drink the Kool-Aid

1979 aerial view the People’s Temple cult compound at Jonestown, Guyana

3 May 2023

To drink the Kool-Aid is a slang Americanism meaning to exhibit unswerving loyalty and belief in one’s leaders or convictions. It was originally a reference to a massacre/mass suicide by members of the People’s Temple in Jonestown, Guyana on 18 November 1978. Over 900 people died on the orders of the cult’s leader, Jim Jones. Many of those who died apparently willingly drank a cyanide-laced drink, but others were forcibly made to do so or were injected with cyanide. But as the memory of that horrific event has faded, the phrase has largely lost its macabre association

Kool-Aid is a brand of flavored drink mix. The name is a respelling for trademark purposes of cool + -ade. It was trademarked in 1927. Ironically, Kool-Aid was not actually used at Jonestown, but rather another brand, Flavor Aid, was. But Kool-Aid had a much larger market share and was better known by far, and so it became associated with Jonestown in the public consciousness.

We see the metaphor start to take hold a few months after the deaths at Jonestown. The following is from a 14 January 1979 op-ed in the Washington Post. It uses the metaphor, but not the phrasing, opting instead for pass around the Kool-Aid:

This is not an age of reason. The Jonestown massacre was an event perfectly typical of the epoch: You can fool most of the people with absolutely any nonsense, all the time, and a belief that the mercenaries were coming for them out of the jungle, that the only escape was mass suicide, was completely normal.

The climax of Leni Riefenstahl’s film of the Nuremberg rally comes with Hess shouting to the frenzied faithful, “Hitler is the Party, the Party is Hitler,” just before the Leader appeared. No doubt about it, if he had ordered the SS to pass around the Kool-Aid, all those crewcut Nazis would have tossed it back with the same fervor with which they cheered Hess’ ravings.

To a large extent, in fact, the latter part of the Second World War was a case of mass suicide: Everybody in Germany knew that the war was lost, and that going on fighting was merely a good way of getting killed. They followed their Leader, all the same, their eyes open, right to the end.

The exact phrasing drink the Kool-Aid appears a few months later. Here it is in a 21 July 1979 article in the Charlotte Observer about a cabinet shake-up in the Carter administration:

“What is going on around here?” trumpeted the Washington Post in an editorial one morning. Cartoonists dipped their pens in acid. Gallows humor abounded.

“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” a reference to the mass deaths at Jonestown in Guyana, was the gag of the day in the White House press room Tuesday when the mass resignation offers were announced.

Everywhere in the capital, people seemed to talk of little else but Carter’s reshuffling of the federal house of cards.

The earliest citation of the metaphorical use in the Oxford English Dictionary quotes poet Allen Ginsberg at a poetry reading during a protest against nuclear power on 20 February 1981:

He read to his audience from his earlier poetry like the famed “Howl” but also offered “Plutonium Ode,” a more recent protest against nuclear power and Three Mile Island[.]

“We are all being put in the place of the citizens of Jonestown, being told by our leaders to drink the Kool-Aid of nuclear power,” he said stressing his dismay at the return of right-wing politics and morality in America[.]

But by 1981, the phrase had started to become disassociated with the horrors of Jonestown. An 18 October 1981 article in the Kansas City Star about the air traffic controllers’ strike blithely uses the phrase in a non-life-threatening context and without direct reference to Jonestown:

The one enduring mystery in the controllers’ strike is why, if their demands are laughable, have so many controllers stuck with them so long? What made them “drink the Kool-Aid,” as one non-striking controller in Memphis put it?

That’s the way with such phrases. Over time, as the events that inspired the original metaphors fade, the phrases lose some of their power.

