face the music

A soldier who is literally not facing the music being drummed out of the Union Army during the US Civil War

10 May 2023

The phrase face the music means to accept unwelcome consequences, especially the consequences of one's own actions. The underlying metaphor is uncertain, but there are a number of plausible suggestions.

What we do know is that the phrase is an Americanism, appearing first in New Hampshire in the mid 1830s. The phrase face up to appears a century earlier, and face the music appears about the same time as face the facts, and may have been a metaphorical play on those more literal phrases.

The earliest known use of the phrase is from the New Hampshire Statesman of 2 August 1834:

By the way, the mention of the late Sheriff of Merrimack brings again to mind the lost law. The editor of the Courier has not, probably, forgotten that this individual was accused by him of stealing that bill, while he held it in his possession, by virtue of the arrangement with one Charles F. Gove. Will the editor of the Courier explain this black affair. We want no equivocation—“face the music” this time—Gove and Barton are able backers. And when this is done with, we may perhaps take occasion to read another lesson or two pertaining to his official conduct, before we touch his private affairs.

It then appears in another New Hampshire paper, the Dover Enquirer, a couple of times the following year before spreading out to the rest of New England and the wider world. The first of these is dated 19 May 1835:

One of the brightest feathers in General Jackson’s cap, in the estimation of the tories of this state, is his pertinacity in vetoing all projects for internal improvement; and one of the strongest claims which Van Buren possesses to the old man’s shoes, according to the same gentry, is his determination to follow up the work. As Van Buren, however, has now given “assurances” that he will not be a Vetoite, we are curious to see how the tories will get over it. Come gentlemen—no dodging—face the music.

And the second appearance in the Dover Enquirer is from 15 September 1835:

Notice is given in the Concord papers, that all “$100 Judges,” who intend to follow the “patriotic example” of Judge Stark, are requested to send in their resignations before Monday the 21st inst. when the Governor and Council will be in session to fill the vacancies. Come Judge Simpson, “face the music!”

There are a number of possible metaphors to explain the phrase. It may be from a nervous performer fearing to come on stage. Alternatively, it may come out of a military context. Face is commonly used in the military in commands telling soldiers which direction to turn, and music is military slang for gunfire, and so to face the music may refer to going into battle. Somewhat more plausible is that face the music may come from the practice of literally drumming a soldier out of his regiment for bad behavior. Militating against the military explanations, however, is the fact that none of the early appearances in print are particularly martial. In the end, though, while all of these speculations are possible, we just don’t know.

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Sources:

“The Editor of the Courier.” New Hampshire Statesman (Concord), 2 August 1834, 3/2. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2023, s.v. music, n.

“Notice Is Given.” Dover Enquirer (New Hampshire), 15 September 1835, 2/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, s.v. face, v.; June 2015, s.v. drum, v.1.; March 2003, s.v. music, n. and adj.

 “A Slant at Henry Hubbard.” Dover Enquirer (New Hampshire), 19 May 1835, 2/5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Haas and Peale, 1863. Library of Congress. Public domain image.

dry run

Sailors aboard the USS Oak Hill conducting a dry run firefighting drill

8 May 2023

Dry run is an Americanism dating to the late nineteenth century usually referring to a rehearsal or practice run of some activity. But the phrase dry run has an older, etymologically unrelated sense referring to a waterless creek bed, an arroyo. This use dates to the late eighteenth century and even appears as a proper place name in some locations.

Wentworth and Flexner’s 1960 Dictionary of American Slang defines the other common uses of the phrase today:

dry run     1 Firing or shooting practice with blank or dummy ammunition. Army use. → 2 A rehearsal; any simulated action. 3 [taboo] Sexual intercourse during which a contraceptive is used. v.t. To subject someone or something to a dry run. 1953: “The V[eterans’] A[dministration] invited Lemanowicz in a few days early so the hospital staff of 27 could ‘dry run’ their equipment.” AP, Jan. 6.

The slang sense of dry run first arises in firefighting jargon, referring to training exercises where water is not used. We see an example of its antonym, wet run, in an announcement of a firefighting tournament in the Tacoma, Washington Territory Daily Ledger of 1 September 1886:

State Association Champion Hose Race—Open to all; wet run; distance, two hundred yards to hydrant.

And the next year we see a similar announcement, only using dry run this time, in upstate New York’s Watertown Herald of 25 June 1887:

No less than fifteen nor more than seventeen men to each company. Dry run, standing start; each team to be allowed one trial; cart to carry 350 feet of hose in 50 foot lengths: distance, 300 yards run; 200 yards to hydrant: attach and lay one line of hose 300 feet from hydrant; break coupling, and put on pipe; pipe and coupling to be 8 threads to the inch, with at least 3 full threads to couple and to be screwed up to shoulder or washer, ready for water.

