Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
American Language Supplement 2 (144 page)
Many of these are also used by telephone and power linemen, but both of the latter have some terms of their own. To the telephone men insulation on a wire is
bark
, a pole dipped in creosote is a
black jack
or
black diamond
, a transformer is a
kettle
or
stove
, a service truck is a
loop-wagon
, a safety-belt is a
crupper
, a cross arm is a
slat
, a lineman is a
stump-jumper
or
hiker
or
Joe Hooks
, a foreman is a
gaffer
or
brains
, a power lineman is a
hot monkey
, the company is
Maw Bell
, to get an electric shock is to be
bit
or
burned
, and to be electrocuted is to be
crossed up
. A lineman’s helper or other workman who never leaves the ground is a
goofer, gopher
,
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groundhog, grunt, click
or
squeak
. The cry of warning when anything drops from a pole is
Headache!
3
Two terms in use by all electricians,
juice
and
live wire
, long since entered the general vocabulary.
With the movement of communications toward radio and of transport toward gasoline there have appeared some new and pungent argots,
e.g
., those of the truckmen and taxi-drivers. Not a few terms of the former are borrowed from older crafts,
e.g., bull o’ the woods
, a company supervisor, from the lumbermen, and
reefer
, a refrigerator, and
highballing
, running at high speed, from the rail-road
road men. Of the more original words and phrases of the truckmen I offer a few specimens:
1
Balloon, or load of wind. A light, bulky cargo.
Baloney, or doughnut. A tire.
2
Bareback, or bob-tail. A tractor without a trailer.
Barrelling, flying too low, floor-boarding, high-balling, on the bottom, or pouring it on. Running at high speed.
Boom-wagon. A truck loaded with explosives.
Boss her, or follow her around,
v
. To back a trailer into position.
Box, or tag-along. A trailer.
Bug juice, or push water. Gasoline.
Cackle-crate. A poultry truck.
Candy-wagon. A light truck.
Cinchers. Brakes.
Cold. Behind schedule.
Cop caller. Squeaking brakes.
Cowboy, Indian, rough-rider, or traffic-whipper. A reckless driver.
Crash-wagon. An ambulance.
Dock monkey. A loader.
Dog. A motor vehicle inspector.
Emergenson, or anchor. An emergency brake.
Eskimo. A driver who drives with open windows in Winter.
Fort, or tin-box. An armored car.
Gipsy. An independent truckman, usually with but one truck.
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Goose it,
v
. To feed gasoline in spurts.
Grounded,
v
. To have one’s license revoked.
Gunnysacked. Said of a badly used truck.
Hack-hand, juice jockey, spinner, or tooler. A driver.
Horse, or mule. A tractor.
Hot. Ahead of schedule.
Iron up.
v
. To put on chains.
Jesse James. A police magistrate.
Kidney-buster. A hard-riding truck.
Line load. A mixed cargo so stowed that its contents may be delivered in a straight line across town.
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Load of post-holes. No cargo.
Long nose, or rubber heel. A company inspector or spotter.
Men. The police.
Pension run. A short, easy one.
Punctured lung. A leaky radiator.
Scow. A very large truck.
Sleeper, or pajama wagon. A truck with sleeping accommodations, usually over the cab.
Soft coal burner. A Diesel truck.
Soup jockey. A waitress at a roadside stand.
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Spook. An insurance or safety inspector.
Sweat-shop. A bullet-proof cab with bad ventilation.
Swinger. A heavy load.
Wobbly hole. Neutral gear.
2
The lingo of taxi- and bus-drivers differs a bit from city to city, but some of its terms seem to run through the country,
e.g.:
Angel. A passenger who takes a cab for the evening, stopping at bars to drink.
Blimp. A worn-out car; a large bus.
Coolie. A driver who works long hours.
Damper. A taximeter.
Donkey. A traffic policeman.
Hack, or rig. A taxicab.
Hod, or scuttle. A Negro passenger.
Hot fare, or stiff. A passenger who fails to tip.
Hungry. Applied to a driver who cadges a tip by pretending to have no change.
Ink. Gasoline.
Jerk. A short trip.
Jockey. A passenger or friend who rides in front with the driver.
Liner. A passenger who asks to be directed to a brothel.
Long-haul, or run. A trip yielding a fare of more than $1.
