brownie points / brown nose / brownie

11 November 2023

Brownie points are a notional accounting system for good deeds that lead to credit with one’s spouse, teacher, or superior at work. The term is overwhelmingly found in the plural, and Brownie is sometimes capitalized, a reference to the belief that the phrase originates in the junior division of the Girl Scouts (Girl Guides in the UK). But what inspired the phrase is uncertain.

It could be from the Girl Scouts. The Brownie program, aimed at girls aged seven to nine, got its name in 1915. The original name had been the Rosebuds. We have references to Brownies earning points for various chores and activities dating back to the 1920s, but there are no uses of the phrase Brownie points in this context until the 1950s, after we see the phrase appearing in other contexts. Alternatively, it may come from brownie as the name for the pixie-like supernatural creatures of myth who are known for known for being helpful by performing household chores. Another possibility is that it is wordplay on brown-nosing or currying favor. Yet another is that it comes out of World War II food rationing. It could also arise out of some combination of these.

The earliest reference I’m aware of to Brownies having some sort of point system is an article in Virginia’s 1926 Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch of 13 October 1926. The article, however, doesn’t use the phrase brownie point:

Here are some of the things Brownies must do during the week:
1. Make up our bed two times.
2. Air our bed two or three times.
3. Have hands, fingernails, and teeth cleaned and hair neatly brushed.

During the next month we must learn something new, to darn a pair of sox, cook something fit to eat, or crochet or knit.

The contest has started and every Brownie on time will make one point for her six. So let us try to do our best.

The “six” is a reference to small group of Brownies, nominally made up of that number.

A similar reference to Brownies earning points, again sans the phrase itself, is found in Wisconsin’s La Crosse Tribune of 11 February 1943:

Troop 21—Monday afternoon Brownies of the training school are going to have a party. Each one is going to bring a defense stamp on a pretty Valentine. The stamp is a Valentine for Uncle Sam. The training school and Emerson school Brownies have a stocking box. The Brownies earn points by bringing stockings. They get awards for this.

The earliest instance I have of the actual phrase brownie point being used in the context of scouting is from California’s Modesto Bee of 17 June 1952, about the time we see the phrase appearing in general contexts:

Brownie Troop 129, under the leadership of Mesdames Harry Rose and Lester C. Hickle, presented a program and party honoring their mothers.

[…]

Mrs. Rose presented a Brownie bracelet to Linda Hickle, first prize winner in a Brownie point contest. Shirley Brennecke and Antoinette Fontana were awarded Brownie rings as second and third place winners.

It is tempting to pin the phrase to the Girl Scouts, but since we don’t have an actual use of brownie points in a scouting context until after it appears elsewhere, those earlier reference to Brownies earning points may be unrelated. Points or gold stars or ribbons are common tools for motivating children, so we cannot take it for granted that any given reference to Brownies earning points is evidence for the phrase.

And the first known use of brownie points is in military slang during World War II. A poem published in the U. S. Army newspaper Stars and Stripes on 30 July 1945 reads as follows:

Here's to you, my little man,
Soldier boy with nose of tan.
Shoes all shined and trousers neat,
Everybody out you beat.

Fellow soldiers you disgust
By making smiles to brass a must.
Tell me, why are you this way?
Tell me, does it really pay?

Do 90 days make one so thick
As not to see through such a trick?
Don't tell me that they're too damn dumb
To wise up to you, you little bum.

Someday you'll end up sans a friend,
Isn't that an awful end?
With us, dear pal, you've hit the bottom,
But brownie points—man you've got 'em.

So here's to you, my little man,
Soldier boy with nose of tan.
Right now you may be making hay,
But may you live to rue the day.

The term continued in military slang use after the war. We have this from the Daily Utah Chronicle, the University of Utah’s school newspaper of 7 March 1952. The article in question is about the school’s Air Force ROTC program and bears the title “Brownies in Blue”:

Off we go into the AROTC! Students in the program are of the opinion that the wild blue yonder of yesterfame has been replaced with the brownie point.

[…]

Morale with the hup-two-three-fourers is in sad shape. The brownie-point system has got them down. The system started out as an incentive program but has been used to build a brassy unit with band, publicity sheet, good dancers and a fabulous Arnold society.