It makes its way into US Army slang by the beginning of the World War II era. The October 1941 issue of the journal American Speech defines it thusly, and also includes its use as a verb:

DRY RUN. To practice; a dress rehearsal.

But a response to the American Speech definition appears in the February 1942 issue, where a commenter, based on “four months’ experience (June to October 1941) as a draftee private at Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland; and Bolling Field, D.C.,” says:

“DRY RUN (to practice; a dress rehearsal).” I never heard it used as a verb, or to mean a dress rehearsal. Originally a semi-official term for practice firing without ammunition, it is slang in other senses, such as a mail-call at which one receives no mail.

But the Oxford English Dictionary has a 1949 citation of its use as a verb, so it’s reasonable to assume that American Speech got it right and the lone commenter was speaking from limited experience. It was undoubtedly the WWII military use of dry run that brought the phrase to the tongues of millions of Americans.

The sexual sense appears by the mid 1950s. Green’s Dictionary of Slang defines dry run as follows:

1. an act of sexual intercourse using a contraceptive. […] 2. (US gay) sex without ejaculation; frottage.

The sexual sense appears in Evan Hunter’s 1954 novel The Blackboard Jungle. Green’s places this citation under its second definition, but while his use of dry run clearly refers to sex, exactly what sexual act Hunter intended dry run to refer to isn’t clear from the text:

He plays drums with Gillespie, West. He beats a wild skin. He beats a wine skin too. But you’ve been to Spain, haven’t you, West? A man of your wide experience. A man who knows what “knocked up” means, and “grind session.” You also know what planked means, don’t you? You know what a dry run is, huh boy? Or do you go for crime jargon, West? Is that your speed? You a heel and toe boy? A grifter? A fish? What are you, West? A con man? Come on, West.

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Sources:

“Fireman’s Tournament.” Daily Ledger (Tacoma, Washington Territory, 1 September 1886, 5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Glossary of Army Slang.” American Speech, 16.3, October 1941, 163–69 at 165. JSTOR.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, s.v. dry run, n. in dry, adj.1.

“Hose & Foot Races!” Watertown Herald (New York), 25 June 1887. [Page 4, image 4. Pages are unnumbered and out of order in the database.] NYS Historic Newspapers.

Hunter, Evan. The Blackboard Jungle. Cambridge, Mass.: Robert Bentley, 1954, 162. Archive.org.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2022, s.v. dry run, n., dry run, v.

Wentworth, Harold, and Stuart Berg Flexner, eds. Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1960, 165. Archive.org.  

Wilson, Douglas E. “Remarks on ‘Glossary of Army Slang.’” American Speech, 17.1, February 1942, 67–68 at 68. JSTOR.

Photo credit: Michael Loggins, 2009. US Navy photo. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

carbon / diamond / graphite / buckminsterfullerene / fullerene / buckyball

Two allotropes of carbon: graphite (left) and diamond (right)

5 May 2023

Carbon, atomic number six and symbol C, is, at least for life on earth, the most important of the elements. It has been known since antiquity in the forms of soot, charcoal, and graphite, although its status as an element, as well as our current names for it like carbon and graphite, date only to the late eighteenth century.

In 1772 Antoine Lavoisier was the first to recognize that charcoal, graphite, and diamond were the same substance. And the name carbon was coined by Louis-Bernard Guyton, Baron de Morveau in 1787 in a treatise on chemical nomenclature:

Quand on a vu former l'air fixe par la combinaiſon directe du charbon & de l'air vital, à l'aide de la combustion, le nom de cet acide gazeux n'est plus arbitraire, il se dérivé nécessairement de son radical, qui est la pure matière charbonneuse; c'est donc l'acide carbonique, ses composés avec bases font des carbonates; &, pour mettre encore plus de précision dans la dénomination de ce radical, en le distinguant du charbon dans l'acception vulgaire, en l'isolant, par la pensée, de la petite portion de matière étrangère qu'il recèle ordinairement, & qui constitue la cendre, nous lui adaptons l'expression modifiée de carboné, qui indiquera le principe pur, essentiel charbon, & qui aura l'avantage de le spécifier par un seul mot, de manière à prévenir toute équivoque.

(When we have seen the formation of fixed air [i.e., carbonic dioxide] by the direct combination of carbon and vital air [i.e., oxygen], with the aid of combustion, the name of this gaseous acid is no longer arbitrary, it is necessarily derived from its radical, which is pure carbonaceous matter; it is therefore carbonic acid, its compounds with bases form carbonates; &, to put even more precision in the denomination of this radical, by distinguishing it from coal in the vulgar sense, by isolating it, theoretically, from the small portion of foreign matter that it usually conceals, & which constitutes the ash, we adapt to it the modified term of carbon, which will indicate the pure principle, the essence of coal, and which will have the advantage of specifying it by a single word, so as to prevent any ambiguity.)

