Word of the Month: D-Day

1 June 2004

This month is the 60th anniversary of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France. On 6 June 1944, British, Canadian, and American troops landed in Normandy to begin the liberation of France. In military jargon, the day was designated D-Day and the sixth of June has gone by this name ever since. To commemorate this event our word of the month is:

D-Day, n., military jargon for the day an attack or operation is scheduled to begin, specifically and historically 6 June 1944, the day the Allied invasion of Normandy began in WWII. The D stands simply and redundantly for day. H-Hour is a similar formulation. The term D-Day dates to the First World War, first used in 1918.

The following words are all associated with the D-Day landings.

airborne, adj., referring to parachute-borne infantry, 1937.

Allied Expeditionary Force, n., also AEF, the Allied forces that invaded France in June 1944 under the command of General Eisenhower. Eisenhower’s headquarters was referred to as SHAEF or Supreme Headquarters AEF.

Allies, n., the coalition of nations led by the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union that fought the Axis in World War II (1939). The term was originally applied to the nations, led by Britain and France, that fought the Central Powers in the First World War (1914). A proper use of the general noun ally, which is from the Latin, via Old French, alligare meaning to bind or fasten.

axis, n., a political-military association between nations, specifically used as a proper name for the alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan in WWII, the Rome-Berlin Axis or Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. The political use of the term dates to 1936. Still in productive use today (e.g., Axis of Evil), the term is generally used to connote an enemy coalition.

BAR, abbrev., Browning Automatic Rifle, an automatic weapon, almost a light machinegun, used by the US Army in WWII.

bazooka, n., a US anti-tank rocket launcher, 1943, named for a trombone-like instrument used by radio comedian Bob Burns, 1935, originally probably from bazoo, a US slang term for a kazoo or for the mouth.

beachhead, n., a fortified position consisting of military forces that have been landed in an amphibious operation, 1940. Formed after bridgehead.

Belgian gate, n., Allied name for a type of anti-landing obstacle deployed by the Germans, a 10-foot by 8-foot steel frame mounted on rollers with the flat side facing seaward. Frequently teller mines were attached to the top of the gate.

bocage, n., terrain in Normandy characterized by fields bounded by earthen banks topped with hedges, from the French. The earthen banks formed formidable defensive obstacles in the campaign for Normandy.

C-47, n., designation for the military version of the DC-3 transport aircraft. C-47s were the primary aircraft used to drop paratroops on D-Day.

commando, n., an elite soldier, a unit of elite soldiers, the name was in official use in the British army from 1940. Used in the 1899 Boer war to refer to Boer militia units. Ultimately, the word is from the Portuguese, meaning a party of men conducting a military raid or expedition and the Vulgar Latin commandare, meaning to command.

Cotentin, prop.n., name of the Norman peninsula that juts northward into the English Channel.

DD-tank, n., an amphibious tank used in the Normandy invasion, the DD is an abbreviation for duplex-drive.

destroyer, n., a small, fast warship, 1893. Originally torpedo-boat destroyer after its original mission. Many types of warships provided shore bombardment for the D-Day invasion force, but destroyers operating close to shore provided the most effective fires in support of the invading infantry.

drop zone, n., area where a paratroop landing is planned.

DUKW, n., also duck, a 2 1/2–ton, wheeled, amphibious vehicle used by the Allies. The name is from the factory designation for the vehicle, D = year of manufacture (1942), U = amphibious, K = all-wheel drive, and W = dual rear axles.

E-boat, n., Allied name for a German torpedo boat. The meaning of E, if any, is not known for sure. Most likely it is either arbitrary or stands for enemy.

eighty-eight, n., also 88, Allied nickname for the German 88-mm anti-aircraft gun that was primarily used, very effectively, as an anti-tank gun.

ETO, abbrev., European Theater of Operations.

Flying Fortress, n., official nickname of the US B-17 heavy bomber.

Fortitude, prop.n., codename for the deception operations used to hide the preparations and intentions of the invasion.

funny, n., British nickname for specially modified armored vehicles used in the Normandy invasion. Funnies included flamethrower tanks, mine-clearing vehicles, tanks with bulldozers, etc.

Gold, prop.n., codename for the invasion beach used by the British 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division.

gooseberry, n., nickname for freighter deliberately sunk to create a breakwater to shelter small craft off the Nomandy beachheads. Cf. mulberry.

Havoc, n., official nickname of the US A-20 light bomber.

hedgehog, n., Allied name for a type of anti-landing obstacle consisting of three or four steel rails welded or riveted together at the center.

hedgerow, n., another term for the bocage in Normandy. The terrain in Normandy differs from the usual use of the term in that normal hedgerows are not placed atop earthen banks.

Higgins Boat, n., a type of American landing craft capable of carrying 36 troops or a vehicle, an LCVP, named after its designer, Andrew Jackson Higgins. Over 20,000 were built during the course of the war.

Juno, prop.n., codename for the invasion beach used by the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division and Canadian 2nd Armoured Brigade.

Lancaster, n., the primary British heavy bomber used on D-Day.

LCA, abbrev., landing craft, assault; a type of British landing craft, similar to the American LCVP or Higgins Boat, only faster but not capable of transporting vehicles.

LCI, abbrev., landing craft, infantry; a 160-foot landing craft capable of holding 200 troops.

LCM, abbrev., landing craft, medium; a landing craft capable of holding several vehicles.

LCT, abbrev., landing craft, tank; a 110-foot landing craft capable of carrying up to eight tanks.

LCVP, abbrev., landing craft, vehicle and personnel; a Higgins Boat. 

Liberator, n., official nickname of the US B-24 heavy bomber.

LST, abbrev., landing ship, tank; a 327-foot, flat-bottomed ship designed to be grounded on shore and disembarking several dozen tanks or other vehicles.

Marauder, n., official nickname of the US B-26 medium bomber.

Mulberry, prop.n., codename for two prefabricated harbors towed to the Normandy beaches from England. The name was chosen because it was next on the rotation of ship names approved by the British Admiralty.

Neptune, prop.n., codename for the naval operations associated with the Normandy invasion.

Normandy, prop.n., a region in northeastern France, named after the Norsemen who settled there. The name is attested to in English from the mid-11th C.

Omaha, prop.n., codename for the invasion beach used by the US 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions. Omaha was the bloodiest of the invasion beaches and the only one where the Germans came near to repelling the Allied invasion.

