1912 "jazz"

[Dave Wilton]

> At 8:39 PM -0400 8/24/03, Dave Wilton wrote:
> >Written citations are vital guideposts, but we shouldn't
> assume that just
> >because there are no known written citations that a slang
> term was not in
> >use. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. ...
>
>    True, but absence of a word in writing isn't evidence that it was
> in use in the meantime either. Theoretically, maybe it was and maybe
> it wasn't. For "jazz"
> one may assume that it continued to be spoken throughout the 1912
> season, but that is only an assumption, and (it seems to me) an
> unfounded one. I don't see why the players would have used the word,
> which didn't refer to an actual pitch but rather seems to have been a
> bit of exuberant nonsense spoken by Henderson for his opening-day
> pitching assignment. What motivation would the players have had to
> use the word?  What would its meaning have been?

Vim, vigor. "That's giving it the jazz." "You jazzed that one." There are
numerous opportunities for such exuberant slang during baseball play.

And there is strong evidence that "jazz" was indeed used in 1912. Namely the
LA Times story about Henderson. We also know from Gleeson's account that
Slattery, a sportswriter, heard the term in use sometime before the 1913
season. So we have two accounts that provide evidence of usage before
Gleeson wrote about it.

>   And is it really plausible that the sportswriters, always trolling
> for anything interesting spoken by the players, could have overlooked
> a new word that gained
> anything more than the most limited currency? If Henderson really
> coined a word that was catching on, why didn't his hometown
> newspaper(s) mention this at least once when writing about him?

Note, I did not say that Henderson coined the term. It simply appears that
he is the first to be recorded using it. There is a difference.

And what reporters fail to report is legion. You've done far more research
into baseball writing of the period, but how many articles explicitly
address the language of ball players? My guess (and its only a guess based
on current sportswriters) that articles or even portions of articles devoted
to baseball language are very few and far between. Most of the references to
terms and language are offhand or oblique. Even the reporter who wrote the
story about Henderson wasn't so much referring to the word as he was a new
pitch.

>      Isn't it more plausible that the LA Times reported on the word
> because Henderson used it in Los Angeles that one day and then all
> newspapers fell silent on the word because in fact it wasn't being
> used?

Perhaps they didn't fall silent so much as not notice. L.A. in 1912 wasn't
the metropolis it was today--it was pretty much a backwater. Also Henderson
was a pretty obscure player. Had Henderson been a more successful pitcher,
maybe his "jazz ball" would have caught on with others writing about it.

I also refer to Metcalf's "Predicting New Words." One of the hallmarks of a
successful word is unobtrusiveness. It gets used and spreads without people
noticing it. This may be true of the baseball use of "jazz."

I find this far more plausible that two people, both associated with PCL
baseball, independently coining a word, identical with each other in form
and meaning, within the space of one year.