Monthly gleanings

On August 23, I appeared on the “Midmorning” show on Minnesota Public Radio. Many of you called in with questions, to some of which I could give immediate answers. But, the origin of several words I did not remember offhand and I promised to look them up in my database. Since I mentioned the existence of this column, a few more queries and comments were sent, but they reached me so late that this extra long edition of the Monthly Gleanings was moved to the first week of September. And so, without further ado, here are my responses:

First the suffix -ster: Do foster, holster, and spinster have the same suffix? Words of different origins may end in -ster: consider master, poster (= post-er), shyster, lobster, and roadster. From a historical point of view, only the last of them is made up of a root (road-) + -ster. The suffix -ster goes back to Old English -estre, and some disagreement exists as to whether it could originally occur only in occupational terms designating women’s professions. Some names of men’s professions undoubtedly had it, but the overwhelming number of such nouns in Old English was feminine. We can see this suffix preserved in several modern last names, by far the most famous of them being Webster (early “websters,” that is, weavers, like tapsters, were women). It is not clear why -ster eventually acquired a derogatory meaning (cf. rhymester, trickster, and the like, though youngster and teamster are stylistically neutral) and why it enjoyed special productivity in American English (here the best-known examples are gangster and pollster; and roadster is not even a human being). Holster and upholster are from (up)hold-ster. Foster (noun) meant “nourishment”; it consists of the old root of food followed by a suffix, whose most ancient form is believed to have been -trom. The verb is from the noun.

How persuasive is the hypothesis that the word jazz owes its origin to the fact that the steamboat JS traveled the Mississippi River between New Orleans and St. Paul, playing music for its passengers in the early 1900’s? Jazz would then come out as “JS music.” Almost all popular derivations from acronyms (unless they are obviously such, as is snafu, for example) are wrong. I would like to quote two notes from the Historical Magazine (1862, pp. 58-59 and 93), a specialized American version of Notes and Queries (excellent reading, by the way). 1. “Philadelphia has long enjoyed the reputation of a peculiar cake called the apee. Thousands who partake of them have no conception of the origin of their name.

Ann Page, lately living under another name and business, first made them, many years ago, under the common name of cakes. The aged may remember her small frame house in Second-street, two doors north of Carter’s alley. On her cakes she impressed the letters A. P., the initials of her name; and from this cause, ever since the initials have been disused on them, the cakes have continued to be called apees. “As the invention of these cakes has been thought worthy of commemoration in the Historical Magazine, it may be well to give the first maker’s name correctly. It was Mrs. Ann Palmer, not Price. She kept a cake shop in Chestnut-street, between Second and Third streets, and was the mother of the late Richard Palmer, Sen. ….” Ann Page? Ann Price? Ann Palmer? Second Street? Chestnut Street? Our withers are unwrung, for the initials will still come out as A. P. Most probably, the etymology of apee (the name of a cake of which I, regrettably, have never partaken) is trustworthy, but it is curious to observe how two contemporary reports differ in details. When it comes to anecdotes of older times, most do not bear scrutiny. I think that if jazz had any connection with the JS steamboat, the word would have been jaycee or jaysee.

The literature on jazz is rich but inconclusive. The word surfaced in 1913, not in 1909, as is stated in the Second edition of the OED. Its origin and its application to music are different issues. According to the latest researches, the music we associate with jazz appeared in California, spread to Chicago, and from there to New Orleans. This fact weakens but does not invalidate the theories that seek the home of jazz in Creole French. Two French words have been proposed as the etymons of jazz: chasser “chase, hunt,” with the implication “look alive, speed up, make wild movements” and jaser “chatter like a magpie, jabber.” Although it is possible that the California musicians knew the traditions and music of the South, the French origin of jazz should not be taken for granted, the more so as neither chasser not jaser looks like a convincing source of the English word (the meanings are too divergent).

The idea that jazz is traceable to Jersey, as has once been suggested, seems to me quite improbable. Jazz is, most likely, not a word of African descent, and it does not go back to the names Chas, Jasbo (Brown), or Jasper. It was at one time spelled jas, jass, jazz, jasz, jascz, and with initial ch-. Those variants look like attempts to write down a word known only from oral transmission. The verb jazz must have existed before the corresponding noun and long before it was applied to a certain type of syncopated music. Whether it ever referred to sexual intercourse (compare the thinly disguised meaning of rock ‘n’ roll cannot be decided. In any case, the derivation of jazz from ja(m)s (such a hypothesis exists too) does not carry conviction. Jazz sounds like some other expressive words, for example, razzmatazz, quiz, and whiz. They may have sprung up as did spiflicate (about which see below), virtually from nothing.

While speaking about universally known words whose origin is still undiscovered, I mentioned glitch, which, in my opinion, became popular thanks to its use in computer work. One of the listeners wrote that glitch, perhaps an acronym like snafu, had arisen in military slang soon after World War II. American English glitch indeed predates the computer era, but, according to the OED, the earliest occurrence of it in texts goes back to 1962. It seems to have emerged with the meaning “a sudden surge of current” in aerospace engineering and is not an acronym, but its history is uncertain. One often meets with the conjecture that glitch is of Yiddish origin (glitsch). This derivation may be right, but it is not more persuasive than the derivation of jazz from chasser and jaser.