Overlord, prop.n., Allied codename for the invasion of and operations in northeastern France.

panzer, n., a German tank or tank unit, in English use from 1940, from the German military term which originally meant a coat of mail.

paratrooper, paratroop, n., parachute infantry, 1940.

pathfinder, n., a paratrooper who drops in advance of an airborne attack to mark the drop zone for the paratroopers in the main attack.

ranger, n., an elite US Army soldier, the American name for a commando, 1941. On D-Day, elements of the 2nd and 5th Ranger Battalions landed at Omaha Beach and scaled the cliffs at Pointe-du-Hoc with a mission to spike German artillery.

Seabee, n., a sailor assigned to US Navy civil engineer unit, the name is from the initials of construction battalion. Seabees did much of the obstacle and mine clearing on the invasion beaches.

Sherman, n., name of the primary type of battle tank used by the US Army in WWII, after the Civil War general.

Sword, prop.n., codename for the smallest of the Normandy invasion beaches, used by the 3rd British Division.

Teller mine, n., a disc-shaped, German anti-tank mine. From the German, Tellermine, the word Teller meaning plate. In English use since 1943.

Utah, prop.n., codename for the invasion beach used by the US 4th Infantry Division.

A Hoagie by Any Other Name

1 May 2004

(This article originally appeared in Verbatim magazine, Vol. XXVIII, No. 3, Autumn 2003, and is reprinted with permission.)

I wanna shake off the dust of this one-horse town. I wanna explore the world. I wanna watch TV in a different time zone. I wanna visit strange, exotic malls. I’m sick of eating hoagies! I want a grinder, a sub, a foot-long hero! I want to live, Marge! Won’t you let me live? Won’t you, please?
—Homer Simpson, “Fear of Flying,” The Simpsons, 20th Century Fox Television, 1994.

One of the amusements offered by my frequent travels to Europe is seeing The Simpsons translated into different languages. Homer speaking French or German is something to behold. But sometimes I wonder if all of the humor translates along with the words. The above-quoted passage is one of the best jokes ever seen on that show, or at least to my inner-linguist it is. But even in Britain, where they don’t bother to dub the original American voices, probably only a few get the joke.

You see a hoagie, a grinder, a sub, and a hero are one and the same thing. They are simply regional names for a sandwich served on a large Italian roll and filled with Italian meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, and sprinkled with olive oil and spices. Variations on the basic recipe are made by filling the sandwich with other things, such as tuna fish, roast beef, ham and cheese, meatballs, and all manner of other ingredients. Subs can be served either hot or cold. All the exotic things that Homer associates with travel are simply roses by another name.

And Homer is just scratching the surface of lexical diversity of the sandwich. In addition to the names he cites there are: poor boy, torpedo, Italian sandwich, rocket, zeppelin or zep, blimpie, garibaldi, bomber, wedge, muffuletta, Cuban sandwich, and spuckie. Most of these names are associated with a particular region of the United States. The names also fall into several distinct patterns of origin, from the shape (sub, torpedo, rocket, zeppelin, blimpie, and bomber), from the size (hero, hoagie), from ethnic association (Italian sandwich, Cuban sandwich), from the type of bread used (muffuletta, spuckie), or from the fact that the sandwich is a cheap meal (poor boy).

Where I grew up, the town of Toms River on the New Jersey Shore, we knew the sandwich as a sub, short for submarine sandwich, so called because the long, tubular shape resembles the submersible vessel. Sub is the general name for the sandwich, found throughout the United States and not associated with any particular region. The name dates to 1941, although there is at least one claim (made in 1967) that the word existed as early as 1928.

It is often asserted that the name submarine sandwich began in New London, Connecticut, after the naval submarine base there, but there is no evidence to support this contention. Sub, the sandwich, is not associated with Connecticut in particular. (Although the Subway® chain of sandwich shops got its start in 1965 as Pete’s Super Submarine Shop in Bridgeport, about 70 miles from New London.) And if the 1928 claim were true, it would seem unlikely, as that citation is from Philadelphia.

Related to the name sub, is torpedo. Like sub, this term is found throughout the US. It is often used to refer to a small or half-sized sub, a torpedo roll being a smaller piece of bread than that used in a full-sized sub.

I learned my first exotic name for the sandwich, hoagie, during my earliest school days. We had subs at home. We ate subs at local restaurants (or sub-shops). But for some reason the school cafeteria served hoagies. That’s the name given to the sandwich in Philadelphia (also known for that other famous sandwich, the Philly Cheesesteak, which can be considered a variant on the basic sub theme). Hoagie permeated outward from Philadelphia, attenuating in use as it traveled, until by the time it reached Toms River it was known only in the school cafeterias. (Whoever wrote the cafeteria menus for the Toms River school system was probably from Philadelphia.) Hoagie is common throughout Pennsylvania and much of southern New Jersey.

My portion of the Jersey Shore lacked a strong Philly influence. Even today the main road from Toms River to Philadelphia, Route 70, is a two-lane, country highway for much of its length. As a boy, I rooted for the Mets, not the Phillies, even though Veteran’s Stadium was much closer, as the crow flies, than Shea. Our beaches were filled with visitors from Bergen County and New York, who came down the Garden State Parkway. Philadelphians went to beaches further south: Long Beach Island, Wildwood, and Ocean City. Hence, hoagie was something of foreign term to the Jersey Shore of my childhood.

Linguists Edwin Eames and Howard Robboy (“The Submarine Sandwich: Lexical Variations in a Cultural Context,” American Speech, Dec 1967) point to uses of both hoagie and hoggy in a 1945 Philadelphia telephone directory. Indefatigable word sleuth Barry Popik has done thorough and meticulous research into early citations and origins of American culinary terms. He has found hoggie in an October 1944 Philadelphia phone directory, hogie from September 1943, and hoogie from January 1941.

How it got its name is an often-debated topic. The most commonly touted explanation is that it comes from the name of Hog Island, Philadelphia. In the early part of the 20th century there was a shipyard on Hog Island (now the site of the Philadelphia airport). According to this tale, during the First World War, Italian-American shipyard workers, or hoggies as they are known in the legend, would bring large sandwiches to work with them. The early spelling of hoggie makes this hypothesis attractive, but there is a gap between the shipyard’s years of operation and the earliest attestation of the sandwich name in 1941. The shipyard operated full-bore from 1917-20, after which production rapidly declined before it closed completely in 1925. That leaves only a handful of years for the name to catch on in the city’s consciousness and a gap of some fifteen years before the name is found in print. If the name can be antedated further, the Hog Island hypothesis will seem more likely, but for now this explanation seems doubtful.

A variant on the above is that it comes from Hogan, a nickname for Irish workers at the shipyard. This has the same problem of dating, plus it seems unlikely that an Irish name would be associated with the Italian sandwich.

