fuzz

The Keystone Cops, publicity still for the 1914 short film In the Clutches of the Gang; standing second-from-left is a young William Frawley, better known for playing Fred Mertz in the 1950s TV show I Love Lucy; to the extreme right is Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle.

24 May 2023

Fuzz is an American slang term for the police. Today, we often associate the term with the 1960s counterculture, but it’s several decades older. Why the police were dubbed the fuzz is simply not known. All we know is the slang term began appearing in print in the 1930s. Here is the earliest example I know of, from the Los Angeles Times of 30 January 1924:

“But there’s only a few places that a ‘mob’ can work. That’s on street cars or in crowds on down-town streets. But the ‘cannon coppers’ here are too hep. A ‘mob’ can ‘beat a pap’ to the ‘leather’ and get away with it with the ordinary ‘fuzz’ lookin’ on. But it’s a twenty-to-one shot when the ‘cannon coppers’ are wise.” A mob in the parlance of the pickpocket is a gang of three or four pickpockets working together. The “wire” or the “gun” is the man who does the actual lifting of the victim’s money. A “pap,” if he is a man, is the victim. The other men who work with the “wire” are known as the “stalls.” The pickpockets refer to policemen in general as “the fuzz.”

(The cannon coppers, as explained elsewhere in the article, are police assigned to the anti-pickpocket detail. Why they are called this is not explained.)

Another example, from some six months later, appears in Chicago, as reported in the New York Times of 19 July 1924:

“Nix! A copper!” shouted one of the robbers as McGlynn appeared in a narrow passageway leading to the main offices of the plant.

“As soon as the fuzz puts his foot in the door, lay it into him,” ordered the leader.

Irwin’s 1930 American Tramp and Underworld Slang includes an entry for fuzz and even postulates an origin, although there is no evidence to suggest that his guess is correct:

FUZZ.—A detective; a prison guard or turnkey. Here it is likely that “fuzz” was originally “fuss,” one hard to please or over-particular.

It’s disappointing that we don’t have any idea where the term comes from, but that is the way of such slang words. Unless more early examples that provide a clearer context for the underlying metaphor, it is likely this origin will be lost to the ages.

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Sources:

“Chicago Policeman Shot.” New York Times, 19 July 1924, 4/2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2023, s.v. fuzz, n.1.

Irwin, Godfrey. American Tramp and Underworld Slang. New York: Sears, 1930. Reprint, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Gryphon Books, 1971, 81. Archive.org.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. fuzz, n.3.

“Pickpockets Dodging City.” Los Angeles Times, 30 January 1924, A3/2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit. Mack Sennett Studios, 1914. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

americium

Interior of an americium-based smoke detector

13 January 2023

(Updated 22 May 2023: added 19 April 1946 Science reference)

Americium, element 95, was first produced by a team led by chemist Glenn Seaborg in 1944 at the University of California, Berkeley and identified by the Manhattan Project’s Metallurgical Laboratory (now Argonne National Lab), located at the University of Chicago. It was the fourth transuranic element to be discovered, after neptunium, plutonium, and curium. Announcement of the discovery was delayed until November 1945 due to wartime security, and the first public mention of the new element’s name was on 10 April 1946. From an Associated Press report of that date:

Seaborg, who last fall announced the existence of the new elements 95 and 96—radioactive elements that somewhat resemble the so-called rare earths—today proposed formal names for them.

He suggested that element 95 be called “Americium,” with the symbol “Am” in honor of the Americans [sic]; and that the element 96 be called “curium,” with the symbol “Cm” in honor of Pierre and Marie Curie, who obtained radium from pitchblende.

The journal Science reported on the discovery on 19 April 1946, including a prediction by some chemists on how the name would be pronounced and spelled:

The two new elements, 95 and 96, were given names by Glenn T. Seaborg at the meeting of the Physical and Inorganic Division of the American Chemical Society meeting at Atlantic City on 10 April. He recommended that 95 be called “americium” with the symbol, Am, after the Americas, and that 96 be called “curium” after the Curies. Dr. Seaborg also recommended that the soft “c” be used in the pronunciation of americium, but some of his hearers thought that it would not be long until the second “i” will be dropped and the pronunciation changed, in the United States at least, following the history of aluminium.

The prediction turned out to be wrong.

Seaborg gave a fuller account of the reasons for the name in a 25 October 1946 article in the journal Science. Seaborg explains the name did not arise (solely) out of patriotic fervor, but the element was named for all of the Americas and had a justification in its position on the periodic table similar to that of europium.

