On The Cuff

Recently an Idiomation subscriber mentioned how different on the cuff and off the cuff were from each other. What they knew of the idiom was that on the cuff meant free of charge or on credit. A quick check with established and well-known dictionaries confirmed such an expression exists and that it means just that (and is quite different from something that is off the cuff).

In the Norman Phillips (November 1921 – 28 June 2021) novel Throw A Nickel On The Grass published in 2012 and based on the true story of the author who became a decorated fighter pilot and rose to the rank of colonel, the idiom is used when speaking of the main character’s younger years. This excerpt uses the idiom and clearly demonstrates what it means.

Rick had seen a white jacket in Nate Fox’s window display, and now he could try one on and tell Nate to hold it for him. It needed a minor alteration that Nat wouldn’t do unless Rick made a five-dollar down payment. After wheedling Grandma, she advanced the five dollars, and Rick got the jacket in time for the prom. The white shoes were easy. Breller’s let him have the shoes on the cuff. He could pay for them later when he had the money.

French novelist, polemicist and physician, Louis-Ferdinand Céline whose real name was Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (27 May 1894 – 1 July 1961) included it in his book Death on the Installment Plan which was a companion volume to his earlier novel, Journey to the End of the Night. Originally published in the mid-1930s (and republished in the 1970s), these two novels told the story of the author’s childhood growing up in the slums of Paris (France), and serving in WWI. It is said that Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s fiction was the forerunner of what became known as black humor.

The first ones to make a stink were the grocers on the rue Berce … They refused to give us any more food on the cuff … They came around with their bills … We heard them coming up … We didn’t answer …

As mentioned, the idiom was still very much in use at the time these novels were reprinted in the 1970s. In April of 1976, the Honorable Louis Arthur “Skip” Bafalis (28 September 1929 – ), a representative in Congress from the State of Florida, submitted this as his statement regarding food stamps and the cost to taxpayers with regards to the Peanut Act of 1976 at hearings before the Committee on Agriculture. In part, this is what he had to say on the matter.

We may see the day when for every American working hard and losing his shirt to the taxman, another American is living on the cuff.

When that day comes, and it could come, you will see a revolt — a middle American revolution. The working man is going to stop working. After all, what is he gaining for himself by working hard, if the taxman takes it all.

And when middle America quits working and paying taxes, a lot of those now living high on the cuff are going to get a rude awakening. Some may starve for they’ve forgotten how to work.

I know this sounds far-fetched. I hope it is. But I am afraid it could happen.

This indicates that the English version of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s book was not a bad translation from the French version. The idiom was known to those who spoke English.

A decade earlier, the Business Review of April 1960 saw one of its articles titled, “$52 Billion On The Cuff: How Burdensome is Consumer Credit?” included in the Consumer Credit Labeling Bill of 1960. The article began by stating that slightly less than $52 billion dollars of outstanding consumer credit was outstanding, not including mortgages, and there was concern that, with the fast rise in consumer credit since the end of WWII in 1945, the situation could negatively impact the housing economy and mortgage markets not dissimilar to what happened in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s.

In 1942, the expression was used in the discussion of the purchase of old vessels and the sale of new vessels from the Waterman Steamship Corporation under section 509 of the Merchant Marine Act, and dating back to 8 June 1940. The Committee on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries was led by the Chairman Schuyler Otis Bland (4 May 1872 – 16 February 1950) of Virginia, and included, among others, Herbert Covington Bonner (16 May 1891 – 7 November 1965) of North Carolina, James Hardin Peterson (11 February 1894 – 28 March 1978) of Florida, investigator for the Washington D.C. office of General Accounting Harry S. Barger (26 September 1882 – 1954), General Counsel James Vincent Hayes (1900 – 13 May 1985), The debate includes this exchange of words.

THE CHAIRMAN: I think wherever it is used it ought to be borne in mind that it has an invidious meaning whenever used in any public document.

MR. BONNER: What does on the cuff mean?

THE CHAIRMAN: Yes; what does on the cuff mean?

MR. BARGER: These are expressions used in the memorandum.

MR. BONNER: Does it mean a private understanding between people?

MR. BARGER: It could, Mr. Congressman. I would rather not interpret it.

MR. PETERSON: Let us read that little portion again.

MR. HAYES: What Mr. Peterson desired to have read was the on the cuff reference back of that.

MR. BARGER: The first clause is “Neither implied nor on the cuff understandings with respect to the purchase of old vessels from Water –“

MR. HAYES: What is the beginning of that sentence?

MR. BARGER: The whole sentence?

MR. HAYES: Yes.

MR. BARGER: It begins with the word “Neither.”

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: The only vessel of the C3-S-DX1 design, SS Schuyler Otis Bland was the final vessel ordered by the U.S. Maritime Commission, and the first vessel launched by the newly-created Maritime Administration. The vessel’s name honored the late U.S. Representative Schuyler Otis Bland of Virginia, sponsor of the Merchant Marine Act of 1936. During construction, however, the vessel was surpassed by the C4-S-1A “Mariner” design and Schuyler Otis Bland was the only vessel built. The ship was ready for service in July 1951 and chartered to American President Lines for which it completed two globe-encircling journeys while engaging in commercial trade. Transferred to the U.S. Navy on August 4, 1961, the ship provided logistical support during the Vietnam War, until struck from the Naval Vessel Register on August 15, 1979. (Source: US Department of Transportation, Maritime Administration)