A second and more likely explanation is that an enterprising restaurateur coined it. Al De Palma, the self-proclaimed “King of the Hoagies,” claims to have coined hoggie. In 1928 while working as a jazz musician, De Palma saw some fellow musicians eating a submarine. Impressed with the size of the sandwich, De Palma remarked that, “you had to be hog to eat one.” When the depression hit, De Palma couldn’t find work as a musician and in 1936 opened up a sandwich shop in Philadelphia. Recalling the sandwich and his remark from eight years before, he made and sold hoggies in the shop. He was quite successful, eventually opening a chain of hoagie shops and earning himself his sobriquet.

De Palma’s claim and story is consistent with the date of the name’s appearance. He opened his sandwich shop in 1936 and the term (hoogie) appears in advertising copy by 1941.

Eames and Robboy include De Palma’s account as a footnote in their 1967 American Speech article. They do not, however, give his name. But various other accounts of the tale do and from these one can determine who the “King of the Hoagies” was. These other accounts often confuse various details of the story, however. The WaWa (a Philadelphia-area chain of convenience stores) website, for example, places the 1928 incident among Italian shipyard workers on Hog Island instead of among jazz musicians—a chronological impossibility. But the account in Eames and Robboy’s article is in De Palma’s own words and is presumably more reliable. De Palma’s account is also interesting because he claims the sandwich was called a submarine as far back as 1928. The earliest known written citation of that term is from 1950. Of course, he is recalling the incident some forty years after the fact and his memory could be faulty.

Other suggestions as to the origin of hoagie include hoke sandwich, supposedly favored by hoboes who were on the hoke. This explanation is originally touted in a 1953 article in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. The sense of on the hoke is not explained beyond having reference to unemployed hoboes. I haven’t found the phrase anywhere else, nor have I found another usage of hoke that is related to either hoboes or unemployment. If the phrase ever existed, it was probably not widespread and as an inspiration for the sandwich’s name it seems unlikely. Other explanations are a reference to the pork or hog meat in the sandwich; honky sandwich, called that by blacks who saw whites eating them; and hookey sandwich, favored by kids skipping school who would buy them from sidewalk vendors. None of these seem very likely either.

To a New Yorker like you, a hero is some sort of weird sandwich, not some nut that takes on three Tigers.
—Oddball (Donald Sutherland), Kelly’s Heroes, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, 1970

Another name for the sandwich that I identified in childhood was hero. Toms River is on the outskirts of New York City’s cultural sphere of influence. Like hoagie, the word hero penetrated into the local vocabulary just far enough to become familiar.

Hero is attested to as early as the 19 February 1947 issue of The New York Naval Shipyard Shipworker and is distinctly a New York name for the sandwich. The most common etymological explanation is that it is so called because of its large size. It is often claimed that New York Herald Tribune food columnist Clementine Paddleford coined the name in the 1930s, claiming the sandwich was so large “you had to be a hero to eat it.” Alas, no one can find any record of this in any of Paddleford’s columns, or any use of the term before 1947. But it does seem likely that the name comes from the size of the sandwich.

An alternative explanation is that it is a folk etymology of gyros (pronounced yee-roh; phonetics experts and those fluent in Greek may feel free to pick at my representation of the proper pronunciation). Non-Greek New Yorkers took the unfamiliar word and made it into the familiar hero. This is a plausible explanation from a phonological standpoint, but not from a cultural one. The hero is a distinctly Italian sandwich, not a Greek one. And there is no way that someone could mistake cold cuts on an Italian roll for a gyros, which is lamb and tzatziki sauce in a pita. Besides, gyros isn’t attested to in English until 1968 and appears to be a later addition to the American bill of fare. It certainly was a later addition to mine. I never saw a gyros until the Army sent me to Germany in 1986. (Toms River had many restaurants owned by Greek-Americans, but none that served Greek cuisine.) Due to the large number of Turkish Gastarbeitern in Germany, we knew them by the Turkish name, döner kebab, anglicized by us G.I.s into donburger.

New York State, as opposed to the city, offers some other regional variants. Around Buffalo, subs are sometimes known as bombers. The name bomber is not limited to Buffalo, however, and is found scattered throughout the US. The term in Westchester County and the Hudson Valley is wedge.

I can recall one other name for the sandwich from my early childhood, blimpie®. The eponymous chain of sub shops served blimpies. Other establishments served subs; Blimpie served blimpies. The chain was founded in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1964 and one of the early franchises was in Toms River. After early childhood, the term disappeared from my vocabulary. The local Blimpie shop closed and I have rarely seen one since—although the chain is still in existence and second only to Subway in number of franchises. According to the chain’s website, the name was chosen by the chain’s founders, a combination of blimp, from the shape of the sandwich, and the –ie ending from hoagie.

Blimpie is etymologically unrelated to zeppelin or zep (1960), another name for the sandwich, common in eastern Pennsylvania. With Lakehurst Naval Air Station, site of the Hindenburg crash and home of the Navy’s lighter-than-air aviation program, right outside Toms River on Route 70, you would think that this name would have caught on in my hometown. But no, blimpie had to pull double duty in representing the area’s aviation history.

So my childhood was subs, with the occasional hoagie or hero or a trademarked blimpie. I was a little better off than Homer Simpson in that I knew a few of the terms. My first real linguistic shock happened on a church choir trip to New England, where in Rhode Island I encountered my first grinder.

Grinder is the term of art throughout most of New England, with the notable exception of Boston where it is less common. The name probably comes from the chewing or grinding your teeth do when consuming the sandwich and dates to at least 1946. Many people make a distinction between grinders and other subs in that they use grinder to mean a hot sub, but this is not the original sense. The original grinders were the familiar cold-cut subs we know and love. Hot sandwiches are often known as oven grinders. And you occasionally see the alliterative guinea grinder that associates the sandwich with its Italian-American heritage, however derogatorily.

Boston has its own local name for the sandwich, spuckie (also spukie, spooky, and spucky). The name comes from spucadella, a type of Italian sandwich roll. This local Hub name appears to be dying, being replaced by the generic sub.

After being surprised by grinder, I was better prepared when I encountered my next lexical variation on the sandwich. I joined the army in 1985 and they sent me to Fort McClellan, Alabama for my officer’s basic course. I quickly discovered that the stuff they served at breakfast that looked like Cream of Wheat wasn’t and the green vegetables that looked like spinach weren’t. Upsetting as grits and collard greens were to my Yankee notions of proper food, I did delight in the discovery of hushpuppies. But while these foods were strange and new to me, I also discovered a new name for a familiar sandwich, the poor boy.

The poor boy got its start in New Orleans and spread out across the South from there. It is attested to as early as 1931. The name most likely comes from the fact that subs are cheap, but filling meals for “poor boys.” But like sub and hoagie, the origin of poor boy is somewhat uncertain.

