Robert Hendrickson is the author of more than twenty-five books including American Literary Anecdotes and God Bless America: The Origins of Over 1,500 Patriotic Words and Phrases. He has a deep-rooted love for the English language. He lives in Peconic, New York.

God Bless America

The Origins of Over 1,500 Patriotic Words and Phrases

By Robert Hendrickson

Skyhorse Publishing

Copyright © 2013 Robert Hendrickson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62087-597-1
CHAPTER 1

A

aa.Aa for rough porous lava, similar to coal clinkers, is an Americanism used chiefly in Hawaii, but it has currency on the mainland, too, especially among geologists, or where there has been recent volcanic activity, mainly because there is no comparable English term to describe the jagged rocks. The word aa is first recorded in 1859, but is much older, coming from the Hawaiian ‘a’a, meaning the same, which, in turn comes from the Hawaiian a, for “fiery, burning.”

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Abe’s cabe. American slang for a five-dollar bill. So-called from the face of Abe, Abraham Lincoln, on the front of the bill, and from cabe, a shortening and rhyming pronunciation of cabbage, which in slang means any currency (green). Coined in the 1930s among jazz musicians, the term is still in limited use today. See also benjamin.

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abide. To endure, stand, or tolerate, usually in the negotiation sense, as in “I can’t abide him.” Mark Twain used this expression, which has been considered standard American English since at least the early 1930s.

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Abraham Lincoln. Old Abe’s nicknames include, among others, Honest Abe, The Railsplitter, The Liberator, The Emancipator, Uncle Abe, Father Abraham, The Chainbreaker, and The Giver of Freedom. He was called many derogatory names, too, notably the sarcastic Spot Lincoln, because he had supported the anti-Mexican War resolution in 1847, demanding that President Polk identify the exact spot where Polk claimed Mexico had already started a war on American soil. During the Civil War Lincoln was called Ape in the South, the word mocking his appearance and playing on Abe. Tycoon, in its sense of military leader, was also applied to him at that time.

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absquatulate. A historical Americanism coined in the early 19th century and meaning to depart in a clandestine, surreptitious, or hurried manner, as in “He absquatulated with all the funds.” The word is a fanciful classical formation based on ab and squat, meaning the reverse of “to squat.” The Rocky Mountain News (1862) gives the following example: “Rumour has it that a gay bachelor, who has figured in Chicago for nearly a year, has skedaddled, absquatulated, vamosed, and cleared out.”

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ace; aces.Aces has been American slang for “the best” at least since the first years of the last century, deriving from aces, the highest cards in poker and other card games. But ace for an expert combat flier who has shot down five or more enemy planes appears to have been borrowed from the French as, “ace,” during World War I. From there ace was extended to include an expert at anything. The card name ace comes ultimately from the Greek as, one. An ace in tennis, badminton, and handball, among other games, is a placement made on a service of the ball, while an ace in golf is a hole in one. The trademarked Ace bandage, used to bind athletic injuries, uses ace meaning “best,” too. Ace figures in a large number of expressions. To ace a test is to receive an A on it, and ace it means “to complete anything easily and successfully.” To be aces with is to be highly regarded (“He’s aces with the fans.”), and to ace out is to cheat or defraud (“He aced me out of my share.”) Easy aces in auction bridge denotes aces equally divided between opponents; it became the name of a 1940s-1950s radio program featuring a husband and wife team called The Easy Aces. Another old ace term is to stand ace high, to be highly esteemed.

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aces all around. Everything is going well, splendidly, first rate, like being dealt all aces in a poker or other card game. Someone might ask “How are you doing?” and get the reply “Aces all around.” The expression was heard in Washington, D.C. (2006) but is doubtless much older.

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acid test. This expression dates back to frontier days in America, when peddlers determined the gold content of objects by scratching them and applying nitric acid. Since gold, which is chemically inactive, resists acids that corrode other metals, the (nitric) acid test distinguished it from copper, iron, or similar substances someone might be trying to palm off on the peddlers. People were so dishonest, or peddlers so paranoid, that the term quickly became part of the language, coming to mean a severe test of reliability.

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Acoma. A Native American tribe of New Mexico and Arizona. The tribe’s name means “people of the white rock” in their language, in reference to the pueblos in which they lived. Acoma is also the name of a central New Mexico pueblo that has been called “the oldest continuously inhabited city in the United States.” The name is pronounced either eh-ko-ma or ah-ko-ma.

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act your age. Perhaps act your age! originated as a reproof to children, but it is directed at both children and adults today, meaning either don’t act more immature than you are, or don’t try to keep up with the younger generation. The expression originated in the U.S., probably during the late 19th century, as did the synonymous be your age!

