doughboy

A WWI-era doughboy, c. 1919

20 November 2023

Doughboy is a slang word for an American soldier, particularly an infantryman, that is most often associated with the First World War, but the term is almost a hundred years older than that war, dating to at least 1835. Why the soldiers were dubbed doughboys is unknown, but that hasn’t stopped people from speculating.

The earliest use of the doughboy to refer to a soldier that I’m aware of is in a letter published in the Army and Navy Chronicle of 30 July 1835. The letter is critical of the new volume of tactics published that year. The use of doughboy is somewhat cryptic here, but it seems to mean an infantryman (I have no clue as to what “Ghost of Indian Warfare” refers):

Mr. Editor:—I call the Infantry Tactics of ’26, made by a board of officers, a system sufficiently good for the United States’ Infantry as now organized, and I’ll prove it to you. The Military Tactics of ’35, I call a system not so good as that of ’26, for several reasons.

Dough-boy’s Ghost of Indian Warfare. (Extract from “Military Tactics, &c.”) The formation in three ranks, provided for in this system, is, for the present, suspended, and will not be adopted in practice until other orders are given from this department.

From this, you must perceive how valuable and how beneficial this system is to be the army [sic]. A careful comparison of the two systems will show that the three rank formation is the distinguishing feature of that of ’35; that the alterations are trifling, but sufficiently great to cause much confusion and considerable trouble to officers and men for the next twelve months. If the three rank system is not to be used why was it translated? Why could it not remain in French until needed, and then put into the hands o the printer? There is a principle to which all military men concede, viz: never to alter a regulation or order unless such alteration be manifestly beneficial, and that in great degree, and in tactics it is particularly applicable.

The extract reading, “The formation in three ranks […] from this department,” is taken from a notice by then Secretary of War Lewis Cass contained in the front matter of the manual on infantry tactics published that year. But the phrase Dough-boy’s Ghost of Indian Warfare and the individual words doughboy, ghost, or Indian do not appear in that manual. What the letter writer is referring to with this phrase is something of a mystery.

But what the standalone word doughboy means is made clear in another letter published in that newspaper on 27 August 1835. This letter makes clear that a doughboy is an infantryman:

It seems as if the inventive powers of some individuals were endless. When we advised a different colored binding for the several volumes of the Infantry Tactics, for the sole purpose of distinction, it did not occur to us that this distinction, to be complete, should address itself to more senses than one. To effect the omission on our part, the brigadier in charge of the printing and binding has caused the second volume to appear in red and gold; the red cloth, unlike the blue imitation of seal skin, is smooth, and the emblematic bugle horn of the Dough Boys is stamped on the flanks of each book, so that by day or by night the most blind may find which is the Military Tactics and which the Infantry.

Doughboy would remain an army slang term and wouldn’t often make its way into print until much later in the nineteenth century. But we do see it some diaries and correspondence of soldiers. Napoleon J. T. Dana, an Army officer, uses it in his diary entry of 1 January 1847 during the Mexican-American War:

We were off at daylight, and the morning was mighty cold, so our pace was soon quickened almost to what is vulgarly called a dogtrot until we were stopped about eight o’clock at the foot of a large steep hill, where we “doughboys” had to wait for the artillery to get their carriages over. But after we did get over, we went even faster than before.

We see it in a Civil War context, but only in a text written decades after the fact. Robert Goldthwaite, in his Four Brothers in Blue, which was serialized in 1898, writes of an exchange between Union cavalrymen and infantry on 20 September 1862. The cavalry, returning from a battle, passed an infantry column fording a river:

The cavalry were met returning. The splashing of their horses the water flying into the faces of some of our grumblers, who out of spite, shouted out, “Are there any dead cavalry-men ahead? What guerillas do you belong to?” etc., etc., to which the answer comes back promptly, “Yes, you bummers, we do the fighting and leave the dead cavalry-men for the ‘dough boys’ to pick up. Go to the rear you “worm crushers”!”

It's not until the First World War that the doughboy makes it way out of army slang into general parlance.

There is a much older, probably unrelated, somewhat more literal use of doughboy to mean a boiled or deep-fried dumpling. We see this usage as early as 1685 in Basil Ringrose’s Bucaniers of America:

These men that were landed, had each of them three or four Cakes of Bread, (called by the English Dough-boy’s) for their provision of Victuals; and as for drink, the Rivers afforded them enough.

Also, in the early nineteenth century doughboy was also used as a slang term for a baker’s assistant.

A number of explanations for why American soldiers were called doughboys have been promulgated over the years. Perhaps the name comes from a penchant for consuming doughboys. Or maybe infantryman, because of their youth and inexperience, were likened to bakers’ doughboys. Some suggest it comes from the round buttons on the military uniform, which resembled the pastry. Others say it comes from using white dough to mask blemishes on the white belts worn by the soldiers. But these are all just speculation, with no solid evidence behind them.