Neutral, or newt. Silly, brainless.
3
Tiddly. Smart or superior, as in
tiddly uniform, tiddly sailor
.
The lingo of deep-sea sailors (including whalers and fishermen) has produced so large and so accessible a literature
1
that there is no need to deal with it here. Many of its terms have got into the common speech and are familiar to everyone,
e.g., above-board, three sheets in the wind, Davy Jones’ locker, on the beach, bilge
(buncombe),
to pipe down, to be taken aback, plain
(originally
plane
)
sailing, ship-shape, half seas over, to give a wide berth to, to run afoul of, to keel over
and
to stand by
.
2
Coastwise, lake and river mariners base their talk upon the lingo of the deep sea, but the pseudonym of Samuel L. Clemens is a sufficient reminder that they also have some terms of their own.
3
The argot of canalboatmen is now almost forgotten, but in its day it showed some picturesque
terms, mainly borrowed from the speech of the yokels along the way.
1
The men who load and unload ships are still a large and rambunctious fraternity, and their talk bristles with words and phrases unintelligible to the outsider.
2
A few examples:
Ambulance. A wooden box in which small articles are hoisted.
3
Big-money boy. A longshoreman handling explosives.
Boilermaker and helper. Whiskey with a beer chaser.
Captain Blood. A harsh boss.
Carrots and peas. Cronies.
Chain-breaker. A strong man.
Chop. Income-tax deducted from wages.
Crumb, or green pea. A man not trustworthy.
Dark cellar. A job on which men are paid less than the union scale.
Draft. A cargo.
Farm. An open space where freight is stacked.
Flame-thrower. A man successful with women.
For the church. Extra work done for nothing.
Glass arm, ten-ton Jack, lamb chop, or poor steel. A weak, lazy or otherwise poor worker.
Golden hours. Overtime.
Hero. A very diligent worker.
Made the parlor. Dead.
Marry the hook,
v
. To live and die a longshoreman.
Mission bell. A drinker of cheap wine.
Pick of the beach. A good worker.
Pie-card job. An office job.
Race-track. The route along which hand-truckmen follow one another.
Reindeer. A hand-truckman who works fast.
Riding. Loading.
Save-all. A safety net hung between ship and pier.
Scavenger. A longshoreman who eats the sailors’ leavings aboard ship.
Termite. One who curries favor with the foreman.
Under the hat. Wages under the union scale.
Uphill. The last hour’s work.
Warden. The boss.
To which may be added some terms of the men who build and service ships:
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After-birth. The sliding ways which cling to a ship after launching.
Baloney. An electric cable.
Duke. An inspector.
Furniture. Masts and rigging.
Gold room. A warehouse where valuable parts are kept.
Hat. A diver’s helmet.
Hole. A drydock.
Jesus slippers. Boots.
Kettle-buster. A boilermaker.
Meat-hook. A wire which ravels out when a steel cable is frayed.
Mill. A marine engine.
Pig. A welding machine.
Rig. A pile-driver.
Shrapnel. Bolts, rivets, etc., that fall upon workmen below.
Snake-rancher. An incompetent workman.
Spider. A painter.
Stick. Any timber more than 6 by 6 inches in size.
Third ear. An informer.
Undertaker bait. A man who takes dangerous risks.
Wheels. Propellers.
The automobile and the airship have both brought in large vocabularies of new terms. Many of those introduced by the former have got into the common speech,
e.g., to park, back-seat driver, road-hog, to step on the gas, garage, detour, filling-station, gas
(for gasoline),
chauffeur, stream-lined, joy-ride, hit-and-run, jaywalker, fender, speed-cop, traffic-light, tourist-camp, safety-zone
and
to thumb a ride
, and the meaning of many more is generally known,
e.g., chassis, limousine, carburetor, tractor, station-wagon, rumble-seat, spark-plug
and
clutch
,
2
but there are others that remain the
private property of the men working in automobile plants and of those who sell or repair cars. A few specimens:
Bald-head. A worn tire.
Bare-foot. A car without tires.
Barrel, or hole. An engine cylinder.
Bender, tomato, or puppy. A stolen car.
Canary, or cricket. A squeak in a car.
Chatterbox. A car radio.
Clinchers, or grippers. Brakes.
Firecracker. An engine that misfires.
