Book Review: Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves

1 July 2004

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
“I’m a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation:
“Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

The idea that a book on proper punctuation would rocket to the top of the bestseller charts is ludicrous. But the cliché says that truth is stranger than fiction, and indeed, such a thing has happened. As I write this review, Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is number two on the New York Times bestseller list and has been on the list for ten weeks. It is number three on the Amazon.com sales list. Compounding the strangeness is that the book is British and has not been edited to reflect differences in American punctuation. The book has achieved similar commercial success in Britain.

Longtime readers who know of my descriptivist bent may be surprised to hear this, but I was rather eagerly looking forward to the American debut of this book. I have long held that punctuation, along with related rules about capitalization, spelling, and spacing, are the traffic signals of the written word. They serve to make reading easier and the writer’s meaning clearer. As such, standardization is highly prized. This book, however, does little to aid this goal.

Even more amazing is that this book is not a particularly good book on punctuation. It is not organized to be a useful guide or reference. Its jokes, of which there are many, are mildly amusing at best, often simply feeble, and always smarmy and smug. Truss provides no conceptual underpinning for the rules she promulgates, simply stating that these are the rules and that’s that. And she and her editors commit the sin of sins for a prescriptivist tome, it is filled with “errors” and violations of the very rules it advocates.

In defense of the first two criticisms, that it was not edited for the American market and that it does not provide clear rules for the punctuation it espouses, it should be noted that the book is not intended as a style guide. Rather it is a manifesto, a call to arms, as it were, for people to take up the cudgel and go to war for good punctuation.

As to the British bent to the book, the publisher’s note states, “any attempt at a complete Americanization of this book would be akin to an effort to Americanize the Queen of England: futile and, this publisher feels, misguided.” That’s fair enough. But one can then hardly use this as a criticism for punctuation practices in America.

Okay, so one should not try and use it as a style guide or a reference. With no index, detailed table of contents, or appendix that lays out the rules according to Truss, you will get no help from this book in determining whether a particular punctuation is correct. But is it an effective manifesto?

My vote is no. This is not a manifesto, but rather a tantrum. Truss wants something from the language, but she cannot articulate what it is. So she just complains. Every good manifesto lists a bill of particulars, clearly stating exactly what the call to arms is all about. Take the Declaration of Independence, for example. Once one gets past the familiar opening paragraphs about self-evident truths and men being created equal, the bulk of the document consists of a long list of specific and clearly stated complaints, such as:

He [George III] has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

Jefferson leaves no doubt as to exactly why the colonists were rebelling back in 1776. By contrast, Truss rarely articulates what the rules of punctuation should be. She simply complains that people aren’t following them (whatever they are). And when she does state the rules, she violates them herself at various points in the book.

Truss also fails to explain exactly why good punctuation is so important. There is a need for this, but Eats, Shoots and Leaves does not meet it. Other than examples of benefits to clarity, like that of the title, she does not make a conceptual case. Let’s go back to the Declaration of Independence. In its opening paragraphs, Jefferson makes the general case:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Only then does he list the bill of particulars detailing how George III became destructive of the end of securing the unalienable rights of the American colonists. It is this conceptual argument, a theory of government that Jefferson distills into two paragraphs of glorious prose, for which people remember and value the Declaration. The list of particulars is largely forgotten and ignored, irrelevant to all but historians.

Truss attempts but fails to do this in the introduction, leaving us with a rambling mess of particulars that lack coherence or clarity. The closest she comes is a quote from a stylebook of an unnamed British newspaper defining punctuation as, “a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.” Unfortunately this definition is incomplete and Truss fails to develop it.

Instead of explaining how punctuation can assist reading and comprehension, Truss simply gives negative examples of how poor punctuation obscures meaning. While many of these examples, like the Panda joke represented by the book’s title, are amusing, they are hardly the stuff of revolutionary fervor.

Instead it is a call to rap people upside the head and tell them to use correct punctuation or they will appear as idiots—and points for the need for a style guide as opposed to a manifesto.