The best-substantiated claim for the coinage of poor boy is that of Clovis and Benjamin Martin, brothers who opened a sandwich shop on the New Orleans waterfront in 1921. They claim to have invented the sandwich and its name, which were quickly copied by their competitors. Their justification for the name is that it is a hearty sandwich for the workingman who doesn’t make much money.

In Puerto Rico there is a similar sandwich, known as the niño pobre. Whether the sandwich and its name emigrated from New Orleans or whether it came to that city from the Caribbean is not known. The same sandwich is available elsewhere in Latin America under the name obrero (laborer). The Martin brothers profess to have been unaware of these Spanish variants.

Being from New Orleans, some insist that the poor boy has a French origin. Two theories contend. One is that it is from pour le bois, a meal taken into the woods by lumberjacks. The second is that it is from pourbois, a tip or gratuity. Supposedly, street urchins would knock at convent doors seeking a pourbois, and the nuns would give them a sandwich.

There are two Southern variants of the poor boy that are not subs in the strictest sense. The first is another New Orleans creation, the muffuletta. The muffuletta takes its name from the bread, a Sicilian dialectical name. Unlike the long, tubular shape of a sub, the muffuletta is round. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the muffuletta was added to the menu of New Orleans cuisine in 1910, when the Central Grocery on Decatur Street started serving them.

The second Southern variation is the Cuban Sandwich. While it has the familiar tubular shape of a sub, it is Cuban rather than Italian in origin and, properly made, contains a different combination of meats and is flattened in a sandwich press. Found mainly in Miami and southern Florida (no surprise), the sandwich has been part of the local cuisine since 1901.

In a few places, subs are called rockets. In Madison, Wisconsin they have been known as garibaldis. And there are undoubtedly other local names for the venerable sandwich.

Why so much lexical diversity in a sandwich? Probably because no single person can lay claim to inventing it. Slicing an Italian roll and filling it with meat, cheese, lettuce, and tomatoes hardly requires culinary expertise or inventiveness. It was undoubtedly created de novo many times across the United States and given a different name each time. Many of the more regional names appear to be going by the wayside as American culture becomes more and more homogenized, but hoagie, hero, grinder, and poor boy remain strong and so far are resisting being overtaken by sub, even as garibaldi, wedge, bomber, zeppelin, rocket, and spuckie fade from the American lexicon.

Word of the Month: McCarthyism

1 May 2004

On 2 May 1957, Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) died of various illnesses exacerbated by alcohol-induced cirrhosis of the liver. McCarthy had been a key instigator of the anti-communist hysteria that engulfed the United States in the early years of the Cold War and McCarthy was the eponym for the term that came to symbolize this hysteria and the tactics used to uncover communists in American society and government. It is our word of the month:

McCarthyism, n., the practice of identifying alleged communists and removing them from government departments or other positions of responsibility through public but unsubstantiated allegations and personal attacks, specifically as pursued by McCarthy in the 1950s. In extended use, any form of persecutory investigation that uses similar tactics. The term was first used on 29 March 1950 in a Washington Post editorial cartoon by Herbert “Herblock” Lock.

McCarthy was elected to the US Senate in 1946 by using aggressive attacks to narrowly defeat Progressive Senator Robert LaFollette, Jr. McCarthy falsely accused LaFollette of war profiteering and castigated him for not enlisting during the war. (At 46 in 1941, LaFollette was too old to serve). In the campaign, McCarthy used photographs of himself in an aviator’s cap and with a belt of machinegun ammunition slung over his shoulder and gave himself the sobriquet of “Tailgunner Joe.” He claimed to have flown 32 combat missions. In actuality, McCarthy served in an administrative position and only flew on training missions. After the loss, LaFollette retired from politics and committed suicide in 1953.

McCarthy’s first few years in the Senate were unremarkable. Needing an issue to take into the 1952 re-election campaign, McCarthy embraced anti-communism, specifically the issue of communist infiltration of the US Government. On 9 February 1950 he made his famous statement, “I have here in my hand a list of 205 that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.” The charge was unsubstantiated. The list had been made public by the State Department in 1946 and consisted of names of federal employees who had failed security screening for various reasons. Some were indeed communists, but others were fascists, alcoholics, and homosexuals. Ironically, McCarthy, an alcoholic and a homosexual himself, would have failed the same security screening.

Over the next four years, McCarthy continued to make wild and unsubstantiated charges, destroying the careers of many individuals who were called before his investigatory committee and cowing and bullying others into silence or acquiescence. Few noticed that McCarthy never uncovered a single communist, either in or out of government.

In 1954, McCarthy’s assistant David Schine was drafted into the Army. Another McCarthy assistant, Roy Cohn, who was also Schine’s lover, attempted to use his political influence to get Schine released from the service. There was a public investigation into the affair, which was one of the first Congressional inquiries to be televised. During the hearings, the Army’s general counsel, Joseph Welch, disdainfully dismissed McCarthy with the now-famous retort, “Have you no sense of decency?” The public, seeing McCarthy’s tactics live for the first time, turned against him and journalists, including the broadcasting icon Edward R. Murrow, took up the attacks on McCarthy. His political fortunes rapidly faded and he was formally censured by the Senate in December 1954 for his tactics. McCarthy died in 1957 from liver ailments associated with his alcoholism.

In current historical usage, the term McCarthyism conflates the activities of McCarthy and those of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which had carried the anti-communist banner both before McCarthy’s rise and after his fall. Other terms associated with McCarthyism include:

blacklist, n. & v., a list of people who are not to be employed in a particular profession or industry, to compile such a list or add a person’s name to such a list. The term, in the sense of a list of undesirable persons, dates to c.1619, from the sense of black meaning subject to censure or guilty of crimes. The term was used in the employment sense in the late-19th C., when it was primarily used to exclude union members from employment. The association with anti-Communism is most famously exemplified by the Hollywood blacklist. In 1947, the HUAC began an investigation of Communists working in the film industry. Many refused to testify or testified and described their own leftist activities to the committee but refused to implicate others. These were placed on a blacklist that eventually grew to over 320 names. Ten were sentenced to prison for failing to cooperate, becoming known as the Hollywood Ten. The Hollywood black list included such luminaries as Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland, Dashiell Hammett, Lillian Hellman, Burl Ives, Ring Lardner, Jr., Arthur Miller, Clifford Odets, Dorothy Parker, Paul Robeson, Zero Mostel, Pete Seeger, and Orson Welles and hundreds of other, lesser-known individuals. A few of those blacklisted continued to work under assumed names. (For example, screenwriters Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman won the 1957 Academy Award for their screenplay for A Bridge On The River Kwai under assumed names.) But most had their careers destroyed. It was not until 1960 when those blacklisted began to return to work under their own names.

