bit / two bits

Spanish pesos, divided into segments worth one, two, and four bits

19 August 2024

(For the computing term, click here.)

Two bits, in American speech, literally means twenty-five cents, but it is also used more generally to refer to a small valuation or as an adjective meaning cheap or insignificant. How it came to mean these things is wrapped up in the history of money in North America.

Bit itself comes from the Old English bita, literally meaning a morsel of food, a bite, but in pre-Conquest England it could also be used more generally to mean a fragment or portion of something.

In the sixteenth century, bit started to be used in underworld slang as a noun meaning money. We see this usage in the 1555 book A Manifest Detection of the Moste Vyle and Detestable Vse of Diceplay:

And whensoeuer ye take vp a cosin, be suer as nere as ye can to knowe a forehand what store of byt he hath in his buy, that is what mony he hath in his purse, & whether it bee in great cogs or in small, that is gold or siluer, and at what game he wil sonest stoupe that we may fede him wt his owne humor & haue coules redy for him.

And by the seventeenth century a more specific sense of bit had developed, that of a Spanish real, or one eighth of a peso. The Spanish peso (Spanish dollar) was the most common coin in circulation in colonial North America. The reals were also known as pieces of eight. We see this phrase in Edmund Scott’s 1606 An Exact Discourse of the Subtilties, Fashishions, Pollicies, Religion, and Ceremonies of the East Indians, in which Scott gives a rather racist account of the greediness of Chinese people:

I profered them a peece of eight a man, which they much scorned, I asked them if it were not enough for halfe an houres worke: they aunswered againe, that if they had not helped vs, we had had our house burnt, and so had lost all.

And we see bit being used to refer to a Spanish real in the minutes of a 1683 inquiry into a counterfeiting ring in Philadelphia:

The Gov^r telleth Ch: Pickering & Sam^ll Buckley of their abuse to y^e Governm^t, in Quining of Spanish Bitts and Boston money, to the Great Damage and abuse to y^e Subjects thereof. The Gov^r asked them whether or no they are Guilty of y^e fact. They confess they have put of some of those new bitts, but they say that all their money was as good Silver as any Spanish money, and also deny that they had any hand in this matter. Charles Pickering saith he will Stand by it and be Tried; he declareth that he heard Jno. Rush Swere that he Spent halfe his time in making of Bitts.

The Gov^r asketh Sam¹¹ Buckley whether he did not help to melt money, or to put in y^e Copper allay into y^e Silver more than Should be, and to have been at y^e Stamping of new Bitts, and Strikeing on the Stamp.

And after the American Revolution, the Spanish coins continued to be widely used. (Spanish coinage would remain legal tender in the United States until 1857.) A June 1792 resolution of a group of Philadelphia merchants on the value of various forms of foreign currency uses the phrase two bits to refer to a quarter dollar:

It was Resolved,

That they will reject the said German Coin in all Payments that shall be rendered to them.—

The following Resolutions were also proposed and agreed to:—

That Johannesses weighing under Eight pennyweights will be rejected in all payments and not be received at more than they weigh; that all other Gold will be received by weight as heretofore, except only the pieces which have always passed at Fourteen Shillings.

That they will receive in payments the new pieces called Quarter Dollars, which pass at the value of Pistreens in Madeira, at 19 1–2d or two bits and a dog, ant the bitt pieces of the same stamp at 10 1-2d or one bitt and a dog.

(A pistreen was a Spanish silver coin. A dog is a coin of low value, particularly a copper coin issued in the West Indies.)

This would be the state of affairs until the turn of the twentieth century, when two bits began to be used as an adjective meaning cheap, of little value. Here is an example from Montana, in the 29 November 1900 edition of the Butte Weekly Miner:

Since the recent overwhelming defeat of everything that goes by the name of republicanism in the state of Montana, every two-bit republican newspaper in the state is busily engaged in hatching plans for the successful reorganization of the national democracy. How kind and thoughtful you are, gentlemen! However, you better attend your own funeral. The great national democratic party is perfectly capable of attending to their own business.

And this from the Idaho Daily Statesman of 26 January 1901:

One of the very gratifying features of political developments is that there is no organized opposition to the navy. While we have two-bit politicians seeking to arouse apprehension that the army will be used to subvert our liberties, there is no such cry respecting the naval arms of the service.

So that’s it, how bit made the journey from a morsel of food to a description of low-rent politicians.

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Sources:

“Attitude Toward the Navy.” Idaho Daily Statesman (Boise), 26 January 1901, 2/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. bit, n.1, two-bit, adj., two-bits, n.