Ginger-bread. Body trim.
Glimmers. Headlights.
Guess-stick. A slide-rule.
Handshaker. A foreman.
Headhunter. An efficiency man.
Hearse, moose, or steam-roller. A very large car.
Hell’s kitchen. A body shop.
Hide. Electric insulation.
Hoop, rubber, or gum. A tire.
Insect. A small defect in a new car.
Juice box. A battery.
Kalsomimer. A body finisher.
Kick the clock,
v
. To set back a speedometer.
Lid. A hood.
Liquor. An anti-freeze mixture.
Mill. An engine.
Old Man. A portable drill.
Orphan, or off-breed. An obsolete model.
Pot, strainer, or percolator. A carburetor.
Scalding. Welding.
Slushers. Chains.
Snort-pipe. The exhaust.
Tack-spitter. An upholsterer.
Umpire. An inspector.
Wind-bag. An inner tube.
Windmill. A fan.
1
Jalopy
is defined by the New Practical Standard Dictionary, 1946, as “a decrepit automobile or airplane” and marked “origin obscure.” Whether it arose among the airmen or the automobile
dealers I do not know, nor am I sure about the spelling, for it has appeared variously as
jalopy, jallopy, jaloppy, joloppy, jollopy, jaloopy, jalupie
and
julappi
. Wentworth says that it was in oral use
c
. 1925, but his first printed example is dated 1934. The Winston Dictionary says that it was used by sports writers in 1924, in the form of
julappi
.
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Wentworth defines it as “an old (battered) automobile” and notes a derivative,
sub-jalopy
. By 1942 Berrey and Van den Bark had found it in use to designate a racing car and an airplane, and as a verb meaning “to ride in or drive a cheap or small car.” It began to attract the attention of amateur lexicographers in 1937 or thereabout, and one of them reported in 1938
2
that it had been employed by used car dealers and taxi drivers “for years.” A little before this another reported that he had encountered it in a film starring W. C. Fields, the comedian, “more than seven years ago.”
3
In those cradle days it had many rivals,
e.g., can, boiler, crate, knick-knacker, Napoleon, klunk, klunker, goat, goat-nest, stone-crusher, tramp, feed-bag, puddle-jumper, rattletrap, chug-wagon, whoopie, china-closet, slop-can, concrete-mixer, coffee-grinder, dog, hoptoad, heap, knockabout
and
tin
. The etymologies proposed for it are numerous and most of them are highly unpersuasive. I offer the following as horrible examples:
1. “Old broken-down Fords were exported to Mexico, many to
Jalapa
. Hence, in Southern California, any floppy car became a
jaiopy
.”
4
2. “In one of Galsworthy’s books he refers to an otherwise undescribed horse-drawn carriage as a
shallop. Shallop
is derived from the French
challupe
.”
5
3. “
Jaloppy
or
jallape
is of Yiddish-Polish origin and a transliteration of the word
shlappe
, meaning an old horse.”
6
4. “
Jalopy
… is simply the first three syllables of the Italian word for dilapidated, namely
dilapidato
, which is pronounced very nearly
jih-lah-pih-DAH-taw
.”
7
5. “Working on the clue that the term is of oriental extraction, we have pin-pointed two possible derivations. One is the Hebrew word
yalleph
, which
means a scabby substance, and the other is an Arabian word,
jalab
, meaning a leathern shield, skin or steel [
sic
].”
1
6. “In Spanish a tortoise is a
galapago
.… The word might be used to designate a person or thing having the characteristics of a tortoise, which is noted for its slow motion and the age it attains, some of them living more than 200 years.… It is easy to think of natives near the Mexican border referring to old, slow-moving automobiles as
galapagos
, and to understand how
galapago
would become
jaloppy
.… Americans have always had trouble with the hard
g
.”
2
7. “The readiest explanation is that
jalopy
is a distorted diminutive form of
gallop
, a term that was frequently used by collegians among the alliterative names painted on their leaping and bucking old open-air taxicabs.”
3
8. “Webster R. Kent, of Memphis, Tenn., suggested in a telegram to
Time
, June 21, 1937, that
jalopy
came either from
gallop
, as mentioned above, or was a euphemistic contraction of
dilapidated
. A more whimsical attempt would relate it to
jollop
, a fowl’s dewlap or wattle.”
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