Many Arnold society members admit that the only reason they joined the organization was to get a few brownie points, which help their grades.

(The Arnold Society is an extracurricular service organization within Air Force ROTC, named for General of the Air Force Henry “Hap” Arnold, commander of the US Army Air Forces during World War II.)

The title of the article would, at first blush, seem to be an allusion to the Girl Scouts, a reference to the brown uniforms of Scouting’s Brownies. And it’s certainly possible that the wartime uses of brownie points are also derisive references, comparing the military to the junior division of the Girl Scouts.

But the military use may be from a different source altogether. Brownie points may be reference to brown-nosing, a term for currying favor that is a euphemism for ass kissing. And the 1945 poem, with the line “nose of tan,” would seem to be using the phrase in this context. Brown-nosing is recorded in 1934 in the student slang of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University). From an opinion column in the school newspaper, the Plainsman, of 11 April 1934:

“If I were the Roosevelt of Auburn:

[…]

Student jobs would be given by ability and not by pull and brown-nosing.

And in 1939, the journal American Speech records brown nose and get in the brown with as student slang at the Citadel, a military academy in Charleston, South Carolina:

BROWN NOSE, v. To curry favor, especially for rank; n. a cadet who curries favor; adj. desirous of rank to the point of currying favor.

Also:

GET IN THE BROWN (WITH), v. To win favorable recognition (of superiors).

Another wartime origin could be on the Homefront with brown points being a way of rationing food. During the war on the US home front, households were issued brown points, so-called because of the color of the stamps in the ration books, that were necessary to purchase certain categories of food. There are numerous references to brown points in US newspapers starting in 1943, such as this one in the New York Herald Tribune of 26 February 1943:

There are eight pages in the new book. Pages 1, 2, 7 and 8 contain blue and brown point-ration stamps similar in all but color to the point stamps of Book No. 2.

And this United Press syndicated article from 21 April 1943:

War ration book No. 3 combines “unit” stamps—already familiar under the sugar, coffee and shoe programs—and “point” stamps, such as are now used for canned goods, meats and fat.

The new book contains eight pages, for with a single alphabet of brown point stamps in the usual eight, five, two and one values. Four center pages hold 48 unit stamps.

Brownie points make their way into the general lexicon shortly after the war. We have this article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times of 15 March 1951. It points to the supernatural creature, known for being helpful by performing household chores, as being the inspiration of the term:

I first heard about them when the chap standing next to me in the elevator pulled a letter from his pocket, looked at it in dismay and muttered[:]

“More lost brownie points.”

Figuring him for an eccentric, I forgot about them until that evening when one of the boys looked soulfully into the foam brimming his glass and said solemnly:

“I should have been home two hours ago … I’ll never catch up on my brownie points.”

Brownie points! What esoteric cult was this that immersed men in pixie mathematics?

What are you talking about about?” I asked.

“Brownie points,” he said. “You either have ’em or you don’t. Mostly you don’t. But if you work hard you sometimes get even. I never heard of anyone getting ahead on ’em.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“Sure, sure. I’m just worried about my points, that’s all.”

“What’s this genie geometry all about?”

“You don’t know about brownie points? All my buddies keep score. In fact every married male should know about ’em. It’s a way of figuring where you stand with the little woman—favor or disfavor. Started way back in the days of the leprechauns, I suppose, long before there were any doghouses.

This appearance in the 1950s would lead one to think that the term arises out of the idea of a husband currying favor with his wife by acting the part of a brownie and performing household chores. But that is not necessarily the case. For one thing, a young husband in 1951 was likely to be a veteran of the war and familiar with the military slang usage.

The name of the supernatural creature dates to the late medieval / early modern period in Scotland. The 1937 Dictionary of the Older Scottish dates brownie to c.1500. Another early appearance is in the preface to Gawin Douglas’s 1553 translation of Virgil’s Aeneid:

For me lyst wyth no man, nor bukis flyite
Nor wyth na bogill, nor browny to debaite
Nowthir auld gaistis, nor spretis dede of lai[t]
Nor na man will I lakkin, nor dyspyse
My werkis till authoris, be sic wise
But twiching Virgyllis honoure and reuerence
Quho euer contrary, I mon stand at defence

(I do not desire to argue with no man, nor books
Nor debate with any boggle, nor brownie
Neither old ghosts, nor spirits lately dead
Nor any man will I make sport of, nor despise
My works regarding authors be likewise
But touching Virgil’s honor and reverence
Wherever contrary, I must stand at defense.)