A Manifest Detection of the Moste Vyle and Detestable Vse of Diceplay. London: Abraham Vele, 1555, sig. C.iii.r–v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

Minutes of 24 August 1683 Meeting. Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, vol. 1 of 13. Colonial Records of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Jo. Severns, 1852, 185. HathiTrust Digital Archive. (Reprint of an 1831 edition).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, July 2023, s.v. bit, n.2 & adj.2; March 2006, s.v. piece, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. two-bit, adj.

“Philadelphia, 7th June, 1792.” Federal Gazette and Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, 7 June 1792, 3/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Scott, Edmund. An Exact Discourse of the Subtilties, Fashishions, Pollicies, Religion, and Ceremonies of the East Indians as Well Chyneses as Iauans, there Abyding and Dweling. London: W. White for Walter Burre, 1606, sig. E3.v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

“Will Look After Itself.” Butte Weekly Miner (Montana), 29 November 1900, 4/7. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Tina Shaw, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2012. Wikimedia Commons. Flickr.com. Public domain image.

roentgenium

Albumen print of one of Wilhelm Röntgen’s first X-ray images. Taken on 22 December 1895, an image of his wife Anna’s hand

16 August 2024

Roentgenium is a synthetic chemical element with atomic number 111 and the symbol Rg. All isotopes of the element are highly radioactive, with half-lives measured in seconds or minutes. Only a handful of roentgenium atoms have ever been created. It has no applications outside of pure research.

It was first produced in 1994 by a team led by Sigurd Hofmann at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany. Subsequent experiments in 2002 confirmed the existence of roentgenium, and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry invited Hoffmann and his team to submit a proposed name in 2033:

The 2003 JWP report concluded that the criteria for discovery of an element had been fulfilled only in the case of element 111 and this by the collaboration of Hofmann et al. Following this assignment and in accordance with the procedures established by IUPAC for the naming of elements, the discoverers at GSI were invited to propose a name and symbol for element 111. The discoverers propose the name roentgenium and the symbol Rg.

This proposal lies within the long-established tradition of naming elements to honor famous scientists. Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovered X-rays in 1895. Their use has subsequently revolutionized medicine, found wide application in technology, and heralded the age of modern physics based on atomic and nuclear properties.

The physicist’s name is spelled Röntgen in German, but the element is spelled with an <e> replacing the umlaut as IUPAC does not use diacritical marks in its nomenclature.

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Sources:

Corish, J. and G. M. Rosenblatt. “Name and Symbol of the Element with Atomic Number 111 (IUPAC Recommendations 2004).” Pure and Applied Chemistry, 76.12 (2004), 2101–03 at 2102. DOI: 10.1351/pac200476122101.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 3—Rivalry of Scientists in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries.” Foundations of Chemistry, 12 November 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09452-9.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2010, s.v. roentgenium, n.

Image credit: Wilhelm Röntgen, 1895. Wikimedia Commons. Wellcome Collection. Public domain image.

supermoon

Size comparison of a supermoon with an average full Moon

15 August 2024

(See also: blue moon)

Every three or four months we are treated to a spate of news stories about how this month’s full Moon will be a supermoon. And in the summer and fall of 2024, we’ll get four supermoons in a row.

But for the casual observer a supermoon is not a thing. The Moon will not appear significantly different from a regular full Moon. The hype is completely undeserved.

A supermoon is when a full or new Moon is at its closest approach (perigee) to the Earth. While a new Moon can be a supermoon, new Moons are difficult to see, a sliver of a crescent during daylight, so they don’t get the media attention. A full supermoon does have a slightly larger angular size than a normal one, about two arcminutes bigger than an average full Moon—the unaided human eye can discern a difference of about one arcminute, and the full Moon is around 30 arcminutes in size. So the difference to the casual observer (one thirtieth or three percent) is really not noticeable; most people need some kind of instrumentation to discern the difference in size. Also due to an optical illusion, the Moon in any phase will appear significantly larger when it is near the horizon than when it is high in the sky.

The one noticeable difference with a supermoon has to do with the tides. The tidal difference is due to the Sun, Moon, and Earth being in alignment (syzygy), with the gravitational pull of both the Sun and Moon adding to or canceling each other. High tides will be higher at a full supermoon, and low tides will be lower at a new supermoon. If you own a boat or are routinely affected by tidal flooding, then a supermoon might be a concern.

The term supermoon was coined by astrologer Richard Nolle in the September 1979 issue of the magazine Dell Horoscope. Nolle and other astrologers claim that earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other natural disasters tend to occur during supermoons. This, like anything else spewed out by astrologers, is simply not true.