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Sources:

Alter, Jonathan. “Air Controllers Were Overstaffed.” Kansas City Star (Missouri), 18 October 1981, 4B/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers,

Boyd, Robert S. “Washington Wobbles After Whirlwind Week.” Charlotte Observer (North Carolina), 21 July 1979, 1/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Brogan, Patrick. “The Age of Un-Reason.” Washington Post, 14 January 1979, G8/1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Graham, Eileen. “Ginsberg Tells of Kool Aid of Nuclear Power.” Gettysburg Times (Pennsylvania), 20 February 1981, 1/5. NewspaperArchive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2005, s.v. Kool-Aid, n.

Photo credit: US Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1978. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

drag (cross-dressing)

Drag performer Francis Leon, c.1919

1 May 2023

(For more on the verb, drag racing, and main drag, click here.)

In present-day speech, drag can refer to wearing clothes associated with the opposite gender. It most often refers to men dressing as women, but the word can also refer to women dressing as men. It’s strongly associated with gay subculture, but drag is also a slang term used in theatrical circles generally. While associated with gay men, public drag performances are rarely overtly sexual in nature and are more about challenging gender roles and expectations than actual sex.

The slang term comes, of course, from the verb to drag, meaning to draw or pull. The present-day verb comes to us from the Old English verb dragan, with the same meaning, and it either developed from proto-Germanic within English or it was borrowed from the Old Norse draga during the pre-Conquest period.

The slang sense of cross-dressing apparently comes from the length of a woman’s dress, which drags on the ground, appearing in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It may have arisen in theatrical slang, being later adopted into gay culture, or perhaps the path was vice versa. J. Redding Ware’s 1909 slang dictionary records a theatrical use from 1887, but also acknowledges the term is used by gay men, whom Ware euphemizes as “eccentric youths”:

Drag (Theat.) Petticoat or skirt used by actors when playing female parts. Derived from the drag of the dress, as distinct from the non-dragginess of the trouser.

Mrs Sheppard is now played by a man—Mr Charles Steyne, to wit. I don’t like to see low coms. in drag parts, but I must confess that Mr Steyne is really droll, without being at all vulgar.—Ref., 24th July 1887.

Also given to feminine clothing by eccentric youths when dressing up in skirts.

But the 1887 theatrical citation given by Ware is not the earliest known use of the term. It appears as early as 1870. In May of that year, the arrest of several men for cross-dressing at a private gathering at a London hotel created something of a sensation, accounts of which appeared in a number of newspapers. Here is one from London’s Morning Post of 23 May 1870:

Cross-examined by Mr. Besley—Gibbins said he was coming up for a week’s frolic, and wished to give a small party, with music, in the way of entertainment. He is a most accomplished musician. He came again and said, “I think we will make it a fancy dress affair,” and that some of them would come in “drag,” a slang term for ladies’ dress.

Mr. Flowers—It is the first time the meaning of the term has been given in evidence.

The testimony described in the Morning Post also says that men in male attire were dancing with the cross-dressing men and that the men in drag were amateur actors. The latter could be taken to indicate that the origin of the term is in theatrical slang, but it could also be an excuse the men concocted to give a socially acceptable explanation for their actions. What this example clearly shows, though, is that the term was clearly part of gay slang in 1870 and likely also in theatrical slang by that date as well.

An account of the arrest printed in the Bradford Observer, also on 23 May, details testimony stressing the non-sexual nature of the gathering:

He said he was coming up for a fortnight’s frolic. A musical party was the first idea. He is a most accomplished musician. He said after that they would have a little dress affair, with music, and that they would come in “drag,” which was a slang term for dressing as females. There was nothing coarse. He believed that all knew the young men were dressed as women, as he heard the observations made round the room as to how well they were acting. There was no impropriety in the room; not in the least; not a gesture.

But that is countered by the first paragraph of the Observer’s account, which reads:

At the Bow Street Police Court, on Saturday, Mr. Flowers, the presiding magistrate, was again engaged in hearing the case against the two prisoners, Frederick William Park and Ernest Boulton, charged with having been found dressed in women’s clothes, and frequenting various places of public amusement for the purpose of committing a felony. The fact that the felonious charge had been proved by medical evidence on Friday seemed only to have added to the excitement outside the court, an immense number of persons striving uselessly to gain admission.