Where does this leave us? The first known use of brownie points is in World War II military slang, but it is preceded by a centuries-old myth of helpful pixies, Girl Scouts earning points, wartime food rationing, and brown nosing. Make of the evidence what you will.

For my part, I think the most likely origin of brownie points is a military allusion to brown nosing, possibly with some derisive and misogynist comparison of those who earn the points to Girl Scouts. The brown points of food rationing are an unlikely direct origin, but it was “in the air” at the time, so to speak, and may have helped reinforce adoption of the phrase. As for the supernatural pixies and their possible relation to the phrase, I think that’s a post hoc euphemistic rationalization to make the origin more palatable for a general audience. If more early uses are found, that might sway my opinion in a different direction.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Baker, John. “Antedating of Brownie Point.” ADS-L, 25 October 2023.

“Brownies in Blue.” Daily Utah Chronicle (Salt Lake City), 7 March 1952, 2. NewspaperArchive.

“Brownie Troop Gives Party for Mothers.” Modesto Bee (California), 17 June 1952, 6/4. NewspaperArchive.

Davies, Mark. Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), 2023, s.v. brownie point, brownie points.

“Deadly Deductions.” Plainsman (Auburn, Alabama), 11 April 1934, 2/5. NewspaperArchive.

Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (1937). Dictionaries of the Scots Language, s.v. (Brounie,) Brownie, Brunie, n.

Douglas, Gawin. “Preface.” The VIII Bukes of Eneados.” London: William Copland, 1553, vr. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“Girl Scouts.” La Crosse Tribune and Leader-Press, 11 February 1943, 14/3–4. Newspapers.com.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. brownie point, n., brown-nose, v., brown nose, n.

“History of Guiding.” Girlguiding UK, 25 February 2012. Archived at Archive.org.

McDavid, Jr., R.I. “A Citadel Glossary.” American Speech, 14.1, February 1939, 23–32 at 25 and 27. JSTOR.

Miles, Marvin. “Brownie Points—a New Measure of a Husband.” Los Angeles Times, 15 March 1951, Part 2, 5/7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Muenz, Robert O. J. “Puptent Poets: To a Brownie.” Stars and Stripes (Mediterranean Edition), 30 July 1945, 4/2. NewspaperArchive.com.

Ochletree, Virginia Lee. “Pack No. 1—Fairy Tree Brownies.” Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch (Virginia), 13 October 1926, 22/3. Newspapers.com.

O’Toole, Garson. “Antedating of Brownie Point.” ADS-L, 25 October 2023.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2021, s.v., brown-nosing, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. Brownie point, n., brownie, n.

“Ration Book 3, Point and Unit Type, Is Ready.” New York Herald Tribune, 26 February 1943, 9/5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

United Press. “No. 3 Ration Book to Be Distributed by Mail in June.” Buffalo Evening News (New York), 21 April 1943, 18/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit:  Elucidate, 2008. Wikimedia Commons. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

indium

A 40-gram ingot of indium

10 November 2023

Indium is a silvery-white, highly ductile, and very soft metal. It has atomic number 49 and the symbol In. It is primarily produced as a by-product of mining and processing other ores, notably zinc, and it has a variety of commercial uses.

Indium was discovered by chemists Ferdinand Reich and Hieronymous Theodor Richter in 1863. The element was discovered through its spectrographic signature, which contained a distinct, bright blue line. (Reich, who was color blind, had employed Richter as a lab assistant because he could read a spectrograph.) Because of the color of the line, the pair named the element after indigo. The notice announcing the discovery reads, in part:

Nachdem es gelungen war, den vermutheten Stoff, wenn auch bisher nur in äusserst geringen Mengen, theils als Chlorid, theils als Oxydhydrat, theils als Metall darzustellen, erhielten wir, nach Befinden nach dem Anfeuchten mit Chlorwasserstoffsäure, im Spectroskop die blaue Linie so glänzend, scharf und ausdauernd, dass wir aus ihr auf ein bisher unbekanntes Metall, das wir Indium nennen möchten, zu schliessen nicht anstehen.