I don’t want to dissuade anyone from going out to gaze at the full moon. By all means do so, whether or not it is “super.” The Moon is beautiful and well worth taking your time to view. But if you want to see an impressively large Moon, you don’t need to wait for a supermoon. Go out shortly after moonrise on any clear night. If the Moon is low on the horizon, it will appear impressively bigger than any supermoon.

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Sources:

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

Photo credit: Marco Langbroek, 2011. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

across the pond / over the ditch

1944 U.S. postage stamp commemorating the SS Savannah, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic in 1819

14 August 2024

The Pond is a jocular and understated way of referring to the Atlantic Ocean, often in the phrase across the pond. By reducing the tempestuous ocean to placid pond, it makes the ocean manageable and domestic, recognizing the cultural differences between Britain and America and Canada, while at the same time diminishing them. 

The use of pond to refer to an ocean generally dates to the seventeenth century. The earliest use that I know of is in Joseph Hall’s 1612 Contemplations vpon the Principall Passages of the Holy Storie:

There is no varietie in that which is perfect, because there is but one perfection; and so much shall wee grow neerer to perfectnesse, by how much wee draw neerer to vnitie, and vniformitie. From thence, if wee goe downe to the great deepe, the wombe of moisture, the well of fountaines, the great pond of the world; wee know not whether to wonder at the Element it selfe, or the guests which it containes.

Hall’s treatise was evidently widely read, for it is quoted in at least three other texts in succeeding decades: Edward Leigh’s 1646 Treatise of Divinitie, George Swinnock’s 1662 The Christian-mans Calling, and the 1677 edition of Thomas Herbert’s Some Years Travel.

Toward the end of the seventeenth century we see pond being used specifically to refer to the Atlantic, especially in phrases such as herring pond, fish pond, or great or big pond. Writer John Dunton uses herring pond in a 1685 letter to his wife:

To-morrow if a gale presents we saile on for a new-world (for soe they call America): at my first arrivall I’le send an account of the wonders I meet on the Great Herring-Pond and a Particular Character of it.

(By “gale,” Dunton would seem to mean what Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary defines as “a wind not tempestuous, yet stronger than a breeze.”)

And we see the phrase across the pond as early as 1780. It appears in a poem in New York City’s Royal Gazette of 22 January 1780, during the Revolution when the city was under British occupation. The poem, titled Mary Cay, is about a mother who enlists a group of men (Dick, Will, and Jack) to discipline her wayward daughter Mary Cay, or Moll, who is consorting with her boyfriend Sam. The poem opens with the lines:

GOOD Neighbours, if you’ll give me leave,
I’ll tell you such a story!
Twill make you laugh, I do believe,
Or I’m an errand Tory.
                                    Yanky Doodle

And the relevant lines are:

Then Mother call’d for Dick and Will
To teach the wench her duty,
They drubb’d her now and then, but still
They coax’d her as a beauty.
Then Jack was sent across the Pond;
To take her in the rear, Sir,
But Dick and Will did both abscond—
We thought it mighty queer, Sir!

Jack is a common term for a sailor, especially an English one, and “take her in the rear” would seem to use a metaphor of a ship raking the stern of an enemy vessel with cannon fire to represent a spanking. (The poem does not support a sexual reading of the line.) So “Pond” would almost certainly seem to be a reference to the Atlantic.

The poem is also an extended metaphor for the American Revolution, written from the Tory perspective. There is of course, the use of Yanky Doodle as a pseudonym for the author. The mother is England, and Moll the American colonies. Dick and Will would be Richard and William Howe, the brothers who commanded the naval and army forces, respectively, in North America until 1778 when they “absconded.” Moll’s boyfriend Sam would then represent the revolutionaries, hinting that it might be a precursor to Uncle Sam. Although this last is quite a stretch.

With that digression complete, by the early nineteenth century, pond was firmly established as a slang term for the Atlantic. We see this in a 24 May 1832 letter by John Lothrop Motley:

I should have been very sorry to have crossed the Atlantic (or the pond, as sailors call it) without a single storm, but one every day in the week is rather too much.

Analogous to across the pond is the phrase over the ditch, which is found Downunder as a reference to the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. As with pond, we first see ditch being used as a general slang term for the ocean, albeit much later. It appears in a 1915 naval sketch written by L. A. da Costa Ricci under the pseudonym Bartimeus. In the story, two men have gone overboard in a storm, and the coxswain of the rescue boat is yelling to his men:

Oars all ready, lads! Stan’ by to pull like bloody ’ell—there’s two of ’em in the ditch.