It also ignores a second, equally important function of punctuation: it serves to translate the tone and rhythm of speech into print. Most people think that writing is the primary mode of language, but that is not the case. Writing is usually nothing more than an attempt to imitate speech.

The lack of a conceptual underpinning to her rant leads to her rule about when to use a comma splice, “only do it if you’re famous” (p. 88). Instead of explaining how great writers have used the comma splice for effect, she simply adopts the posture that you can get away with violating the rules if you’re notable enough.

And evidently, Truss thinks she is notable enough herself to violate the very rules she promulgates. For example, Truss lists three acceptable uses for the semicolon, to link independent clauses without using a conjunction, to separate items in a list that contain commas, and to denote a pause that is longer than that created by a comma. (Actually, Truss gives conflicting explanations of what the third rule actually is. This is the explanation given in the section on semicolons, but in the chapter on commas Truss says that a semicolon should be used to join clauses that are linked by the conjunctions however and nevertheless.) Yet right there in the preface (to the American edition) she writes:

My hopes for Eats, Shoots & Leaves were bold but bathetic; chirpy but feet-on-the-ground; presumptuous yet significantly parenthetical.

Either she has made an error by omitting the commas before “but” and “yet,” or she should use commas for the items in the list, not semicolons.
In the very next sentence, she misuses quotation marks, using them for emphasis rather than quotation (italics would be a better choice):

My book was aimed at the tiny minority of British people “who love punctuation and don’t like to see it mucked about with”.

And then in the next sentence Truss violates more rules of quotation marks, failing to place a comma before the quotation and switching from British to American practice and placing the ending comma inside the marks. To cap it off, she uses a comma when she should be using a semicolon:

When my own mother suggested we print on the front of the book “For the select few,” I was hurt, I admit it; I bit my lip and blinked a tear.

All this and we’re only on the second page of the preface.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves is also filled with misquotations and misstatements. On page 143, Truss has Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady saying, “The Arabs learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning.” The line actually reads, “Arabians,” not “Arabs.” That’s a minor nitpick, but sloppy research like this leads to more significant errors, such as when she writes:

British readers of The New Yorker who assume that this august publication is in constant ignorant error when it allows “1980’s” evidently have no experience with how that famously punctilious periodical operates editorially.

Evidently Truss has no experience in this regard either. The New Yorker style is to spell out the names of decades, “the nineteen-eighties.”

After all this, we return to the conundrum presented at the beginning. Why is it that a book on punctuation, especially one that is not very good, is so wildly popular on both sides of the Atlantic? The answer is that smug superiority sells. Write a book disdaining how the unwashed masses do things; include quotes from Fielding, Woolf, and Shaw; tell an amusing anecdote or two about James Thurber and Harold Ross and you have a bestseller. The key to understanding the success of Eats, Shoots & Leaves (and any other prescriptivist book for that matter) is that it feeds the egos of those with literary pretensions. But this kind of prescriptivism displays a fundamental misunderstanding of what language is.

Grammatical language is the greatest and most democratic of human institutions. It is what separates us from the other animals. It is not an invention of one person, but of us all. It belongs to all of us, but is answerable to none of us. It is wild, ever changing, and quite ungovernable. Ungovernable, but it can be mastered—not as a trainer masters a wild horse, but as a surfer masters a wave, using the force of it to propel the writer and the audience in an exhilarating rush.

Language is not mastered by adhering to strict rules. It is mastered by understanding which rules actually exist and why. Once this understanding is reached, one can apply, bend, and ignore the rules as appropriate to achieve great effect.

Hardcover; 240 pages; Gotham Books; April 2004; ISBN: 1592400876; $17.50.

Word of the Month: Liberty

1 July 2004

July hosts the anniversaries of two great 18th century political revolutions, the American and the French. Despite their occurrence in the late 18th century and commonality of political ideals and rhetoric, the two revolutions could hardly have been more different. One was the secession of a group of colonies led by wealthy merchants and landowners. The other was an uprising by the mob in the streets. One was relatively bloodless, the worst punishment inflicted on those that supported the old regime was usually forced exile and seizure of property. The usual punishment in the other was loss of one’s head.1 One resulted in a long-lasting and stable democratic government. The other resulted in rule by a megalomaniac intent on conquering all of Europe.