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 2: Herbert Covington Bonner rose to the position of chairman of the House Marine and Fisheries Committee and was dubbed the father of the first nuclear-powered merchant ship, the Savannah. He was well known for backing the social programs of the Roosevelt and Kennedy administrations, and was an original member of the House on UnAmerican Activities Committee.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 3: James Hardin Peterson helped to draft the G.I. Bill of Rights, and was instrumental in making the Florida Everglades into a national park. He and Lawton Mainor Chiles (3 April 1930 – 12 December 1998) worked as law partners until the late 1960s (Chiles went on to be a Senator from 1971 through 1989 and then the governor of Florida from 1991 through to 1998), after which time, he practiced on his own.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 4: James Vincent Hayes was an anti-trust lawyer who graduated from Fordham Law School and went into practice in 1926. He became the assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York before he was appointed special assistant to the United States Attorney General in 1938.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 5: In 1944, Harry S. Barger’s boss was John Joseph Sirica (19 March 1904 – 14 August 1992) who is best remember for being the Federal district judge at the trial of the Watergate burglars in the 1970s. Judge Sirica was nicknamed “Maximum John” because he was known for handing out tough sentences.

At this point, things get obscured. While it’s true that on the cuff referred to placing something on credit or getting something for free and was reportedly a popular slang expression in the 1920s and 1930s, especially among flappers, this doesn’t mean it is the same thing as what was meant at the end of the 19th century in the U.S., where the practice of penciling debts in shops and bars on celluloid cuffs was very real. Just because something appears to have a connection does not mean the connection can be proven.

In 1942, Looney Tunes put out a cartoon titled, Eatin’ On The Cuff where the moth eats his fill at everyone else’s expense (which is definitely in keeping with the meaning of the idiom). For your enjoyment and courtesy of YouTube, here’s that cartoon!

In Volume 133 of Bankers Magazine published in 1936, the subject of using credit to pay for holidays was addressed. The idiom found its way into the article thusly:

But like all sports and all vacations … it takes money. A skimpy vacation, one you ‘put on the cuff‘ is like sailing with a dragging anchor. No matter how much fun, there is still a reckoning. Let’s be smart and do it all beforehand.

In the August 1930 edition of Boys’ Life, there was a story about newspapermen and how one the Chicago Herald’s ace cameraman, Connie Layor, had been fired in front of all his colleagues despite the fact he had an exclusive shot at breaking a story about a man named Darucci who was on trial in Judge Cardigan’s court along with three other men who had been arrested with him and charged with various crimes. Bay McCue was a recent addition to the staff reporters, and had met up with Connie Layor at the court house. The short story by Alvin E. Rose and illustrated by Frank Spradling (1885 – 18 August 1972) was titled, The Man in the Door.

“You can’t tell. It might have helped a little, enough maybe have got us a lay-off instead of a permanent vacation without pay,” McCue moaned disconsolately.

“You don’t know the ‘old man,'” Layor growled. “Be quiet! I don’t feel socially inclined.”

“But I’m broke, Connie,” said McCue, “and, come to think of it, hungry. You couldn’t put me on the cuff for a few bucks, could you?”

Layor reached mechanically into his pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill.

“Thanks, Santa, “McCue brightened; “haven’t got a job in the other pocket, have you?”

Although Idiomation was unable to find an earlier published version of this idiom, clearly in 1930 it was an expression understood by young readers of Boys’ Life and, as claimed by numerous dictionaries, it appears to be an expression from the 1920s. It also explains why the Senators (who were middle aged men at the time) struggled with the idiom’s meaning in 1942, and why Bankers Magazine used the idiom in quotation marks in 1936.

Baloney

Bologna is a large city in Northern Italy. Bologna (pronounced baloney) is also a processed meat that is a combination of ground pork, beef, chicken, and turkey. So where does baloney — as in nonsense, rubbish, or foolishness — come from and is it somehow related to the city or the processed meat?

The Herald newspaper of Everett (WA) published a story on 28 May 2009 about the Twitter account held by cwalken that was suspended due to strange activity. Some believed the account was that of American actor Christopher Walken but it wasn’t. The photo that accompanied the account name was that of Christopher Walken, but the Twitter account wasn’t that of the actor. The article was titled, “That Famous Twitter Feed Could Be Baloney.”

As a reminder, Twitter verification was introduced in June 2009 and became Twitter’s way to distinguish real celebrity accounts from unverified celebrity accounts. Twitter closed down Twitter verification requests in 2017 but after a four-year absence, as of May of 2021, Twitter has reinstated it.

University of California Berkeley law professor Phillip E. Johnson (18 June 1940 – 2 November 2019) wrote “Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds” which was published in 1997. The title to Chapter Three was “Tuning Up Your Baloney Detector.” This chapter spoke about the need, even in science, to suspect baloney in claims that appear to be easily debunked. He stated that Carl Sagan’s own baloney detecting kit was instrumental in directing the scientist to quickly identify con artists and conspiracy theorists who purported to be all about the science.

What we need to protect ourselves from such false beliefs, Sagan writes in his book, “The Demon-Haunted World” is a well-equipped “baloney detector kit” A baloney detector is simply a good grasp of logical reasoning and investigative procedure.

In 1979, the United States Department of Agriculture published “What’s to Eat? and Other Questions Kids Ask About Food.” According to the Foreword, it was written mostly because 1979 was designated as the International Year of the Child by the United Nations, and it was felt that publishing a kid friendly book would be the thing to do that year.

Among the contents was an article titled, “Truth or Baloney About Oranges.” There were two sets of questions — one about growing oranges and the other about processing oranges — comprising of 5 statements each to which readers were to check one of two boxes: Truth or Baloney. The quiz was followed by a diagram showing the correct answers.