Specific use of over the ditch to reference crossing the Tasman Sea appears at the end of the century. A 15 January 1998 post to the Usenet group alt.tv.xena-subtext uses the phrase in reference to travel to Sydney for Mardi Gras:

Unfortunately my finances over the next couple of months will only take me as far as the Auckland Hero Parade, not over the ditch to Sydders.

A few months later we see a column titled “Strange Happenings Across the Ditch” in the New Zealand gay periodical Out! And there

“Strange Happenings Across the Ditch” (title)

And there is this about the in the gay newspaper Queensland Pride for 28 September 2001:

Its great having the Games in Sydney—I was born and bread [sic] in NZ and we are never going to get the Games close to us again, so we’re very excited that its [sic] just over the ditch, and very excited that it’s being hosted in our part of the world.

These last three are all in a gay or lesbian context, but that is just happenstance of which sources are preserved in the databases I have access to. (My access to North American and British/Irish sources is extensive, much less so for Australia and New Zealand.) Over the ditch is not especially associated with gay subculture.

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Sources:

Bartimeus (pseud. L. A. da Costa Ricci). “The Greater Love.” Naval Occasions. Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1915, 231. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Dunton, John. Letter to Elizabeth Dunton, 25 October 1685. In John Dunton’s Letters from New-England. Publications of the Prince Society. Boston: T. R. Marvin & Son, 1867, 19. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. pond, the, n.; ditch, n.

Hall, Joseph. Contemplations vpon the Principall Passages of the Holy Storie, vol. 1. London: M. Bradwood for Samuel Macham, 1612, 20. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

Herbert, Thomas. Some Years Travels. London: R. Everingham, 1677, 374. ProQuest: Early English Books Online. (This is a revised edition. The OED dates the edition in which the quote appears to 1665, but the 1665 edition in EEBO does not contain the quote).

Leigh, Edward. A Treatise of Divinitie Consisting of Three Books. London: E. Griffin for William Lee, 1646, 3.59. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

“Mary Cay.” Royal Gazette (New York), 22 January 1780, 3/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Motley, John Lothrop. Letter to his mother, 24 May 1832. In 11. George William Curtis, ed. The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, vol. 1 of 2. London: John Murray, 1889, 11. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2006, pond, n.; second edition, 1989, ditch, n.

Preston, Joseph. “Strange Happenings Across the Ditch.” Out! In the Land of Oz (column). Out! August–September 1998, 30. Gale Primary Sources:  Archives of Sexuality and Gender.

“Profile: Fa’ataualofa Aiono, Softball Participant.” Queensland Pride (Mount Gravatt, Australia), 28 September 2001, 10/3. Gale Primary Sources:  Archives of Sexuality and Gender.

Swinnock, George. The Christian-mans Calling. London: T.P. for Dorman Newman, 1662, 41. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

“Sydney Mardi Gras.” Usenet: alt.tv.xena-subtext, 15 January 1998.

Image credit: U.S. Postal Service, 1944. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

Uncle Sam

WWI recruiting poster by James Montgomery Flagg

12 August 2024

[14 August 2024: added reference to Samuel Adams]

The United States government is often referred to as Uncle Sam, who is rendered pictorially as a white-haired, goateed man wearing a suit and top hat that are adorned with the stars and stripes. Perhaps, the most famous image of Uncle Sam is James Montgomery Flagg’s WWI recruiting poster, but Uncle Sam was not the creation of Flagg. The term predates Flagg’s poster by over a century.

The term is a play on the initials U.S., making the government into an uncle, an older, masculine authority figure, stern but caring.

The earliest known use of Uncle Sam is in a 7 June 1803 letter by Robert Orr, a master armorer at the armory in Springfield, Massachusetts. In the letter to his son, Orr mentions that:

I expect to go to New Haven Next Week to inspect armes Made by Ely Whitney for Unkel Sam 500

The number 500 is likely a reference to the number of rifles to be inspected.

Another early use is in the journal of Isaac Mayo, a midshipman on the USS Wasp. In the 24 March 1810 entry, Mayo writes of nearly losing his footing and going overboard in rough seas:

24 [March] weighed anchor stood down the harbour, passed Sandy Hook, where there are two light-houses, and put to sea, first and second day aut most deadly seasick, oh could I have got on shore in the hight of it, I swear that Uncle Sam, as they call him, would certainly forever have lost the services of at least one sailor — ordered aloft by Capt L, when I could not keep my feet on deck, about to remonstrate but as usual in such cases, came of only second best.

