stool pigeon

A pigeon decoy

1 July 2024

In American underworld slang, a stool pigeon is a police informer. The stool is puzzling to most. It is a variant on an older word, stale, meaning a decoy or lure.

That word comes from the Old English stæl, meaning place (also the source of our present-day word stall). The Old English root was reinforced by the Anglo-Norman estal, also meaning both place and decoy, and ultimately coming from the same Germanic root as the Old English word. It’s unrelated to the other main use of stool, which is from the Old English stol, meaning seat or throne.

We see this Old English root in the compound stælhran, meaning a decoy reindeer. From the Old English translation of Orosius’s Historiarum adversum paganos (History Against the Pagans):

Þa deor hi hatað “hranas”; þara wæron syx stælhranas; ða beoð swyðe dyre mid Finnum, for ðæm hy foð þa wildan hranas mid.

(They call the beasts “reindeer”; there were six stool-reindeer; they are very dear to the Finns, for they capture the wild reindeer with them.)

And we see it used in relation to hunting birds in the c. 1440 English-Latin dictionary Promptorium Parvalorum. But here the word staal is used to refer to a hunting blind rather than a lure:

Staal of fowlynge or off byrdyes takynge: stacionaria

We see the lure sense about a century later, in Richard Huloet’s 1552 dictionary, Abcedarium Anglico-Latinum:

Stale that fowlers vse, incitabulum, mentita auis.

(Stool that fowlers use, [an incentive, a pretend bird].

It is applied more figuratively to people a bit earlier in John Skelton’s (d. 1529) poem The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng. The poem is about a less-than-honest alewife, and this particular passage is about how her ale lures the villagers:

Some for very nede
Layde downe a skeyne of threde,
And some brought from the barne
Both benes and pease;
Small chaffer doth ease
Sometyme, now and than:
Another there was that ran
With a good brasse pan;
Her colour was full wan;
She ran in all the hast
Vnbrased and vnlast;
Tawny, swart, and sallowe,
Lyke a cake of tallowe;
I swere by all hallow,
It was a stale to take
The deuyll in a brake.

(Some for great need
Laid down a skein of thread.
And some brought from the barn
Both beans and peas;
A little bargaining does the price ease
Sometime, now and then:
Another there was who ran
With a good brass pan;
Her color was very wan:
She ran in all haste,
Loose and unlaced;
Tawny, dark, and sallow,
Like a cake of tallow;
I swear by all that is hallowed,
It was a stool to take
The devil in a snare.)

But the compound stool pigeon would have to wait until turn-of-the-nineteenth-century America, where it was first applied to a dupe who would then be used to lure others into some kind of “trap.” Here is an early use in New York City’s American Citizen of 19 April 1800 in a political context:

The federalists laughed in their sleeves at this event—they held a CAUCUS and resolved (these are there [sic] own words) to make a decoy duck or stool pigeon of some pliable cartman for the purpose of getting the votes of his fellows in business.

And by the 1830s we see the sense of a police informer, one who entraps their fellows in crime. From the Vermont Watchman of 25 January 1831:

One hundred dollars are offered as reward for the apprehension of the above villain, and we hope the city authorities will at once take the matter in hand, and offer an additional sum of large amount, so that the officers of the police and their “stool pigeons” may be excited to go upon the track of the offenders.

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Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2007, s.v. estal, n.1, estal, n.3.

“Another Attempt at Abduction.” Vermont Watchman and State Gazette (Montpelier), 25 January 1831, 4/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. stool-pigeon, n.1.

Huloet, Richard. Abcedarium Anglico-Latinum. London: William Riddel, 1552. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Mayhew, A. L., ed. Promptorium Parvalorum (c. 1440). Early English Text Society. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1908, col. 432, 704–05. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. stal(e, n.4.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. stool-pigeon, n., stale, n.3.