(After we had succeeded in representing the suspected substance, even if so far only in extremely small quantities, partly as a chloride, partly as an oxide hydrate, partly as a metal, we found that after moistening it with hydrochloric acid, the blue line was so shiny in the spectroscope, sharp and persistent, so that we cannot hesitate to conclude from it that there is a previously unknown metal that we would like to call Indium.)

Subsequent analysis of indium’s spectrograph revealed there were actually two blue lines, one weaker than the other. The following year, Richter succeeding in isolating a sample of the metal, and their partnership ended acrimoniously after Richter claimed to be its sole discoverer. Whether this was a case of Richter trying to grab more credit than was due him or an example of the age-old story of a senior scholar taking credit for a grad student’s work has been lost in the mists of time.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements: Part 2—Turbulent Nineteenth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 8 December 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09451-w.

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

Reich, F. and Richter, Th. “Vorläufige Notiz über ein neues Metall.” Journal für Praktische Chemie, 89, 1863, 441–48 at 442. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Weeks, Mary Elvira. “The Discovery of the Elements. XIII. Some Spectroscopic Discoveries.” Journal of Chemical Education, 9.8, August 1932, 1413–34 at 1429–32. DOI: 10.1021/ed009p1413.

Photo credit: Chemical Elements: A Virtual Museum, 2009. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. 

booze

8 November 2023

Booze, a slang term for liquor, is probably borrowed from the Middle Dutch busen, but it could possibly be from the Germain bausen. Middle Dutch also had buise, a drinking vessel.

There are a few attestations of the word’s use in Middle English, dating to the fourteenth century, but both noun and verb seem to have been underworld cant terms which did not make their way into general slang until the sixteenth century. The early form of both noun and verb was bouse, with the booze spelling becoming dominant in the eighteenth century.

The earliest known use of the verb to booze in English is from the c.1335 satirical poem Hail Seint Michael:

Hail ȝe holi monkes wiþ ȝur corrin,
Late and raþe ifilled of ale and wine!
Depe cun ȝe bouse, þat is al ȝure care,
Wiþ seint Benet is scurge lome ȝe disciplineþ.
Takeþ hed al to me!
Þat þis is sleche, ȝe mow wel se.

(Hail you holy monks with your tankards,
Once and now filled with ale and wine!
Deep can you booze, that is your sole concern,
With Saint Benedict’s scourge you often discipline,
Take heed of all I say!
That this is wise, you may well see.)

And from the same period, we have a use of the word as a noun, but here it refers to a drinking vessel and not the liquor itself. From the poem Mon in the Mone Stond and Strit, this passage describes what to do if one’s quota of brushwood, collected for making hedges, has been stolen:

Yef thy wed ys ytake, bring hom the trous!
Set forth thyn other fot! Stryd over sty!
We shule preye the haywart hom to ur hous,
Ant maken hym at heyse, for the maystry,
Drynke to hym deorly of fol god bous,
Ant oure dame douse shal sitten hym by.
When that he is dronke ase a dreynt mous,
Thenne we schule borewe the wed ate bayly.

(If your pledge is taken, bring home the hedge-cuttings!
Set forth your other foot! Stride over the path!
We shall ask the hayward home to our house,
And put him at ease, to achieve mastery.
Drink to him dearly from a full, good booze,
And our dear wife shall sit by him.
When he is drunk as a drenched mouse,
Then we shall secure the pledge from the bailiff.)

We see booze applied to the liquor itself in Thomas Harman’s 1567 A Caueat for Commen Cursetors Vulgarely Called Uagabones, in a passage warning about being waylaid by rogues who will steal one’s money and use it for buying drink:

And if he be not learnedly able to shewe him the whole circumstaunce therof he wyl spoyle him of his money, eyther of his best garment if it be worth any money, and haue him to the bowsing ken. Which is to some typpling house next adioyninge and laieth their to gage the best thing that he hath for twenty pence or two shyllinges, this man obeyeth for feare of beating. Then doth this vpriight man call for a gage of bowse whiche is a quarte pot of drinke and powres the same vpon his pelde paie adding these words.