These two uses show that Uncle Sam was reasonably common in US military and naval slang in the opening years of the nineteenth century. But the term did not come into widespread use outside of government service until the War of 1812. A letter in Vermont’s Bennington News-Letter on 23 December 1812 complains of the toll conscription was taking on the town:

The expence to this town, or more properly to the unfortunate individuals who were drafted, cannot be less than from two to three thousand dollars, exclusive to the expence the U. States of pay, clothing, rations &c. Now Mr. Editor—pray if you can inform me, what single solitary good thing will, or can acrue [sic] to (Uncle Sam) the U. S. for all the expence, marching and countermarching, pain, sickness, death &c. among us? What was the object to be obtained by it?

And Massachusetts’s Salem Gazette has this from 30 April 1813:

He confirms a great part of the statements before published. The troops proceeded about 20 miles a day, and might have marched on foot, much farther—Says many received little or nothing; but that his horses were taken into the camp, and fairly appraised, so that “Uncle Sam,” (as the soldiers say) might be chargeable in case they died in service.

But I have found what might possibly be an even earlier precursor to Uncle Sam. It is the use of Sam, sans Uncle, in a poem published in a Tory newspaper, the Royal Gazette, in British-occupied New York City on 22 January 1780. The poem, titled Mary Cay, is an allegory of the American Revolution up to that date, meant to be sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle. In the poem, Sam represents the rebellious elements in the colonies. The fourth through sixth stanzas of the poem read:

IV. For Molly counted full thirteen,
   And bundled now with Sammy,
Who said she ought to be a Queen,
   And never mind her Mammy.
V. So Sam an[d] Moll together plot,
   To make a stout resistance,
And from the school, in short, they got
   Some truants for assistants.
VI. Then mother call’d for Dick and Will
   To teach the wench her duty,
They drubb’d her now and then, but still
   They coax’d her as a beauty.

In the poem, thirteen-year-old Molly is the American colonies, her mother is, of course, England, and Dick and Will are Richard and William Howe, the brothers who commanded British forces in North America. Later in the poem are allegorical references to the battle of Bunker Hill, the entry of France into the war, and the dismissal of the Howe brothers.

The question is whether this use of Sam is an early form of Uncle Sam, if it is a reference to Samuel Adams, a well-known advocate for American independence, or if it is just a common name chosen at random. If uses of Sam in this fashion can be found that date to between 1780 and 1803, those would argue strongly in favor of it being a precursor. But at the moment, it is just a tantalizing possibility and that the Sam in the poem is an allegory for Samuel Adams would be the most likely reading.

Uncle Sam has also generated its share of etymythologies. The most famous is that the term comes from Samuel Wilson, a U.S. government inspector of provisions purchased for the troops during the War of 1812. Allegedly Wilson would stamp the casks he inspected with the letters U.S., which some wags took to be a reference to “Uncle Sam” Wilson. Even if the facts are true, it is not the origin as examples of Uncle Sam predate the war by some years.

Another legend is that the U.S. Army unit, formed in 1808, the United States Light Dragoons, or U.S.L.D., went by the nickname Uncle Sam’s Lazy Dogs. But like the Samuel Wilson explanation, the 1803 Orr letter disproves this as the origin of the phrase.

And there is also a claim that a version of the song Yankee Doodle from c. 1789 contains a reference to Uncle Sam in one of its stanzas. Putting aside the fact that the initials U.S. did not come into use until later, none of the versions containing the reference appear before 1824.

So it would seem that, for now at least, the 1803 Orr letter is the oldest known use of the phrase Uncle Sam, but it would have been in military slang use for some period before that.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

A Conscript. Letter to the editor. Bennington News-Letter (Vermont), 23 December 1812, 3/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. Uncle Sam, n.1.

Hickey, Donald R. “A Note on the Origins of ‘Uncle Sam,’ 1810–1820.” New England Quarterly, 88.4, December 2015, 681–92. JSTOR.

“Impressments” (24 April 1813). Salem Gazette (Massachusetts), 30 April 1813, 4/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Mary Cay.” Royal Gazette (New York), 22 January 1780, 3/3–4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Matthews, Albert. Uncle Sam. Worcester, Massachusetts: Davis Press, 1908, 61–63. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Mayo, Isaac. Entry for 24 March 1810. Private Journal at Sea from 1809 to 1819. Archive.org. Printed transcript by the USS Constitution Museum.

Orr, Robert. Letter to Hector Orr, 7 June 1803. Swann Auction Galleries, Sale 2600—Lot 240, 7 April 2022.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2017, s.v. Uncle Sam, n.

Popik, Barry. “Uncle Sam (summary).” Barrypopik.com, 14 November 2008 (revised sometime after 7 April 2022).

Image credit: James Montgomery Flagg, 1917. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.