One wonders what the “medical evidence” was, but perhaps we better not go there. But clearly this was not what we would today call a drag show. It was a private gathering of gay men with prospect of sex ensuing, even if nothing overtly sexual happened in the main room. Today, such a private gathering of consenting adults would be no one else’s business, but in Victorian England it was a felony.

Still, it is unresolved whether the slang sense of drag arose in the theater or among gay men, but whichever was first, the cross-over was early.

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Sources:

“The Charge of Personating Women.” Morning Post (London), 23 May 1870, 7/4. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2023, s.v. drag, n.1, drag, adj.1. (Green incorrectly notes: “The first OED citations (1870) imply fancy dress; gay refs. not overt until 20C.” The evidence from those citations is clearly in the context of gay men dressing as women, not a costume party, despite the use of “fancy dress” (i.e., costume) in the citation.)

“The Men in Women’s Clothes.” Bradford Observer (England), 23 May 1870, 4/4. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. drag, n., drag, v.

Ware, J. Redding. Passing English of the Victorian Era. London: George Routledge and Sons, 1909, 117. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Bradley and Rulofson, c. 1919. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

californium

August 1939 photo of the 60-inch (152 cm) cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley used to synthesize californium and other transuranic elements.

28 April 2023

Element 98 is dubbed californium, with the symbol Cf. It was first synthesized in 1950 by a team at the then University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley (now the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory). Californium is one of the few transuranic elements with practical applications, used as a source of neutrons in nuclear power plants and in nuclear diffraction and spectroscopy. It is named for both the University of California and for the state.

The discoverers explain their choice of name in a 15 March 1950 letter in the May 1950 issue of the journal Physical Review that officially announced their discovery:

It is suggested that element 98 be given the name californium (symbol Cf) after the university and state where the work was done. This name, chosen for the reason given, does not reflect the observed chemical homology of element 98 to dysprosium (No. 66) as the names americium (No. 95), curium (No.96), and berkelium (No. 97) signify that these elements are the chemical homologs of europium (No. 63), gadolinium (No. 64), and terbium (No. 65), respectively; the best we can do is point out, in recognition of the fact that dysprosium is named on the basis of a Greek word meaning “difficult to get at,” that the searchers for another element a century ago found it difficult to get to California.

But that wasn’t the first instance of the name appearing in print. Word of the discovery had gotten out prior to the official announcement, and the name was revealed in the 25 March 1950 issue of the Science News Letter:

Creation of the 98th and heaviest chemical element through atomic bombardment in the University of California 60-inch cyclotron has been made known.

It has been christened californium, honoring the university and state where the six heaviest trans-uranium elements, including plutonium, have been manufactured and discovered in the past decade.

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Sources:

“Californium Element 98.” Science News Letter, 57.12, 25 March 1950, 182. JSTOR.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 3—Rivalry of scientists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.” Foundations of Chemistry, 12 November 2022 (online).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. californium, n.

Thompson, S.G., K. Street, Jr., A. Ghiorso, and G.T. Seaborg. “Element 98” (15 March 1950). Physical Review, 78, May 1950, 298.

Photo credit: Unknown photographer, 1939. US National Archives, NAID: 558594. Public domain image.

d'oh / duh

26 April 2023

D’oh! and duh! are two interjections that have been popularized by cartoons. The first is a famous tagline of Homer Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, and the second first appears in a Bugs Bunny cartoon short.

