Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
American Language Supplement 2 (142 page)
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, meaning the showing of a picture, before its first public performance, at a special performance for movie critics and other privileged persons, is not a Hollywood invention. The identical verb is traced by the NED to 1607. The noun, however, seems to be an Americanism, for the NED’s two examples, one dated 1882 and the other 1899, and both antedating the movies, come from American publications. It has been borrowed by the English, and is now used in senses having nothing to do with motion-pictures, as it is in America. The austere
Literary Supplement
of the London
Times uses it, for example, as a heading on advance notices of new books.
1
Release
, in the sense of a new picture just delivered, or about to be delivered, to exhibitors, was apparently borrowed by Hollywood from the jargon of newspaper offices. It arose in the latter when public dignitaries began sending out advance copies of their speeches marked
For release
at such-and-such a time. This legend was presently used by press-agents for a similar purpose, and a document so marked came to be known as a
release
. According to Eric Berger, writing in
Coronet
,
2
photoplay
was invented by Edgar Strakosch in 1912. The early motion picture producers disliked
movie
, which had begun to displace
biograph, kinetoscope, kinetograph
3
and
cinematograph
,
4
and in 1912 the Essanay Company offered the princely prize of $25 for something more elegant. The money went to
photoplay
, sent in by Strakosch. The term gained a considerable popularity, and became the name of one of the earliest and most influential magazines for movie fans, edited from 1914 to 1932 by James R. Quirk, but
movie
nevertheless survived.
A term which often puzzles movie fans is
oscar
, the name of a gold statuette awarded each year for various sorts of professional achievement by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Hollywood opposite number to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
5
For the following account of the origin of the word I am indebted to the late Edgar Selwyn:
Donald Gledhill, secretary of the Academy, and his wife were in Gledhill’s office and fell to discussing the impending arrival of a relative called Uncle Oscar. A newspaper man was waiting in an outer office. While this conversation was going on a jeweler arrived with a sample statue. At first glance Gledhill mistook him for the missing relative and said to Mrs. Gledhill, “Here’s Oscar now.” The newspaper man, thinking he referred to the statue, wrote in his column the next day: “The gold Academy awards are referred to as
oscars
by Academy officials.” This was lifted by other newspaper men all over the country, and in a little while the awards were being called
oscars
everywhere.
1
Many terms associated with the movies are the product of pressagents,
2
e.g., wampas
, a female aspirant to stardom;
3
sheik
, a romantic lover;
4
cobra
, a girl powerfully aphrodisiacal;
5
vamp
, a more mature woman skilled at conquering and wrecking men;
6
starlet, sex-appeal
,
7
it
,
8
oomph
,
9
glamor-girl
,
10
motion-picture
cathedral
, and the magnificent
super-colossal
. Some of other terms emanating from Hollywood wits have their points,
e.g., to go Hollywood
, meaning, when applied to an actor, to succumb to a suffocating sense of his own importance,
1
and, when applied to a movie writer or other intellectual, to abandon the habits and ideas of civilization and embrace the levantine life of the richer movie folks;
casting-couch
for the divan in a casting-director’s office;
tear-bucket
for an elderly actress playing heart-broken mothers;
finger-wringer
, for a star given to emoting;
baddie
for an actor playing villains;
cliff-hanger
, for a serial melodrama;
sobbie
or
weepie
for a picture running to sadness, and
bump man
for a performer who undertakes dangerous stunts.
Variety
uses
flesh
to designate live players who appear in movie houses.
The queer jargon called
jive
, which had its heyday in the early 1940s, was an amalgam of Negro slang from Harlem and the argots of drug addicts and the pettier sort of criminals, with occasional additions from the Broadway gossip columns and the high-school campus. It seems to have arisen at the start among jazz musicians, many of them Negroes and perhaps more of them addicts,
2
and its chief users were always youthful devotees of the more delirious
sort of ballroom dancing,
i.e
., the so-called
jitterbugs
. Earl Conrad says in his foreword to Dan Burley’s “Original Handbook of Harlem Jive”
1
that it was “one more contribution of Negro America to the United States” and that it had its rise in “the revolutionary times when it was necessary for the Negro to speak and sing and even think in a kind of code,” but this is a romantic exaggeration. It actually arose in the honky-tonks and tingle-tangles of the prejazz era, and many of its current names for musical instruments go back to that era or even beyond,
e.g., bull-fiddle
or
dog-house
for a double-bass;
groan-box
or
box of teeth
for an accordion;
slip-horn, slush-pump, gas-pipe, syringe
or
push-pipe
for a trombone;
thermometer
for an oboe;
iron-horn, plumbing, squeeze-horn
or
piston
for a trumpet;
pretzel
or
peck-horn
for a French horn;
licorice-stick, wop-stick, gob-stick, blackstick
or
agony-pipe
for a clarinet;
fog-horn, fish-horn
or
gobble-pipe
for a saxophone;
box, moth-box
or
88
for a piano;
2
scratch-box
for a violin;
chin-bass
for a viola;
gitter, gitbox
or
belly-fiddle
for a guitar;
grunt-iron
for a tuba;
god-box
for an organ;
wood-pile
for a xylophone, and
skin
or
suitcase
for a drum. So with the names for performers,
e.g., skin-tickler, skin-beater, hide-beater
or
brave boy
for a drummer;
squeaker
for a violinist;
sliver-sucker
for a clarinetist;
whanger, plunker-boy
or
plink-plonker
for a guitarist;
monkey-hurdler
for an organist,
gabriel
for a trumpeter; and
brass officer
for a cornetist. Any performer on a wind instrument is a
lip-splitter
.
