Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
American Language Supplement 2 (150 page)
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College. A rubber factory.
Gob. A worker in a rubber factory.
Nerve. Firmness, strength and elasticity in crude or reclaimed rubber.
Plugger. A maker of rubber heels.
Red apple. A non-union man.
Sausage grinder. A tube machine.
Shoddy. Reclaimed rubber.
Wheel. An automobile tire.
4
Bore hole. A tunnel.
Drummy. Loose rock.
Hot cat. Dynamite which fails to explode.
Navvies. Excavators employed on canals, docks, or other maritime projects
Niggerhead. A dense, hard boulder, also, a cylinder on a power-winch.
Rib. The side of a tunnel under construction.
Slaughterhouse. A job on which there are many accidents.
Smitty. A blacksmith.
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Biddy, or gummer. An old ewe.
Blade-man, or barber. A shearer.
Bum, bummer, orphan, dogie, or leppy. A lamb whose mother has deserted it.
Drag. The rear end of a moving flock.
Drop band. A group of ewes about to lamb.
Gancho. The sheepman’s crook.
Granny. A ewe which adopts the lambs of other ewes.
Herder, or jockey. A shepherd.
Marker. A black or spotted sheep.
Nut,
v
. To castrate.
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Al, Albert or Andy. A shoe of A width.
Benny. A shoe of B width.
Charley. A shoe of C width.
Cheaters. Insoles used to palm off over-large shoes.
Chromo. A difficult customer.
Compos, paste, or Mac. The cheapest sort of shoe.
Cowhide, or keg of nails. Men’s work-shoes.
Danny, or David, or Dave. A shoe of D width.
Dog. A shoe that is hard to sell.
Early, or Eddie. A shoe of E width.
Float. A customer who walks out while a salesman is getting a shoe to try on.
Forty-four boy. A salesman’s helper.
Forward, or up, or front. A customer is entering the store.
Happies. Arches.
Jiffy. A shoe included in a special sale; also, a cork inner sole.
Knock down, or grab,
v
. To take a customer out of turn.
Lawyer. A friend accompanying a customer, to advise him on his purchase.
M. M. A mismated pair of shoes.
Mrs. McKenzie,
1
or shome.
2
A customer who doesn’t buy.
Personal, or P. T. A customer who insists upon being waited on by a favorite salesman.
P. M., spiff, ninety-nine, or skig-last. An unpopular shoe on the sale of which the salesman receives an extra commission, called
push-money
.
Schlach-joint. A store without fixed prices.
3
Schlock. An overcharge.
4
Shoe dog. A salesman.
Skig, tinge, P. M. man, or P. M. hound. A salesman eager for
push-money
.
Stock manager. A salesman to whom a turnover is handed.
5
Thirty-four. Go away.
Thrown out. Said of a customer to whom it was impossible to sell anything.
T. L. A salesman who tries to ingratiate himself with the boss.
6
Walk. A customer who leaves the store without buying.
Wrap-up. A sale that is easy to make; also, an easily satisfied customer.
Zex. Beware; the boss is watching.
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Bat. A cheap shoe.
Beauty parlor. A dressing and packing room.
Bootblacks. Ironers in the finishing and packing departments.
Club sandwich. A high heel in layers of different colors.
Crispin. An old-time shoemaker.
1
Doughman. A paymaster.
Flat foot. The superintendent.
Tap. A half-sole.
Tripe. Bad leather.
2
Bar-mop. A towel.
Belch-water. Seltzer.
Black and white. Chocolate soda or malted milk with vanilla ice-cream; also, coffee with cream.
Black-bottom. A chocolate sundae with chocolate syrup.
Black-cow. Root beer with ice-cream.
Blue bottle. Bromo-Seltzer.
Bottom. Ice-cream added to a drink.
City juice, or moisture. Water.
Coke, or shot. Coca-Cola.
C. O. cocktail, or high-ball. Castor oil in soda.
Eighty-one. A glass of water.
Eye-opener. Castor oil in sarsaparilla.
Hoboken. A mixture of pineapple syrup and chocolate ice-cream.
Hot top, or hot cha. A cup of hot chocolate.
House-boat. A banana split.
Hump. Camel cigarettes.
Java. Coffee.
Oh gee, or red ball. Orangeade.
Scandal soup. Tea.
Spiker. Lemon phosphate.
Sprinkle. Spirits of ammonia.
Straight Kelly. Orange juice.
White-cow. A vanilla milk shake.
White horn. A vanilla ice-cream cone.
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1
Bogieman. A foreman.