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African American.African American, a term many blacks and whites prefer as the name for blacks today, is not of recent origin and wasn’t coined in the North, as some people believe. African American did become common in the late 1980s but was first used in the American South some 140 years ago. Even before its birth, terms like Africo-American (1835) and Afro-American (1830s) were used in the names of black churches.

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after someone with a sharp stick. To be determined to have satisfaction or revenge. John Bartlett called this phrase a common Americanism in 1848 and it is still occasionally heard today.

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aggie fortis. An Americanism meaning anything very strong to drink. As one old-timer put it “… this man’s whiskey ain’t Red Eye, it ain’t Chain Lightnin’ either, it’s regular Aggie forty [sic], and there isn’t a man living who can stand a glass and keep his senses.” Aggie fortis derives from aqua fortis, strong water, the Latin name for nitric acid.

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ain’t got sense enough to poke acorns down a peckerwood hole. An old rural Americanism said of someone pitifully stupid. A peckerwood is a woodpecker but can also mean a poor southern white. See cracker; redneck.

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ain’t hay.Hay has meant a small amount of money in American slang since at least the late 1930s, which is about the same time that this expression is first recorded. Little more is known about the very common and that ain’t hay for “a lot of money,” a saying that I would suspect is older than currently supposed.

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ain’t he (she) a caution. Isn’t he or she remarkable, unusual, or, especially, funny; an old term still heard infrequently. Could be a variation of ain’t he a corker, once frequently heard among Irish Americans.

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ain’t no place in heaven, ain’t no place in hell. Nowhere for one to go, limbo. The expression is from an old African-American folk song quoted in William Faulkner’s Sanctuary (1931): “One day mo! Ain’t no place fer you in heaven! Ain’t no place fer you in hell! Ain’t no place fer you in white folk’s jail! Whar you gwine to?”

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airtights. Canned food was called “airtights” by cowboys in the American West during the latter part of the 19th century. Canned beef was meat biscuit or beef biscuit.

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aisle.Aisle strictly means a section of a church or auditorium, deriving from the Latin ala, “wing,” and that is how the word has been used by the British until relatively recently. But Americans have long used aisle to mean a passageway in a church, auditorium, or elsewhere, and this usage is becoming universal.

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alamo. The name of several poplar trees, including the cottonwood; from the Spanish alamo meaning the same. The Alamo is also the name of a Franciscan mission in San Antonio, Texas, besieged by 6,000 Mexican troops in 1836 during the Texan war for independence. The siege lasted 13 days and ended with all 187 of the defenders being killed. “Remember the Alamo!” became the Texan battle cry of the war. The most recent use of the Alamo’s name is San Antonio’s Alamodome sports stadium constructed in 1992 at a cost of $130 million.

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Alaska.seward’s folly, seward’s icebox, Seward’s iceberg, Icebergia, and Walrussia were all epithets for the 600,000 square miles now known as Alaska. All of these denunciations today honor one of the great visionaries of American history, William Henry Seward. Seward’s most important work in Andrew Johnson’s administration was the purchase of Alaska, then known as Russian America, from the Russians in 1867. Negotiating with Russian Ambassador Baron Stoeckl, the shrewd lawyer managed to talk the Russians down from their asking price of $10 million to $7.2 million, and got them to throw in a profitable fur-trading corporation. The treaty was negotiated and drafted in the course of a single night and because Alaska was purchased almost solely due to his determination — he even managed to have the treaty signed before the House voted the necessary appropriation — it was widely called “Seward’s folly” by irate politicians and journalists. Seward himself named the new territory Alaska, from the Aleut A-la-as-ka, “the great country.”

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Albany beef. Sturgeon was once so plentiful in New York’s Hudson River that it was humorously called Albany beef. The term is first recorded in 1791 and was in use through the 19th century; sturgeon caviar was so cheap in those days that it was part of the free lunch served in bars. Cod was similarly called Cape Cod turkey in Massachusetts.

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alewife. One early traveler in America, John Josselyn, seems to have thought that this plentiful fish was called the alewife because it had “a bigger bellie” than the herring, a belly like a wife who drank a lot of ale. More likely the word is a mispronunciation of some forgotten American Indian word.

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Alexander Hamilton. Sometimes used as a term for one’s signature, similar to the use of john hancock or john henry. The term, of course, comes from the name of American statesman Alexander Hamilton (1757 — 1804).