In “The Supplemental Appropriation Bill, 1958” published by the United States Congress, House Committee on Appropriations, the matter of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Tennessee River component of the Ohio River was a hot matter of discussion. The Tennessee River system at the time contributed to the floods on the Ohio River. Money had been borrowed by the TVA, and was being repaid to the Treasury Department. Senator Joseph Landon Evins (24 October 1920 – 31 March 1984) of Tennessee claimed the total repayments up until 1958 had far exceeded the 40-year statutory annual requirements, but some senators didn’t believe that was an accurate representation of the situation.

MR. JENSEN: You can cut it any way you want to, but it is still baloney, Mr. Evins. It is still baloney to me.

MR. EVINS: It happens to be a fact — a true fact. I am sure the gentleman would consider anything TVA as baloney, but what I have given him are the true facts of the situation. TVA has paid back into the Treasury more than would be required by interest payments.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: Joseph Landon Evins was named a staff attorney for the Federal Trade Commission in 1935 and rose to the position of the Federal Trade Commission Assistant Secretary in 1938. He held that position until the U.S. entered WWII where he was commissioned in the United States Army Judge Advocate General Corps where he served until 1946, at which time he returned to private practice. He was a Senator from 1953 through to 1977.

INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 1: Senator Evins was preceded by Senator Albert Gore Sr, the father of Senator Al Gore Jr who went on to become Vice-President of the United States of America under President Bill Clinton.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 2: Benton Franklin Jensen (16 December 1892 – 5 February 1970) was the Senator from Iowa served thirteen consecutive terms as the U.S. Representative from Iowa. Before being elected to the House of Representatives, he managed a lumber company for twenty years. Prior to that he was a second lieutenant in WWI, and before that he was a yardman and an assistant auditor at a lumber company.

INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 2: He was shot in the back near his right shoulder on 1 March 1954 in Washington DC when four Puerto Rican nationalists — Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero, and Irvin Flores Rodriguez — promoting the cause of Puerto Rico’s independence from the US fired 30 rounds from semi-automatic pistols onto the legislative floor from the visitors’ balcony above.

It seems that baloney was a favored word if one goes by government documents. It was repeated several times in the “National Labor Relations Act: Hearings Before the Special Committee” in 1940 where a clear definition is provided by attorney Edmund M. Toland. On Saturday, 27 April 1940 Edmund M. Toland, general counsel to the Congressional Committee investigating the National Labor Relations Board and Herbert Fuchs (20 September 1905 – 1988), attorney for the National Labor Relations Board sprinkled their comments liberally with the word.

MR. TOLAND: Notwithstanding the fact that the charge against this company was a violation of section 8 (2), that it had sponsored, dominated, or instigated, or all of the violations of section 8 (2) with respect to this union, and this witness, being called by the respondent, after being cross-examined by the Board, then the attorney for the independent union questions him, and asks him whether or not the company had ever interfered with, dominated, or sponsored the organization so are as he knew, and his answer was “none whatever” and you took that testimony as to be immaterial to the issues in this case, and therefore concluded that the testimony of this witness, under oath, was baloney!

MR. FUCHS: Oh, I don’t think I intended to characterize it as untrue. You might get a lot of people to testify that they hadn’t seen one person kill another.

The use of the word baloney was used a number of times by both Edmund M. Toland and Herbert Fuchs.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 3: Herbert Oscar Fuchs was a former American Communist who joined the National Labor Relations Board in 1937. In November 1948 he left the National Labor Relations Board over the increased attention being paid to the Alger Hiss (11 November 1904 – 14 November 1996) and Whittaker Chambers (1 April 1901 – 9 July 1961) case.

INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 3: Whittaker Chambers was a senior editor at Time magazine and in August 1948, he testified under subpoena before the House of UnAmerican Activities Committee that Alger Hiss, who had worked as an attorney for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration as well as the Nye Committee before moving to the Department of State in 1936, was a spy for the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

Back in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a plan to go off the gold standard. The Depression wasn’t letting up and inflation was only making matters worse. The passage of the Gold Reserve Act allowed the Federal Reserve to increase the amount of money in circulation to the level the economy needed, but not before New York Governor Alfred Emmanuel Smith (30 December 1873 – 04 October 1944), took to the newspapers with an open letter to the New York State Chamber of Commerce. In his letter he wrote:

I am for gold dollars as against baloney dollars. I am for experience as against experiment.

The government was concerned citizens would use the term baloney dollars instead of the high-sounding term compensated dollars. Senator George Norris of Nebraska tried to offset the damage by stating to the media, “Even baloney is pretty good food for a starving individual.”

During the 1936 presidential, Governor Smith backed Roosevelt’s opponent with the memorable refrain, “No matter how thin you slice it, it’s still baloney.”

But was the governor the first to talk about baloney that way? Not at all.

Idiomation found a joke of sorts in Volume 99, Issue 2275 of The Judge published on 6 June 1926.

HE: I love your eyes with their lustrous rays focused lovingly into mine.

SHE: Baloney; those are just words, nothing more.

HE (very much put out): What did you expect them to be? Sandwiches?

It was attributed to a publication recognized as the Texas Ranger.

Throughout the 1920s, newspaper comic strips American engineer, inventor, author, sculptor and cartoonist, Reuben Garrett Lucius “Rube” Goldberg (4 July 1883 – 7 December 1970) featured wonderfully complicated mechanical contraptions. They also often included the word baloney to mean nonsense as in “that’s the baloney” or “it’s a lot of baloney” or just plain old “baloney” all on its own.

