Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
American Language Supplement 2 (137 page)
Why do criminals speak a lingo? There are several reasons, perhaps the most widely accepted of which is that they must have a secret language in order to conceal their plans from their victims or from the police. In some instances it is undoubtedly used for this purpose – for instance,
flat-jointers
,
5
three-card monte men
, and other
short-con workers
1
sometimes use it to confuse or deceive their victims. But most professional criminals speak argot only among themselves,… for using it in public would mark them as underworld characters whether or not they were understood.… There is a very strong sense of camaraderie among them, a highly developed group-solidarity.… A common language helps to bind these groups together and gives expression to the strong fraternal spirit.… Professional crime is nothing more than a great variety of highly specialized trades; hence it is only natural that many of the same factors which operate among legitimate craftsmen should affect criminal speech.
2
The vast upsurge of crime brought in by Prohibition made all Americans familiar with a large number of criminal words and phrases, and many of these, as I have noted, have entered into the everyday speech of the country. How much of the argot of the Volsteadian racketeers was the product of their own fancy and how much was thrust upon them by outside admirers,
e.g
., newspaper reporters and movie writers, is not easily determined, but Maurer is convinced that a substantial amount of it came from the latter, including even such apparently characteristic terms as
big shot
. He says
3
that actual members of the
mob
called the brass hats of the profession
wheels
(in the plural). But
trigger-man, torpedo, gorilla, pineapple
(bomb),
whiskers
(a Federal agent: a reference to Uncle Sam),
hot
(a stolen object or a criminal pursued by the law),
on the lam, to snatch
(to kidnap),
moll
and
racket
, whatever their provenance, were really in use. The gentlemen of the
big con, i.e
., swindlers who specialize in rooking persons of means, constitute the aristocracy of the underworld, and hold aloof from all lesser criminals. They are, taking one with another, of superior intelligence, and not many of them ever land in prison. Their lingo thus shows a considerable elegance and also some humor,
e.g., apple, savage
or
Mr. Bates
for a victim;
big store
, the bogus poolroom or brokerage office to which
apples
are lured;
coarse ones
, large bills;
ear-wigger
, one who tries to eavesdrop;
excess baggage
, a member of a mob who fails to pull his weight in the boat;
to fit the mitt
,
to bribe an official;
Joe Hep
, a victim who tumbles to what is happening;
larceny
, the itch for illicit money that lures a victim on: “He has
larceny
in his heart”;
to light a rag
, to run away;
to play the C
, to operate a confidence game;
to sting
, to swindle;
sucker-word
, a term not used by professionals,
1
and
yellow
, a telegram. The craft is called the
grift
, not the
graft
.
2
At the opposite pole from practitioners of the
big con
are the crude and brutal fellows who follow the
heavy rackets, i.e
., those involving violence. They include burglars, safe-blowers (yeggs), hijackers, kidnapers, automobile thieves, window-smashers, mail robbers, pay-roll grabbers, purse-snatchers, and so on. They had their heyday during the thirteen delirious years of Prohibition, and there was a revival of their art, made much of by the newspapers, following World War II, but on the whole they seem to be declining in prosperity, and the new methods of thief-taking organized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation have landed large numbers of them in prison. They range in professional dignity from the
jug-heavies
or
bank burglars
, who stand at the top, to the mere hoodlums, many of them young neophytes, at the bottom. Among the cant terms of the
jug-heavies
are
bug
, a burglar alarm;
to case
, to spy out;
cutter
, a prosecuting attorney;
dinah
or
noise
, dynamite;
double
, a false key;
forty
, O. K.;
gopher
, an iron safe;
hack, a watchman
;
soup
or
pete
, nitroglycerine;
stiffs
, negotiable securities;
swamped
, surprised and surrounded, and
V
, a safe. Maurer says
3
that there are some regional differences in
jug-heavy
speech,
e.g
., a bank is a
jug
everywhere but sometimes a
jay
in the Middle West or a
tomb
in the East, and a policeman is an
elbow
on the Pacific Coast, the
law
or the
works
in the Middle West, and a
shamus, fuzz
or
goms
in the East. The automobile thieves who once raged in large and well-organized gangs also had an argot of their own,
e.g., doghouse
, a small garage;
bent one
or
kinky
, a stolen car, and
consent job
, a car stolen with the connivance of an owner eager for the insurance,
4
and so did the hijackers who arose during Prohibition
and flourished in the aftermath of World War II,
e.g., baloney
, an automobile tire;
box
, a truck trailer;
to carry the mail
, to drive fast;
crate
, a truck;
dark horse
, a watchman;
girl scout
or
hairpin
, a female associate;
in creeper
, in low gear;
on the I. C
., on the lookout;
powder-wagon
or
blast-furnace
, a sawed-off shotgun;
red eye
, a stop signal;
stick
, a crowbar;
toby
, a highway;
traveler
, a hijacker, and
whistler
, a police-car.
1
The stick-up men who specialize in robbing pedestrians often operate in pairs. One clasps the victim around the neck from behind and chokes him while the other goes through his pockets. This is often done very violently and sometimes the victim is badly hurt. It is called
mugging
in New York, but
yoking
in most other places.
