Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
American Language Supplement 2 (149 page)
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Anchor. A pick.
Auto. A wheelbarrow.
Blockhead. A bulwark erected against fire.
Book-miner. A geologist.
Bootleg. A charge of explosive that explodes but does not break rock.
Cackler. A white-collar employé.
Capon. A miner who evades hard work.
Collar. The mouth of a shaft.
Country rock, or Protestant ore. Waste rock.
Cousin Jack. A Cornish miner.
Gallows-frame. A structure supporting hoisting machinery.
Hacienda. A smelter.
Hardrocker. A miner.
Jack, or steel. A drill.
Mike. A heavy hammer.
Pickey-poke. A soft-rock drill.
Picture-ore. Very high grade ore.
Porcupine, or Dutchman. A drill stuck in the hole.
Sewer-hog. A ditch digger.
Shawn O’Farrell. Whiskey with a beer chaser.
Shifter, gaffer, push, pusher, heeler, or enemy. A shift boss.
Sod-buster, hay-stoper, stubble-jumper, or top-hand. A recruit from the farms.
Spoon. A rod for cleaning out drill holes.
Stone (or rocks) on the chest. Miner’s silicosis.
Tar-baby. A man who lubricates hoisting cables.
Wiggle-tail, or widow-maker. An old-fashioned power-drill, making much dust.
1
Afternoon. The shift from 4
P.M
. to midnight.
Barefoot. Said of a hole with no
liner
.
Basket, bulldog spear, fishing tool, or overshot. Devices for recovering
fish
or a section of pipe.
Bean. A small pipe or steel billet inserted in the pipe in a well to restrict the flow of oil.
Belly-buster. A rope stretched across the derrick as a protection to the derrickman.
Biscuit-cutter. A drill bit.
Bleed,
v
. To drain off water at the bottom of an oil-tank.
Blow in,
v
. To begin to flow; said of a well.
Blow-out. An outburst of gas under high pressure.
Boll-weevil. In Texas, a new worker; in California, a Texan or a rotary driller.
Breathing. The expansion and contraction of gases in an oil-tank as the temperature rises and falls.
Bridge. A collection of debris in a well.
B. S. The sediment in an oil-tank.
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Calf-line. The cable used to hoist and handle casing.
Casing. The pipe which lines the well.
Cat plant. A plant in which crude oil is split into lighter fragments by catalysis.
2
Christmas tree. The group of valves at the top of a well.
Come in,
v
. To begin producing oil.
Core-barrel. A device used to obtain a sample of the sand or rock at the bottom of the hole.
Cut. Impurities in oil.
Daylight. The shift from 8
A.M
. to 4
P.M
.
Dead. A well that has ceased to flow.
Dead-in-a-hurry. A hauler of nitroglycerin.
Doodlebug. A divining rod.
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Dry gas. Natural gas containing no vaporized oil.
Duck’s nest. The firebox of a boiler.
Duster. A dry hole.
Farmer, or Sears-Roebuck. A green worker.
Fish, or junk. Anything lost down a well.
Fourble. Four joints of pipe.
Freeze,
v
. To be stuck; said of a drill or pipe.
Go-devil. A device run through a pipe-line to clean out paraffin and other sediment;
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also, a small charge of nitroglycerin used to detonate the main charge when a well is shot.
Go wild,
v
. To get out of control; said of a well.
Graveyard. The shift from midnight to 8
A.M
.
Gusher. A well spouting oil by its own pressure.
Hot-ass. A bench in a locker with a steam-pipe under it.
Joint. A section of pipe, usually 20 feet long.
Liner. The casing which lines the hole in the oil-producing stratum.
Maud. An engine.
Mother Hubbard. A flat-bottomed bit used for drilling in soft soil.
Mouse-trap. A device for securing pipe.
Mud-smeller, or rock-hound. A geologist.
Nipple-chaser, or pusher. A foreman.
One-armed Johnnie. A hand-pump.
Pig-tail. A coil in a refinery pipe, employed to condense vapors.
Roustabout. A laborer on an oil lease, not a member of the rig crew.
Shoot,
v
. To break up the hard stratum at the bottom of a well by exploding nitroglycerin.
Spud in,
v
. To start drilling.