bookburner, n., one who destroys literary works considered objectionable or subversive; or by extension a censor of such works. In 1954, McCarthy assistants Roy Cohn and David Schine conducted a tour of US Information Service facilities in Europe and recommended that works by “Communist authors” be excluded from the government libraries. Various press reports used the term bookburner to describe this and President Eisenhower, in a speech to Dartmouth College students urged the students “Don’t join the bookburners! Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.”

censure, n. & v., a judicial sentence, a judgment that condemns, to make such a judgment. From the French, ultimately from the Latin censura, c.1470. In the US Congress, censure is the harshest punishment, short of expelling the member, that either house can direct at its members. In December 1954, the Senate censured McCarthy.

character assassination, n., the destruction of the reputation of an individual, also character assassin. The term dates to 1949 and rose to prominence in the McCarthy era. An 18 February 1951 editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch described the period as, “a period of ‘the big lie,’ of the furtive informer, of the character assassin, of inquisition, eavesdropping, smear and distrust. They lump the whole under the term McCarthyism, a common noun derived, as in the past other expressions have been taken, from personalities such as Judge Lynch, Capt. Boycott, and Vidkun Quisling.”

communism, n., a political theory which holds that there should be no private ownership of property and that all should work according to their abilities and receive goods and services in accordance to their needs, 1843. The theory was formalized in the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, especially The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867). In modern use, the term is usually a specific reference to Marxism-Leninism (1932, although the term Leninism dates to 1918), or the theory as modified by V.I. Ulyanov (a.k.a. Lenin) and the political doctrines underpinning the governments of the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and their satellite allies.

engage in personalities, c.phr., to make a personal attack on a political opponent, to lay blame for a failure. The term was uttered by Dwight Eisenhower during the 1952 campaign for president in reference to the “loss” of China to the communists, which many blamed on alleged communists in the US State Department. Eisenhower was later criticized for failing to engage in personalities and take on McCarthy.The phrase is a clipping of engage in a discussion of personalities.

fellow traveler, n., one who believes in or sympathizes with the communist cause but does not formally join the Communist Party, 1936. A translation of the Russian popútchik, a term coined by Trotsky.

Have you no sense of decency, Sir!, c.phr., uttered by US Army counsel Joseph Welch to McCarthy during the televised Army-McCarthy hearings of 9 June 1954. McCarthy’s assistant Roy Cohn, had attempted to get his colleague and lover, David Schine, released from Army service. This resulted in a public inquiry in which the Army was represented by Welch, a lawyer in private practice. During Welch’s cross-examination of Cohn, McCarthy intervened in an attempt to save his assistant by impugning that a young lawyer in Welch’s firm, Fred Fisher (who was not involved in the case at hand), was a communist. Welch stopped this tactic cold with his, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

HUAC, abbrev., House Un-American Activities Committee, a committee of the US House of Representatives that investigated subversive activities, 1938-75. The committee pioneered the tactics that were later used by McCarthy in the Senate, although unlike their Senate counterpart, the HUAC occasionally correctly identified communist spies, most notably State Department official Alger Hiss. Richard Nixon first rose to national prominence as a member of HUAC and the Hiss hearings. HUAC initially focused on the activities of fascist organizations and the Ku Klux Klan, it focused on anti-communism after WWII. The committee was renamed the House Internal Security Committee in 1969 and abolished six years later.

junketeering gumshoes, n., derisive nickname for McCarthy assistants Roy Cohn and David Schine, based on a 1954 visit by the two to ferret out communists in European outposts of the US Information Service (later the US Information Agency). The term was probably coined by Theodore Kaghan of the US High Commissioner’s Office in Germany. The term junket is a derisive term used to describe an taxpayer-funded trip to a desirable location, ostensibly for official purposes but really for pleasure. This American political usage dates to at least 1886, but the use of junket to mean a banquet or pleasure outing dates to the 16th C. The term is of obscure origin, but probably comes from the Old Norman French for a basket made of rushes, presumably used to hold food and delicacies.

loyalty oath, n., a sworn promise of fealty to the government, esp. by public employees, 1952. The term dates to the McCarthy era, but the concept of requiring such oaths has enjoyed voguish popularity in earlier eras where national security is threatened. In the US, such oaths were required during the red scare following WWI and during the Civil War.

name names, v., to incriminate or implicate specific individuals. This verb phrase dates to the late 17th C., but is often associated with McCarthy era and especially with the Hollywood blacklist.

numbers game, n., misleading use of statistics in support of a political argument. This term was coined in 1954 by Democrat Adlai Stevenson as a description of the Eisenhower administration’s announcement that 2,247 federal employees had been removed from their positions because they were security risks. Stevenson claimed the number included those who had left government service for all reasons and were only later found to be security risks. The term has a deliberate association with the earlier sense of an illegal gambling racket.

Philippic, n. & adj., a bitter, vitriolic argument. The term dates to the late 16th C. and is a reference to Demosthenes’ orations on Athenian liberty and against Philip of Macedon. McCarthy’s tactics were frequently described as Philippic.

pinko, n. & adj., denoting or descriptive of a person whose politics are left of center, not quite “red” or communist. Noun use dates to 1936 and adjectival use to 1957. The use of pink to describe radical or progressive politics dates to 1837. The term parlour pink, referring to wealthy socialists, dates to 1929, although other forms, like parlour socialist, date to at least 1910.

point of order, n., in parliamentary procedure, an objection to a ruling from the chair regarding a question of procedure, 1751. McCarthy used points of order to great effect, using them as a tactic to interrupt and introduce substantive objections and ad hominem accusations into the proceedings. As a result, the term rose in popularity in the 1950s and was used extensively in fields far from parliamentary procedure.

red, adj. & n., anarchistic, revolutionary, communist. The color red is first explicitly associated with radical politics in 1848 when the French Second Republic was called the Red Republic.

security risk, n., a person whose tenure in an official position constitutes a threat to the state, 1948.

smear, v. & n., to discredit, to launch an ad hominem attack, such an attack. The word is from the Old English smeoru, meaning fat or oil. The verb first appears in the sense of to anoint with oil. Later used to mean to spread any thick or gelatinous substance. In the 16th C it began to be used metaphorically in reference to applying discreditable qualities. Political usage dates to 1936 when Republicans referred to Democratic tactics in the previous US presidential election as a “smear Hoover” campaign. Noun usage to mean a defamatory remark or charge dates to 1943.

spy ring, n., an organization of people engaged in espionage, 1943.

take (or plead) the fifth, c.phr., to refuse to answer a question, to remain silent in the face of accusations. The phrase is a reference to the fifth amendment to the US Constitution which grants protection against self-incrimination. The phrase first appears in print in 1955.

un-American, adj., contrary to the values of American democracy and society, 1818. The term is obviously somewhat nebulous, with exactly what is un-American changing with time, circumstances, and the political views of the speaker. In the late-1940s and 1950s, the term came to be associated with communism, especially in the title of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

vet, v., to examine carefully, esp. to examine a person for political suitability, 1904. From a late-19th C usage meaning to examine an animal medically, particularly to examine racehorses for suitability.

witch hunt, n., malicious investigation or persecution directed against groups deemed politically or socially unacceptable. Literal use of the term to refer to historical persecutions of people deemed to be witches dates to 1885. First use in a political context dates to 1938 when the term was used by George Orwell to refer to persecution of communists in Spain.