The word was found used with ease in this published letter in the Vaudeville newspaper dated 30 June 1922.

Idiomation was unable to find any earlier published versions of baloney meaning nonsense, rubbish, or foolishness. It is therefore pegged at the beginning of the flapper era even though baloney as a prepared meat sausage was available long before then.

The Penny Dropped

The British idiom about a penny dropping means that someone has finally understood something that escaped their understanding for a period of time, but that expression is not to be confused with the idiom to drop a penny which still means something entirely different. It also should not be confused with the lyric in the Christmas song that encourages the audience to “please drop a penny in the old man’s hat.”

And it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the story of a penny dropped off the observation deck of the Empire State building killing someone on the street below.

Pennies have been around a long time. Back in the mid-1800s, 12 pennies (also known as pence) made a shilling, and a shilling made a pound 20 a pound was made up of 240 pennies. In Canada, coppers (as pennies were called) were stamped out by Britain’s Royal Mint and represented 1/100th of a Canadian dollar and at the time, outside of Ontario, Canadian pennies were considered worthless.

But long before the Canadian penny, in 1793, the American penny made its appearance authorized by the United States from the Mint Act of 1792 which was signed by George Washington and designed by Benjamin Franklin.

You might think the expression should be American, not British, based on how long the penny has been around in the U.S. and yet, that’s not the case. A penny during William Shakespeare time wasn’t really a penny but a reference to money in general.

What penny hath Rome borne, What men provided, what munition sent?

But was the British penny of William Shakespeare’s the penny the British people came to know as a real penny? In 1797, pennies in Britain were made from copper but before that, pennies were made of silver, and in 1860, copper pennies were made from bronze instead of copper.

But at what point were pennies associated with people understanding what took the listener so long to understand that was obvious to the speaker?

At the end of the 19th century, penny machines (also known as penny-in-the-slot machines) were very popular in Britain. They provided cheap entertainment. Usually, when you dropped a penny into the machine, a song would play or a puppet would dance or a mannequin clairvoyant predicted something in your future after wich a small card dropped down into the slot with the fortune printed on it. The mannequin clairvoyant was a featured player in the Tom Hanks’ movie, “Big.”

You could also have gas delivered by way of an automatic penny-in-the-slot machine in 1890 where those of the poorer class (as they were called back then) could purchase 25 cubic feet of gas for their homes by inserting a penny into the penny-in-a-slot machines attached to their homes.

It wasn’t long before there were automatic postal boxes supplying postcards and stamped envelopes with paper enclosed and automatic insurance boxes providing insurance against accidental death for 24 hours, and automatic photographic machines.

Pennies were all the rage, and not just as they pertained to slot machines either!

INTERESTING SIDE SIDE NOTE 1: The penny-farthing was a popular bicycle in its day beginning with its arrival in the 1870s. It got its name from the difference in the size of its wheels which was a nod to the difference in size between a penny and a farthing. The front wheel was large and the back wheel was small in much the same way that the penny was much larger than the farthing (which was worth a quarter of a penny).

The Sekgness Standard in Lincolnshire published the following in the column “Things We Want To Know” on 20 April 1932:

The identity of the gentleman who was allowed to go for a drink after assisting the missus on Sunday?
And how long it took him to fathom the problem as to why the hostelry was closed at 1.15 p.m.
And if the penny dropped on suggestion of his spouse that he had forgotten to advance his watch an hour?
And if he has made a mental resolve to guard against a similar happening in future years?

With a 40-year gap to work within, Idiomation continued tracking the idiom’s history down.

In the 1890s and 1900s, the Kinetoscope or Mutascope movie machines were all penny-in-the-slot machines. The viewscreen would be completely blank until the coin dropped through the slot into the machine, and there was usually a delay between the action of plugging the slot with a penny, the penny dropping into the box, and the mechanism within finally starting the movie.

The concept of a penny dropping and the person who paid the penny going from a blank screen to a movie is from this particular era even though the idiom is attest to years later. However, that it should be used so easily in a newspaper column and without quotation marks in 1932 indicates it was an idiom in use without doubt throughout the 1920s.

Top Banana

Fictional Titi Vlar asked fictional Missy Barrett on her Facebook page if she knew the history of the expression top banana. Idiomation is always pleased to step up to the plate and assist real and fictional people alike when it comes to tracking down the meaning and history of expressions, phrases, sayings, clichés, and more.

Whenever you hear someone being referred to as the top banana, that person is the lead person in a group or organization, or who is heading up an undertaking. Of course, when it comes to the entertainment industry, the top person is the usually the headlining comedian in a musical comedy, vaudeville, or burlesque show. The comedian’s straight man was second banana to the top banana.

On December 12, 2017 an article posted by Today.com reported the following:

While Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have yet to make any official announcement about their wedding cake, there’s a pretty big rumor that has people going absolutely bananas … <snip> … [Dole] offered the services of their “top banana” chef to personally bake the cake that will be served after the couple’s ceremony in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 1: A banana is 75% water.

In the December 10, 200 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald, journalist Michael Evans reported how Westpac Bank boss, Gail Kelly, had gone from being ranked the world’s 18th most powerful woman by Forbes magazine in September of 2009 to angering hundreds of thousands of Westpac customers when they were advised by the bank’s retail chief about supercharged interest rates.

How much was the increase, you ask? Variable mortgage rates rose by 45 basis points, nearly twice the level of the Reserve Bank’s 25 basis point increase, and Gail Kelly’s popularity slipped badly because of it. The news story was aptly titled, “How The Top Banana Slipped.”