Skelton, John. “The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng.” The Poetical Works of John Skelton, vol. 1 of 3. Boston: Little, Brown, 1862, 109–131 at 120–21. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Sweet, Henry, ed.. King Alfred’s Orosius, part 1. Early English Text Society, o.s. 79. London: Oxford UP, 1883, 1.1, 18. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“To the Cartmen of the City.” American Citizen and General Advertiser (New York City), 29 April 1800, 3/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Andy Reago and Chrissy McClarren, 2016. Wikimedia Commons. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

special relationship

Poster promoting the 1898 United States and Great Britain Industrial Exposition

30 June 2024

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the phrase special relationship as “a particularly close relationship between countries, often resulting from shared history, politics, or culture, spec. that of the United Kingdom with the United States.” While that definition is correct as far as it goes, it misses the point that the core of the special relationship between Britain and United States is that of extremely close military, diplomatic, and intelligence cooperation between the two countries. The relationship got its start in the Manhattan Project during the Second World War, where the two countries cooperated closely in building the first atomic bombs.

The phrase special relationship has been used in a general sense to mean a close relationship between any two countries since at least 1900. But the particular use in the context of Britain and the United States dates to 7 November 1945 when Winston Churchill used it in speech in the House of Commons:

May I in conclusion submit to the House a few simple points which, it seems to me, should gain their approval? First, we should fortify in every way our special and friendly connections with the United States, aiming always at a fraternal association for the purpose of common protection and world peace. Secondly, this association should in no way have a point against any other country, great or small, in the world, but should, on the contrary, be used to draw the leading victorious Powers ever more closely together on equal terms and in all good faith and good will. Thirdly, we should not abandon our special relationship with the United States and Canada about the atomic bomb, and we should aid the United States to guard this weapon as a sacred trust for the maintenance of peace. Fourthly, we should seek constantly to promote and strengthen the world organisation of the United Nations, so that, in due course, it may eventually be fitted to become the safe and trusted repository of these great agents. Fifthly, and this, I take it, is already agreed, we should make atomicbombs, and have them here, even if manufactured elsewhere, in suitable safe storage with the least possible delay.

Churchill would, more famously, use the phrase again in his 5 March 1946 “Sinews of Peace” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. This is also the speech where he famously uttered (but did not coin) the phrase iron curtain:

Now, while still pursuing the method of realising our overall strategic concept, I come to the crux of what I have travelled here to Say. Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organisation will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States. This is no time for generalities, and I will venture to be precise. Fraternal association requires not only the growing friendship and mutual understanding between our two vast but kindred Systems of society, but the continuance of the intimate relationship between our military advisers, leading to common study of potential dangers, the similarity of weapons and manuals of instructions, and to the interchange of officers and cadets at technical colleges. It should carry with it the continuance of the present facilities for mutual security by the joint use of all Naval and Air Force bases in the possession of either country all over the world. This would perhaps double the mobility of the American Navy and Air Force. It would greatly expand that of the British Empire Forces and it might well lead, if and as the world calms down, to important financial savings. Already we use together a large number of islands; more may well be entrusted to our joint care in the near future.

While American politicians do use the phrase special relationship to denote the deep connections between the two countries, the phrase has much greater resonance and political significance in Britain, where not only as the “junior partner” in the relationship Britain is more dependent on the United States for its security than vice versa, but in recent decades Britain has used the relationship to position itself as a broker between the United States and the rest of Europe.

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Sources:

Churchill, Winston. House of Commons debate, 7 November 1945. Hansard.

———. “The Sinews of Peace” (Iron Curtain speech), Fulton, Missouri, 5 March 1946. International Churchill Society.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2015, s.v. special relationship, n.