2
Forgers, counterfeiters (
penmen
) and other such intellectuals have a certain standing in the underworld and even pickpockets are respected more or less as the masters of a difficult art, but they do not rank with the princes of the
big con
nor even with the more daring heroes of the
heavy rackets
. Among forgers, says Maurer,
3
there is a “sharp division of labor.” The men who produce forged checks (
makers, designers, scratchers
or
connections
) are usually wholesalers who supply the actual
passers
, but do not tackle the public. The former, like their allies, the counterfeiters, often operate in safety for years on end, but the latter are frequently taken. The
passer
is also called a
paperhanger
, but the colleague who works off counterfeit money is a
paper-pusher, pusher
or
shover
. A forged check is
paper, scrip
or a
stiff
, and when it is a cashier’s check it is a
jug-stiff
or
cert. Bouncer
and
rubber-check
, both in common use among laymen, do not seem to be in the professional vocabulary. The
paperhanger
does most of his
spread
on Saturday, after the banks close; in consequence he is usually broke by Friday, and he thus calls a dismal countenance a
Friday face
. To him a store-detective is a
shamus, Mr. Fakus
or
Oscar
, a warrant for his arrest is a
sticker
, a credit manager is a
credie
or a
Joe Goss
, a check-book is a
damper-pad
, and the confidence talk which precedes his passing of a bad check is the
business
. Among pickpockets the act of picking
a pocket is called the
beat
, the
sting
or a
come-off
, a watch is a
toy, thimble, turnip, kettle
or
super
,
1
a policeman is a
buttons, fuzz
or
shamus
, a victim is a
chump, mark, yap
, or
hoosier
, the member of a mob who does the actual stealing is a
claw, wire
or
tool
, his assistants are
stalls
, a wallet is a
poke, leather, hide
or
okus
,
2
an empty wallet is a
cold poke, dead skin
or
bloomer
, a ring is a
hoop
, paper money is
rag
or
soft
, and an overcoat is a
tog
. All pickpockets are
guns, cannons
or
boosters
, and a lady of the profession is a
gun-moll
.
3
Dip
for a practitioner is now obsolete in America, though it is still used by lay writers upon crime waves and seems to survive in England.
4
Shoplifters, or
boosters
, have some resemblance to pickpockets, but they are much less daring. Many of them are women, and most of the women are amateurs. The professionals often carry a
booster-box
, which is a box resembling an ordinary shopper’s parcel, but with a trap-door for receiving the loot.
5
A large part of the vocabulary of the rum-running mobs of Prohibition days passed into the general speech,
e.g., the real McCoy
,
6
to take for a ride
,
1
torpedo, trigger-man, bath-tub gin
,
2
alky, to muscle in, to cut
(to dilute),
hide-out, jake
(all right),
to needle
(to add alcohol),
piece
(a share),
tommy-gun
and
hijacker
,
3
and some of them seem likely to stick, along with the Yiddish loans that these public servants also made familiar,
e.g., kosher
(reliable),
meshuga
(crazy) and
to yentz
(to cheat).
4
The assorted ruffians who adorned the same glorious era made every American schoolboy aware of the meaning of
to rub out, mob, to scram
,
5
G-man
,
6
canary
,
1
to put the heat on, gat
,
2
on the lam
,
3
–
or else
,
4
gangster
,
5
racketeer
6
and
public enemy
.
7
“One might expect prison slang,” says Maurer, “to be a composite of the various specialized argots, but while some bonafide argot crops out in it, it is, on the whole, a separate institutional lingo which differs somewhat from prison to prison.” He goes on:
Relatively few successful professionals ever
do time
, and when they do they tend to hold themselves somewhat apart from the general run of prisoners. They count upon their strong political connections to secure preferment and often associate with the prison administration on intimate terms. The great bulk of prison populations is composed of amateurs or failures; hence the fallacious belief among some psychologists and criminologists that criminals are subnormal in intelligence. Thorough-going and successful professionals are usually superior in intelligence and have nothing about them to suggest the popular conception of a criminal. If you mixed a hundred of them with an equal number of business and professional men all the statistics of a Hooton or a Lombroso would never set them apart.
1
But the residuum actually behind the bars is of generally low mentality
2
and in consequence the lingo of the average prison, save in so far as it is reinforced by the inventions of the aloof minority or by contributions from outside, shows little imagination. Its basis, says James Hargan, is “a variety of Anglo-Saxon terms dealing mainly with the sexual and simpler life processes, which have survived the centuries in defiance of the dictionary’s refusal to receive them.”
3
A large part of it, adds Hargan, shows a “euphemistic, often humorous understatement” by which the prisoner “softens an otherwise too unpleasant reality into something bearable,”
e.g., kimona
, a coffin;
dance-hall
, the death house;
sleeping time
, a short sentence;
mouse
, a spy or informer; and
bird-cage
, a cell. The animal appetites naturally take a major place in his thinking, and much of his humor, such as it is, is devoted to flings at his always monotonous and usually tasteless fare. I quote from a convict lexicographer:
On our first morning at breakfast a waiter came along calling “
Strawberries
” and we gullibly pushed our plate out – to have it filled with red beans.… Stew is
slum
, coffee is
jamoca
and water is
sky juice
. When someone yells for the
sand
one passes him the salt. Hamburger balls are entitled
jute-balls
.… Gravy and pork sausages go under the pseudonym of
hog and mud
, while pork, gravy and boiled potatoes are
hog, mud and rocks
. Bread parades under the alias of
sawdust
.
4