbed the wife of a friend and went into a big kissing pose. And how those cameras clicked! When wife Lydia saw the photographs in a magazine, she laughed and laughed. She knows the paparazzi. And her spouse.

Can one blame a celebrity for punching a paparazzi who disrupts their sweet life?

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Sources:

Graham, Sheilah. “Short Honeymoon for Anna Marie.” Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 7 September 1964, A-19. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Ingrid Pops a Paparazzi.” Philadelphia Daily News, 20 September 1962, 3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2005, s.v. paparazzo, n. (and adj.), paparazzi, n.

“Paparazzi on the Prowl.” Time, 14 April 1961, 81. Time Magazine Archive.

“Tale of Two (Eternal) Cities: Just Eternal and Eternally Political” (United Press International). Springfield Union (Massachusetts), 13 May 1962, 16A. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Image credit: Unknown photographer, 1963. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

shit

2 November 2021

[Update 14 December 2022: added 1844 interjectional use]

The passage from Bald’s Leechbook that uses the word shit

It is commonly believed that our so-called “four-letter words” are all Old English in origin, dating back to the earliest days of our language. In most cases, this is a false assumption. Most of our modern swear words are more recent than the early medieval era. Shit, however, is an exception where this common belief is actually correct. It traces back to the Old English scitte.

Here is a passage from Bald’s Leechbook, a mid tenth-century manuscript of a medical text:

Wiþ þon þe men mete untela melte & gecirre on yfele wætan & scittan, þam monnum ðeah þæt hie spiwen, gif him to uneaðe ne sie, gegremme mið wyrtðrence þæt he spiwe.

(In case a person’s food digests badly and turns to an evil liquid and shit. [It is good for] these people that they should spew; if it is difficult for them, induce with wort-drink so that they spew.)

In Old English use, or at least in the instances of the word that survive, scitte specifically means diarrhea.

The Old English verb *scitan (to shit) isn’t found in the extant Old English corpus, but it probably existed. The verb is first recorded in Middle English, in the c.1335 Hail Seint Michel Wiþ þe Lange Sper, a satirical poem of twenty stanzas. The poem is a parody of the Norse practice of minnis-drykkja, or toasting the saints. The first five stanzas toast saints, starting with archangel Michael (technically not a saint, but labeled and treated as such), the next five toast clerics, the next nine toast various tradespeople, and the last stanza addresses the audience, telling them to drink deeply. The word schite appears in a stanza about how tanners and their chemical solutions produce a noxious odor:

Hail be ȝe skinners wiþ ȝure drenche kine!
Who so smilliþ þerto, wo is him aliue,
Whan þat hit þonneriþ, ȝe mote þer in schite.
Daþeit ȝur curteisie, ȝe stinkeþ al þe strete,
     Worþ hit wer, þat he were king
     Þat ditid þis trie þing.

(Hail to you skinners, with your pungent liquid!
Whoever so sniffs it, he is ever so wretched,
When in that place, you must shit in there.
Cursed be your courtesy, you stink up the street,
     It would be worthy, that if he were king
     That he ended this vexatious thing.)

Use of shit as an interjection doesn’t come until much later. The earliest recorded instance of the interjection is in a 16 May 1844 diary entry of one James Thomas Robinson:

Drunk! Drunk! Why in hell cant I be a Byron, or more! Why cant I immortalize my name before morning? I dont think much of this heavy drunk after all that is said about it. I dont think tis very pleasant, this allmighty dizzyness. I cant seem to write. Shit.

The punctuation makes it clear that the word is an interjection and not a characterization of his writing.

The next known use of shit as an interjection is in the record of a 5 July 1865 US Army court martial:

Charge II. Conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline. Specification 1. In this that he, Private James Sullivan, Company I, 13th Regt. V.R.C. having been ordered by Srgt. Edward R. Finno [?] of said company to fall in the ranks for dress parade did in a contemptuous and disrespectful manner reply (to Srgt. E. R. Finno [?]) “O shit I cant,” or words to that effect.

[I am not certain of the sergeant’s name. The handwriting is not particularly good, and names are difficult to transcribe at the best of times.]

These particular instances may be the earliest we know of, but it is certain that people were saying “oh, shit” long before this date; it just wasn’t recorded in writing. As more handwritten manuscripts are digitized, undoubtedly more and probably earlier instances of the usage will be found.

Oh, and that story about shit originating as an acronym meaning ship high in transport. That’s too obviously a joke, not a serious attempt to explain where the word comes from.

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Sources:

Cockayne, Oswald. Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, vol. 2 of 3. London: Longman, et al., 1865, 226–227. HathiTrust Digital Archive. London, British Library, Royal MS 12.D.xvii, fol. 84v.

Heuser, W. Die Kildare-Gedichte. Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1904. 157. HathiTrust Digital Archive. https://www.hathitrust.org/ London, British Library, Harley MS 913, fol. 8r.

Martin, Susan. “‘Why Cant I Immortalize My Name Before Morning?’: The Diaries of James Thomas Robinson.” The Beehive (blog). Massachusetts Historical Society. 25 February 2019.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019. s.v. shit, n., shitten, v.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2011, modified September 2021, shit, n. and adj., shit, v.; modified December 2020, s.v. shit, int.

Proceedings Court Martial United States Army (Judge Advocate General's Office), US National Archives: Rec. group 153, File MM-2412 3 Charge II.

Sheidlower, Jesse. “Interjectional ‘Shit’ in a Drunken 1844 Diary Entry.” Strong Language (blog), 13 December 2022.

Turville-Petre, Thorlac. Poems from BL MS Harley 913, “The Kildare Manuscript.” Early English Text Society OS 345. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015, 9–10, 12.

Image credit: Portion of London, British Library, Royal MS 12.D.xvii, fol. 84v. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.

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.