Stovepipe. Welded or riveted casing.
Sump. A ditch to catch waste oil.
Tank-farm. A group of storage tanks.
Thief-sand. A stratum of sand which absorbs oil from richer strata.
Thrible. Three joints of pipe.
Tour.
1
A work period.
Whiskey-jack. A hydraulic jack.
Wildcat. A well drilled in an area where oil has not been found hitherto.
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Baby doll. An unusually well-finished yearling steer or heifer.
Bath towel. Beef tripe.
Beagles. Sausages.
Bologna, or baloney. A bull of a low grade, fit only for sausage.
Boulevards. The stockyards.
Bowbow. A stunted, aged steer.
Cat. A ram that lacks plumpness.
Cattalo. A steer showing buffalo blood.
Chicken-eater. A thin sow.
Deacon. A calf too young to be slaughtered.
Dog. Any low-grade animal.
Dollie. A choice, light heifer.
Dude. An office worker.
Educated. Said of stock raised at an agricultural college.
Elephant, or hippo. A steer weighing more than 1,500 pounds.
Facer. One who skins the heads of slaughtered cattle.
Grouch. A cattle buyer.
Gut-fatter. One who trims fat from the viscera.
Gut-shanty. The place where sausages are made.
Gutter. One who splits a carcass for the government inspection.
Ham-sniffer. An inspector of hams.
Ham-tree. A rack on which hams are placed.
Header. One who cuts off the heads of slaughtered hogs.
Hooks. The hip-bones of a cow.
Judas. A sheep trained to lead other sheep to the killing-floor.
Knocker. One who stuns the animal with a blow on the head.
Mountain oyster. A sheep testicle.
Mouse. An undersized lamb.
Nanny. An old ewe.
Nelly. An old, thin cow.
Peeler. A skinner.
Peewee. A small, stunted pig or lamb.
Scenery-fed. Applied to half-starved sheep or steers.
Slimmer. A remover of fat.
Snatcher. One who removes the viscera from a carcass.
Snooper. A government inspector.
Soo-ey. A whip used in driving cattle.
Stiller. An animal fed on distillery mash.
Sunfish, or tripe. A thin, common animal.
Turp. An inferior animal from the South, supposed to have been fed on turpentine.
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Acrobat, or distorter. A photographer who specializes in pictures taken at arty angles.
Blow-up. An enlargement.
Box. A camera.
Candid camera. A small hand-camera with a very fast lens, used for making surreptitious shots.
2
Cheese-cake, or submarine shot. A photograph of a woman showing her legs above the knee.
3
Cook,
v
. To develop.
Crop, or guillotine,
v
. To trim a print.
Dodging. In making prints, to shade parts of the negative in order to keep the shadows from becoming too dark.
Dope. A mixture used to roughen a negative for retouching.
Dynamite. A very rapid developer.
Elbow artist. A newspaper photographer who presses to the front, thus obstructing his fellows.
French it,
v
. To deceive a
lens-louse
by going through the motions of making an exposure without actually doing so.
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Fuzz-ball. A photograph out of focus.
Glowworm, shutterbug, snapper, clicker, ham, or film-burner. An amateur photographer.
Gun. An apparatus for setting off a flashlight.
Hypo-bender. One in charge of the fixing-bath – hyposulphite of soda.
Lens-louse, or -hog. A publicity-seeker who tries to force himself uninvited into news photographs.
Mugger. A portrait photographer.
Percentage man. A news photographer who makes a large number of exposures, hoping that chance will give him a few good pictures.
Photogenic. Used to describe a good photographic subject.
1
Pix. An accepted plural for
picture
.
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Pop-bottle. A poor lens.
Screwball. A difficult photographic subject.
Shot. An exposure.
Soup. A developer.
Stripper. A photographer specializing in nudes.
Tent. A darkroom.
Thirteen and eight. A warning cry that a
lens-louse
has got into a group about to be photographed.
3
4
Airedale, bloodhound, or minute-man. A foreman.
Aviator. A man working on a high ceiling, as in a theatre.
Bottom. The walls.
Butterflies. Lumps in the lime that don’t spread out.
Chicken-wire. Light metal lath.