Bone. A hard streak in a piece of steel.
Bug. A large ladle.
Buggy. A traveling crane.
Bull. A large ladle; also, a shop foreman.
Cabbages. Scrap metal pressed into blocks.
Cat’s-eye, or wormhole. A gas bubble in crucible steel.
Cheese. A disk-shaped ingot.
Clocks. A timekeeper.
Dickey boy. An efficiency man.
Dynamite. Limestone.
2
Flush,
v
. To withdraw molten iron from a blast furnace.
Flute. A wave on the surface of a badly rolled sheet.
Healer, or iodine. A first-aid man.
Heat. The contents of one furnace; also, any load of molten steel.
Irish local. A wheelbarrow.
3
Knobbling. A forging.
Niggerhead. A piece of scrap sticking above the surface of molten steel in a furnace.
Noodles. Material used to stuff cracks in the bottom of a furnace.
Pickle sheets. Sheets from which the scale has been removed by chemicals.
Pulpit. The raised platform from which the mill operations are controlled.
Salamander. The solidified iron on the bottom of a furnace.
Shoe. A plant policeman.
Skull. Iron cooled in a ladle.
Teeming. The act of pouring molten steel.
Umbrella. An ingot that curls when rolled.
4
Airedale. A successful stock salesman.
Bird-dog. An outsider (often innocent) who rounds up customers.
Boiler-room. A telephone-room.
Cats and dogs. Worthless securities.
Cut a melon,
v
. To declare a large extra dividend.
D. K. The opposite of O. K.
Dynamiter. A stock salesman of extraordinary virulence.
Front-money. An
airedale’s
expense-account.
Hot stuff. Selling literature.
Irish dividend. An assessment on stock.
Lily, or mooch. A customer.
P. O. A Postoffice inspector.
Reefer. A refunding bond.
Reloader. A stock salesman skilled at selling more of the same stock to persons who have already bought shares.
Scenery. Directors elected to give an appearance of respectability to a company.
Tagged. Indicted.
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2
Banker, or skidway. A structure on which a stone rests while being worked.
Dog. A hook used for lifting stone.
Dutchman. A cemented repair on a finished stone.
Gang. A machine for sawing stone.
Hickey. A small grave marker.
Knot. A dark gray or black patch in granite.
Lumper. A laborer.
Saint Lucia day. Pay-day.
Slant-face. A grave marker with a surface for the inscription at an angle of about 65 degrees.
Buckeroo. The man who puts his weight against one end of a rivet while the other is being driven.
Button-head. A rivet.
Catcher. The man who catches hot rivets.
Driver. A riveter.
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Dutchman. A small derrick, operated by hand.
Flop. A fall not resulting in death.
Framer. A carpenter.
Header. A fall resulting in death.
Hole. The basement of a building under construction; also, the empty space under the workers on high jobs.
Monday. A sixteen-pound hammer.
Monkey. A member of a raising gang.
Red dot. A hot rivet.
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Buffing. The operation of taking a light cut from the surface of cattle skins.
Butt. That part of a hide covering the hind-quarters of the animal.
Chamois. If genuine, leather made from the skin of the Alpine chamois.
Usually the flesh part of sheepskins, oil-dressed and suede-finished.
Cordovan. Leather made from horse hides, used for shoe uppers.
Crushed. Said of leather in which the natural grain has been artificially accentuated.
Currying. Incorporating oils or greases into leather.
Doeskin. White sheep- and lambskin.
Full grain. The outer surface of a hide from which nothing has been removed save the hair.
Iron. The unit of thickness in sole leather. One iron equals 1/48 inch.
Loading. Materials used to condition leather,
e.g
., glucose and magnesium chloride.
Ounce. The unit of thickness in upholstery and bag leather. One ounce equals 1/64 inch.
Rawhide. Cattle hide that has been dehaired and limed, and sometimes stuffed with oil or grease, but not tanned.
Russia. Originally a calfskin shoe leather, dressed with birch oil, but now applied to a fancy leather made of either calfskins or cattle hides.
Suede. Leather finished by applying it to an emery-wheel, thus separating the fibres and giving the surface a nap.
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Agafretted. Tangled or snarled work.
Alley. A mill aisle.
Birdseye. Woolen or worsted cloth.
Buggy-rider. A sweeper.
Bull. The factory whistle.
Cut. A length of cloth, usually 60 yards.
Doc. A machinist who repairs looms.
Dungeoneer. A dye-house worker.
Elegazam. Perfect work.