The 4th of July is Independence Day in the United States, the day in 1776 when the 2nd Continental Congress approved the draft Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson and broke its political ties with Britain. Ten days later, on the 14th, is the anniversary of the 1789 storming of the Bastille prison in Paris, the event that marks the beginning the of the French Revolution.

Because of this, our word of the month is liberty, n., freedom, esp. from the political dominion of others, c.1375, taken as a rallying cry of the revolutions of the 18th C. Some other terms associated with the American and French Revolutions are:

ancien régime, n., the former system of government, esp. the French monarchy before 1789, in English use from 1794.

articles of confederation, n., a written agreement that governs an alliance between persons or states, esp. used as the proper name for an early American constitution, in force from 1777-1789. In use since 1603.

Benedict Arnold, n., a traitor, also arnold, after an American revolutionary general who offered to surrender the fortress of West Point to the British for ₤20,000; the plot was foiled when his accomplice, a Major André, was captured. Arnold’s treachery was especially galling to the Americans because he had been one of their greatest heroes. He was personally responsible for the American victory at Saratoga—the turning point in the war, and was perhaps the only truly great military leader on the American side other than Washington. Arnold escaped to Britain; André was hanged. In metaphorical use since 1793.

bill of rights, n., a legally binding declaration of political privileges and immunities, esp. the English Bill of Rights, passed by Parliament in 1689 which limited the powers of the crown, or the first ten amendments to the US constitution, passed in 1789, which limited the powers of the federal government and guaranteed certain individual liberties. In contemporary use, the term is often used as a label for legislation that provides benefits to a group of citizens, e.g., the G.I. Bill of Rights passed by Congress in 1944 that provided educational and other benefits to soldiers returning from the war and the various proposed Patient’s Bills of Rights, that seek to govern the health insurance industry.

bourgeois, adj., 1) pertaining to the French middle classes, 1564; 2) pertaining to the middle class in general, often used disparagingly to denote conventional and unimaginative styles and tastes, 1764; in Marxist usage, capitalistic, 1850; n., 1) a French freeman living in a city or town, contrasting with the peasant class and nobility, now used to denote the mercantile or middle class of any country, from 1674; 2) in Marxist usage, an exploiter of the proletariat, from 1883; 3) a socially conventional person, 1930.

commune, n., a French administrative district that governs a municipality, 1792, esp. the Commune of Paris, which usurped the power of the municipal government in 1792 and played a leading role in the Reign of Terror until suppressed in 1794, also the name for a short-lived communist government established in Paris in 1871. Since 1818 the term has also been used to denote a community established on principles of shared resources and labor.

constitution, n., the system of principles and institutions by which a nation is governed, the supreme governing principles of law. Constitutions may be unwritten, as in Britain, or written documents, as in the United States. From 1735.

émigré, n., a French royalist who fled the country in the wake of the revolution, 1792; in contemporary use to denote any political exile, 1955.

federalist, n., one who advocated for a strong, central government in the wake of the American Revolution, a member of the Federalist Party, 1787. The Federalist Papers were a series of newspaper editorials that advocated ratification of the US Constitution, written anonymously by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay.

give me liberty or give me death, c.phr., motto of the American Revolution, first uttered by Patrick Henry on the floor of the Virginia House of Burgesses in March 1775.

guillotine, n. & v., a device, consisting of a blade suspended between two grooved posts, used to behead people, from the name of its inventor, Dr. Joseph Guillotin. In use from 1792 in French, 1793 in English. The verb, meaning to behead someone by a guillotine, has been in English use since 1794.

Hamiltonian, n. & adj., a follower of the political ideas articulated by Alexander Hamilton, the first US secretary of the treasury, who advocated for a strong central government, a national bank, and for government’s role in promoting commercial interests of the nation; pertaining to those ideas; in use as a noun since 1797, as an adjective since 1843. Cf. Jeffersonian.