(And if he is not cogently able to relate to him the entire circumstance thereof, he will take from him his money, or his best garment if it is worth any money, and have him to the boozing house. Which is to some nearby tippling house and pledge the best thing he has for twenty pence or two shillings; this man obeys for fear of a beating. Then does this upright man call for a gauge of booze, which is a quart pot of drink.)

Folklore has it that the word booze comes from a Philadelphia distiller named Edmund C. Booz who prospered around 1840 by selling whiskey in bottles shaped like a log cabin to promote the presidential run of William Henry Harrison, whose campaign associated him with having come from a rustic life in a log cabin. The folklore is wrong.

Booz did, in fact, sell whiskey in such bottles, but he did not begin to do so until 1858, well after Harrison was long dead. In addition to the British citations quoted above that date to the fourteenth century, the word has been in use in America since at least the early eighteenth century. Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary, for instance, defines the verb boose as a vulgar term meaning, “to drink hard; to guzzle,” and the adjective boosy as “a little intoxicated; merry with liquor.” (Vulgar here meaning common, popular.) In another entry, that dictionary defines böuse and booze as vulgar verbs meaning, “to drink freely; to tope; to guzzle,” and böusy as a vulgar adjective meaning, “drunken; intoxicated.” Mr. Booz was taking advantage of his name to market a product that had an already established slang usage and not coining a term.

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Sources:

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. booze, n., bouse, n., booze, v., bouse, v.

“Hail Seint Michael.” Die Kildare-Gedichte, W. Heuser, ed. Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1904, 155–56. London, British Library, MS Harley 913, fol. 7v. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Harman, Thomas. A Caueat for Commen Cursetors Vulgarely Called Uagabones. London: Wiliam Gryffith, 1567, sig. Biiii. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. bousen, v., bous, n.

“Mon in the Mone Stond and Strit.” The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript, vol. 3 of 3. Susanna Greer Fein, ed. TEAMS Middle English Text Series. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2015, art. 81. London, British Library, MS Harley 2253, fol. 115r.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. booze, n., booze, v., bouse, v.1, bouse, n.1

Sullivan, Jack. “Booz in the Name and Booze in the Bottle.” Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men! (blog), 27 July 2015.

Webster, Noah. An American Dictionary of the English Language, vol. 1 of 2. New York: S. Converse, 1828. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Unknown photographer, 2014. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

card sharp / card shark / sharp / sharper / shark

Caravaggio’s The Cardsharps, c. 1595. (The title is a modern one.) Oil on canvas painting depicting men in late sixteenth-century dress cheating at a game of primero, a precursor of poker. On the left is the dupe, unaware that behind him the older card sharp is signaling his accomplice with a hand, the glove having had the fingertips cut out in order to better feel marked cards. At right, the young card sharp reaches behind his back to pull out a card hidden in his breeches

6 November 2023

A card sharp or card shark is a person skilled at playing cards, with a strong connotation of being one who cheats. Pedants will often claim that since card sharp is the older of the two, that is the correct and proper term to use. But while the phrase card sharp is recorded several decades before card shark, that is not the end of the story, as both sharp and shark, in the sense of a cheat or rogue, are much older and of similar vintage, with shark nosing out sharp in the written record. And regardless of the above, both card sharp and card shark are in widespread use with card shark being more than twice as common. So one cannot by any stretch consider card shark to be an incorrect usage.

Shark, the name of the predatory fish, appears in the mid fifteenth century and by the end of the sixteenth century is being applied to predatory humans. This usage comes first as the verb to shark, meaning to prey upon another. The verb appears in Sir Thomas More, an Elizabethan play from c.1592 with later revisions. In the past mistakenly attributed to Shakespeare, the play is the product of a collaborative effort. The manuscript is composed by six different hands, and attribution of authorship is contentious. It may, however, been originally composed by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle, and later, after 1600, revised by Thomas Heywood and Thomas Dekker. The fifth hand is that of a theater scribe who seems to have supervised the revision process but was apparently not a substantial contributor to original text. The sixth hand, contributing a single scene, has tenuously been identified as Shakespeare’s, but if it is his handwriting, it’s unclear whether the scene he contributed was to the original text or the revision. The passage with shark, which is not in the scene thought to be by Shakespeare, is as follows:

What had you gott? I’le tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand shoold prevayle,
How ordere shoold be quelld; and by this patterne
Not on of you should lyve an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With sealf same hand, sealf reasons, and sealf right,
Woold shark on you, and men lyke ravenous fishes
Woold feed on on another.