Fly. Fabric particles and dust given off by the looms.
Iron horse. A loom.
Lint-head. A cotton-mill worker.
Looney. A green worker.
Nurse cloth. Colored goods woven in stripes.
Oatmeal cloth. Cretonne.
Picks. The number of threads to an inch.
Race-horse. A loom geared to high speed.
Scroop. The rustle or crunch of silk.
Squat-head. A company executive.
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Bookman, or ticket-maker. A warehouse clerk who records sales.
Bull-gang. Laborers who handle hogsheads.
Duckbill, or spoonbill. A small hand-truck.
Frenchman. A stalk with small, erect leaves, worthless in quality.
Frog-eye. A small speck on a tobacco leaf.
Guinea. Tobacco with
frog-eyes
.
2
Lug. A leaf low on the stem, of small value.
Pinhooker. One who buys privately, often at bargain prices.
3
Pole-sweat, or house-burn. Spoiling of tobacco in the process of curing.
Smithfield. “Making a bid by a nod, but calling aloud at the same time a lower price in order to trick other buyers.”
4
Wooden ear. A buyer who raises his own bid.
Yellowhammer. A speculator.
5
Beef-squad, or goon-squad. A gang of
goons
.
Brother. Used in addressing or speaking of a fellow union man.
Check-off. Union dues or assessments deducted by the employer and paid to the union.
Featherbedding. Getting pay for work not done.
Goon. Originally, a ruffian hired to intimidate strikers; now, a ruffian menacing workers who refuse to strike.
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Hooker. “An operative who inveigles union men into acting as spies on their fellows and keeps them
hooked
by threatening to expose them to the union.”
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Jimmie Higgins. A willing member who does the drudgery of a union.
2
Kickback, or piece off. A bribe paid by a workman to a foreman or union official for security in his job.
Missionary worker. One who seeks to break down the morale of strikers.
Noble. The commander of a strike-breaking squad.
3
Picket. A person posted at a struck plant, usually bearing a placard setting forth the strikers’ case.
Pork-chopper. A union official who is in the labor movement for what he can get out of it.
4
Portal-to-portal. From the entrance to the plant or mine back to the same place.
5
Rollback. A reduction in wages to a former level.
Scab, or fink. One who takes the place of a striker.
6
Scissor-bill. A non-union worker.
Sit-down, folded arms, crossed arms, or stay-in. A strike in which the strikers remain in the plant but refuse to work.
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Struck. Used to designate a plant in which a strike is in progress.
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Wildcat, quickie, or outlaw strike. One not authorized by union officials.
Wobbly. A member of the Industrial Workers of the World, or I. W. W.
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Yellow-dog contract. A contract whereby workers agree not to join a union.
10
World War II, though it threw off an enormous number of what, to newspaper lexicographers, appeared to be neologisms, actually produced few that were really new, and not many of them have stuck. Some of the most familiar,
e.g., foxhole, brass hat, M.P
.
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and
black market
, were legacies from World War I, and others went
back to earlier wars, including the Civil War,
e.g., dog-tag, K.P., a. w. o. l., hike, pup-tent, gook
,
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belly-robber, to bust
(to reduce in rank),
commando
(South African War).
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What differentiated World War II from all others in history, aside from the curious fact that it produced no popular hero and no song, was the enormous number of newspaper correspondents who followed its operations, and the even greater number of press-agents who served its
brass
. Many of these literati were aspirants to the ermine of Walter Winchell, and as a result they adorned the daily history of the war with multitudinous bright inventions, but the actual soldier, like his predecessors of the past, limited his argot to a series of derisive names for the things he had to do and endure, and the ancient stock of profanity and obscenity. All the more observant and intelligent veterans that I have consulted tell me that a few four-letter words were put to excessively heavy service. One of them, beginning with
f
, became an almost universal verb, and with -
ing
added, a universal adjective; another, beginning with
s
, ran a close second to it. The former penetrated to the highest levels, and was the essence of one of the few really good coinages of the war, to wit,
snafu
, meaning, according to Colonel Elbridge Colby, the leading authority on Army speech, “the confusion that comes from sudden changes in orders.”
3
Colby says that it is an abbreviation of “Situation normal; all
foozled
up,” and other lexicographers have substituted
fouled
for
foozled
, but the word really in mind was something else again.
4
Nor were the two mentioned the only ones of the sort in constant use. The verb in the last clause of I Samuel XXV, 22 also had a heavy play,
5
and so did the ancient Germanic word for backside.
6
Nor were their lesser analogues forgotten.
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