Tag: Marty Storm

Slang from Storm Waters, Part 12

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Going to Read and Write:

Today’s slang has a really long history in various forms. Although this particular formation is from the early part of the 20th Century, I’ve also encountered variations and similar allusions from Shakespeare onward and it’s probably got roots even earlier.

Going/Gone to Read and Write: (v) going to/in jail.

When I used to do Renaissance fairs, my first “job” was with the thieves’ guild (no, we weren’t actual thieves, we posed as them, and did a lot of street theater about pickpockets, con men, and other nefarious types in Elizabethan England). Here I encountered the term “college” among the thieves cant we learned. If one of our troupe said they’d been “been to college” we were supposed to understand and play on the fact that they’d been in jail. We made a lot of college jokes since the majority of us were actual college students or had been at some time. So I figured out the 1920s/30s term “gone to read and write” to mean the same thing and, behold, after looking it up in several references it does!

Banksy painting on a brick wall of a prisoner escaping from above the wall down a "rope" of written pages to a hanging typewriter acting as a weight. With Creative Commons rights usage.

 

Slang from Storm Waters, Part 11

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Durham:

A phrase now forgotten anywhere outside of North Carolina, although it’s still useful, and seems to have been around for quite a while before the 1930s.

Durham: (noun) “bullshit.” Probably in reference to “Bull Durham” tobacco products based in Durham North Carolina.

None of this is a reference to the movie of the same name (which was definitely full of its measure of Durham,) nor apparently to either of the two baseball players who were also nicknamed “Bull” Durham, or the baseball team named “the Bulls” also based in Durham NC. That’s a lot of bulls. But why “bull” at all? Well…

Bull Durham smoking tobacco was introduced by W.T. Blackwell and Company in 1850, which was the first major tobacco company to establish itself in Durham, but not the last, since the town quickly became the tobacco warehousing capital of the United States. At some point, the company started using a bull on their labels and advertising, supposedly to tie the brand the English Durham mustard brand that used a bull on its labels, and thus give the product a little olde-world cred. Blackwell used the bull as early as 1897 for certain, and possibly earlier. The brand was so popular that the city itself was nicknamed “The Bull City.” And now the whole town is all about bulls… because of mustard.

Reproduction of newspaper ad from the late 19th or early 20 century for for the Blackwell tobacco company showing a cartoon bull smoking a pipe while it attempts to row a small boat across a rushing river. The boat has "W.T Blackwell and Co, Durham NC" painted on its side, as well as small fringed flag flying on its bow with the words "Smoke Blackwell Durham Tobacco" on it. Small cartoon people stand on the shore saluting and waving to the ridiculous spectacle of the dinghy-rowing, pipe, smoking bull.

 

Slang from Storm Waters, Part 10

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Black and white frame from a film about the Berlin Wall, showing five men ducking through barbed wire to cross through "no man's land" to the West from the East in the 1960s.

Crush Out:

I heard the term used recently in a song from the 2010s and thought it was interesting that a term from the crime world of the 1920s and 30s was apparently still useful as recently as ten years ago. Since it also shows up a few times in Storm Waters, I figured it was a good term for today.

Crush Out: (v) escape.

Hoping that you will all be successful with any crushing out that may be on your agenda today.

 

Slang from Storm Waters, Part 9

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Hard Ticket:

The first finished draft of Storm Waters was actually a novella titled “Hard Ticket.” Due to his family background, it’s a term Marty would have been familiar with. It’s an odd term I had encountered in a few stories from the very early part of the 20th Century, but the only crime author I can remember using it was Cornell Woolrich—and I may be misremembering that.

Hard Ticket: (noun) A person or ghost who is difficult or dangerous to deal with; an unscrupulous person. A rare term in the 1930s, mostly used in spiritist  an spirtualist circles starting late 19th century.

After a lot of revisions, Storm Waters moved so far from the original novella, which is now mostly the first third of the book, though some of it was split and put into the last third. But the scenes that scenes that contain my original “hard ticket” remain in the first chapter of the book, though Captain Davies is called a “tough nut” now.

By the way, Storm Waters is officially on-sale today, so if you still don’t have a copy, trot on over to the publisher’s site and get one: Buy Storm Waters at Fairwood Press

And if you want an ebook or a different purchase site, look here: Books2Read

1912 sepia tone of a woman dressed in black, possibly in a trance, sitting in a chair with a thread of bright light stretching between her spread hands

 

Slang from Storm Waters, Part 8

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Cutting (up) Foxy:

This is an odd term you don’t see anymore and I first encountered it in “Crooked Souls” by Dashiell Hammett. The short story was originally published in Black Mask in October, 1923. The story was later reprinted in the May, 1953 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and again in a 1962 collection A Man Named Thin, edited by Fredrick Dannay (who was also one half of the writing/editing team we know as “Ellery Queen.”) With thanks to Don Herron of Dashiell Hammett Tour fame for posting the Ellery Queen connection on his website.

Now, where the term comes from before Hammett put it on paper, I don’t know, though there’s an obvious connection to the idea of foxes as sly or clever.

Cutting (up) Foxy: (v) acting clever.