Image credit: Donaldson Litho Co., 1898. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

Gish gallop

2012 political cartoon depicting candidate Mitt Romney engaging in a Gish gallop during a presidential debate

29 June 2024

A Gish gallop is a rhetorical tactic in which a debater quickly runs through an extended series of falsehoods, misrepresentations, and shoddy arguments that are impossible to refute in the context of the debate format. The term was coined in 1994 by anthropologist Eugenie Scott, then the director of the National Center for Science Education, and named after young-Earth creationist Duane Gish, who was fond of using the technique in debates with scientists over evolution. Gish did not invent the technique, which is as old as debate itself. Scott wrote in 1994:

Now, there are ways to have a formal debate that actually teaches the audience something about science, or evolution, and that has the potential to expose creation science for the junk it is. This is to have a narrowly-focused exchange in which the debaters deal with a limited number of topics. Instead of the “Gish Gallop” format of most debates where the creationist is allowed to run on for 45 minutes or an hour, spewing forth torrents of error that the evolutionist hasn't a prayer of refuting in the format of a debate, the debaters have limited topics and limited time.

Use of the term was mainly restricted to creationist debates about evolution until around 2010, when it started to be used in other contexts. The following is from a 9 August 2010 blog post by physicist Greg Gbur about the website Conservapedia using the tactic in an attempt to discredit Einstein’s theories of relativity:

Over the past day, Twitter has been abuzz with tweets on the Conservapedia page on “Counterexamples to relativity”, provides a list of 24 “points” that attempt to show the weakness of Einstein’s crazy ideas!

In my mind, perhaps the most despicable sort of denialism or crankery, however, is that which is based on some sort of political or religious ideology. This is clearly what is going on here, and the author relies on a familiar form of rhetorical trickery known as the “Gish Gallop”: throw as many claims out there as possible, regardless of their validity, with the realization that most people will be swayed by the amount of “evidence”, and not look too closely at the details.

Looking at the “evidence”, it is clear that there isn’t a single point made that isn’t misleading, incoherent, or simply dishonest. A person reading the Conservapedia post will be measurably more ignorant afterwards, and I get the distinct impression that this is what the author intended.

And by 2012 the term was being applied to electoral politics in the context of Republican Mitt Romney’s bid for the presidency in that year. From the Lowell, Massachusetts Sun of 14 October 2012:

What I didn't realize until just this week was that lying was the strategy from the start by Republicans, not merely, as I had assumed, the usual blunderbuss and hyperbole employed by both parties in campaigns past.

It's called the “Gish Gallop,” and it is a brilliant creation in the age of the 24-hour news cycle, where rumors and stories come and go in a single day, never to be fully analyzed for validity or vetted for accuracy.

There is a similar debate tactic known as squid ink, but in that tactic the torrent consists of factual, accurate, and on-point information rather than lies.

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Sources:

Gbur, Greg. “Right-Wing Refutations of Relativity Really, Really Wrong!” Skulls in the Stars (blog), 9 August 2010.

Goldman, Michael. “‘Gish Gallop’ Delivers Unique View of Reality.” Sun (Lowell, Massachusetts), 14 October 2012. ProQuest Newspapers.

Scott, Eugenie. “Debates and the Globetrotters,” 7 July 1994. TalkOrigins Archive.

Image credit: Pat Bagley / Cagle Cartoons, 2012. Duluth News Tribune, 6 October 2012. Fair use of a low-resolution copy of a copyrighted image used to illustrate the topic under discussion.

praseodymium / neodymium / didymium

Castor and Pollux rescuing their sister Helen during the sack of Troy, Jean-Bruno Gassies, 1817, oil on canvas

28 June 2024

Praseodymium is a chemical element with atomic number 59 and the symbol Pr. Neodymium has atomic number 60 and the symbol Nd. Both are silvery, malleable metals that are found together in nature, making them twins of a sort. Both are widely used in the production of colored glass and magnets. Additionally, praseodymium is a component in a number of alloys, and neodymium is used to produce lasers of a certain wavelength.