The noun appears in another Elizabethan play, this one being Ben Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humor, which was published in 1600. Sharke appears in the published version’s prefatory material, in Jonson’s description of the character named Shift:

SHIFT.

A Thredbare Sharke. One that neuer was Soldior, yet liues vpon lendings. His profession is skeldring and odling, his Banke Poules, and his Ware-house Pict-hatch. Takes vp single Testons vpon Oths till dooms day. Fals vnder Executions of three shillings, & enters into fiue groat Bonds. He way-layes the reports of seruices, and cons them without booke, damming himselfe be came new from them, when all the while hee was taking the diet in a bawdie house, or lay pawn’d in his chamber for rent and victuals. Hee is of that admirable and happie Memorie, that bee will salute one for an old acquaintance, that hee neuer saw in his life before. Hee vsurps vpon Cheats, Quarrels, & Robberies, which he neuer did, only to get him a name. His cheef exercises are taking the Whiffe, squiring a Cocatrice, and making priuie searches for Imparters.

We see shark’s synonym sharper by the end of the seventeenth century. This word is formed from the verb to sharp + -er (one who performs the action of a verb). The verb to sharp has two potential, and not mutually exclusive, origins. The verb literally means to make something, like a knife, keen or acute but was used metaphorically to mean to cheat or swindle. Alternatively, given that the fish were not commonly known in England at the time, it could come out of re-analysis or folk etymology of the verb to shark. Or both possibilities could apply, independent coinages that reinforced one another.

Sharper appears in the diary of historian Narcissus Lutrell, who wrote of events of 15 June 1681:

The 15th was a project sett on foot in Grayes Inn for the carrying on an addresse for thankes to his majestie for his late declaration; and was moved that day in the hall by some at dinner, and being (as is usuall) sent to the barr messe to be by them recommended to the bench, but was rejected both by bench and barr; but the other side seeing they could doe no good this way , they gott about forty togeather and went to the tavern, and there subscribed the said addresse in the name of the truely loyall gentlemen of Grayes Inn. The cheif sticklers for the said addresse were sir William Scroggs jun., Robert Fairebeard, capt. Stowe, capt. Ratcliffe, one Yalden, with others. to the number of 40 or thereabouts; many of them sharpers about town, with clerks not out of theire time, and young men newly come from the university. And some of these went the 17th to Windsor, and presented the said addresse to his majesty; who was pleased to give them his thanks, and conferr (as is said) knighthood on the said Mr. Fairebeard: this proves a mistake since.

Sharper also appears in a fable collected and recorded by Roger L’Estrange in 1692. The fable is especially of interest to the history of the word as it also includes a use of the verb to shark:

FAB. CCXLI.
A Boy and a Thief.

A Thief came to a Boy, that was Blubbering by the Side of a Well, and Ask’d him what he cry’d for. Why, says he, the String's Broke here, and I've dropt a Silver Cup into the Well. The Fellow presently Strips, and down he goes to search for’t. After a while, he comes up again, with his Labour for his Pains, and the Roguy Boy, in the Mean time, was run away with his Cloaths.

The MORAL.

Some Thieves are Ripe for the Gallows sooner then Others.

REFLEXION.

IT must be a Diamond that Cuts a Diamond, and there is No Pleasanter Encounter then a Tryal of Skill betwixt a Couple of Sharpers to Over-reach one Another. The Boy’s beginning so Early, tells us that there are Cheats by a Natural Propensity of Inclination as well as by a Corruption of Manners. It was Nature that taught This Boy to Shark; not Discipline, or Experience. And so it was with Two Ladies that I have known (and Women of Plentiful Fortunes too) they could not for their Bloods keep themselves Honest of their Fingers, but would still be Nimming something or other for the very Love of Thieving. ’Tis an Unhappy Thing, that the Temperament of the Body should have such an Influence upon our Manners, according to the Instance of the Boy in This Fable: For the Morality, or Immorality of the Matter, is not the Whole of the Case.