Elements 95 and 96 should, of course, have names, and these investigators have proposed the following in which these “actinide” elements (see [periodic table] below) are given names by analogy with the corresponding members of the “lanthanide” earths. They have suggested for element 95, with its six 5f electrons, the name “americium” (symbol, Am); thus, this element would be named after the Americas, or New World, by analogy with europium, with its six 4f electrons, which was named after Europe. For element 96, containing seven 5f electrons, they have suggested “curium” (symbol, Cm), after Pierre and Marie Curie, historical leading investigators in the field of radioactivity; this is by analogy with gadolinium, containing seven 4f electrons, which recalls Gadolin, the great investigator of the rare earths.

Americium is widely used in smoke detectors.

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Sources:

Associated Press. “World A-Energy Controls Declared Necessary: Scientist Says Alternative is Non-Commercial Use of Power.” Columbus Evening Dispatch (Ohio), 10 April 1946, 2-A. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2008, s.v. americium, n.

“U.S. News and Notes.” Science, 103.2677, 19 April 1946, 480–82 at 481. DOI: 10.1126/science.103.2677.480.

Seaborg, Glenn T. “The Transuranium Elements.” Science, 104.2704, 25 October 1946, 384–85. JSTOR.

Seaborg, Glenn T., Ralph A. James, and Leon O. Morgan. “The New Element Americium (Atomic Number 95).” Oak Ridge, Tennessee: United States Atomic Energy Commission, AECD-2185, January 1948. US Department of Energy: Office of Scientific and Technical Information.

Image credit: Mark D., 2009. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

triskaidekaphobia

Triskaidekaphobia in Action

22 May 2023

Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number thirteen or the superstition that the number is associated with bad luck and misfortune. The term is a modern coinage from Greek roots: τρεῖσκαιδεκα (thirteen) + -phobia.

In early use, the term is generally spelled triakaidekaphobia, and the earliest use I have been able to identify is from Tuke’s 1892 Dictionary of Psychological Medicine under the entry for neurasthenia:

Were we to carry this absurdity further, we might distinguish a much greater number of conditions of fear: scopophobia and klopsophobia, the fear of spies and thieves; thanatophobia, the fear of death; necrophobia, the fear of the dead and of phantasms; triakaidekaphobia, the fear of the number thirteen, &c., but what should we gain?

The earliest use with the < s > spelling that I know of is in Worcester, et al.’s 1908 Religion and Medicine: The Moral Control of Nervous Disorders:

To enumerate them were impossible; for a phobia may attach itself to almost any object or idea. Among the more common are “monophobia,” fear of being alone; “claustrophobia,” fear of narrow places; agoraphobia,” fear of broad or open places; “ereuto- phobia,” fear of blushing; “triskaidekaphobia,” fear of the number 13; “mysophobia,” fear of dirt or microbes; “nosophobia,” fear of disease.

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Sources:

Wilson, Douglas G. “[Antedating] Triskaidekaphobia (1908).” ADS-L, 15 March 2009.

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

Tuke, D. Hack. A Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, vol. 2 of 2. London: J. & A. Churchill, 1892, s.v., neurasthenia, 844. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Worcester, Elwood, Samuel McComb, and Isador H. Coriat. Religion and Medicine: The Moral Control of Nervous Disorders. New York: Moffat Yard, 1908, 281. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Yoshimasa Niwa, 2009. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elevator_panel_with_no_13_(cropped).jpg Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

chlorine

Chlorine gas

19 May 2023

At room temperature and pressure, chlorine is a yellowish-green, odoriferous, and toxic gas. It has atomic number 17 and the symbol Cl. It is highly reactive and used in making bleach and disinfectants in addition to a myriad of other uses. In the First World War it was used as a chemical warfare agent.

Chlorine was first isolated by Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1774, but he didn’t recognize it as an element, and it initially became known as oxymuriatic acid. Humphry Davy identified it as an element in 1809–10 and dubbed it chlorine, taking the name from the Greek χλωρός (green) + ‑ine. Davy’s lecture to the Royal Society on 15 November 1810 reads, in part:

After consulting some of the most eminent chemical philosophers in this country, it has been judged most proper to suggest a name founded upon one of its obvious and characteristic properties—its colour, and to call it Chlorine, or Chloric gas.*

The footnote reads:

* From χλωρος

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Sources:

Davy, Humphry. “The Bakerian Lecture. On Some of the Combinations of Oxymuriatic Gas and Oxyene” (15 November 1810). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 101, 1811, 1–35 at 32. The Royal Society. 