Morveau’s work was translated into English the following year.

Carbon appears naturally in two forms or allotropes, diamond and graphite. Both forms have been known since antiquity, but the English names are more recent, with diamond dating to the mid fourteenth century and graphite to the late eighteenth century.

Our present-day word diamond is from the Middle English diamaunt. That is borrowed from the Old French, which in turn comes from the medieval Latin diamas and medieval Greek διαμάντε (diamante). The classical Latin word is adamas, which also gives us adamant. The addition of the dia- prefix was probably to distinguish the gem from the more common magnetic lodestone, which in medieval Latin was also referred to as adamas.

Graphite, on the other hand, is borrowed from the German graphit, which dates to 1789 in that language. The modern name is based on the Greek γράϕειν (graphine, to write) because of its use in pencils. Graphite appears in English by 1796. Older names for graphite include black lead and plumbago, which is literally “black lead” in Latin, both dating to the sixteenth century.

A new allotrope of carbon was artificially created in the 1980s. Dubbed buckminsterfullerene, the first of this type consisted of sixty carbon atoms joined together as a truncated regular icosahedron of twelve pentagons and twenty hexagons, forming a symmetrical spheroidal structure suggestive of the geodesic dome or a soccer ball. It was so named in honor of architect Buckminster Fuller, a popularizer of the use of geodesic domes in architecture. The creation of buckminsterfullerenes was announced in the journal Nature on 14 November 1985:

Thus a search was made for some other plausible structure which would satisfy all sp2 valences. Only a spheroidal structure appears likely to satisfy this criterion, and thus Buckminster Fuller’s studies were consulted. An unusually beautiful (and probably unique) choice is the truncated icosahedron depicted in Fig. 1 [i.e., a photo of a soccer ball].

[…]

We are disturbed at the number of letters and syllables in the rather fanciful but highly appropriate name we have chosen in the title to refer to this C60 species. For such a unique and centrally important molecular structure, a more concise name would be useful. A number of alternatives come to mind (for example, ballene, spherene, soccerene, carbosoccer), but we prefer to let this issue of nomenclature be settled by consensus.

Buckminsterfullerene is a mouthful indeed, and Harry Kroto, one of its creators, commented in 1987 on the naming and coined the shorter fullerene to designate the class of allotrope of which buckminsterfullerene is just one:

It was called buckminsterfullerene because the geodesic ideas associated with the constructs of Buckminster Fuller had been instrumental in arriving at a plausible structure. It is convenient to retain this name for C60 and use the name fullerene generically for the class of all carbon cages composed of twelve 5-membered and an unrestricted number of 6-membered rings consistent with the constructs discussed in the original patents.

But even earlier, Kroto and his associates had more playfully dubbed them buckyballs. That name is attested in an Associated Press piece of 24 December 1985 on the discovery:

Several Rice University scientists noticed two months ago that their laser machine was producing unusual spherical carbon molecules they had never seen before.

The researchers quite by accident had found carbon 60, which they nicknamed “Buckyballs,” a discovery that has taken the international scientific community by storm.

[…]

The spheres were named buckminsterfullerene for the late architect Buckminster Fuller.

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Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2007, s.v. diamand, n.

Associated Press. “Scientists Find Odd Molecule.” El Paso Times (Texas), 24 December 1985, 8-A. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, 2013, s.v. diamandus, diamans, diamas, n., adamas, n. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Kirwan, Richard. Elements of Mineralogy, vol. 2 of 2, second edition. London: P. Elmsly, 1796, 58. Archive.org.

Kroto, H.W., et al. “C60: Buckminsterfullerene.” Nature, 318.6042, 14 November 1985, 162–63.

Kroto, H.W. “The stability of the Fullerenes Cn, with n = 24, 28, 32, 36, 50, 60 and 70.” Nature, 329.6139. 8 October 1987, 529–30 at 529.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. diamaunt, n.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 1—From Antiquity till the End of 18th Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, November 2022.

De Morveau, Louis-Bernard Guyton. “Mémoire sur le Développement des Principes de la Nomenclature Méthodique.” In Methode de Nomenclature Chimique. Paris: Chuchet, 1787, 44–45. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2016, s.v. fullerene, n.; September 2011, s.v. black lead, n.; December 2008, s.v. carbon, n.; September 2006, s.v. plumbago, n.; 1997, s.v. buckminsterfullerene, n., buckyball, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. graphite, n.

Photo credit: Robert M. Lavinsky, 2015. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

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.