The Lexicographer's Rules

My annual buzzwords of the year piece for the New York Times has appeared today, featuring expressions such as aporkalypse, swine flu party, El Stiffo, Octomom, and sexting. Also, there's a discussion going on about them on the New York Times Ideas blog, where you can leave your own comments about my choices, or give your own buzzword of the year.

Recently I bought a copy of Birds of the Pacific Coast by William Ayres Eliot at B Street Books in San Mateo.

It is a charming book, filled with color plates (which you can see here) and interesting tidbits, but I bought it because it contained this handwritten letter inserted in its pages:


.


It says this:

"Those bird watchers who first spotted the two white Crested Laughing Thrushes from Southeast Asia may want to know they're big (and loud) on Russian Hill, hanging out in Louis Petri's lush property and being fed by the fancy likes of Elinor Chatfield-Taylor and Mary Keesling. Noisy devils, but amusing — The birds, I mean. The feathered ones — that is... Heckwithit—"

The two women were stars of the San Francisco social scene in the 1950s and perhaps later. Louis Petri was a wine magnate.

The letter was probably written after 1948, which is when, according to the obituary linked above, Elinor Chatfield-Taylor moved to San Francisco.

The book is inscribed with the name "Vera Gillett" on the flyleaf, but I could turn up no one by the name who might obviously be connected to the big names above.

The American Dialect Society is now accepting nominations for the "word of the year" of 2009, as well as for the "word of the decade" for 2000-2009

What is the word or phrase which best characterizes the year or the decade? What expression most reflects the ideas, events, and themes which have occupied the English-speaking world, especially North America?

Nominations should be sent to woty@americandialect.org. They can also be made in Twitter by using the hashtag #woty09.

They will be considered for the American Dialect Society's 20th annual word-of-the-year vote, the longest-running vote of its kind in the world and the word-of-the-year event up to which all others lead. It will be held in Baltimore on Friday, January 8, 2010.

The best "word of the year" candidates will be:

—new or newly popular in 2009
—widely or prominently used in 2009
—indicative or reflective of the popular discourse

The best "word of the decade" candidates will be:

—especially prominent or important throughout the years 2000-2009
—indicative of trends, fads, upheavals, groundswells, or sea changes which affected history, culture, or society throughout the years 2000-2009.

Multi-word compounds or phrases that act as stand-alone lexical items are welcomed, as well.

Sub-categories for "word of the year" include most useful, most creative, most unnecessary, most outrageous, most euphemistic, most likely to succeed, and least likely to succeed.

The vote is informed by the members’ expertise in the study of words, but it is far from a solemn occasion. Members in the 120-year-old academic organization include linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, authors, editors, professors, university students, and independent scholars. In conducting the vote, they act in fun and do not pretend to be officially inducting words into the English language. Instead, they are highlighting that language change is normal, ongoing, and entertaining.

Past winners can be found on the society's web site.

More information about the annual meeting.

My latest column in the Malaysia Star: Underworld lingo. The column, as always, is written for an audience that may not be perfectly fluent with English.

...

In 1931, the Los Angeles Times published a story headlined Underworld lingo. It was a lexicon of criminal cant and jargon written by Ben Kendall, a police reporter.

Kendall formerly was a police reporter in Chicago, too, where he uncovered bribes and corruption by making friends with pickpockets, safeblowers, and shoplifters. Some eight years later, Kendall would be indicted and convicted for his role in bribery related to illegal gambling in Los Angeles.

So, given his experience on both sides of the law, one can only assume that the lingo he recorded was genuine. But how much of it lasted? Seventy-eight years on, we find that some of the lingo is still in use, while some of it has vanished.

Alky is recorded by Kendall as “straight alcohol.” Most people today would use it to mean an acoholic drinker rather than the drink itself.

Angle he records as “a plan; a lead,” which is more or less how it’s used today. If someone says, “I don’t know what his angle is, but he’s up to no good,” they’d mean that the fellow seemed to be planning something suspicious.

Booster does indeed still mean a shoplifter. Boost in general means “to steal” and a booster bag is a specially designed bag that is meant to conceal stolen merchandise as it is taken out of a store.