Praseodymium and neodymium have similar etymologies and their discovery, as well as their existence in nature, are bound up with one another. In 1841, Swedish chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander discovered a substance that he believed was an element. He dubbed it didymium, after the Greek δίδυμος (didymos), or twin, because the substance was found with cerium and lanthanium. Mosander was wrong about it being an element, but the name was apt, as didymium turned out to be a combination of the metals which would later become known as praseodymium and neodymium. Mosander announced his discovery in July 1842, and his paper was translated into English and published in October 1843:

To the radical of this new oxide, I gave the name of Didymium (from the Greek word δίδυμος, whose plural δίδυμοι signifies twins), because it was discovered in conjunction with oxide of lanthanium. It is the oxide of didymium that gives to the salts of lanthanium and cerium the amethyst colour which is attributed to these salts; also the brown colour which the oxides of the same metals assume when heated to a red heat in contact with the air.

But in 1885 Carl Auer von Welsbach showed that the name didymium was appropriate for the ore but for a different reason than Mosander had ascribed to it. Didymium was not a single element but rather an ore made up of two other elements, which he dubbed praseodymium, from the Greek πράσιος (prasios), meaning leek-green, from the color of the element’s salts, and neodymium, from the Greek νεο (neo), or new. The dymium he took from didymium:

Da sonach die exacte Zerlegung des Didyms in mehrere Elemente realisirt ist, so sehlage ich vor, die Bezeichnung Didym nunmehr ganz zu streichen und beantrage, für das erste Element, entsprechendder Grünfärbung seiner Salze und seiner Abstammung die Benennung:

Praseodym mit dem Zeichen Pr

und für das zweite, als das “neue Didym”, die Benennung:

Neodym mit dem Zeichen Nd.

(Since the exact decomposition of Didym into several elements has now been achieved, I propose to delete the name Didym completely and request that the first element be named according to the green color of its salts and its origin:

Praseodymium with the sign Pr

and for the second, as the "new Didym", the name:

Neodymium with the symbol Nd.)

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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.

Mosander, C. G. “On the New Metals, Lanthanium and Didymium, Which Are Associated with Cerium; and on Erbium and Terbium, New Metals Associated with Yttria.” London, Ediburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, third series, 23.152, October 1843. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2007, s.v. praseodymium, n.; September 2003, s.v. neodymium, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. didymium, n..

von Welsbach, Carl Auer. “Die Zerlegung des Didyms in seine Element.” Monatshefte für Chemie und verwandte Teile anderer Wissenschaften, 6, December 1885, 477–91 at 490. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Jean-Bruno Gassies, 1817. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain work as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.

flap / flip / flop / flip-flop

26 June 2024

Flip-flopping, or reversing one’s position on a political issue, especially when it is perceived to have been done solely for a politician’s political gain, is a cardinal sin in American politics. But flip-flopping is by no means unique to the modern American political scene. Flip-floppers, or simply floppers, as they were originally known, have been so-called for almost two centuries, and they’ve been around under other names for a lot longer.

Both flip and flop are variants of the verb to flap, which is first recorded in the fourteenth century meaning to strike a sudden blow or as a noun meaning such a blow. Flap was applied to the flight of birds in the sixteenth century. The standalone verb to flip isn’t recorded until the early seventeenth century, but it probably dates to the same period as flap. And we have the reduplicative adverb flip-flap also appearing in the sixteenth century. In his 1583 Anatomie of Abuses, pamphleteer Phillip Stubbes comments on men’s fashion of the day, in particular on the practice of wearing ruffs, or those frilled Elizabethan collars:

They haue great and monsterous ruffes, made either of Cambrick, holland, lawn or els of some other the finest cloth that can be got for money, whereof some be a quarter of a yard deep, yea some more, very few lesse.

So that they stand a full quarter of a yarde (and more) from their necks hanging ouer their shoulder poynts, insted of a vaile. But if Aeolus with his blasts, or Neptune with his stormes, chaunce to hit vppon the crasie bark of their brused ruffes, then they goe flip flap in the winde like rags flying abroad, and lye vpon their shoulders like the dishcloute of a slutte.

Here slut is being used to refer to a slovenly woman, not necessarily one who exercises her sexual agency.