The word appears several times in Colley Cibber’s 1697 play Woman’s Wit. The first is the adjective sharping, uttered by the character Major Rakish in reference to his son:

Where is this Rogue! This Villain! This sharping Dog?

And a few lines later the same character uses the verb to sharp in response to the idea that he give his son a more generous allowance:

Allowance! a Dog! has not Nature given him a strong Back? let him live by that; let him turn Beau, and live upon tick; let him lye with his Laundress, get in with his Semstress, help his Taylor to Custom, Dine with me, Bilk his Lodging,——and now and then sharp a Play in the side Box.

And then we have this exchange between father and son later in the play:

Ma[jor Rakish]. Ay!—That is give him all, and take the rest to my self! Why really if it were not for a little scandal, a Sharper is a very good Trade, I see.

Y[oung]. Ra[kish]. What's that you say, Sir? Dammee! A Sharper! I suppose you have a mind to tilt for it?

The father wins the subsequent fencing match, taking the money from his son.

We see that both shark and sharp were well established by the end of the seventeenth century. The phrases card sharp and card shark would have to wait, however, until the nineteenth century.

As mentioned above, card sharp is recorded first, in Henry Downes Miles’s 1840 novel Claude du Val:

While thus running on, the knavish card-sharp was slowly and with apparent fairness, cutting the pack, which was prepared by having every card but the honours of each suit cut at the ends, but in so slight a degree as not to shorten them enough to be detectible by an ordinary eye, though sufficiently to be felt by a fine and practiced finger, which could thus ensure a court-card, while the red cards of the pack (or deck of cards, as they were then commonly called,) were deprived of their proper size by a similar process of shaving off the sides, so as to make the turn-up either red or black at the will of the player.

And card sharper is found a year later in an advertisement for a Dublin magic show. From the Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser of 13 May 1841:

NEW THEATRE ROYAL, ABBEY-STREET.
INCREDIBLE INCREDIBILITIES.

THIS NIGHT the GREAT WIZARD will Animate a Half-Crown, make it dance an Irish Jig, and tell a Lady’s Fortune—Burn all the Handkerchiefs in the Theatre, and restore them perfect—Change a Gentleman’s Hat into a Feather Bed—Card Sharpers exposed—Cheat Cheating Gamblers, and a Thousand Other Mysteries.

Doors open at Half-past Seven—Miracles commence at a Quarter-past Eight.

Private Boxes, 3s.; Boxes, 2s.; Pit 1s.; Gallery, 6d.; Half-price at a Quarter past Nine.

Carriages in attendance at Half past Ten.

Card shark isn’t recorded for some decades, but there is no reason to think it wasn’t in oral circulation much earlier. We see it in an article in Ohio’s Sandusky Daily Register of 7 September 1877. It is about events in Nevada and is reprinted from a Nevada newspaper, which I have been unable to find:

Captain Bob’s Poker Convention

From the Virginia (Nev.) Chronicle

Captain Bob, the Piute politician has called a big poker convention, to be held at American Flat to-day. The subject of this gathering of card-sharks is to definitely settle the relative values of some of the larger denominations of hands. Some years ago Bob learned the dip, spurs, and sinuosities of the game from a white man, and introduced it into the pastimes of his tribe in a manner advantageous to his private exchequer. He did not, so to speak, throw the game to them all at once, but doled out the fine points in judicious driblets. It took experience and money to learn the game of Bob. For instance, one day, with $18.50 in the pot one of the players revealed possession of four aces. A trifle like that did not abash the mental resources of Bob, for he coolly gathered in the pot on a pair of kings and two deuces. His antagonist was easily convinced by Bob’s argument that the two deuces were just equivalent to the four aces, having the same number of spots, while the kings gave the required preponderance. Some of the bucks accuse Bob of having a different poker rule for every change of the moon, and they have demanded a convocation of the tribe to deliberate upon it. Bob, by a diplomatic strike, is now first and foremost in the call for reform, and is louder than all the rest in the demand for a convention. Long Brown has received an invitation to be present, and Jim Orndorff will act as referee.