The jazz band is a variable quantity, and may run from four or five men to what almost amounts to a symphony orchestra. Jazz itself is divided into two halves, the
sweet
kind and the
hot
kind or
jive or swing
,
3
of which
boogie-woogie
is a sub-species.
4
All jazz
is based upon a strongly marked rhythm, almost always in four-four time, but the
sweet
variety is otherwise not greatly differentiated from ordinary popular music.
1
A performer who sticks to the printed notes is a
paperman
, and if he ever undertakes conventional music is a
commercial, salon-man, long-underwear
or
long-hair
. An adept at
hot jazz
, which is marked by harmonic freedom and a frequent resort to improvisation, is a
cat
, and if he excels at arousing the libido of the fans (who are also, by courtesy,
cats
) he is said to
send
or
give
or
ride
or to
go to town
or to be
in the groove
, and becomes a
solid sender
or
gate
. The test of his skill is his proficiency at adorning the music with
ad lib
. ornaments called
licks, breaks, riffs, get-offs
or
take-offs
. The wilder they are the better. When swing performers meet to
lick
and
riff
for their own entertainment they are said to hold a
jam-session, clam-bake
or
barrel-house
. Music that is banal or stale is
corny
.
2
Boogie-woogie
accentuates a monotonous bass, usually of eight notes to the measure.
3
A woman singer is a
canary
or
chirp
. Any wind performer is a
Joe blow
. Tuning up is
licking the chops
. High trumpet notes are
Armstrongs
.
4
Notes are
spots
. Rests are
lay-outs
. To emphasize the rhythm is to
beat it out
. To be out of a job is to be
cooling
. Jazz in Negroid style is
gut-bucket
. To keep good time is to
ride
. The jazz bands have changed much of the conventional Italian terminology of music.
Music played
dolce
is said to be
schmalz
(German for lard),
scherzo
is
medium bounce
, a grace-note is a
rip
, the final chord is a
button
, a drop in pitch on a sustained tone is a
bend
, and a
glissando
is a
smear
or
slurp
.
1
The vocabulary of the jazz addict is largely identical with that of the jazz performer. He himself is a
hep-cat, alligator
or
rug-cutter
. To him those who dislike swing music are
tin-ears
, and are said to be
icky
. A dance is a
rat-race
or
cement-mixer;
anything excellent is
killer-diller, murder
or
Dracula;
a girl is a
chick, witch, drape, mouse, spook
or
bree;
face powder is
dazzle-dust;
a shot of Coca-cola is a
fizz;
a blind date is a
grab-bag;
a hamburger is
ground horse;
a kiss is a
honey-cooler;
money is
moula;
a sandwich is a
slab;
to sit down is to
swoon;
to dance wildly is to
get whacky;
an aggressive girl is a
vulture
or
wolverine;
a fat girl is a
five-by-five
, and a person disliked is a
specimen, herkle, prune, corpse, droop, fumb, gleep, cold cut, apple
or
sloop
.
2
When he encounters swing
that really lifts him he says that he has been
sent down to the very bricks
, an experience comparable to suffering demoniacal possession or dying in the electric chair. This slang of the adolescent changes quickly, as is shown by the rapid fading out of
to neck, to pet, to pitch woo, boy-friend
and
red-hot mama
.
1
During the middle 1940s there was a rage for abbreviations,
e.g., natch
(naturally) and
def
(definitely), but the
Circle and Monogram
, the trade journal of the publishers of Webster 1934, was reporting by March, 1947, that they were already “as passé as a yearling egg.”
2
In view of the background of latter-day jive it is not surprising to find that some of its principal terms were originally of indecent significance.
Jazz
itself is one of them. Efforts have been made to derive it from the names of various Negro performers of years ago,
e.g
., Charles (
Chas
) Alexander or Washington, of Vicksburg, Miss.,
3
a dancing slave named Jasper, alias
Jass
or
Jazz
,
4
and a musician of Chicago named Jasbo (
Jas
) Brown,
5
and certain etymologists have also sought to relate it to a Louisiana-French verb,
jaser
, meaning (varying with the authority) to speed up
6
or to chatter
and make fun,
1
but the plain fact is that
to jazz
has long had the meaning in American folk-speech of to engage in sexual intercourse, and is so defined by many lexicographers,
e.g
., Godfrey Irwin,
2
Allen Walker Read,
3
Berrey and Van den Bark,
4
Maurice H. Weseen
5
and “Justinian.”
6
According to Clay Smith, an old-time traveling performer and song-writer,
7
the transfer of the accompanying noun to the orgiastic music it now denominates occurred in the bawdy honky-tonks of the Western mining-towns,
c
. 1890. “If the truth were known about the origin of the word,” he says, “it would never be mentioned in polite society.” Tamony says that it was introduced to San Francisco in 1913 by William (Spike) Slattery, sports editor of the
Call
, and propagated by a band-leader named Art Hickman.
8
It reached Chicago by 1915
9
but was not heard of in New York until a year later.
10
The first New York
jazz-band
appeared in February, 1917,
11
and by August 20 of the same year one was billed at the Holborn Empire in London. Three months later there was one playing at the Casino de Paris.