And a few pages later Stubbes presages the twentieth-century use of flip-flop to refer to a heelless sandal when he comments of on the practice of men wearing pantofles, a type of indoor slipper, out in public:

For how should they be easie, when as the héele hangeth an inch or two ouer the slipper on the ground? Insomuch as I haue knowen diuers mens legs swel with the same. And handsome how should they be, when as with their flipping & flapping vp and down in ye dirte they exaggerate a mountain of mire & gather a heape of clay & baggage together, loding the wearer with importable burthen?

The present-day sense of flip-flop meaning a heelless sandal, usually made of plastic or rubber, makes its appearance in the late 1950s.

While flip and flap entered into widespread use early on, flop is a comparative newcomer to the party. There are a few seventeenth-century uses of the noun and verb, but it doesn’t enter into widespread use until the nineteenth century. And it is in the latter half of that that century that we see flip-flop meaning sudden change in a political position. Here is an early example from the Daily Oregonian of 5 December 1867:

“FLIP-FLOP.”—The Walla Walla Statesman has blossomed into the most intense Copperheadism. […] We also observe that the Statesman is rejoicing greatly over the results of the recent elections. It says: “More than half the distance back that we were driven in the ‘fog’ at the Presidential campaign of 1864, we have recovered.” This is good considering the editor of the Statesman himself supported Mr. Lincoln in 1864, and helped to drive the party he now associates with into the “fog” and black Cimmerian darkness which enveloped it at that time. Newell is the grand original flip-flop in journalism.

Copperheads was the nickname given to Democrats during the Civil War who wanted to end the war and preserve the Union by giving into the South’s demands over slavery.

There are other senses of flop. The sense meaning a failure is recorded in Farmer and Henley’s 1903 volume of Slang and Its Analogues. A cheap, temporary place to sleep is recorded in Dave Ranney’s 1910 account of being homeless in New York City:

We got to talking, and he asked me where I was living. I smiled at the idea of my living! I wasn’t even existing! I told him I lived any place where I hung up my hat: that I didn’t put up at the Astor House very often; sometimes at the Delevan, or the Windsor, or in fact, any of the hotels on the Bowery were good enough for me—that is, if I had the price, fifteen cents. You can get a bed in a lodging-house for ten cents, or if you have only seven cents you can get a “flop.” You can sit in some joint all night if you have a nickel, but if you haven’t you can do the next best thing in line, and that is “carry the banner.” Think of walking the streets all night and being obliged to keep moving!

Finally, flop is a term in Hold ’em poker (a variety of seven-card stud) for the first three community cards dealt to the players. In the game each player is dealt a number of cards and then a number (for a total of seven) are dealt face up to be shared by all the players. With bets placed at each deal. The players must make the best five-card hand out of the seven cards dealt. In Texas Hold ’Em, the most popular variant, each player is dealt two hole cards; bets are placed; the flop of three cards is dealt; bets are placed; the turn community card is dealt; bets are placed; finally the river community card is dealt; and the final round of betting commences. This poker use of flop dates to at least the early 1970s.

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Sources:

Farmer, John S. and W. E. Henley. Slang and Its Analogues, vol 3 of 7. 1903, s.v. flop, subs., 31–32. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Flip-Flop.” Daily Oregonian, 5 December 1867, 3/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. flop, n.3, flop, n.4, flop, n.5.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. flap, n., flap, v., flip, v., flip-flap, adv, n., & adj., flip-flop, n. & adv., flip-flop, v., flop, n.1 (with poker sense added in 2006), flop, v.

Ranney, Dave. Dave Ranney or Thirty Years on the Bowery: An Autobiography. New York: American Tract Society, 1910, 69–70. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Stubbes, Phillip. The Anatomie of Abuses (part 1). London: John Kingston for Richard Jones, 1583sig. D7v and E4r–v. Early English Books Online.

Photo credit: Michael Popp, 2018, Wikimedia Commons, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.