Homer Simpson first utters d’oh! in The Simpsons short “Punching Bag,” which aired as part of The Tracy Ullman Show on 27 November 1988. At the very end of the short, Homer grunts “d’oh!” as he gets hit in the face with the recoil of a punching bag. The scripts for the Simpsons do not specify the exclamation, calling it only an “annoyed grunt.” Throughout the shorts and the subsequent series, Homer utters d’oh! when he does or says something foolish. Actor Dan Castellaneta, who voices the character, told Daily Variety on 28 April 1998 that his choice of the exclamation was an homage to comic actor James Finlayson, who played a straight man to comedians Laurel and Hardy in many of their films. Castellaneta said:

The D'oh came from character actor James Finlayson's “Do-o-o-o” in Laurel & Hardy pictures. You can tell it was intended as a euphemism for “Damn.” I just speeded it up.

An example of Finlayson’s use of the exclamation can be seen in the 1931 film Pardon Us, where he plays a schoolteacher attempting to educate convicts, Laurel and Hardy among them. Note, however, that Finlayson’s use is different than Homer Simpson’s in that it is an expression of frustration at someone else having done or said something foolish:

Schoolteacher (Finlayson): How many times does three go into nine?

Laurel: Three times.

Schoolteacher: Correct.

Laurel: And two left over.

Schoolteacher (to Hardy): What are you laughing at?

Hardy (snickering): There's only one left over.

Schoolteacher: Do-o-o-o!

[…]

Schoolteacher: Now, what is a comet? You. (Pointing at a prisoner)

Prisoner: A comet…a comet is a star with a tail on it.

Schoolteacher: Right! (To Laurel) Name one.

Laurel: Rin-tin-tin.

Schoolteacher: Do-o-o-o!

The exclamation duh! is similar, but not quite the same. It has two primary uses. In one, it is less an exclamation than it is a grunt of hesitation, and it’s used to express or feign inarticulacy or stupidity. We see this use in the 1943 Bugs Bunny cartoon short Jack Wabbit and the Beanstalk. In the short, Bugs has climbed the beanstalk to steal the giant’s carrots, and the dim-witted giant is voiced by Mel Blanc:

Hey, duh, wait a minute, duh, tryin’ to pull a fast one on me, hey. Duh, well, he can't outsmart me, because I'm a moron.

But the more common use of duh! is as a retort when someone else has said something banal or extremely obvious. It is recorded as being part of children’s slang in a New York Times Magazine piece of 24 November 1963:

A favorite expression is “duh” (spelled phonetically). This is a standard retort used when someone makes a conversational contribution bordering on the banal. For example, the first child says, “The Russians were first in space.” Unimpressed, the second child replies (or rather grunts), “Duh.”

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Sources:

Freleng, Friz, dir. “Jack Wabbit and the Beanstalk” (cartoon). Mel Blanc, voice. Merrie Melodies, Warner Brothers, 1943. Dailymotion.com.

Groening, Matt. “Punching Bag” (cartoon short). The Tracy Ullman Show, 27 November 1988. YouTube.

Guitar, Mary Anne. “Not for Finks: If You Don’t Understand Sub-Teen Lingo, It’s Because You’re Not Supposed To.” New York Times Magazine, 24 November 1963, 54. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2001, s.v. doh, int., duh, int.

Shapiro, Fred. “Earliest Usage of ‘Doh.’” ADS-L, 24 March 2002.

Walker H.M. and Stan Laurel. Pardon Us (film). James Parrott, dir. MGM, 1931. YouTube, at 22:00.

deadline

1882 drawing of the deadline at Andersonville prison camp, Georgia during the US Civil War

24 April 2023

Today, deadline is almost exclusively used to mean a time by which a task must be accomplished, but this sense of a time limit is a later development. Deadline started out with a variety of meanings, but all designating some kind of boundary or limit.

The term begins to appear in earnest in the middle of the nineteenth century. It is an Americanism, and the early uses often literally referred to death. For instance, there is this from the New York Observer of 21 February 1856 that uses the word to denote the line on a tree branch that marks living plant from dead wood:

When the first warm weather of early spring renders it necessary to cut back, before the sap begins to circulate, then do so, a little below the evident frost spark, or dead line. But if the peach trees are of good sorts, touch not the bodies too rashly, for they sometimes survive after the bark and wood show discolorations and slight disorganization, on cutting into them.