New York City is always a great place for unexpected news stories and on August 31, 1991 the New York Times reported on a situation that happened at a housing project in East Harlem in the middle of the day. According to reporter Seth Faison Jr, the spectacle included a crowd of spectators, a phalanx of Housing Police, a crew of EMS workers, a truckload of firefighters, and a monkey in a tree. The monkey was a real monkey owned by Sandra Rodriguez who lived in the Washington Houses project on East 104th Street.

And just like the story about Australia’s Gail Kelly, this article was also aptly titled with the amusing headline, “Monkey Shows Police Just Who’s The Top Banana.”

American lyricist and songwriter Johnny Mercer (18 November 1909 – 25 June 1976) and American screenwriter, playwright, and theatrical producer Hy Kraft (30 April 1899 – 29 July 1975) were responsible for the Broadway play titled, “Top Banana” starring American entertainer and comedic actor Phil Silvers (11 May 1911 – 1 November 1985). Silvers played the part of Jerry Biffle, an ex-burlesque comic who has become a television star on the Blendo Soap Program, and displays a Milton Berle style egocentric personality.

The show opened on November 1, 1951 (closing on October 4, 1952 with a total of 350 performances and a nearly month-long layoff from August 3 to August 31) and in the magazine Cue: The Weekly Magazine of New York Life the expression was part of their published review.

Phil Silvers, the man in the glasses on your right, is a changed man. For one thing, the comic who is *top banana” in the soon-to-arrive musical of the same name is no longer a frustrated actor in search of dignity.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 2: Two years after the Broadway production closed down, many of the original actors in the play reprised their roles in the United Artists movie of the same name.

Bananas were a popular fruit as far as composers were concerned. George Gershwin blended bananas into his songs “Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off” and “But Not For Me.” In 1926, Ted Waite wrote the very popular “I’ve Never Seen A Straight Banana” and in 1923 the big novelty hit song was “Yes! We Have No Bananas.”

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 3: One of the earliest comic novelty songs involving bananas that was a song dates back to 1904 vaudeville when Elizabeth Murray, Raymond Teal, and Willie Tilden included “The Banana Man” by Hamilton and Fischer in their respective acts.

But while all this is very interesting, it gets us no closer to the origin of the expression top banana.

The first full cargo of bananas reached the United States in 1871 when Captain Lorenzo D. Baker landed in Boston after a long trek across the ocean.  Bananas caught on with the American public, and it wasn’t long before bananas were featured in family photographs.  I couldn’t make that up if I wanted to as strange as that sounds.  The Washington Banana Museum in Auburn (WA) has evidence to support this.

Scant years later, a number of fraudulent banana peel claims against streetcar lines were common in America, beginning in the 1890s. This was reported by the Street Railway Review on January 15, 1895. In 1910, the New York Times reported that Anna H. Sturla was arrested for the 17th time in 4 years, claiming she had slipped on a banana peel and been injured.

By the time women like Anna H. Sturla were making a living from banana peel lawsuits, cities were passing laws against discarding banana peels on city streets. St. Louis city council was among the first cities to pass a law outlawing the “throwing or casting” of banana peels on any and all public thoroughfares. New York City, under the guidance of former Civil War military man Colonel George Waring, organized the uniformed “White Wings” workers to sweep, clean, and dispose of waste — mostly because of the banana peel problem. They worked in shifts and disposed of garbage at city-owned composting facilities throughout the city.

Vaudeville comedian “Sliding” Billy Watson aka William Shapiro (1876 – 1939) found fame with his banana peel pratfall and he claimed to be the originator of the gag but vaudeville comedian Cal Stewart (his copyrighted stage persona name was Uncle Josh) was already a hit on stages and in recordings with his banana peel-laden sidewalk jokes.

With the banana peel gag already in play, vaudeville entertainer Rose Bacon incorporated the banana con into her comedy routine in the early 1900s.

There was a young lady named Hannah
Who slipped on a peel of banana.
More stars she espied
As she lay on her side
Than are found in the Star Spangled Banner.

A gentleman sprang to assist her;
He picked up her glove and her wrister;
‘Did you fall, Ma’am?’ he cried:
‘Did you think,’ she replied,
‘I sat down for the fun of it, Mister?’

So how is it that banana peels went from being a popular treat and fodder for vaudeville acts to the phrase top banana in 50 years?

This has proven difficult indeed to track. While the term top banana was obviously used long before burlesque comedian Frank Lebowitz rose to fame, his name is most closely associated with the phrase due to his use of bananas in his stage act. But as we all know, bananas and their peels were already established as props for vaudeville and burlesque acts long before the 1950s hit.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 4: The American burlesque era is from 1840 to 1960. To burlesque meant to make fun of operas, plays, and social habits of the upper classes.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE 5: The difference between vaudeville and burlesque came about in the 1920s when burlesque introduced strip teases in the hopes it would draw audiences away from vaudeville and over to burlesque shows. The American strip tease is thought to have originated with Little Egypt’s 1893 Chicago World’s Fair performance of the hootchie-kooch.

Oddly enough, there’s a little known fact about bananas that take them from being a popular fruit that is responsible for a great many vaudeville gags and being the best of the bunch. During the flapper era of the 1920s, if a person was bananas they were crazy.

The best comedians in vaudeville and burlesque specialized in slapstick comedy which included the banana peel gag. The better they were at the banana peel gag, the harder the audiences laughed. The harder the audiences laughed, the better the chances those comedians would play to packed houses night after night. It wasn’t long before stage managers were referring to the best comedians as the top bananas.