Book Review: The Meaning of Everything, by Simon Winchester

1 April 2004

Simon Winchester has been making something of a career of late writing books about the Oxford English Dictionary. In 1998 he wrote The Professor and the Madman (British title: The Surgeon of Crowthorne) and has now penned The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. This latest is something of an unofficial history of the OED. The book was suggested to Winchester by the editors at Oxford University Press and is based on the research Winchester conducted for his 1998 book.

While the story of the OED is not one of high drama or cracking adventure, The Meaning of Everything is a book of great interest to anyone interested in words and lexicography. The creation of the OED was one of the monumental achievements of the Victorian age. (Although it was not completed until 1928, the OED is essentially a Victorian work.) It is also a story of bureaucratic and academic infighting and about how books get published.

The monumental achievement of this dictionary is demonstrated by some simple statistics. The first edition of the dictionary took over 70 years to complete. The idea of a comprehensive dictionary of the English language was first put forward in 1857 and the first edition was not completed until 1928. (And with supplements, a second edition, and with the beginning of a third, the work has never stopped.) The first edition is 15,490 pages long in twelve volumes. It contains 414,825 headwords and 1,827,306 illustrative quotations. At the height of the project, readers were submitting quotations at a rate of 1,000 per day. The cataloging of the English language was truly a massive task and one done without automation or modern information processing tools.

The central figure in the creation of the OED is James Murray, the editor from 1879 until his death in 1915. Murray was the perfect man for the job of compiling this dictionary from scratch—and it was essentially from scratch, the previous two editors, Herbert Coleridge, tubercular grandson of the poet, and Frederick Furnivall, an excellent scholar who let his passion for women distract him from the work at hand, had accomplished little. Murray combined academic brilliance with the drive, vision, and organizational skills of a modern-day entrepreneur.

Murray set the academic standard and shepherded the fledgling work through the bureaucracy of Oxford University Press, juggling the competing goals of maintaining excellence with the demands to publish quickly. When Murray took charge in 1879, it was estimated that the dictionary would run some 7,000 pages, take another ten years to complete, and cost a total of £9,000. It would turn out to take over twice that number of pages, take 49 years to complete, and cost over £300,000. The publishers were expecting 704 completed pages per year, almost two per day, an average of over 33 words per day. This was a dizzying pace, especially when considering that one word, black, took Murray’s chief assistant over three months to complete.

The editor was also responsible for organizing the efforts of a small army of volunteer readers who scoured the corpus of English literature to find uses of specific words. One chapter of the book focuses on two of the more interesting, the hermit Fitzedward Hall who worked in solitude, refusing all visitors, including Murray himself, and W.C. Minor, the surgeon housed in a home for the criminally insane who was the subject of Winchester’s earlier book.

Another of Murray’s arduous tasks was cleaning up the mess left him by the previous editors. Furnivall in particular had distributed the quotation slips collected to date to various sub-editors around the world and recovering these proved a major task. The entirety of the letter H was missing, later found in a villa in Tuscany. The quotations for words beginning with Pa were eventually found in an Irish stable. And the sub-editor for the letter O simply refused to return the material; eventually, Murray convinced him.

Winchester’s treatment of the subject is excellent. The book is readable and Winchester deftly addresses the bureaucratic aspects of publishing such a mammoth work without being overwhelmed by details and minutiae.

Of the books few faults, there are two of note. The first is that the book reads like a hagiography of Murray. This is somewhat understandable as Murray was clearly brilliant, an organizer par excellence, and a man without personal vices. But no one is as saintly as Murray is portrayed in the book. We are told he is a family man (with eleven children, no less) but we learn next to nothing about his wife or his children, except for the work they did assisting him. A bit more humanity in the portrayal would make The Meaning of Everything more interesting.

The second fault is that the book largely ignores the scholarly processes underlying the dictionary. Winchester does a fine job describing the discipline of writing definitions, but ignores etymology and pronunciation. How did Murray and the other editors determine the origins of words? How did they determine the pronunciations? One will not learn these answers by reading this book. Still, these are minor faults when placed in perspective.

Winchester has produced an excellent history of a major academic achievement—in scale the Victorian equivalent of cracking the human genome. Readable, entertaining, and insightful, The Meaning of Everything is a book that deserves a place on the bookshelves of any word lover.

Hardcover; 260 pages; Oxford University Press; October 2003; ISBN: 0-19-860702-4; $25.00

Word of the Month: Mafia

1 April 2004

This past month, Home Box Office, or HBO, a US subscription television service began broadcasting the fifth season of The Sopranos. The Emmy-winning series dramatizes the life of a New Jersey organized crime boss, Tony Soprano and his two “families”—his wife and children and his business associates. Unlike earlier mob-dramas like The Godfather, this series does not treat mobsters as men of honor; Tony Soprano is a violent sociopath, a thug who abuses and mistreats those closest to him. The series has earned host of awards and consistently high ratings.

Because of the premiere of what will probably be the penultimate season of the popular series, our word of the month is mafia, n., a criminal organization; originating in Sicily, but with offshoots operating in the United States; from the Italian, probably a back formation from mafioso, a member of the organization, the ultimate etymology is unknown; 1866.

What interests us here is not the violence of the show or even the nude women who dance in Tony’s strip club (being a subscription cable service, HBO is not limited by same broadcast standards of terrestrial television networks), but rather the language of the show. The series is replete with mob jargon and Italian words, usually spoken using the Sicilian-American pronunciation.

A combination of Southern Italian and Sicilian dialect and several generations in America have rendered some of the Italian terms in The Sopranos barely recognizable. These dialects have a few some distinct consonant shifts in their pronunciation. The letter C is often transmuted to a /g/ sound, and vice versa. Similarly, P becomes /b/ and D is sounded as /t/. Final sounds are often dropped. Thus compare becomes /gumba/ and comare is pronounced /guma/ or, with the New York R added, /gumaɹ/.

