A ham is a bad or overly dramatic and emotive actor. But why ham? What does the meat have to do with the theater? In this case the etymology, where the word comes from, is reasonably clear, but the etiology, why it is so, remains mysterious, with the only answers being speculative.
The word ham goes back to a Proto-Germanic root. The Old English word hamm referred to the back or hollow or bend of the knee. It was only applied to people. There are two instances, out of twenty-two in the surviving Old English corpus, where the meaning of hamm is extended to refer to either the thigh or the calf of the leg. Similarly in Middle English, there are a handful of the instances of the word referring to the thigh or specifically to the hamstring muscles.
By the seventeenth century, ham starts to be used for animals as well as for humans. We see it applied to horses in Edward Topsell’s 1607 The Historie of Fovre-Footed Beastes:
Of the Selander
This is a kind of scab breeding in the ham, which is the bent of the hough, and is like in al points, to the Malander, proceeding of like causes, and requireth like cure, and therefor resort to the Malander.
Selander is a dry scab that can form on a horse’s hock.
By the middle of the seventeenth century, ham is being used to refer to pig meat, specifically the cut from the thigh of a pig. John Row’s 1650 The History of the Kirk of Scotland contains this, relating to events of May 1619, in which minister is accused of having puritan sympathies and banished to a distant church where he can do no harm. Row includes, for no apparent reason, the fact that the minister in question has an aversion to the meat:
And Mr Henrie Blyth was transported to a ministrie in the Mers, not far from Berwick, called Eckells, (i.e., as I conjecture, Ecclesiæ, for it is two Kirks, a kirk and a cross kirk, or four equall yles;) thus he is far removed from Edinburgh, and putt in a place, (as the Prelats thought,) scarce capable of puritanicall principles, hard upon the Border. It is remarkable that Mr Henrie Blyth had such antipathie aganis an ham, that no sooner did he heare a ham spoken of but he swarfed [i.e., fainted].
So that’s where the common meaning of ham comes from. But what about the theatrical sense? It seems that the theatrical ham is a clipping of hamfatter. Or at least that’s what the common wisdom is. But there are a couple of early uses of ham that call that into question.
Hamfatter comes from a Civil War-era, blackface-minstrel song titled The Ham Fat Man. The earliest reference to the song that I know of is in the 1861 song book Songs for the Union. It appears as a direction to sing another song to the tune of The Ham Fat Man, so it would seem the song was well established by 1861.
The earliest lyrics to The Ham Fat Man that I have found are in 1863 sheet music by a composer named A. Jones. The lyrics make reference to the Civil War, so if the song does predate 1861, these are not the original words:
White folks I come before you now, to try to please you all;
I’m right from old virginny, sassy ragged fat and tall;
you talk about your comfort; ole mass am de man,
dat gibs de n[——]r ham fat smoking in de pan.[Chorus]
Ham fat, ham fat, Zigga Zolla zan, Ham-fat, ham fat, Tickle olla tan; oh!
Ham fat, ham fat, Zigga Zolla zan, Ham-fat, ham fat, Tickle olla tan; oh!
walk into de kitchen, as quick as you can,
Hoochee Koochee Koochee, says the Hamfat man.
walk into de kitchen, as quick as you can,
says the Hamfat man.When wittels am so plenty, oh! I bound to get my fill;
I know a pretty yaller gal, and I love her to kill,
If any n[——]r fools wid her, I’ll tan him if I can,
A Hoochee, Koochee, Koochee, says the Hamfat man.Oh! Fare you well good white folks! I now must go away,
I’ll lay back and stay back, in clover all the day;
I’ll tell you what it is now, as long as I can stand,
I’ll stick to the Union, and the Ham fat man.
The earliest use of hamfatter that I have found is rather cryptic. The available context doesn’t make it clear. It appears in brief item Nashville’s Daily American from 20 November 1876. It’s in a snippet from a longer story, The Bulldozer: A Romance of the Sunny South by a Jim Bloodyroad, almost certainly a pseudonym. I have been unable to locate the full story, which was evidently to be published in an election Campaign Supplement to the New York World on 27 November. The snippet concerns the lynching of a Black man by the Klan:
“Gag the — — — — — —— — —!” yelled the leader, and Peter was throttled till his tongue protruded several feet, when the slack of that member of the Ku-Klux took a couple of turns abuot [sic] the kneeling man’s neck, tying it securely in two clove-hitches and a slip-knot at the nape.
And this in the Centennial Year and the Land of Freedom!
“Ho, Hamfatter!” hissed the leader of the Ku-Klux, “bring forth the Bull-doz—”
But ere he had concluded his order, the door again opened and—
(For the remainder of this blood-curdling and hair-raising romance…
Is the Klan leader calling his victim a hamfatter? That would align with the existence of the blackface-minstrel song. Or is it a nickname of one of his men? In which case what it means is anyone’s guess.