Hessian, adj. & n., pertaining to the state of Hesse in Germany, 1677; a native of Hesse, esp. one of the mercenary soldiers from Hesse employed by the British during the American Revolution, 1729; a mercenary regardless of state of origin, 1877.

in harm’s way, c.phr., applied to military, esp. naval, actions, from a 1778 quote by John Paul Jones: “I wish to have no Connection with any Ship that does not Sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.”

Jacobin, n. & adj., a member of a French political society that advocated extremes of democracy and equality or sympathizers with their cause, 1790; by 1800 the term had generalized to mean any political reformer. From the nickname of the Dominican Order of the Roman Catholic clergy, c.1325; given because their first monastery in France was at the Church of St. Jacques in Littré. The political society met in a former Dominican monastery.

Jeffersonian, adj. & n., pertaining to the political doctrines of Thomas Jefferson, who advocated a minimalist and decentralized government and emphasis on individual rights and freedoms, 1799; a follower of the political ideas of Jefferson, 1803. Cf. Hamiltonian.

John Hancock, n., a signature, 1903, from John Hancock’s signature on the Declaration of Independence, which was unusually large and bold. Hancock, a prominent Boston merchant, was the president of the 2nd Continental Congress and the first to sign the Declaration.

liberté, egalité, fraternity, c.phr., motto of the French Revolution, meaning liberty, equality, brotherhood. In December 1790, Robespierre recommended that these words be emblazoned on the uniforms and flags of the National Guard; his proposal was rejected, but the phrase continued in informal use. The phrase was finally officially enshrined in the preamble to the constitution of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, c.phr., enshrined by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence as the inalienable rights of humans, based on life, liberty, and property, advocated by John Locke as the basic rights of humans.

macaroni, n., a dandy or fop, from London’s Macaroni Club, an establishment known for serving foreign foods, hence the name, and for its stylish and well-dressed members, 1764. Now chiefly remembered because of a line in the song Yankee Doodle, popular during the American Revolution, “stuck a feather in his cap and called it Macaroni.”

Marseillaise, n., the French National Anthem, composed in 1792, the original French title was Chant de guerre pour l’armée du Rhin, but from the beginning the song was also called La Marche des Marseillois, after volunteer army units from Marseilles who adopted it as their anthem. It was being called l’hymne des Marseillais by 1795. The form la Marseillaise is not attested in French until 1832. In English, the name The Marseillaise Hymn was in use by 1794 and The Marsellois by 1815.

minuteman, n., 1) the member of an American militia unit during the Revolution who held themselves ready for immediate service, 1774; 2) more generally, a member of any militia group or political cause, esp. in the late 20th century a member of such a group that advocates military action against the US government, 1859; 3) name for a type of intercontinental ballistic missile, 1961.

patriot, n., from the French patriote, ultimately from the Latin patriota, fellow-countryman, and the Greek, patrios, of one’s father. One who sacrifices for the well-being of one’s nation, 1605.

republic, n., a state where supreme power lies with the people and their elected representatives, from either the French république or Latin respublica, 1604.

shot heard ‘round the world, c.phr., name given to the first shot fired at the Battle of Lexington that started the American Revolution, from an 1875 poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson commemorating the centennial of the event, “Here once the embattled farmers stood / And fired the shot heard round the world.”

terrorism, n., the use of violence and fear to achieve political goals, originally applied to the period from March 1793 to July 1794 where the party in power in France engaged in indiscriminate bloodshed, the reign of terror, in English use from 1795.

Tory, n., an anglicized spelling of the Irish tóraidhe, or pursuer. 1) an Irish outlaw, 1646; 2) a supporter of James, Duke of York who was excluded from the Crown because he was Roman Catholic, so called because many of his supporters were Irish, 1679; 3) a political party that arose from James’ supporters, the forerunner of the modern Conservative party, 1689; 4) in US usage, one who remained loyal to the crown during the American Revolution, originally members of the Tory party, 1775.

