aste(r)perious

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 5, 2004, at 10:15 AM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

>> astorperious: arrogant, haughty.
>
> I think this must be the right connection. Presumably the figure
> painted on the WW II bomber had white gloves to show upper-crust
> social position.

there are others who know this material much better than i do -- speak
up! -- but weren't white gloves part of the minstrel show tradition?
the figure combines signifiers of pacific islanders, african
"tribesmen", and stereotypical african americans, and the last of these
could have been the source of the white gloves.

the iconography of the nose art is complicated.  female figures (often
in combination with the Jolly Rogers' skull and crossbones) figured
very prominently; at least two were Varga figures.  some female-figured
planes: Lady Luck, Naval Body, Surprise Attack, Sack Time, Million $
Baby, Booby Trap (yes, a pun), Lucky Strike, Peace Offering, Playmate,
Shoo Shoo Baby, Photo Fanny, COD Knot For Tojo, The Peter Heater.  then
there's Axis Nightmare (just the skeleton, no babe).  and a huge
assortment of boastful and threatening figures: Big Ass Bird, Who
Shives a Git, "The Flying Stud" (winged horse), Hells Angels, Lone Star
Avenger, Mitsu Butcher, Tear-Ass (The Bull), Tyrannosaurus Rex, "Yanks
 From Hell".  and some mysteries, like 'Come And Get It', with a duck
figure not unlike the famous Donald; Sodpa's Wabbit, with a rabbit
figure not unlike the famous Bugs; and Wabbit Twansit, with Bugs and
Porky riding a bomb.

> ...I find only one instance of "astorperious" in the newspapers, in a
> 1978 article about Hurston. This article states that Hurston coined
> the word.

Hurston maintained that she was recording black speech, not inventing
it.  (recall that she was a Boas student.)  of course, some of the
usages she recorded (and then represented in her fiction) might well
have been "family words" or other very restricted usages.  she was in
no position to survey black speech -- even rural southern black speech
-- as a whole, and for relatively infrequent items she could have had
no way of knowing what their distribution was like.  (a problem we all
have, even now, which is why there are projects like DARE.)

> ...Is it known whether this word has/had any known existence
> independent of Hurston? Did the more recent authors take the word from
> Hurston's "Harlem Slang" or other work, or does the word have currency
> today? Is it known whether/where/when the word was current before
> Hurston recorded it?

good questions.  "Harlem Slang" as a source for modern occurrences
seems *very* unlikely to me.  yes, there's been a Hurston revival going
on for several decades now, but not many people have read anything
beyond her masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)