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Sources:

Carter, Robert Goldthwaite. “Four Brothers in Blue.” 20/2. The Main Bugle, January 1898. HathiTrust Digital Library. [Green’s Dictionary of Slang dates this source to 1862, which is not quite accurate. The event described happened in that year, but the account was written in 1898.]

Cass, Lewis. Letter, 10 April 1835. As front matter to Winfield Scott. Infantry-Tactics, vol. 1 of 2. New York: George Dearborn, 1835. HathiTrust Digital Library.

“Communications: New Infantry Tactics.” Army and Navy Chronicle (Washington, DC), 30 July 1835, 247. Gale Primary Sources: American Historical Periodicals.

———. Army and Navy Chronicle, 27 August 1835, 277. Gale Primary Sources: American Historical Periodicals.

Dana, Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh. Diary, 1 January 1847. In Ferrell, Robert H., ed. Monterrey Is Ours!: The Mexican War Letters of Lieutenant Dana, 1845–1847. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990, 166. JSTOR.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. doughboy, n.

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

Ringrose, Basil. Bucaniers of America, vol. 2. London: William Crooke, 1685, 4. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Photo credit: Spurr Studio, Waterloo, Iowa, c. 1919. Library of Congress. Public domain image.

iodine

Iodine evaporating into a purple gas

17 November 2023

The origin of the word iodine is a story of cooperation and rivalry between scientists of warring nations in the Napoleonic era.

Iodine is a semi-lustrous, non-metallic solid at room temperature and pressure with atomic number 53 and the symbol I. Iodine is essential for human health, and a deficiency can lead to goiters in adults and intellectual disabilities in children. (Nowadays, iodide is typically added to table salt to prevent such deficiency.) It has a variety of applications, including medicine, where it has long been used for its anti-microbial properties. More recently it has been used as a radiocontrast material in medical imaging and in treating thyroid cancer.

The name comes from the Greek ἰώδης (iodes, violet colored), after the purple color of its gaseous state.

Iodine was discovered in 1811 by Bernard Courtois. At the time, in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, France was blockaded by Prussia and Austria on land and by the Royal Navy at sea and was thus unable to obtain nitrate for gunpowder from abroad. Courtois was engaged in finding ways to extract nitrate from kelp. One day, probably in November of that year—the exact date is not known—when using acid and heat to clean out the vats used to extract nitrate from the seaweed, Courtois noticed a purple vapor arising from the vessels and metallic-like crystals forming at their bottoms. Courtois sent samples of the substance to various colleagues for analysis, including Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and André-Marie Ampère.

Two years passed with no discernable progress made on identifying the substance. Then in October 1813 English chemist Humphry Davy and his young lab assistant, twenty-two-year-old Michael Faraday, were traveling through France on their way to Italy. (It was a different time then, and despite being at war with England, Bonaparte was happy to grant passports to English scientists, especially an eminent one like Davy.) While in France, Davy met with Ampère, who shared his sample of the unknown substance. Davy, using the traveling laboratory he always took with him, got to work. Upon hearing this, Gay-Lussac was furious; he had already determined it was an element but had been slow in publishing his findings and did not want to be scooped by his English rival.

Davy and Gay-Lussac engaged in a bitter quarrel over who had priority in the discovery. Gay-Lussac was the first to publish, but he did so under Courtois’s name in October 1813, dubbing the new element iode:

La substance nouvelle, que depuis on a nommée iode à cause de la belle couleur violette de sa vapeur, a bien tout l’aspect d’un metal.

(The new substance, which has since been named iode because of the beautiful purple color of its vapor, has all the appearance of a metal.)

Davy wrote up his findings in December 1813, when he was still in Paris, changing Gay-Lussac’s coinage to iodine, and sent them off to the Royal Society, where they were read and published the following year:

The name ione has been proposed in France for this new substance from its colour in the gaseous state, from ἴον, viola; and its combination with hydrogen has been named hydroionic acid. The name ione, in English, would lead to confusion, for its compounds would be called ionic and ionian. By terming it iodine, from ἰώδης, violaceous, this confusion will be avoided, and the name will be more analogous to chlorine and fluorine.

Thus iodine was born out of a scientific rivalry between warring nations (not unlike the transuranic elements discovered during the Cold War of the twentieth century). Ironically, the young lab assistant Faraday would end up eclipsing both Davy and Lussac with his scientific achievements.

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Sources:

Courtois, B. (Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis) “Découverte d’une substance nouvelle dans le Vareck.” Annales de Chimie, 88, 31 October 1813, 304–10 at 305. Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Gallica.

Davy, Humphry. “Some Experiments and Observations on a New Substance Which Becomes a Violet Coloured Gas by Heat” (10 December 1813, read 20 January 1814). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 104, 74 at 93 at 91. DOI: 10.1098/rstl.1814.0007. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1814.0007

Kelly, Francis C. “Iodine in Medicine and Pharmacy Since Its Discovery—1811–1961.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 54.10, October 1961, 831–926. DOI: 10.1177/003591576105401001.

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. iodine, n.

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

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.