dope

Cooking heroin or “dope”

15 November 2023

Dope has a variety of meanings. The ones I’m going to consider here all, with one exception, originally come from a sense of a thick, viscous liquid. The word’s origin is uncertain. It could be variation on daub, originally referring to a plaster used in construction, but later used to refer to various viscous substances like lubricants. Or it may be a borrowing from the Dutch doop, meaning sauce.

The use of dope, referring to a sauce or gravy, dates to the early nineteenth century. It’s first recorded in the writing of Washington Irving, who clearly thought it came from the Dutch. Here is Irving proffering a specious etymology for the name of Philadelphia in his Salmagundi #10 of 16 May 1807:

According to the good old rule, I shall begin with the etymology of its name, which, according to Linkum Fidelius, Tom. LV, is clearly derived, either from the name of its first founder, viz. PHILO DRIPPING-PAN,* or the singular taste of the aborigines who flourished there on his arrival. Linkum, who is as shrewd a fellow as any theorist or F. S. A. for peeping with a dark lantern into the lumber-garret of antiquity, and lugging out all the trash which was left there for oblivion by our wiser ancestors, supports his opinion by a prodigious number of ingenious and inapplicable arguments; but particularly rests his position on the known fact, that Philo Dripping-pan was remarkable for his predilection to eating, and his love of what the learned Dutch call doup. Our erudite author likewise observes that the citizens are to this day noted for their love of “a sop in the pan,” and their portly appearance, “except, indeed,” continues he, “the young ladies, who are perfectly genteel in their dimensions”—this, however, he ill-naturedly enough attributes to their eating pickles, and drinking vinegar.

* I defy any travel monger to excel friend Jeremy in forcing a derivation.

The sense of dope meaning drugs comes out of this sense of a viscous liquid, with opiates and other such substances often consumed in a liquid form. The earliest use of dope to refer to drugs, that I’m aware of is from Ohio’s Ashtabula Weekly Telegraph of 4 December 1858. The article in question contains a transcript from a murder trial. In this passage, a defense witness is testifying as to why the defendant would legitimately have the toxic substance on hand:

He came to my house frequently—came with a horse and buggy; think he visited there oftener when his wife was there than when she was not; think one horse he called Tiger, another Charlie; think I learned something of his giving dope to his horses about the time he moved from Garrettsville to Chagrin Falls—gave some to Charlie horse.

And the specific sense of an opiate dates to at least 20 May 1883, when this appeared in the pages of the New York Sun:

It would be very fine if you could float off into space to invisible music, see Spanish castles in thick clouds of blue smoke, or think yourself in a land of purple daisies and blue-eyed sirens. Education was not neglected in our family, and they say I don’t lack imagination; but I never got any such effect from smoking “dope” (opium).

Pennsylvania’s Juniata Sentinel and Republican of 3 November 1897 has this story that mentions how prospectors in the Klondike, taking a myth about jimson weed to heart, would dope up their children in the hope that the tots would lead them to gold. Not only is the myth ludicrous, but I have my doubts about Klondikers ever doing this, but regardless of the veracity of the story, it’s good evidence of the word’s usage:

The lowly jimson weed belongs to a family not only interesting, but of great importance from an economic point of view. The Jamestown weed is only another species of the plant from which the priests of Apollo mad a decoction to induce that state of ecstasy in keeping with the prophetic character of their revelations. Tonga is drink made from the seeds which the Indians of Darien give to their children that they may discover the location of gold. Klondikers might take a baby along and a few jimson weed seeds to make tea, and when the baby has its “dope” and falls down, there daddy could dig, sure of a find.

Dope could refer to any type of adulterant, not just to medicine or drugs. There is this from the Chicago Daily Tribune of 24 December 1872 that sounds a lot like the health info peddled by present-day internet “influencers”:

It is his chief delight to concern himself with what we eat and drink, and, just as we flatter ourselves that we have got a good dinner on the table and sit down to enjoy it, he bounds in like a harlequin and bids us beware of the sugar, for it is full of flour and sand; of the pickles, for they have been soused in muriatic acid and are colored with arsenic; of the biscuits, for they have been raised with some chemical abomination; of the milk for it is compounded of dope; and so on, to the end of the chapter; and thus succeeds in spoiling our dinner, without telling us how or where we can get pure articles.

The sense of dope meaning information also arises from the drug sense, but in this case it comes out of horse racing and the knowledge of which horses had been administered performance-enhancing drugs. We see the information sense, in the context of horse racing, by the end of the nineteenth century. From Frank Hutcheson’s 1896 The Barkeep Stories:

“Why didn’t you send me dat getaway money I staked you to last spring? Been too busy figurin’ dope an’ countin’ money t’ t’ink o’ trifles, I s’pose?”

“Well, on de square, I was goin’ ——"

“You was goin’ t’ send it w’en you beat a ten to one shot wid a fifty-dollar not, I s’pose—but you took a chance an’ bet de hull works on a t’ree-to-five shot, and—de lamp wen out. Youse guys make me sick! Blow back t’ town after bein’ round de race-tracks all summer wid a paper suit an’ a screwy overcoat an’ a pair o’ yellow shoes an’ stand round an’ look wise an’ tell bout how you come near ownin’ dat black filly dat just win de stake down east, an’ how if dis one could have win you’d be makin’ book now, an’ a few more smoke-up stories.”