The term is usually applied with some derision as in “You keep cuttin’ up foxy, and I’m gonna bop you in the beak.” It also shows up as just “cutting foxy” upon occasion. Sadly, I have no further etymology for the term and it’s always possible that Hammett just made it up—he did that from time to time—but it does appear in a few other places through the 1940s, and then disappears. Alas, poor foxy….

black on white clip art of a fox, created with spline curves. it looks very like it's thinking clever things.

 

Slang from Storm Waters, Part 7

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Buttons:

Because it’s almost Veteran’s Day in the US, I figured I’d show you some uniforms. In this case, police uniforms, because the term we usually use for police—cops—comes from an item of their uniform. So here we go.

Button/buttons: (n) cop/cops. Shortened from “copper buttons,” referring to the buttons on early police uniforms, which were made of copper.

“Where’d you hear this line?” “Couple of buttons on the nightshift were leakin’ air.”

This specific photo shows the Seattle Police Department’s Fifth Precinct officers with their one and only car sometime in the 1920s. And if the photo were in color, you’d see that the buttons and badges are copper colored. Copper was cheap at the time—cheaper than the brass that became popular later. Alas, I couldn’t get a photo of the  LAPD dress uniform of the period, but it was similar and featured a small, silver-colored hat badge that was a heart-shaped shield with wings on top—which the LAPD still uses—and an oval copper badge with a pointed bottom that featured an eagle on the top and a tiny enameled circular seal of the City of Los Angeles. The current badge with its image of the Los Angeles City Hall’s central tower didn’t come into use until 1940.

Why police in the US continue to be called “cops,” but not “buttons,” defies me, but the term seems to have faded out in the late 1930s or early 1940s. Maybe because copper ceased to be cheap during the Second World War and uniform buttons were replaced with brass or mixed metals, and the buttons no longer stood out as unusual. Most police departments had started trading in silver badges for copper or brass around 1900, but the buttons held on little longer.

One other note: the uniforms of most police departments in the US at the time were made of wool. Los Angeles police uniforms are still made of wool—including the shirt—to this day. Can you imagine walking a beat in Los Angeles in the summer wearing a black wool shirt and hot copper buttons? Holy cow!

Seattle PD officers from the 1920s stand in front of precinct 5 in full dress uniforms made of wool, featuring copper buttons and badges

 

Slang from Storm Waters, Part 4

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Broderick: 

A term that has vanished completely, although I doubt the activity has. In period crime fiction of the 1920s through 1940s, “the Broderick” shows up with fair frequency. I guess the closest terms today would be “tune up,” or “work over” even though those are also a bit dated, now. If you can suggest another current term, please leave a comment.

Broderick (the): (n) severe, usually methodical, beating. Derived from real life NYPD detective John Broderick, notoriously violent head of the Gangster Squad, which was established during Prohibition. Usage as in: “Give ‘im the Broderick, boys. And don’t hold back.”

Having now weathered the US election, I’m hoping that no one is feeling that giving anyone the Broderick is a good idea.

gray-scale Venn diagram shaped like a flower showing the intersections of linguistic and cultural origin and influences that create slang—shown as a black dot in the center, like the center of a flower with the influences radiation out and overlapping like the petals.

 

Slang from Storm Waters, Part 3

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The Bird (Give The Bird)

Hey, a term that hung on for a looooooong time and comes from the 1920s, but was still in use into the early 1970s in some places. Which is why I have to differentiate between this “bird” and the “bird” that is flipped via a finger beginning in the late 1950s/early 1960s (this is a bit hard to pin down.) The obnoxious noise implies a degree of derision or disapproval without being overtly obscene (though that noise… well, you know.)

Give the bird: (v) blow a raspberry/”Bronx cheer”; make a derogatory sound with the lips. (not  the flipping of a middle finger.)

I have no idea why the New York City borough of the Bronx gets the nod for this noise, but there it is. Maybe folks from the Bronx are just particularly good at expressing their disgust without actually saying a word. Given that we’ve just emerged from a highly-charged Presidential election cycle here in the United States, I have no doubt there are plenty of people giving others the bird today (of both varieties.) All together, now: put your tongue between your lips and make a very rude noise!

In front of a brick wall, head and shoulders of a young man with curly brown hair "blowing a razberry" or "bronx cheer" with his tongue sticking out between his lips and his cheeks puffed out to make a rude noise.

 

Slang from Storm Waters, Part 2

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All Rung Up:

Continuing with the daily slang term from the 1920s and 30s. Will you be celebrating tonight when the election returns come in? Maybe you’ll be “All rung up.” No, you won’t be on the phone until you’re exhausted, nor will you and your party be on the trash pile of election history. Instead, you will be dressed to impress!

All rung up: (adj) dressed in fancy clothes or costume; may imply evening clothes.

This odd phrase shows up in plenty of pulp descriptions of the 1920s and into the early 1940s, when it faded out. Keep an eye out for this phrase when you read Storm Waters.

black and white charcoal sketch of people in many different fancy costumes

 

Slang from Storm Waters Part 1

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All Balled Up

So, Storm Waters comes out next week from Fairwood press, and since it’s set in Los Angeles in 1934, I thought I’d post a slang term from the period every day until the book is out. So let’s start with something that might be appropriate, considering that tomorrow is Election Day in the USA:

All balled up: (v) confuse; make a mess of; get something wrong. Eg: “You got it all balled up!”

Because no matter how this election goes, someone will claim it was all balled up. Whatever else you do, don’t ball up your chance to vote!