(Notes)
1 Some 15,000 died in the American Revolution, mostly soldiers from disease or in battle. Over 40,000 died by the guillotine in Paris alone.

Book Review: John McWhorter's Doing Our Own Thing

1 June 2004

The supposed decline of the English language is often bemoaned by grammarians and prescriptivists. In these pages we have frequently taken to task those who seek to impose arbitrary and pointless grammatical and usage prescriptivism, but is there something more to these complaints. Once you move beyond split infinitives and the difference between peruse and read, the question of whether or not we are losing artful use of our language remains.

John McWhorter’s Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care seeks to answer the questions of whether or not American society has lost the artful use of language and what impact this will have on our lives. He succeeds brilliantly at the first question, but falls short in answering the second. McWhorter charts a sea change in American use of the language dating to the mid-1960s, when we lost formalism in our public discourse. He then seeks to explain why this loss is consequential; unfortunately he does not quite succeed in describing why we should, like, care.

First, be forewarned about what this book is not. If you are seeking a book that picks apart texts for grammatical “errors” or “sloppy” usage, this is not it. McWhorter does not go in for prescriptivism. He is a linguist by trade, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and knows better than that. He does not bemoan the change in language simply because it is change. Instead, he is concerned with aesthetics in how we use the English language.

McWhorter opens the book with an examination of the speech delivered at Gettysburg in 1863, not the famous one delivered by Lincoln, which was billed as mere remarks by the president, but rather the main oration of the day, a speech by Edward Everett, perhaps the foremost orator in mid-19th century America. Everett opened his long oration with:

Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghanies [sic] dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed;—grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and sympathy.

The 19th century audience may have eaten this up, but it is unlikely that Everett would get any indulgence or sympathy if he were speaking like this today. Not only is the prose too purple and verbose for the modern ear, but Everett’s opening paragraph is almost a third as long as Lincoln’s entire address. He went on like this for two hours to an enraptured audience. The MTV generation would be snoring in five minutes.

McWhorter compares Everett’s address with a direct modern equivalent, the memorial service on the site of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2002. Both events were intended to commemorate the deaths of thousands of Americans, but the speeches given were so very different. In 2002 the main “speech” was a reading of the names of those whose lives were lost. This would have been as unthinkable in 1863 as Everett’s speech would be today. A 19th century audience would expect the speaker to explain the event and put it into historical and moral perspective. A modern audience expects that any such attempt by a speaker would be pompous and self-serving.

But it is not simply the purple prose of Everett that would be unacceptable in modern public discourse; it is formal speech itself that is eschewed in American society. A president like George W. Bush, who cannot even deliver a brief scripted statement without looking like a deer caught in the headlights, can get half the electorate to vote for him because, among other things, he talks like “plain folks.” And it is not simply politicians who talk like this. News broadcasters, actors, and preachers no longer use formal diction and usage in their speech either. Compare the dialogue delivered by Ray Milland to that by Robert De Niro.

That there has been such a change in the aesthetics of our language is undeniable. The questions are when did it occur and why?

People in the 19th century America did not normally talk with the high-flown verbiage of Everett’s speech. Their speech was much more like the dialogue in a novel by Mark Twain, not that radically different from the ordinary speech of today. What was different was that there was a place for formal language, like Everett’s, in America of years past.

McWhorter traces this change to the mid-1960s. Along with the loss of trust in government, big business, and other institutions of our society, the American people also lost trust in formal language. People began to disdain formal speech in favor of “just talking.” Informal speech carried an authenticity and honesty that formal language did not and these values were valued more highly than aesthetic quality of usage.

McWhorter provides an excellent example of this shift in two speeches given in the US Congress. The first was by Charles Eaton of New Jersey on 8 December 1941:

Mr. Speaker, yesterday against the roar of Japanese cannon in Hawaii our American people heard a trumpet call; a call to unity; a call to courage; a call to determination once and for all to wipe off of the earth this accursed monster of tyranny and slavery which is casting its black shadow over the hearts and homes of every land.