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Alibi Ike. Someone who is always making excuses or inventing alibis is called “Alibi Ike.” The designation was invented by Ring Lardner in his short story “Alibi Ike” (1914) as a nickname for outfielder Frank X. Farrell, so named because he had excuses for everything. When Farrell drops an easy fly ball, he claims his glove “wasn’t broke in yet”; when questioned about last year’s batting average he replies, “I had malaria most of the season”; when he hits a triple he says he “ought to had a home run, only the ball wasn’t lively,” or “the wind brought it back,” or he “tripped on a lump o’ dirt roundin’ first base”; when he takes a called third strike, he claims he “lost count” or he would have swung at and hit it. The author, who had a “phonographic ear” for American dialect, created a type for all time with Alibi Ike, and the expression became American slang as soon as the story was published. In an introduction to the yarn the incomparable Lardner noted, “The author acknowledges his indebtedness to Chief Justice Taft for some of the slang employed.”

* * *

all aboard! This common train conductor’s call is an Americanism, first recorded in 1837, and is nautical in origin. Wrote Joshua T. Smith in his Journal in America (1837): “They [the Americans] describe a situation by the compass ‘talk of the voyage’ of being ‘all aboard’ & etc.; this doubtless arises from all their ancestors having come hither over ocean & having in the voyage acquired nautical language.” The call all aboard! was used on riverboats here before it was used on trains.

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all-American. Walter Chauncey Camp, “the Father of American Football” who formulated many of the game’s rules, picked the first all-American football team in 1889 along with Caspar Whitney, a publisher of This Week’s Sport Magazine. But the idea and designation was Whitney’s and he, not Camp, should be credited with introducing all-American to the American lexicon of sports and other endeavors.

* * *

all chiefs and no Indians. Many businesses have experienced trouble because they had all chiefs and no Indians, that is, too many officers who want to do nothing but give orders to others. The origin of this common worker’s complaint has been traced to about 1940 in Australia, where the expression was first all chiefs and no Indians, like the University Regiment. Yet the first half of the expression has an American ring, and one suspects that some determined word sleuth might turn up an earlier printed use in the United States.

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all dressed up and no place to go. Said to have originated in a 1915 song by U.S. comedian Raymond Hitchcock. The words are still heard today but nowhere nearly as often as they once were.

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alley-oop. This interjection may have been coined by American soldiers during World War I, for it sounds like the French allez (“you go”) plus a French pronunciation of the English up — hence allez oop, “up you go.” During the 1920s allez-oop (often spelled alley-oop) was a common interjection said upon lifting something. The expression became so popular that a caveman comic strip character was named Alley Oop. Soon alley-oop became a basketball term for a high pass made to a player near the basket, who then leaps to catch the ball and, in midair, stuffs it in the basket. In the late 1950s, San Francisco 49er quarterback Y. A. Tittle invented a lob pass called the alleyoop which was thrown over the heads of defenders to tall, former basketball player R. C. Owens.

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all good Americans go to Paris when they die.See mutual admiration society.

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all hands and the cook.All hands and the cook on deck! was a cry probably first heard on New England whalers in the early 19th century when everyone aboard was called topside to cut in on a whale, work that had to be done quickly. Fishermen also used the expression, and still do, and it had currency among American cowboys to indicate a dangerous situation — when, for example, even the cook was needed to keep the herd under control.

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all hat and no cattle. A Texan phrase describing someone who acts rich or important but has no substance, such as a person who pretends to be a cattle baron, even dressing the part: “He’s all hat and no cattle.”

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all his bullet holes is in the front of him. A colorful phrase describing a brave man, not a coward, coined by cowboys in late 19th-century America.

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all I know is what I read in the papers. This saying has become a popular American expression since Oklahoman Will Rogers coined it in his Letters of a Self-Made Diplomat to His President (1927). It has various applications but is commonly used to mean “I’m not an expert, just an ordinary person, and what I’ve told you is true to the best of my knowledge.” It implies one may be wrong because one’s sources are not infallible.

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all oak and iron bound. A 19th-century Americanism meaning in the best of health and spirits, as in “He’s feeling all oak and iron bound.” The comparison is to a well-made barrel. Oak alone is a hard, strong, durable material.

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all quiet on the Potomac. Sylva Clapin explained this phrase in A New Dictionary of Americanisms (1902): “A phrase now become famous and used in jest or ironically as indicative of a period of undisturbed rest, quiet enjoyment, or peaceful possession. It originated with Mr. [Simon] Cameron, Secretary of War during the Rebellion [Civil War], who made such a frequent use of it, in his war collections, that it became at last stereotyped on the nation’s mind.” E.L. Beers published a poem in Harper’s Weekly (Nov. 30, 1861) extending the expression: “‘All quiet along the Potomac,’ they say, / ‘Except now and then, a stray picket / is shot, as he walks on his beat to and fro./ By a rifleman hid in the thicket.'” General George McClellan is also said to have invented the phrase. See all quiet on the western front.

(Continues…)Excerpted from God Bless America by Robert Hendrickson. Copyright © 2013 Robert Hendrickson. Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
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