Card sharp versus card shark

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:28 PM -0800 2/24/03, Page Stephens wrote:
>An interesting transformation of the use of the word card sharp or shark
>occurred in the cartoons of Willard Mullin--I hope I have the name
>right--who used to draw sports cartoons for among other publications The
>Sporting News.
>
>He represented the Brooklyn Dodgers AKA "Dem Bums" as a fat out of shape Bum
>smoking a cigar. He represented The St. Louis Cardinals as a slick riverboat
>gambler which is, of course derived from their nickname which was the Cards.
>
>It also referred to St. Louis' position on the Mississippi River.
>
>The origin of the nickname first Cardinals and later Cards originated
>because colors of their uniforms included cardinal red.

and of course THAT association represents a transfer from the color
of the outfits of the cardinal priests of the Catholic church.
_cardinal_ (orig., 'relating to hinges') is one of my favorite
examples of semantic transfer.

>Thus it was similar
>to the origin of an earlier name of the AAA (St. Louis major league team)
>and the later name of the American League team which was The Browns.
>
>Over the years the nickname became associated with the bird of the same
>name thus the Cardinal signature which consists of two redbirds sitting on a
>baseball bat.

One of the more interesting cases of serendipity along these lines
was the period after the Chicago Cardinals had relocated to St.
Louis, leaving the city with both baseball and football cardinals
(both with bird logos).  Now, of course, they're the Arizona
Cardinals, which is about as appropriate as the L. A. Lakers and Utah
Jazz previously discussed here.

>
>The same thing occurred with the St. Louis AL team, the Browns whose name
>originally referred to the color of their uniforms but who later adopted as
>their symbol an elf, i.e. a Brownie.

before they moved to Baltimore and became a bird of a different feather

>
>This brings up the problem of a variety of professional sports team names

and college team nicknames

>which originally dealt with the color of their uniforms with the exception
>of The Cleveland Browns in the NFL which were named for the late Paul Brown
>who was the first coach

and creator, and owner

>  of the team.
>

A later version of this involves the renaming of teams whose original
nickname later came to be felt to be offensive.  So the Stanford
athletic teams, formerly the Indians, were renamed the Cardinal
(singular) after the color of their uniforms.  And St. John's teams,
formerly the Redmen, are now the Red Storm.    A more complex example
is the St. Louis Blues hockey franchise, named not for the color but
for the music form (a version of the one that provided our Word of
the Century), which in turn is presumably based on the metaphorical
extension of the color term to the psycho-emotional state associated
with it.  No teams named "the Whites" or "the Blacks" as far as I
know.  Or "the Pink(s)" or "the Yellow(s)"--although my undergraduate
college's teams were the Yellowjackets and the school color Dandelion
Yellow.  Dartmouth is "Big Green", Cornell "Big Red", Syracuse "the
Orangemen" and of course Harvard "the Crimson".

larry