A speech on a similar topic was delivered by Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas in October 2002:

And if we don’t go at Iraq, that our effort in the war on terrorism dwindles down into an intelligence operation. We go at Iraq and it says to countries that support terrorists, there remain six in the world that are as our definition state sponsors of terrorism, we’re serious about you not supporting terrorism on your own soil.

Neither man would dream of delivering the other’s speech. If Brownback attempted flowery language like that used by Eaton he would be laughed at. An era where the phrase “axis of evil” raises suspicion, “accursed monster of tyranny and slavery” would never fly. Likewise, Eaton would never dream of delivering a speech like Brownback’s, filled with run-on sentences and fragments. Yet both men are successful politicians in their respective eras; both are considered good speakers by their contemporaries.

McWhorter identifies a transitional figure in this shift in Mario Savio, an activist in the Free Speech movement at Berkeley in the mid-60s. On 2 December 1964, Savio delivered a speech on the Berkeley campus that contained the following paragraph:

Well, I ask you to consider. If this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the Board of Directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I tell you something—the faculty are a bunch of employees, and we’re the raw materials, but we’re a bunch of raw materials that don’t mean to be . . . have any process upon us, don’t mean to be made into any product, don’t mean, don’t mean to end up being bought by some clients of the university, be they of government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone—we’re human beings.

Savio’s speeches are like this one, filled with colloquialisms and informal clauses, but retaining the elements of traditional rhetoric and narrative that modern speeches lack.

Savio did not, however, spring up ab initio. Traces of this shift in preferred style can be traced back many decades, certainly to the 1920s and even to the writing of 19th century authors like Mark Twain. But the sea change was in the 1960s, when the formal was abandoned altogether in favor of the informal and colloquial.

Political speech is not the only victim of this shift. McWhorter writes a chapter on the loss of poetry in American society. Except for a few, Americans do not read poetry any more. A familiar example used by McWhorter is a Bugs Bunny cartoon from 1941, Hiawatha’s Rabbit Hunt. The cartoon begins and ends with Bugs reciting Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, sandwiching the usual comic antics in which Hiawatha takes the place of Elmer Fudd as the hunter. To children watching the cartoon today, the recitation of the poem is odd. Why is Bugs reading a poem? But to the audiences of 1941 the parody was apt. Recitation of poems on the radio and in stage performances was common. Audiences would instantly get the joke of Mel Blanc’s New Yorkese voice of Bugs formally reciting a poem, “Sail a-lawng, liddle Hiawadda . . .”

Many claim that popular song lyrics are the poetry of today, but McWhorter correctly points out that Kurt Cobain is a terrible poet by any traditional standard and even the best of today’s lyricists, Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan, only occasionally write something that can stand alongside even a mediocre poet like Longfellow, much less Dickinson or Whitman. Similarly, the qualities that are appreciated by audiences in modern slam poetry competitions are quite different than those praised in traditional poets.

Interestingly, and perhaps unintentionally, the final episode of the television series Angel, which aired just a few weeks ago, illustrates this succinctly. In an earlier episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series that spun off Angel) we were introduced to Spike, a.k.a. William the Bloody, a vampire born in the 19th century who fancied himself a poet. Spike’s poetry was so awful that it earned him the sobriquet—bloody not because he killed a lot of people (although he did that too), but because his poetry was so bloody awful. One of his poems features the following lines:

My heart expands
‘tis grown a bulge in it
inspired by your beauty, effulgent.

In the episode of Angel, facing the apocalypse and how to spend his last day on earth, Spike goes to a slam poetry contest where he recites this poem to a cheering crowd. Poetry that was ridiculed in the 19th century is applauded in the 21st.

Doing Our Own Thing is well worth reading simply for this part of McWhorter’s analysis, the charting of the “degradation” of our language and the loss of the formal mode of speech from American discourse. The book, however, fails at delivering the second half of the promise it makes in its subtitle, And Why We Should, Like, Care.