That’s it. A viscous liquid eventually gave rise to inside information.

But the sense of a dope meaning someone who is foolish or stupid has a very different origin. That sense arises in the dialect of Cumberland, England, where it is recorded as early as 1851.

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Sources:

“Adulterations.” Chicago Daily Tribune, 24 December 1872, 4/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Bostwick, C. B. “Trial of Hiram Cole for Murder.” Ashtabula Weekly Telegraph (Ohio), 4 December 1858. 1/7. Newspapers.com.

Glossary of Provincial Words Used in the County of Cumberland. London: John Gray Bell, 1851, 8. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. dope, n.1, dope, n.2, dope, n.3, dope, adj.1, dope, v.1. Green’s contains an 1859 citation for dope as medicine, but this is erroneous. The reference is to a 1959 issue of the Waukesha, Wisconsin Freeman which celebrates the centennial of the town. The passage in question is from a WWI-era remembrance of one of the town’s early doctors. NewspaperArchive.com’s metadata incorrectly lists this 1959 issue as being from 1859.

Hutcheson, Frank. The Barkeep Stories. Chicago: E.A. Weeks, 1896, 6–7. Internet Archive.

“An Interesting Family.” Juniata Sentinel and Republican (Mifflintown, Pennsylvania), 3 November 1897, 4/3. Library of Congress: Chronicling America, Historic American Newspapers.

Irving, Washington (pseud. Launcelot Langstaff). Salmagundi, 10, 16 May 1807. In Salmagundi, vol. 1 of 2. New York: D. Longworth, 1808, 199–200. Google Books.

“Opium Smoking.” The Sun (New York), 20 May 1883, 2/7. NewspaperArchive.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. dope, v., dope n., doping, n., daub, n.; third edition, December 2001, dope, adj.

Image credit: Psychonaught, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

Davy Jones's locker

1892 illustration by John Tenniel in Punch of Davy Jones sitting on his locker, wearing a pirate captain's uniform, while viewing a 1789 chart of Ferrol Harbor, Spain, that had belonged to HMS Howe. The ship had run aground at the mouth of the harbor on 2 November 1892, allegedly after using a poorly prepared naval chart to navigate its waters.

13 November 2023

Davy Jones (also David Jones) is a spirit of the sea, a nautical demon whose appearance is said to foretell storms and shipwrecks. His locker is the bottom of the sea, where he keeps sunken ships and which is the grave of drowned sailors.

The origin of the term is obscure. The name Davy Jones suggests a Welsh connection, referring to St. David, the patron saint of Wales, and Jones being a common Welsh surname. The Jones may also be an alteration of Jonah, of the biblical story. In the story, the prophet Jonah disobeys God and attempts a sea voyage. God sends a storm, and the sailors, who determine that Jonah is to blame, cast him overboard, and the storm suddenly abates. Jonah was sailor slang for a person who brought bad luck onboard a ship.

The earliest known reference to Davy Jones and his locker is in Daniel Defoe’s 1726 The Four Years Voyages of Capt. George Roberts. In the novel, the title character is taken prisoner by pirates who debate whether or not to give him provisions when they set him adrift:

Some of Loe’s Company said, They would look out some Things, and give me along with me when I was going away; but Russel told them, they should not, for he would toss them all into Davy Jones’s Locker if they did; for I was the Scooner’s Prize, and she had all my Cargo and Plunder on Board of her, and therefore what was given to me should be given to me out of her.

A more detailed description of Davy Jones appears in Tobias Smollet’s 1751 The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. This passage details an attempt to frighten a man by dressing up as the evil spirit:

“By the Lord! Jack, you may say what you wool; but I’ll be damn’d if it was not Davy Jones himself: I know him by his saucer-eyes, his three rows of teeth, his horn and tail, and the blue smoak that came out of his nostrils, What does the black guard hell‘s baby want with me? I’m sure I never committed murder, nor wronged any man whatsomever since I first went to sea.” This same Davy Jones, according to the mythology of sailors, is the fiend that presides over all the evil spirits of the deep, and is often seen in various shapes, perching among the rigging on the eve of hurricanes, shipwrecks, and other disasters to which the sea-faring life is exposed; warning the devoted wretch of death and woe.

That’s about all we know about the origin of Davy Jones and his locker: references to it appear in the early eighteenth century, and the myth and term may be older in sailor slang.

Claims that David Jones was the name of real pirate and that Davy is from the West Indian duppy, a spirit or ghost, are without evidence.

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Sources:

Defoe, Daniel (pseud. George Roberts). The Four Years Voyages of Capt. George Roberts. London: A. Bettesworth and J. Osborn, 1726, 89. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. Davy Jones’s locker, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. Davy Jones, n.

Smollett, Tobias. The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, vol. 1 of 3. Dublin: Robert Main, 1751, 101–02.  Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Image Credit: John Tenniel, 1892. Punch, 103, 10 December 1892, 271. Heidelberg University Library. Public domain image.

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.

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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.