I was asked whether I know anything about the verb spiflicate “confound; mishandle; destroy.” I knew nothing, but I am sorry that I did not cite the verb smifligate, which I remembered at once. I am sorry, because now no one, except those with whom I spoke later in the studio, will believe that I knew it. But I did. It occurs in Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby, and I quoted the relevant passage in one of my articles. Mrs. Nickleby, Nicholas’s mother, has been enticed to go to the theater, and two minor villains (Pyke and Pluck) are there to wait on the silly woman. This is how the events developed: “…and so polite were they, that Mr. Pyke threatened with many oaths to ‘smifligate’ a very old man with a lantern who accidentally stumbled in her way—to the great terror of Mrs. Nickleby, who, conjecturing more from Mr. Pyke’s excitement than any previous acquaintance with the etymology of the word that smifligation and bloodshed must be in the main one and the same thing, was alarmed beyond expression, lest something should occur. Fortunately, however, Mr. Pyke confined himself to mere verbal smifligation, and they reached the box with no more serious interruption by the way, than a desire on the part of the same pugnacious gentleman to ‘smash’ the assistant box-keeper for happening to mistake the number” (Chapter 27).

On the radio I only said that the verb is probably a fanciful formation. Spiflicate can be found in the OED, and it turned out that this funny word had some currency in the 19^th century, but no other example of smifligate has been recorded. As to my article, I finished it with the invitation: “Those with a taste for such problems are humbly requested to discover the exact meaning and origin of the verb smifligate. I could not imagine that my offer would return to me like a boomerang. The OED suggests that both verbs are fanciful formations and thus uses the same formula I did. What is good for the OED is, as a rule, good for me.

Another query was about shenanigans. I answered that the word sounds Celtic. My sources revealed that it sounded Celtic to many. However, its origin is enveloped in absolute obscurity. Shenanigans was first attested in American English and has been traced to Irish, Mexican Spanish, regional English (which does not exclude Irish as its source), and, most forcefully, to German. The situation is the same as with jazz and glitch. Arrows are shot into the air and fall to earth we know not where. I think that what I said about uff da, an interjection people of Norwegian descent often use in this country, is correct. Strange as it may seem, many common interjections are borrowed bookish words. Ouch and oops are of this type. Someone in pain will not yell (holler): “Ouch!” Uff sounds almost like Engl. oof and exactly like German and Russian uf. It is hardly a “natural” cry. A letter to the blog pointed out that da “there” in uff da may have been added for emphasis. This is undoubtedly true. Compare English conversational this here ~ that there man and their exact analogue in Norwegian (den der) and Swedish.

It is no wonder that I was unable to satisfy every listener on the spur of the moment. There is little one can say about those words, and who can remember the content of a huge database? But I regret that I misheard the word chthonic, even though the listener spelled it. I only said that it sounded Greek to me (no pun intended). Not only do I know what chthonic means (it is indeed Greek); I constantly use it when speaking in my course “Scandinavian Myths” about chthonic deities, that is, the gods connected with the earth and controlling death. I even feel some pride that I can pronounce it correctly (in English the first two letters are mute). Pride (like grace) before the fall. I received a letter explaining the adjective and was touched by its gentle, forgiving tone. Thus, with regard to spiflicate and especially chthonic, I could have done much better. Perhaps next time.

The last question for today is more theoretical, and I’ll copy its beginning. “How would one go about tracing the spread of a word? I’m thinking specifically of the word sandwich. I’m aware of the origin with the Earl of Sandwich, and even a contemporary mention in a travel diary. What I have not been able to find is any information on how the word spread from apparently a single mention to what seems to be worldwide usage.” The information in the OED is as follows: “Said to be named after John Montagu, 4^th Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792), who once spent twenty-four hours at the gaming table without other refreshment than some slices of cold beef placed between slices of toast. This account of the origin of the word is given by Grosley Londres (1770) I. 262. Grosley’s residence in London was in 1765, and he speaks of the word as having then lately come into use.” The earliest citation with the word sandwich is dated 1762 (it refers to a gathering of twenty or thirty “best men in the kingdom… supping on a bit of cold meat, or a Sandwich”). In the 1771 citation, sandwich is also capitalized, but Jane Austen, writing at the turn of the century, uses the low case letter. To her, sandwich was no longer a proper noun.

The question about the spread of a word (any new word) goes far beyond the history of sandwich. In every innovation, two processes should be distinguished: the emergence of the novelty and its acceptance by the public (its rejection can be disregarded, for if the novelty has not “found favor” with a relatively wide circle, nothing can be known about it). This is equally true of fashions and words. However hard it may be to account for the birth of a word, it is sometimes even harder to explain its unexpected popularity. What is there in cool that it has conquered half of the world?

Familiar words from names go all the way from champagne to Kalashnikov (Note the use of small and capital letters!). In the history of foodstuffs, prestige and the quality of the product play a role in the “brand name’s” staying power. “The best men of the kingdom” added ceremony to “supping on a bit of cold meat,” and others tried to emulate their superiors. Sandwiches inaugurated fast foods (precursors of our burgers) and were doomed to success. But in language very much depends on chance. Sandwich had good luck. It could have shared the fate of the now forgotten apee.

Featured Image Credit: ‘Radio, Vintage, 1950s’, Image by Skitterphoto, CC0 Public Domain, via Pixabay.