McWhorter fails to make a case that this change really matters in anything other than an aesthetic sense. Certainly the loss of a particular style of expression or an appreciation of poetry is an aesthetic change, but aesthetic changes are simply changes in taste. There is no fundamental difference, for example, between Eaton’s 1941 speech and Brownback’s 2002 one. Both were successful in rallying support for a war.

McWhorter states that the loss of traditional tools of rhetoric has a political impact on society. The loss makes it more difficult for well-crafted policies to wend their way through the body politic. He does not provide evidence for this, however, and the historical record does not support this as a proposition.
Several times in the book, McWhorter extols the Russian appreciation of poetry. He makes the point that modern Russians can quote Pushkin while most Americans cannot recite a single poem from an American poet, that the TV show Seinfeld even made a joke of the character George being unable to name a single poet. Yet this appreciation of Pushkin among Russians did not prevent the rise of Stalin.

Germany of the early 20th century was the nation of Goethe. Yet, it was also the nation of Hitler. Command of rhetoric and appreciation of language and literature does not guarantee enlightened politics—in fact there is little evidence that it has any impact at all on the substance of politics. Rhetoric is simply a tool, to be used for good or ill.

At one point, McWhorter takes on modern textbooks and the poor quality of the language the present to students. He gives several examples from reading texts over the 20th century. The first is from the fourth McGuffey reader of the 1920s, a selection from Addison’s “Reflections in Westminster Abbey:”

When I am in serious humor, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey, where the gloominess of the place and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable.

This is a well-written piece, but it is probably not appropriate for a modern reading text. Phrases like “the use to which it is applied” are not the stuff of today’s language. By the early 1960s, this excerpt from Stories from the Arabian Nights was being used in texts:

I decided, after my first voyage, to spend the rest of my days at Bagdad [sic]. But it was not long before I tired of a lazy life, and I put to sea a second time, in the company of other merchants. We boarded a good ship and set sail. We traded from island to island, exchanging goods. One day we landed on an island covered with several kinds of fruit trees, but we could see neither man nor animal.

The simpler vocabulary here is less challenging to middle-school students, no words like “solemnity,” but the syntax is more in tune with the sensibilities of modern American usage of the language. By 1996, reading texts included such passages as this:

Tahcawin had packed the parfleche cases with clothing and food and strapped them to a travois made of two trailing poles with a skin net stretched between them. Another travois lay on the ground ready for the new tipi. Chano was very happy when Tasinagi suggested the three of them ride up to their favorite hills for the last time.

This is an extremely simplistic and unchallenging passage. Other than the Native-American names and a few words referring to things in a foreign culture, there is no challenge to be had reading this. Worse, it is just plain boring. McWhorter illustrates this by removing the “multicultural” references from the passage:

Justin had packed the leather cases with clothing and food and strapped them to the two trailing poles with a skin net stretched between them. Another set of poles with a net lay on the ground ready for the new teepee. Michelle was very happy when Jennifer suggested the three of them ride up to their favorite hills for the last time.

McWhorter is not on a rant against multiculturalism, quite the contrary. But he does make the point that multicultural references alone are not enough to make a passage worthy of inclusion in a reading text. A few difficult Native American names, which are not likely to be encountered ever again, are not helpful in teaching reading and writing. But the textbook is not bad because it uses informal language; it is bad because the informal passages it chooses are simplistic and dull. Take a passage from Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms:

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slipped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear… Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

There are no difficult words here. The style is rather simple, with the exception of the one, run-on sentence—which is consistent with the new style of written language becoming more informal, or more like spoken language. The passage does show, however, that interesting passages of literary value can be found in the modern style. Just because a passage is written in a modern, informal, style does not make it unworthy of inclusion in a reading text.

Most of McWhorter’s criticism of the new, informal style is like this. His protests are either unsupported or what he is bemoaning is not the changed aesthetic, but rather something else. The one argument he has is that the new, informal style is not aesthetically pleasing. That is a valid argument, but a subjective one and nothing more than an opinion.

Still, his basic historical analysis of the change in American speech is compelling and interesting. Any language lover will enjoy this book for that reason alone.

Hardcover, 279 pages, Gotham Books, October 2003, $26.00

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.