parlo(u)r pink, pinko

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

Thanks so much, Fred. This is is very useful, and makes sense -- it
isn't likely that these uses of 'parlor' and 'pink' could both have
been around for more than forty years before anyone thought to
combine them. As it happens, the cites you came up with are also
antedates for 'pink' tout court in its political use.

As for 'parlour', I just checked K. C. Phillips' Language and Class
in Victorian England (a terrific book, I think), which notes that the
word had become declasse by the late Victorian period -- Phillips
writes that by 'parlour' was  "quite demoted in class usage, as the
late Victorian music-hall song 'When Father Papered the Parlour'
suggests." The OED says  "Hence, in a private house, the ordinary
sitting-room of the family, which, when more spacious and handsomely
furnished, is usually called the drawing-room." That suggests that in
British usage, at least, 'parlour pink' and the rest conveyed some
social condescension, with the implication that left sympathies were
a petit-bourgeois affectation.

Geoff Nunberg

>On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Geoffrey Nunberg wrote:
>
>>  I wonder if someone could help me trace the earliest uses of these
>>  items. The OED gives 1910 for "parlour" in this use (in "parlour
>>  socialist," a phrase for which JSTOR has an -or antedate for 1908)
>>  and gives 'pink' in this sense from 1927, but gives no cite for the
>>  collocation "parlour pink" until 1960: "1960 News Chron. 22 June 6/5
>>  A wonderfully reactionary view of country life. It makes John Buchan
>>  look a åparlour pink.¼"
>
>Here are two earlier cites:
>
>1920 _N.Y. Times_ 25 Apr. XX1  As the complexion of the radical changes
>from palest parlor pink to darkest red, the joy increases in proportion.
>
>1923 _Wash. Post_ 13 Apr. 1  It would be easily possible to ... link the
>American fund for public service with perhaps fifty or more of the leading
>pacifist, pro-Bolshevist and parlor pink organizations.
>
>Fred Shapiro
>
>
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