So while Idiomation was unable to identify who coined the phrase top banana or the exact year the expression came into use, it dates back to American vaudeville and burlesque houses in the 1920s.

Scribbledehobble

It’s not often you hear some words but when you do, they stick in your mind either because they’re unique or because they’re amusing and entertaining as well as unique.  Scribbledehobble is one of those words.  It can mean hurried, messy writing, or it can be a reference to the workbook with ideas written down quickly with little to no concern for appearance.

Irish novelist and poet James Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) decided to give the notebooks in which he jotted down names, words, ideas, turns of phrase and anecdotes a name.  The name he gave to one of them was scribbledehobble.

There’s some question as to the exact date James Joyce came up with this word.  It’s a fact that when Thomas E. Connolly transcribed and published one of James Joyce’s notebooks in 1961, it was under the title, “Scribbledehobble” in keeping with the first word in the book’s text.

This notebook held the notes for his book “Finnegans Wake” that was published in 1939, and was seventeen years in the writing after his book “Ulysses” was published in 1922.

SIDE NOTE 1:  “Finnegans Wake” is a book that few have read due in large part to the enormous complexity of the text that was written, for the most part, with idiosyncratic language.

Some scholars believe the word was a hybrid of the words scribble and hobbledehoy.  Hobbledehoy is a word that dates back to the early 1500s, and refers to someone or something that is clumsy and awkward.  The word has appeared in many novels over the generations.

It was used in Chapter 47 of the book “Little Women” by American novelist and poet, Louisa May Alcott (29 November 1832 – 6 March 1888), published in 1868.  The book was about four sisters who lived at home with their mother in New England while their father was away fighting in the Civil War.  The family had lost its fortune, but the family managed to make do and to continue living in the house they had always known.

“Now don’t be a wet-blanket, Teddy. Of course I shall have rich pupils, also–perhaps begin with such altogether. Then, when I’ve got a start, I can take in a ragamuffin or two, just for a relish. Rich people’s children often need care and comfort, as well as poor. I’ve seen unfortunate little creatures left to servants, or backward ones pushed forward, when it’s real cruelty. Some are naughty through mismanagment or neglect, and some lose their mothers. Besides, the best have to get through the hobbledehoy age, and that’s the very time they need most patience and kindness. People laugh at them, and hustle them about, try to keep them out of sight, and expect them to turn all at once from pretty children into fine young men.”

It was also used by English writer and humorist Jerome K. Jerome (2 May 1859 – 14 June 1927) in his collection of humorous essays, “Idle Thoughts Of An Idle Fellow” published in 1886.  This was the second published book for the writer, and it established him as a leading English humorist.

The shy man, on the other hand, is humble–modest of his own judgment and over-anxious concerning that of others. But this in the case of a young man is surely right enough. His character is unformed. It is slowly evolving itself out of a chaos of doubt and disbelief. Before the growing insight and experience the diffidence recedes. A man rarely carries his shyness past the hobbledehoy period. Even if his own inward strength does not throw it off, the rubbings of the world generally smooth it down. You scarcely ever meet a really shy man–except in novels or on the stage, where, by the bye, he is much admired, especially by the women.

SIDE NOTE 2:  Jerome K. Jerome’s quotes are well-known even if they may not be propertly attributed to him.  Two of his most noteable quotes are, “It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you aren an exceptionally good liar” and “I like work; it fascinates me.  I can site and look at it for hours.”

Even James Fenimore Cooper (15 September 1789 – 15 September 1851) spoke of “the hobbledehoy condition” in which America found itself in his book “The Pioneers, or The Sources of the Susquehanna; a Descriptive Tale” published in 1823.  This book was the first of five novels which became known as the Leatherstocking Tales.

This period in the history of a country may be likened to the hobbledehoy condition in ourselves when we have lost the graces of childhood without having attained the finished forms of men.

It isn’t difficult to see how James Joyce would feel compelled to mesh scribble with hobbledehoy to come up with scribbledehobble to describe either hurried, messy writing or the workbook with ideas written down quickly with little to no concern for appearance.  Idiomation pegs this to the around 1920 with thanks to James Joyce for his creativity in coming up with this new word.

Daffy

Watching the movie about J. Edgar Hoover starring Leonardo DiCaprio, there was a scene between Hoover and his mother that spoke of a certain schoolmate of J. Edgar’s who had committed suicide years earlier.  She asked her son if he knew why he was called “Daffy” and then revealed that it was short for daffodil.  While it wasn’t stated outright, the implication was that a daffodil — or rather, a daffy — was a homosexual.

Back in 1935, it was understood that a daffodil was an effeminate young man in the vein of pansies and millies.  In “Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang” the term with this definition is pegged to the 1920s.  Interestingly enough, however, in this same dictionary, there’s an entry for daffy-down-dilly which refers to a dandy, and dates back to the mid-1900s according to Cassell’s.  The “Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English” by John S. Farmer and W.E. Henley published in 1905 confirms the claim in Cassell’s dictionary.

American romance novelist and short story writer Nathaniel Hawthorne (4 July 1804 – 19 May 1864) published a novel in 1843 titled, “Little Daffydowndilly.”   The story is about a little boy who only likes to do things that are agreeable to him, and dislikes work of any kind.  His mother has indulged her son to this end, and when he finds himself old enough to attend school, he finds the schoolmaster to be unreasonable in his expectations and believes him to be overly stern.  As the story unfolds, Little Daffydowndilly learns a lot about himself and his schoolmaster.

INTERESTING NOTE 1:  Nathanial Hawthorne is better known as the author of “The Scarlet Letter.”

