Mike Walsh both coined and popularized "shyster"

[Gerald Cohen]

    The person who said "shyseter"/"shiseter" before Walsh was
Counselor Terhune (most likely a transplanted Cockney), who then
expressed amazement that Walsh, who reveled in earthy language, was
not familiar with this term.
However:
1) Terhune most likely did not say "shiseter" (with "t") but
"shiser," a British cant term derived from German Scheißer meaning
"somebody worthless." For example, in the 19th century memoirs of a
London thief I once found "Joe was a shiser in the molling line,"
i.e., Joe (the author's pal) was so drunk that he was worthless that
evening for chasing women. And the way Terhune used the term
"shise(t)er" is entirely consistent with its British cant meaning.
Terhune is saying that he doesn't want "to be confounded with sich
[sic] shyseters as Magee, Peck, Camp and Stevenson," i.e., Don't let
your readers get me (the highly competent, even if crooked) Terhune
confused with that totally worthless, incompetent bunch; that would
hurt my reputation in the prison and cut back on my scam operation.
     Walsh then applied this term to ALL the legal-scam-artists at the
NYC prison, not merely the incompetent ones. This was the start of
"shyster" in its present meaning "disreputable lawyer", although it
of course later expanded to include disreputable lawyers of all sorts
(not just dregs-of-society,incompetent ones), politicians, and
business people. BTW,with the possible exception of Terhune, no
respectable lawyer participated in the prison scam which Walsh
protested against and which led to his "shyster" conversation with
Terhune.  The men who carried out the scam might be pimps or thieves
one month and then pretend-lawyers the next in carrying out the scam.

2)    The -t- in "shyster" was most likely mistakenly added by Walsh,
who was reporting on a conversation he had heard earlier in the week.
And it was Walsh who by his repeated use of "shyster" in reference to
alleged dishonest people of all stripes singlehandedly made "shyster"
a part of the standard English lexicon.Incidentally, Walsh was
furious at District Attorney Jeremy Whiting who had used devious
means to put him in jail, and Whiting therefore played a key, if
unwitting, role in popularizing "shyster."  Whenever Walsh mentioned
Whiting in his newspaper writings, he almost always added "shyster,"
And Walsh's crusade against Whiting guaranteed that "shyster" would
appear often.

     So Walsh was both the coiner and popularizer of "shyster," a
legacy of his crusading spirit.

    For the full passage of the July 29, 1843 _Subterranean_ article
in which Terhune and Walsh wind up talking about
"shyseter"/"shiseter," see pp.63-65 of my first book on "shyster."

--Gerald Cohen


At 3:34 PM -0500 3/30/02, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>On Sat, 30 Mar 2002, Gerald Cohen wrote:
>
>>     Now, for the next slang word-coiner item: "shyster," coined by Mike
>>  Walsh, editor of the 1840's NYC newspaper _The Subterranean_
>
>I read through your fascinating book some years ago, and commend it to all
>students of slang.  But wasn't "shyster" used by someone else and then
>picked up by Walsh?  I did ask in my original query for people who were
>coiners or popularizers of important slang terms, but I just want to
>clarify which it is: did Walsh coin "shyster" or popularize it?
>
>Fred Shapiro