Corker. An easy job, without the delays caused by windows, beams, etc.
Dope. A chemical retarder that prevents plaster from setting immediately.
Hoddy-doddy. An apprentice.
In the boilers. Work underground.
Mudslinger, spreader, or mutt. A plasterer.
Putty. Lime.
Slugger. A hard worker, in a derogatory sense.
Snots. Lumps left on the wall.
Whitewash. A poor plastering job.
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Bicycle Jake, or roller-skater. An overzealous workman.
Cocker. A steamfitter.
Digging for gold fish. Cleaning clogged sewers or toilet bowls.
Dope, gooey, or gee. The white lead used on pipe-threads to prevent leakage.
Fly swatter. A painter.
Fourteen and a half. The boss is coming.
Good Friday. Pay day.
Hardware. Tools.
Hickey. Any tool.
Jewelry. A tool kit.
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Balloon. A large mail-pouch.
Boodle. A valuable letter or package.
Box up, or buck the
case, v
. To sort mail.
Bum. An empty mail-pouch.
Case. A rack of pigeonholes into which mail is assorted according to its destination.
Confetti. Envelopes of less than the usual size.
Czech. An unpopular superior.
Fat stock. Letters too bulky to go through the cancelling machine.
Floating. Loafing on the job.
House. A postoffice.
Humpback. A mail sorter.
Kluck. A used postage stamp on a letter.
Landlord. A high postoffice official.
Nixie. A letter or other piece of mail so badly addressed that it can’t be delivered.
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Peeling, skinning, or sweeping. Collecting mail from street boxes.
Shedder, or brummie. A stamp fallen from an envelope.
Shoo-fly. A carrier foreman.
Swing-room. A lunch-room or rest-room.
Clay-belly. A potter.
Doughnut. A woman’s stocking worn in the cap as a cushion by men who carry ware on their heads.
Fire-eater. A worker who unloads kilns.
3
4
Button. The point of the jaw.
Chiropractor. A wrestler.
Cauliflower, or tin ear. An effusion of blood or serum between the cartilage of the ear and the skin, caused by blows.
1
Has-been. A played-out pug.
2
K. O., or kayo. A knockout.
3
Level,
v
. To fight honestly in a framed bout.
4
Mouse. A black eye.
5
Palooka,
6
ham, or tomato. An inferior fighter.
Punch-drunk, slap-happy, slug-nutty, punchy, goofy, or cutting paper-dolls. Feeble-minded as a result of taking too many blows to the head.
7
Roarer, or breather. One who fights with his mouth open.
Semi-windup. The fight before the last one of the evening.
8
Solar plexus. A network of nerves behind the stomach and in front of the aorta.
9
White hope. A white fighter expected to beat a colored champion.
10
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Acey-deucy. A jockey riding with one short stirrup and one long one.
Blind Tom. A track steward.
Bug. An apprentice jockey’s five-pound weight allowance, lost when he has been riding a year or won a certain number of races.
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Dead weight. Lead to bring a jockey’s weight up to the amount the horse he rides is required to carry.
Dogs. Temporary fences set up on muddy mornings to prevent horses working out from messing up the track near the inner rail.
Embalmer. A bookmaker who bribes stable boys to dope favorites.
Gumbo. A muddy track.
Gyp. A small owner.
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Heavy-headed. Said of a horse which runs with its head low.
High in flesh. Said of a fat horse.
Kentucky position. The fourth place in a race.
3
Lug in, or lug out,
v
. To swerve from the course.
Maiden. A horse that has never won a race.
Morning glory. A horse that shows good speed in the morning trials, but does badly in the afternoon.
Night cap. The last race of the day.
Photo finish. A finish so close that only the photograph usually taken can determine the winner.
4
Ringer. A horse entered under a false name.
5
Sportsman. One who patronizes racing because he really loves horses.
6
Stiff. A horse sent out not to win.
Stimulate,
v
. To dope a horse.
7
Suicide club. Steeplechase riders.
Tack. A jockey’s equipment.
8
Tap out,
v
. To bet one’s last dollar.
Walk-over. A race in which only one horse starts.
Wall-eyed. Said of a horse blind in one eye.
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Work. Any sort of exercise for a horse, including walking.
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