Two years earlier, playwright William Leman Rede (31 January 1802 – 3 April 1847) wrote, “Sixteen-String Jack: A Romantic Drama In Three Acts” where he used daffy-down-dilly in Act i, Scene 2.  The scene begins with Bobby Buckhorse, the waiter at the “Cock and Magpie” and Nelly.

BOBBY:
I’m here, my daffy-down-dilly.

NELLY:
Don’t down-dilly me! but take some daffy to the back parlour.

BOBBY:
Back parlour’s served: I saw three brandy’s cold, one egg-hot, and a qartern with three outs, go in.

INTERESTING NOTE 2:  “Sixteen-String Jack” was a play about English criminal and highwayman, John “Sixteen String Jack” Rann (1750 – 30 November 1774) who was known for his charm and quick wit.  His attire was said to be overly showy.

It’s easy to see how a flashy dressing rogue such as John “Sixteen String Jack” Rann could be thought of as effeminate, even as he waylaid the countryside with his nefarious deeds.

Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet, and cleric, Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) used daffy-down-dilly in his short story, “A Punning Letter to the Earl of Pembroke” published on June 13, 1709.

There is a published reference to daffy-down-dilly recorded in Mother Goose or rather, what was known then called Mother Hubberd, back in 1593.

Daffy-down-dilly is new come to town
With a yellow petticoat, and a green gown.

The term is what’s known as a sandwich word which are, by nature, generally naughty.  That being said, calling a lawyer a daffy-down-dilly from 1483 onward was a serious accusation of double-dealing, and playing both ends against the middle for the lawyer’s own personal gain.  In other words, it was a conflict of interest that the lawyer chose to work to his advantage.

Idiomation finds that while daffy-down-dilly has been an insult for a great many centuries, it evolved to mean an effeminate male by the late 1700s and early 1800s.  This eventually evolved to mean a homosexual by the 1920s.  Idiomation therefore pegs this to 1800 as well as to 1920 because one really doesn’t know where the line was drawn between being effeminate and being a homosexual in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Cute As A Button

Children are said to be cute as a button although every once in a while someone might refer to a young woman in this way. What it means is that the person who’s said to be cute as a button is charming and attractive while implying the person is small or young, like a child is.

On March 30, 2014, snlgamers.com published an article from writer, David Graham that discussed Nintendo’s history. The article was titled, “Hanafuda: Nintendo’s Past” and gave a detailed accounting of where Nintendo began and how it became what it is a hundred years later. Along the way, the writer included this passage.

We think of Nintendo as the wholesome video game company. Mario and Kirby are as cute as a button and the company in general feels squeaky clean, especially compared to other industry titans.

Back on October 30, 1995, journalist Tony Kronheiser’s story, “Those 15 Minutes Of Fame Will Ruin The Kid” about 12-year-old Jeffrey Maier from Old Tappan in Bergen County (New Jersey) hit the newsstands. It’s not that Tony wasn’t aware that his comments might not be appreciated by some, however, as a journalist, he felt compelled to write the story nonetheless.

The boy in question had leaned over the right field railing at Yankee Stadium in Game 1 of the American League Championship at the bottom of the 8th inning with one out and the Orioles leading 4 to 3. He stretched his baseball gloved hand out over Tony Tarasco, and gave the New York Yankees a home run in the process.

The journalist knew that his comments would be unpopular with a segment of the population but that didn’t stop him from writing about the situation as it was. And he predicted that some of his detractors might even think this of him:

Tony, this is the lowest you’ve ever sunk. He’s a 12-year-old boy, and he’s cute as a button. So what if he hurt the Orioles? Stop pandering to the Washington audience. All the kid did was try to catch a fly ball. You’d have done the same thing yourself.

As it was, the Baltimore Orioles lost the pennant that year, and over the years, Jeffrey Maier went on to play high school and college baseball, and then worked for minor-leagues baseball teams. And the journalist was right: Jeffrey Maier never escaped from being forever thought of as The Kid.

In the Deseret News edition of April 16, 1954 stores were in full swing with spring fashions and nothing said cute as a button for a little girl than a strappy little patent leather number as seen in this newspaper advertisement.

In the book, “The Best Plays of 1938 – 39” edited by Burns Mantle, the idiom appeared in “Kiss The Boys Good-Bye.” It was a comedy in three acts, written by American author (and later U.S. Ambassador) Clare Boothe  (10 March 1903 – 9 October 1987) and later known as Clare Boothe Luce after marrying Henry “Harry” Luce (3 April 1898 – 28 February 1967), the founder of Time and Fortune magazines.

BREED
The Old South, the last illusion of the New North —

CINDY LOU
Lift me down (TOP lifts her down.)

BREED
… destroy that — and comes the Revolution!

CINDY LOU
I declare you’re strong …

BREED
Personally, I think she’s cute as a button —

CINDY LOU
Why, you damn Yankee pole-cat! Here I come!

The idiom as we know it is actually an abbreviated version of cute as a button quail. For those who aren’t familiar with button quail, they’re tiny, extra-fluffy, docile members of the quail family. They have an extensive vocabulary with multiple chirps and coos that are understood by other button quail, and yet, their chirps and coos are very quiet … perhaps so as not to disturb others in the vicinity.

The proper name for button quail is Chinese Blue Breasted Quail (Excalfactoria chinensis) and are native to only a few provinces in southeast China. European tourists visiting China in the late 1800s and early 1900s fell in love with them and took them back home with them to add to their persona aviaries.

American soldiers during WWI encountered them in these homes in Europe. Soon afterwards they were brought to America. However, rather than arrive with their proper name, American soldiers reported that these little birds were about the size of their uniform coat buttons when they first hatched, and that’s where the idiom began.