But by the 1880s, we get the abbreviation ham, and this is clearly in a theatrical context. The earliest use I know of is in an article about theatrical slang in the Los Angeles Herald of 13 August 1881:
If this representative of the burnt cork branch of the business desired to express his contempt for “Gilhooly and McGinnis, Ireland’s peerless characterizationists,” he would wither the peerless pair by calling them “jays,” or “chumps,” or “duffers,” or “ranks,” or perhaps “hams.”
“Burnt cork” refers to the substance used to create blackface, so we have a clear reference to minstrelsy here.
The following year we get this use of ham, in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News. While the publication is British, the reference is to American performers. The banjo, of course, was a staple instrument in minstrelsy:
What is a “ham,” by the way, apart from pork? “Banjo hams” are held up to scorn, and one writer proudly describes himself as “no ham, but a classical banjo player.”
That same year we see hamfatter being used as a derogatory term without reference to the theater. This may be because it had a more general sense, or perhaps because the writer, an Englishman, misunderstood its context:
Every American who does not wish to be thought “small potatoes” or a “ham-fatter” or a “corner loafer,” is carefully “barbed” and fixed up in a hair-dressing saloon every day.
And the 1889 Century Dictionary connects hamfatter with the theater:
Hamfatter (ham´ fat´´ ėr), n. A term of contempt for an actor of low grade, as a negro minstrel. Said to be derived from an old-style negro song called “The Ham-fat Man.”
So it looks like ham is a shortening of hamfatter, which comes from an 1860s blackface minstrel song. While this is likely the case, there are few early citations that indicate hamfatter was used in a wider context than just the theater, and in the record, ham predates clear use of hamfatter in a theatrical context. These are not necessarily deal killers for the hypothesis, but they give one pause.
But why did hamfatter/ham come to mean a poor or inept performer? Here we enter into the realm of pure speculation. A 25 May 1902 article in the New York Sun gives two competing hypotheses:
At this Bowery theatre [Tony] Pastor used to give presents to his patrons. He gave away tons of coal, silk dresses, barrels of flour, hats and ham. Tickets with certain numbers were sold and the fortunate possessor of the lucky ticket got the present it called for. That advertised Pastor’s theatre all over the country. Perhaps from the giving away of ham at Pastor’s the impression may prevail that that’s just how the term “hamfatter” for a bad performer originated but this is not so.
The expression is an old minstrel term and came from the refrain of a song and dance which goes something like this:
“Ham fat, ham fat, smoking the pan.”
This song became popular, and the performers and later the public caught up the term. When a minstrel or a variety actor appeared and was not up to the standard they used to yell at him, “Ham fat, ham fat, smoking in the pan.” And this was abbreviated until poor actors were known as “hamfatters.”
Another, similar, alternative is that instead of not living up to the standard expected of a well-known piece in the repertoire of every minstrel band, performers were derisively labeled hamfatters because they did not play original or new material and the audiences would quickly grow bored.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang offers up the idea that ham fat (lard) was used by impoverished performers as a base for the makeup powder, rather than the more expensive oils and creams. What evidence there is for this explanation I don’t know, and it ignores the evidence that the terms are related to the minstrel song.
Take your pick as to which explanation you prefer or make up your own. One is as good as another.
And we can’t go without mentioning ham radio operators, that is amateur radio enthusiasts. That term comes from the acting sense, originally referring to a novice or student radio operator, one who is not very good. It dates to the earliest days of radio telegraphy, at least to 1919. By the late 1920s its meaning had morphed from novice to amateur. Cf. jabroni.
Sources:
Brown, Peter Jensen. “Part II—The History and Etymology of the ‘Hoochie-Coochie’ Dance.” Early Sports and Pop Culture History Blog, 8 July 2016.
The Century Dictionary of the English Language, part 10. New York: Century: 1889, 2696, s.v. hamfatter, n. Internet Archive.
“Circular Notes.” Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (London), 23 December 1882, 355/2–3. ProQuest Historical Periodicals.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., ham, n.2, hamfatter, n.
Jones, A. The Ham Fat Man: A Comic Song [sheet music]. Cincinnati: John Church, Jr., 1863. Library of Congress: Performing Arts Databases.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. hamme, n.(1).
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. ham, n.1 & adj., hamfatter, n., fatter, n.
“A Romance of the Day.” Daily American (Nashville, Tennessee), 20 November 1876, 2/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers
Row, John. The History of the Kirk of Scotland, from the Year 1558 to August 1637 (1650). Edinburgh: Wodrow Society, 1842, 324. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Sala, George Augustus. America Revisited, vol. 1 of 2. London: Vizetelly, 1882, 66. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Songs for the Union. Philadelphia: A. Winch, 1861, 32. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Theatrical Slang.” Los Angeles Herald, 13 August 1881, 2/3. Library of Congress: Chronicling America.
Topsell, Edward. The Historie of Fovre-Footed Beastes. London: William Jaggard, 1607, 407. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Vaudeville Then and Now.” Sun (New York City), 25 May 1902, 36/7. Library of Congress: Chronicling America.
Photo credit: Renee Comet, National Cancer Institute, 1994. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.