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements: Part 2—Turbulent Nineteenth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 8 December 2022 (online).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2014, s.v. chlorine, n.

Photo credit: W. Oelen, 2008. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chlorine_ampoule.jpg Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

field day

A boxing match at a Farm Security Administration field day in Yuma, Arizona, 1942

17 May 2023

To have a field day means to triumph, to have great success at some endeavor. Field day is also a term used by schools and other organizations to denote a day devoted to athletic competition among the students and members. But these current meanings are far removed from the term’s origin in eighteenth-century military exercises.

Field day appears in the early eighteenth century, referring to military exercises or reviews, a day spent outside of the barracks. We have this from London’s Daily Journal of 3 September 1723:

Yesterday was Field Day for the Horse in Hide-Park [sic], when one of the four Troops of Guards pass'd in Review there before the several Officers of their own Corps.

About a century later, a figurative use of field day, meaning a day that is remarkable or successful, appears. The underlying metaphor would seem to equate success and celebration with flags flying and troops in brightly colored uniforms marching by. English politician Thomas Greevey wrote the following in a letter dated 26 March 1827, likening a dinner party to a military review:

Saturday was a considerable field day in Arlington Street, the Duncannons and the Jerseys, Geo. and Mrs. Lamb, Lord Foley, Punch Greville, and Genl. McDonald, and a very merry jolly dinner and evening we had. What remarkably fresh, clean looking creatures the sisters—Ladies Jersey and Duncannon are.

In 1864, journalist and publisher Charles Knight uses field day to describe 27 February 1812, a day of great speeches in the English parliament and an early-career scoop for Knight:

Thursday, the 27th of February, is to be a great field-day in the Commons. I must be there at noon, to secure a seat in the gallery. […] Up rose Mr. Canning. Somewhat alarmed I began to write. I gained confidence. His graceful sentences had no involved construction to render them difficult to follow. His impressive elocution fixed his words in my memory. Some matters I necessarily passed over; but the great point of his speech, that he was for speedily granting the Catholic claims with due safeguards, was an important one for the journal which I was suddenly called upon to represent, and I caught the spirit, if not the full words, of the declaration in which he stood opposed to the Minister, and to his own ancient rival. I ran to the office (for young legs were faster than hackney-coaches), wrote my report, to the astonishment of the regular staff of reporters, and went happy to bed at five o'clock. I doubt whether any literary success of my after-life gave me as much pleasure as this feat.

But before this figurative use of field day to refer to a success, the term was also being used in the context of sports, another extension of the original, military sense. We have this from London’s Observer of 5 March 1821 referring to a series of boxing matches:

Thus it has been seen, that the opening of the present pugilistic season has been distinguished by an activity of no common description. During the last fortnight there has been no less than three field days, on which competitors for bruizing honours of high repute have had the felicity of mashing each others [sic] frames with the most perfect good will for the two-fold purpose of amusing their enlightened patrons, and replenishing their almost exhausted finances.

And by 1856, this sense had been taken up by schools. From the sporting magazine The Field of 22 November 1856:

The undergraduate members of Pembroke College had a grand field-day on Tuesday last, on the Old Bullingdon ground, which the proprietor, Mr. Edward Hurst, had kindly placed at their disposal, and where a numerous field of spectators were much gratified at the agility and prowess exhibited in the various athletic sports which formed the afternoon’s amusements.

The original, military sense of field day has faded from use, except when referring to eighteenth century military maneuvers, but the general and school metaphorical uses live on.

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Sources:

Creevey, Thomas. Letter (26 March 1827). In John Gore, ed. Creevey’s Life and Times. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1934, 236. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

The Daily Journal (London), 3 September 1723, 2/1. Gale Primary Sources: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.

Knight, Charles. Passages of a Working Life, vol. 1 of 3. London: Bradbury & Evans, 1864, 1.109–11. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2011, s.v. field day, n.

“Pastimes.” The Field (Bath, England), 22 November 1856, 328/4. ProQuest Magazines.

“Pugilism.” The Observer (London), 5 March 1821, 1/3. Newspapers.com.

Photo credit: Russell Lee, 1942, US Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information. Library of Congress. Public domain image.