Idiomation therefore pegs this idiom to the 1920s.

Spit Or Go Blind

It’s not often that you hear someone say they don’t know if they should spit or go blind, but when someone uses that expression, what they’re really saying is that they’re confused about what they should say or do next.  Of course, the question begs to be asked:  Who exactly uses that kind of language and where did the expression come from in the first place?

On March 14, 2012 a new entry was published in the series discussing digital formats, sampling rates, and more on the audiophile-musings blog.  It was a condensed yet comprehensive piece that made the subject easier to understand for those who didn’t work in the music industry.  Midway through the entry, the following was written:

Musicians, producers, and audiopphiles alike are all about to “spit or go blind” when it comes to the future of digital audio. The Blu-Ray disc, with its infancy in 2002, created a storage medium exactly the same physical size as the CD but with over 7 times the storage capacity. Now that’s what I’m talking about!

Almost a generation before that, Reg Silvester wrote an article for the Edmonton Journal that was published in their September 17, 1980 edition.  The article, entitled “Choreopoem Reaches Out Across All Barriers” reviewed a theater performance at the Rice Theatre.  The review began with this:

Every so often, somebody comes at you with something from a cultural or social base so strange that you don’t know whether to spit or go blind.

Now, 22 years before that (to the day) outfielder Harvey Kuenn was quoted as having said this about a home run hit by Mickey Mantle at Tiger Stadium:

I didn’t know whether to laugh, spit, or go blind!

The fact of the matter is that the expression doesn’t appear very often in newspaper articles or in literature before this, however, readers know for Harvey Kuenn to have used it so easily in 1958 that it was a recognized idiom of the day.  This implies that it goes back at least to the generation previous pegging it at sometime in the 1920s.

That being said, the word blind has its own interesting history that gives a twist to the expression spit or go blind.  The original sense of the word blind meant confused and not sightless, as attested to in the early 1600s.  In fact, Geoffrey Chaucer (1300 – 25 October 1400) wrote “The Chanouns Yemanns Tale” (part of “The Canterbury Tales“) where the following passage using the word blind (blynde) is found:

Telle how he dooth, I pray thee hertely,
Syn that he is so crafty and so sly.
Wher dwelle ye, if it to telle be?”
“In the suburbes of a toun,” quod he,
“Lurkynge in hernes and in lanes blynde,
  
Where as thise robbours and thise theves by kynde
Holden hir pryvee fereful residence,
As they that dar nat shewen hir presence.

In this context, blind meant the alley was closed at one end (a dead end).  By 1702, blind also meant anything that obstructed one’s sight, and thus the blind alley became one that was not only closed at one end, but beset by obstacles that prevented one from seeing to the end of the alley.  Ergo, if things were blocked from sight, it left people blinded (albeit temporarily).

As a secondary side note to this first side note, it should be noted that on September 19, 1702 Jupiter occulted Neptune from the Earth (such planet occultations being extremely rare according to astronomers).  While some use the words occulted, eclipsed and transited interchangeably, there are very set differences between the three conditions.

An eclipse  happens when an object moves into another object’s shadow (you can sometimes still see both objects).

A transit happens when an object passes in front of another (but does not obstruct the view of the planet).

An occult is when an object is completely hidden from view because the object passing before it lies directly in one’s line of sight.

So, yes, on September 19, 1702, Jupiter blinded people on Earth … but only if they hoped to see Neptune that night!

Getting back to the expression spit or go blind, that exact expression (as previously mentioned) can be tagged to the 1920s but Idiomation was unable to take it back any further.  However, it appears that the expression was about 200 (if you go with 1702) or 300 (if you go with 1610) years in the making before it was first used.

Ace In The Hole

Whether you’re talking poker or the game of life, having an “ace in the hole” is definitely an advantage.  So how did this phrase come to mean someone has a hidden advantage?

Back in the 1920s, when stud poker was a very popular game, the rules were such that after each round of betting, players were dealt an additional card face up.  The only one who was dealt a card face down was the last player.  This card was referred to as the “hole” card.

The winner of the game was decided by the highest as well as the lowest scoring hand, and those two would then divide the winnings in the pot.

If you were the last player and the card that was before face down in the “hole” position just happened to be an Ace, that player most definitely had a hidden advantage that no one … not even the last player … knew he had.

It’s In A Wewoka Switch

Wewoka is a small town in Oklahoma and situated at the junction of State Highway 56 and U.S. Highway 270.  The town was originally located in 1849 in what was considered to be the Seminole Nation, Indian Territory (I.T.).   After the U.S. Civil War, Elijah J. Brown, was selected by the U.S. government to lead Seminole refugees from Kansas to the Seminole Nation, Indian Territory.

Not too much later, in 1895, the Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf Railroad (the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway after 1902) ran its line from McAlester to Oklahoma City, passing through Wewoka.  They also installed side tracks.

In the early 1900s, freight would oftentimes go missing once a train had been redirected to the side tracks, and items that went missing were said to be “lost in the Wewoka Switch.”

In the 1920s, when thousands of freight shipments destined elsewhere went missing, they were soon found hidden at the Wewoka Switch.  Soon, the railroad company made it a policy to check Wewoka first whenever they were advised of a lost shipment.   It got to be such a habit that soon a rubber stamp was created that read: “Search Wewoka Switch.”

It didn’t take too long before the saying became: “It’s in a Wewoka Switch” meaning that whatever or whoever was involved in questionable — possibly illegal — activities was quite obviously tangled up in a tight spot.