Chiv is common still in prison lingo, though it’s usually spelled shiv. An even older form is chive, meaning a knife as far back as the 17th century. A shiv is a knife, too, but in prison slang it is especially a crude, improvised one, such as a toothbrush that has had a razor blade attached to it.

Grand still means a thousand dollars. Take still means “a share,” too, but it’s a fairly straight business term: “What’s my take on all this? If he gets 15% of the ticket money, I want 15%, too.” A pay-off is still a bribe or a payment made to someone to keep them from hurting you or your things.

Haywire, Kendall writes, is a “mental aberration.” Today we’d say that a machine went haywire more often than we would say a person went haywire. We mean the machine started malfunctioning.

Jam still means trouble or a sticky situation. “Can you help me out with the rent this month? I’m in a jam until payday.” Or, “I’m in a jam with the wife. She doesn’t know I was at the bar last night. Tell her I was at your house.”

Lug he defines as a “stupid fellow; a hanger-on,” which is close to the way we’d use it today, but not quite. We’d say a man (almost never a woman) is a big lug, which would mean that he was kind of stupid, but also clumsy or ungainly. It’s often used as an affectionate insult. “You big lug! You didn’t have to bring me flowers!” might be the kind of thing a woman would say in a fake tough voice.

Muscling in is still done pretty much as Kendall defined it: “to force one’s way in for a cut on the profits of a venture.” People still get nailed, too, meaning they get caught or arrested. And screwy still means “crazy.”

Kendall calls a wing-ding “a fit; berserk,” which is a meaning that other dictionaries show to have been more common in the past. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it more fully as “a fit or spasm, esp. as simulated by a drug addict” and in a “weakened sense, a furious outburst.”

However, only a later meaning is used today, which is “a party.” I daresay that no-one who today throws a wing-ding is faking a seizure so that they can get controlled drugs from a doctor.

Yentz hasn’t lasted. It meant “to outsmart” or “to defeat.” It was sometimes spelled yence or yince and had another crude, sexual meaning that meant “to have a non-romantic act of copulation.” Both meanings are synonymous with different meanings of screw.

Loogan (sometimes spelled loogin or lugan, according to the Historical Dictionary of American Slang) is also no longer used to mean “a minor hoodlum,” though hood, recorded by Kendall, is still used to mean “a petty gangster.”

For what it’s worth, I find loogan in Jamieson’s Scottish Dictionary of 1825 with a definition of “a rogue” and in a couple of modern amateur lists of prison slang online as meaning “mentally ill prisoner” in Ontario, Canada.

Perhaps one of the most interesting additions to Kendall’s slang list is his definition of quim as “anybody’s sweetheart.” Historically, and more often, this term has meant “the vagina.”

Even when used to mean “a woman” (a usage confined mainly to North America) it has usually been the crudest of terms meant to refer to the woman as chattel (a personal possession) or as nothing more than the target of sexual acts. It objectifies her as being no better than what her sexual organs are good for.

It’s possible that Kendall only knew the term in a purer, more innocent form. But I imagine, especially given his connection with the rougher corners of the underworld, that he knew very well about its less polite meaning. He would have had a laugh at getting such a coarse word printed in a daily newspaper in a time when even hell and damn might not have been allowed.

I want to take a moment to remember William Safire for his kindness.

He was unstinting with his help in matters that were important to me. He gave generous public praise to my radio show, A Way with Words. He supported the Historical Dictionary of American Slang when it applied for funding during my editorship, by writing letters of support that shone with erudition and respect. He gave my book, the Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang, a much kinder review than it deserved. He gave a cover blurb for my Official Dictionary of Unofficial English. He mentioned Wordnik, my latest project, in his column, generating interest from many thousands. He consented to a long interview about his political dictionary.

Perhaps most importantly, he gave me credit as often as possible in his column for helping him with his research, which allowed my own star to rise in the "language dodge," which is what he called this maven-rich, grammarizing, languagey niche we both inhabited. He did this for lots of people and he did it unbegrudgingly.

Thanks, Bill. You were kind.