And there is this instance from nautical jargon that appeared in a report about a business meeting of the Boston, Massachusetts Board of Alderman on 11 January 1859. Exactly what the dead line here signifies isn’t clear, but it has to do with the lading of cargo onto ships:

The Ballast Inspectors during the last quarter inspected the dead line and light water marks of 406 vessels, the cargoes of which amounted to 22,763 tons, and the fees to $682 89.

But the most infamous use of deadline, the one that sparks widespread use of the term, was in the Confederate military prison camp at Andersonville, Georgia during the US Civil War. The camp became notorious for the horrific conditions under which Union prisoners of war were kept. Here is a portion of an account that appeared in Wisconsin’s Janesville Daily Gazette of 26 July 1864:

At the stockade there is an imaginary line, which if our men pass the rebel guard shoots; hence it is called the “dead line.” Many of the men’s sufferings become so intolerable that they voluntarily cross the line and are shot.

Accounts like this were printed in papers throughout the United States starting in 1864, and the term became notorious. Within a few years, deadline started appearing in other contexts, but often in the sense of an imaginary line that one literally risked death by crossing. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, one often sees the term in the context of range wars between cattlemen and sheep herders, where one side establishes such a boundary. It also often appears in the context of some accident where it is treacherous to approach the site.

But more metaphorical uses are also present. Deadline is frequently used in the context of refusal to hire older workers. (Ageism is nothing new.) The phrase deadline of fifty is frequently found in relation to the ministry. Here is an example from the Congregationalist and Boston Recorder of 24 June 1869:

We are invited to some very singular statements, which if true, are a reproach to our religion, viz: that the churches are so bewitched of young men for the sacred desk that the moment “gray hair”" being to develop, and the “dead line” of “fifty” is reached, off goes the minister’s head.

Another example of a metaphorical use comes from the world of newspaper publishing, but not in the sense of a time limit. Rather, this use that appeared in the Memphis, Tennessee Commercial Appeal of 6 September 1901 uses deadline to refer to boundary of silence surround negotiations for the settlement of a strike that reporters cannot penetrate:

The day was spent by the amalgamated advisory board in secret conference, behind doors guarded closer than ever before. The newspaper “deadline” was drawn most effectually. When adjournment for the day came, those who had been inside headquarters refused to talk.

Finally, by 1904 we get the sense referring to a time limit. This one appears in New Orleans’s Daily Picayune of 4 August 1904. It’s in a short story about a newspaper reporter, so clearly this sense of deadline was already a part of newspaper jargon by this date:

“To a phone, quick,” he whispered [sic] huskily. Then he twitched his watch from his pocket. “It’s 12:35,” he muttered, “and the deadline for the Bulldog edition is 1 o’clock. Twenty minutes to write the story, five minutes on the copy desk and we’ve got it. Hurry, Agnes—to a phone!”

Over time, this newspaper sense drove the other senses into obscurity. One still can find examples of deadline being used to refer to imaginary lines demarking territory, but the overwhelming number of uses are in the sense of a time limit.

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Sources:

Bittinger, J.Q. “Gray Hairs and Fifty.” The Congregationalist and Boston Recorder, 24 June 1869, 194/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Board of Aldermen.” Boston Evening Transcript, 11 January 1859, 4/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Lait, Jacquin Leonard. “Briggsie’s ‘Scoop.’” Daily Picayune (New Orleans), 4 August 1904, 7/5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“The Need of Troops.” Janesville Daily Gazette (Wisconsin), 26 July 1864, 2/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. dead-line, n.

“Peace Is in Sight.” Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tennessee), 6 September 1901, 2/5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Western Fruit Crop.” New York Observer (New York City), Religious Department, 21 February 1856, 64/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Image credit: Urban, John W. Battle Field and Prison Pen. Philadelphia: Hubbard Brothers, 1882, 355. Archive.org. Public domain image.