Most of the terms, however, are not so difficult for the average American to understand. They are ordinary English words that have particular meanings in the jargon of organized crime. Some of the more common ones, illustrated with quotations from the show, are:

a fa Napoli, interj., Southern Italian dialect, literally go to Naples, but used in the same sense as go to hell.

action, n., 1. gambling, 1887; 2. profit from a venture, esp. from illegal activities, 1957. “As far as two percent of his action, that’s up to you to settle.” (Ep. 6, Pax Soprana)

administration, n., to top-level of the mob hierarchy, composed of the boss, underboss, and consigliere.

associate, n., a criminal who works for and with the mob, but is not a formal member of the organization. “They will undoubtedly be focused on the, as yet unsolved, execution style slaying of Soprano family associate Brendan Filone.” (Ep. 8, The Legend Of Tennessee Moltisanti)

beef, n., a complaint or disagreement, 1899. “These guys I had a beef with at the newsstand.” (Ep. 12, Isabella)

book, n., illegal gambling, from the notebook in which bets are recorded, 1812.

books, the, n., the membership rolls of a mob family. “The books are closed [...] They’re not accepting any new members.” (Ep. 2, 46 Long)

bootleg, 1. v., to trade in illegal liquor, from 1889, after the practice of smuggling bottles of liquor in high boots. 2. adj., counterfeit, unlicensed. “The feds are never gonna surveil an old folks home. I know that’s why I got six truckloads of bootleg polident coming in.” (Ep. 9, Boca)

borgata, n., an mob family, 1963, literally village in Italian.

boss of bosses, n., the leader of the Five Families of New York, no longer in use by the mob, but still found in the press, often in the original Italian, capo di tutti capi.

boss, n., the head of a organized crime family, 1845, the standard English sense is that of a supervisor or overseer, from the Dutch baas meaning master, use in English dates to the early 19th C, first appearing in the works of Washington Irving, although usage by Dutch speakers in New York is recorded as far back as the mid-17th C. “I mean when Jackie was acting boss no one minded ‘cause it all evened out at the end of the day.” (Ep. 6, Pax Soprana)

break an egg, v., to murder.

burn, v., to murder, 1933.

button man, n., a low-ranking member of a criminal organization, a soldier, 1969. Not to be confused with button.

button, n., full-fledged membership in an criminal organization. “They’re talking like the Moltisanti kid might get his button.” (Ep. 17, Commendatori)

can, the, n., prison, 1912. “There are men in the can better looking than my sister.” (Ep. 18, Big Girls Don’t Cry)

cannoli, n. pl., tube of pastry with a sweet filling, such as sweet ricotta cheese or cream, 1925, from the Italian plural of cannolo, ultimately from canna, cane or tube. “Get a pastry box. Move it! That’s better. Now fill it with cannoli, sfogliatelle, and napoleons.” (Ep. 8, The Legend Of Tennessee Moltisanti), “Leave the gun...bring the cannoli.” (The Godfather, 1972)

capo, n., an organized crime leader, one who heads a crew, 1952, from the Italian for head, often Anglicized into captain. “Three of my capos have their mothers in this place?” (Ep. 11, Nobody Knows Anything)

cappicola, n., spiced Italian ham, pronounced /gɑba gul/ in Sicilian dialect. “We had sandwiches brought in the other night, four with ham, salami, cappicola, one eggplant, and the other with tomato and mozzarella.” (Ep. 22, From Where To Eternity)

clip, v., to murder, 1928. “One of the reasons that they tried to have me clipped is because I’m seeing a shrink.” (Ep. 13, I Dream Of Jeannie Cusamano)

comare, n., a mistress, pronounced /guma/ in Sicilian dialect. “I should have stayed with my comare tonight.” (Ep. 19, The Happy Wanderer)

Commission, The, n., the mob’s ruling body, composed of the bosses of the Five Families.

connected, adj., associated with or a member of an organized crime family, 1977. “I’m trying to think. Did I ever meet any connected guys from Delaware?” (Ep. 17, Commendatori)

consigliere, n., a counselor or advisor, from the Italian.

contract, n., an offer of money for a murder, a command to murder, 1941.

Cosa Nostra, n., the mafia, 1963, from the Italian for our thing. “Who invented the mafia? What? La Cosa Nostra, who invented that?” (Ep. 8, The Legend Of Tennessee Moltisanti)

crew, n., a criminal gang, 1946. “There was a time in my life when being with the Tony Soprano crew was all I ever dreamed of.” (Ep. 2, 46 Long)

don, n., the head of an organized crime family, the capo or boss, 1952, from the Italian term of respect.

earner, n., a person who makes a lot of money for a criminal organization. “But he’s one of my best guys, a terrific earner.” (Ep. 26, Funhouse)

eat alone, v., to keep the profits of a criminal enterprise to oneself, not to share with the rest of the organization. “But our uncle, does he eat alone? He doesn’t even pass the salt.” (Ep. 6, Pax Soprana)

enforcer, n., a thug who uses violence, including murder, to execute the criminal organization’s wishes, 1929. “Not seized today, although named in the indictments, was alleged Soprano enforcer and loan-sharking chief, Michael “Grab-Bag” Palmice.” (Ep. 13, I Dream Of Jeannie Cusamano)

executive game, n., a card game for celebrities and other high-rollers that play on credit, paying high interest rates for the privilege. “That’s a certain kind of player. That’s why we call it the executive game.” (Ep. 19, The Happy Wanderer)

family, n., a crime organization, in modern mob use from 1963, but an older and probably separately coined sense of a criminal gang dates to the mid-18th C. “Since you are at the helm, it all gets back to putting up bigger blinds. Really limiting your exposure to potential RICO boo-boos. The only way to run a family these days is bunker style.” (Ep. 14, Guy Walks Into A Psychiatrist’s Office)

Five Families, n., the five major Italian-American organized crime families of New York, the Gambino, Genovese, Lucchese, Colombo, and Bonanno families. “Wasn’t it Salvatore Lucana, better known as Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, who organized the five families?” (Ep. 8, The Legend Of Tennessee Moltisanti)

flip, v., to inform to law enforcement authorities. “He flipped about ten years ago. He got busted for peddling H.” (Ep. 5, College)

friend of ours, n., a person associated with a criminal organization, esp. a made guy. “Jimmy, let me introduce you to a friend of ours. This is Joey from Dover, Delaware.” (Ep. 17, Commendatori)

fungoo, interj., fuck you, a dialectical pronunciation of the Italian affanculo, there are various English spellings and pronunciations.

G, n., a thousand dollars, abbrev. for grand, 1928.

get a place ready, c.phr., to find site to dispose of a corpse.

give a pass, v., to grant a reprieve, esp. from being murdered.

go away to college, v., to go to prison.

goombah, n., a trusted male friend, from a dialectical pronunciation of the Italian compare, popularized by boxer Rocky Graziano, 1955.