So the next time someone tells you that the proper term is card sharp and that card shark is an error, you will have the facts to refute them. (If you wish to do so, but you should probably let it pass. There’s no sense in arguing with such people.)

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Sources:

Advertisement. The Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (Dublin), 13 May 1841, 1/1. Newspapers.com.

“Captain Bob’s Poker Convention.” Sandusky Daily Register (Ohio), 7 September 1877, 2/4–5. NewspaperArchive.

Cibber, Colley. Woman’s Wit. London: John Sturton, 1697, 9. Early English Books Online.

Davies, Mark. Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE), accessed 1 October 2023.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., sharp, n.1., sharp, v., sharper, n.

Jonson, Ben. Every Man Out of His Humor. London: William Holme, 1600, sig. Av. Early English Books Online.

L’Estrange, Roger. “Fables of Anianus.” In Fables of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists. London: R. Sare, et al., 1692, 209–10. Early English Books Online.

Luttrell, Narcissus. Diary (16 June 1681). In A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, vol. 1 of 6. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1857, 99. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Miles, Henry Downes. Claude du Val. London: Thomas White, 1840, 129. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Munday, Anthony, et al.. Sir Thomas More (c.1592). Dyce, Alexander, ed. London: Shakespeare Society, 1844, 2.4, 27. London, British Library, Harley MS 7368. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2021, s.v. card sharp, n., card sharper, n.; 2020, card shark, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. sharp, adj. & n., n.8., sharper, n.1.

Image credit: Caravaggio, c. 1595. Wikimedia Commons. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. Fair use of a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.

bromine

3 November 2023

The element bromine, atomic number 35 and symbol Br, is a volatile, reddish-brown liquid at room temperature. It has a wide variety of commercial applications. Bromine is a borrowing of a French word brome, which in turn is a modern coinage based on the Greek βρωμος (bromos), meaning odoriferous or smelly.

The element was independently discovered by chemists Carl Jacob Löwig, in 1825, and Antoine Balard, in 1826. But Löwig delayed announcement of his discovery, allowing Balard to publish first and get the honor of naming the element. In his 1826 paper announcing his discovery, Balard says this about his choice of name:

M. Anglada me conseilla d’appeler cette substance Brôme, en déduisant cette denomination du grec βρωμος (fœtor). Ce nom se prête à merveille à la formation des denominations composes que nécessitent ses combinaisons, et je l’adopte pour la facilité du langage.

(Mr. Anglada advised me to call this substance Brome, deducing this name from the Greek βρωμος (fetor). This name lends itself wonderfully to the formation of the compound names that its combinations require, and I adopt it for ease of language.)

And appended to Balard’s paper is commentary by Louis Nicolas Vauquelin, Louis Jacques Thénard, and Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac which, among other things, discusses the name:

M. Balard a donné à la nouvelle substance le nom de muride; mais plusieurs objections pouvant être faites contre cette denomination, nous l’avons remplacée, avec le consentement de l’auteur, par celle de BRÔME, de βρωμος, mauvaise odeur.

(Mr. Balard gave the new substance the name muride; but several objections could be made against this name, we have replaced it, with the consent of the author, by that of BRÔME, from βρωμος, bad odor.)

The -ine suffix was added in English to conform with the names of other halogens existing at the time, chlorine and iodine.

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Sources:

Balard, Antoine Jérôme. “Mémoire sur une Substance particulière contenue dans l’eau de la mer.” Annales de Chimie et de Physique, 32, 1826, 337–81 at 341. Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Gallica.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements: Part 2—Turbulent Nineteenth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 8 December 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09451-w.

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

Vauquelin, Louis Nicolas, Louis Jacques Thénard, and Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac. “Rapport sur le Mémoire de M. Balard relative à une nouvelle Substance” (14 August 1826). Annales de Chimie et de Physique, 32, 1826, 382–84 at 382. Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Gallica.

Image credit: Heinrich Pniok, 2009. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license.