H, n., heroin. “He got busted for peddling H.” (Ep. 5, College)

heavy, adj., armed. “Next time you come in, you come heavy or not at all.” (Ep. 4, Meadowlands)

hit, v. & n., to murder, an underworld killing, an order to commit such a killing, 1942 for the verb, 1950 for the noun. “That’s how they got tipped off about the Bevilaqua hit, huh?” (Ep. 26, Funhouse)

hot place, n., a location where law enforcement conducts or is thought to conduct surveillance on organized crime.

ice, v., to murder, 1941.

joint, the, n., prison, 1933.

juice, v., to receive money from or for illegal activities, esp. usurious interest, 1935. “You’d rather be juiced than pay all at once.” (Ep. 19, The Happy Wanderer)

lam, v., to flee, 1886, from the late-16th C meaning to beat or strike, also a noun, esp. in the phrase on the lam, 1911. “He might’ve recognized me at the gas station; he could lam any time.” (Ep. 5, College)

large, n., a thousand dollars, 1972. “He said there’s twenty-five large in it if we could get him this here ‘get.’” (Ep. 3, Denial, Anger, Acceptance)

loanshark, n., someone who lends money at usurious interest, to lend money at those rates, 1905.

made guy, n., a member of the mob. “Made guy; he flipped about ten years ago. He got busted for peddling H.” (Ep. 5, College)

make, v., to initiate into a secret organization, esp. the mob, 1833.

mattresses, go to (or hit the), c.phr., to engage in a mob war, 1969, from the mattresses used for sleeping in mob hideout. “No one’s going to the mattresses this day and age.” (Ep. 4, Meadowlands)

mob, n., a criminal organization, the mafia, 1927, from an older sense of a criminal gang, 1791, originally a 17th C word for a riotous and disorganized group of people, a clipping of the Latin mobile vulgus. “We just don’t want this place to become another mob hangout like the old Vesuvio.” (Ep. 13, I Dream Of Jeannie Cusamano)

mobbed up, adj., associated with or run by organized crime, 1973. “I’m in the waste management business. Everybody immediately assumes you’re mobbed up.” (Ep. 5, College)

mobster, n., a member or an criminal organization, 1917.

Mustache Pete, n., derogatory term for the older generation of Mafiosi, originally simply a reference to any mustachioed Italian, 1938.

nut, n., a share of money from illegal activity, 1929.

O.C., n., law enforcement abbrev. for organized crime. “I been thinking about taking courses while I’m in the can, Psychology, Criminology, and maybe go give lectures at police departments on O.C..” (Ep. 25, The Knight In White Satin Armor)

omertà, n., a vow of silence, 1909, from a dialectical pronunciation of the Italian umiltà, or humility, in the Italian the term has a broader sense of submission to the Mafia hierarchy.

paesano, n., friend, from the Italian for villager.

pay tribute, v., to give a share of the profit from an illegal venture to the boss. “You know, you got a reputation for immaturity. And it’s not gonna be improved by not paying tributes the acting boss demands of you.” (Ep. 2, 46 Long)

pazzo, adj., crazy, from the Italian, often pronounced as /obætzo/ or /ubætz/. “He looked at me like I was fucking pazzo.” (Ep. 12, Isabella)

pen, the, n., prison, a clipping of penitentiary.

piece of work, n., a murder.

piece, n., a firearm, 16th C.

pinch, v., 1. to steal, 17th C; 2. to be arrested, 1837. “They were gonna pinch you for leaving the scene, but I got you out of it.” (Ep. 25, The Knight In White Satin Armor)

pop, v., to murder. “I hear Tony S’s own mother wants him popped.” (Ep. 12, Isabella)

rat, n., an informer, 1902.  “Through the mouth, the guy was a rat. The eye is just how Francis [Ford Coppola] framed the shot [in The Godfather]. For the shock value.” (Ep. 4, Meadowlands)

RICO, n., abbrev. for the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 1970, a law that broadens law enforcement’s powers to investigate and prosecute organized crime.

shakedown, n., an instance of extortion, 1902, also a verb. “But it’s reparations that I seek. Why don’t we call this what it is. A shake down.” (Ep. 10, A Hit Is A Hit)

shy, n., interest charged by a loanshark, from shylock. “You tell my uncle that he gets to keep five percent, five percent of his shy, his sports betting, same with the coke. The joint fitters union, it’s all his, okay?” (Ep. 15, Do Not Resuscitate)

shylock, n., a loanshark, after the character in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, late-19th C. “Did you tell him [...] that ten cents out of every dollar that goes into his kick is directly related to your shylock business?” (Ep. 6, Pax Soprana)

sit-down, n., a meeting, esp. one to resolve a dispute. “I’m arranging a sit down for him with Hesh.” (Ep. 10, A Hit Is A Hit)

soldier, n., a rank-and-file member of a criminal organization, as in foot soldiers, 1963. “Loyal soldier, if you will, and he winds up dead ... Soldier?! Brendan Filone, associate, soldier?!” (Ep. 8, The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti)

stand-up guy, n., someone who lives up to his obligations regardless of the cost. “Your father would catch a bullet for you. Don’t you ever forget that. He’s a stand-up guy.” (Ep. 20, D-Girl)

taste, n., a share in the profits from an illegal enterprise. “Anymore Porsches disappear, make it two towns over, and I want a taste.” (Ep. 14, Guy Walks Into A Psychiatrist’s Office)

tax, v., to take a percentage of the profits from a subordinate’s illegal activities. “Are you telling me that since I’m the new boss I should tax Hesh?” (Ep. 6, Pax Soprana)

underboss, n., the second in command in a criminal organization. “Junior Soprano, alleged boss of the Jersey crime family that bears his name, was indicted today on federal racketeering charges, along with Lawrence ‘Larry Boy’ Barese, ailing alleged underboss, Joseph ‘Beppy’ Sasso, and thirteen other reputed mob figures.” (Ep. 13, I Dream Of Jeannie Cusamano)

vig, n., the interest paid to a loanshark on a loan, clipping of vigorish, 1912, probably from the Russian for earnings, via Yiddish. “The Knicks lost, lieutenant. You’re down two large. Lay off the vig?” (Ep. 4, Meadowlands)

whack, v., to murder. “What are you saying? That unconsciously she tried to whack her best friend?” (Ep. 2, 46 Long)

wiseguy, n., a member of a criminal organization. “I don’t know which is more embarrassing, to be caught in a bordello or to be caught with the wiseguy.” (Ep. 11, Nobody Knows Anything)