1913 "jazz"; was: Terror Dome; Dallas Morning News (1885-present?)

[George Thompson]

To amplify my message of yesterday with some disjointed remarks:

I would myself be interested in any appearance of the word "jazz" in
regional and small town newspapers, through 1920 or so.  I have access
to Proquest, but not Newspaper Archives or other such files.

We're not likely to find an instance in print from the 1910s or before
of "jazz" used as a dirty word.  I'll settle for an expression of
embarrassment or outrage that such a vulgar word could have become
commonly used.  Though maybe someone will find a letter from perhaps
Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne that speaks of "jazzing" Harriet
Beecher Stowe?  Nah.

JL cites "the word "spunk," which in Britain has become a verb
meaning "to
ejaculate.""  Also a noun, meaning semen: Molly Bloom says "Poldy has
more spunk in him."  Does this sense exist in American English?  I
looked up "spunk" a while ago in OED, but am forgetting the details.  A
very old word, originally meaning "spark", as I recall, which would
cover the word "spunk-water" in Tom Sawyer.  So "spunky" as a male
characteristic or nickname is the equivalent of "sparky" or "firey".
Is it ever interpreted as "full of semen"?  Were women ever spunky? and
if not, was that because in olden times women were expected not to show
fire or because they don't generate semen?

Are there examples in American English of dirty words acquiring a
respectable meaning?  Not in recent days, when the idea of "dirty
words" has become obsolete, of course, but way back when.

In the reverse process, dirty and nice meanings for the words cock and
prick coexisted in English for centuries.  In American English, the
word "rooster" replaced cock -- I have a note of an NYC newspaper
editor in about 1823 using the word "he-biddies" for fighting cocks,
though with a raised eyebrow.  Was it ever usual to call the thorns of
roses pricks?  We discussed here recently the disappearance of the
word "pussy" as a tern for a cat, though I regularly address my cat
as "puss".

Any word that means energy or vigor is likely to come to mean sexual
energy and vigor.  In addition, jazz music was associated with what
seemed at the time to be highly erotic social dancing, where the
dancers pressed their bodies together rather than holding each other at
arms' length.  I posted here some time ago a statement from a late-
1910s family-values creep, with reference to late afternoon dance
parties , that he didn't mind daylight dancing, so long as there was
daylight between the dancers.
In addition, the dancers were left in a state of exhaustion that may
have seemed to be almost post-coital: "Late in the morning [viz., after
midnight] the Jazzers go to work and the dancers hit the floor, to
remain there until they topple over if the band keeps on playing.  It
leaves no question but what they like to dance to that kind of music
and it is "a kind."  If the dancers see someone they know at the
tables, it's common to hear "Oh, boy!" as they roll their eyes while
floating past, and the "Oh, boy!" expression probably describes the
Jazz Band music better than anything else could."  Variety, March 16,
1917.  A article on the Hickman band in Billboard from 1919 says that
with encores his dance arrangements could last a half hour.

I posted here a while ago a statement of my notion that "jazz"
originally referred to the energetic chatter that some baseball players
spout during games.  All that is required is some evidence to elevate
this from a notion into dogma.  It arises from the fact that the very
earliest appearances of the word are connected with baseball and
derives it from the French "jaser" & "jaseur", and would account for
the fact that the earliest appearances mean either energy or nonsense,
since this energetic chatter on a ball field is pretty nonsensical.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
Date: Wednesday, September 7, 2005 8:19 pm
Subject: Re: 1913 "jazz"; was: Terror Dome; Dallas Morning News (1885-
present?)

> A significant assemblage, George.
>
> Gerald Cohen called our attention to the possibility that early
> claims that jazz "originally" referred to sex are subject to
> challenge.  This did not occur to me when I was editing the
> article for HDAS.
>
> Once the music word became popular, editors may have had no qualms
> about printing it because no one could point to a dictionary and
> insist that "jazz" ever had an off-color significance. (I don't
> know how much force this hypothesis carries; really just a SWAG.)
>
> This paragraph contains adult themes. The formal similiarity to
> "jasm," which had both an innocent and a sexual meaning, may be
> the key.  This word may have led a double life among some speakers
> as merely "energy" and among others as "seminal fluid."  The
> second group, not necessarily regionally defined, may have turned
> it into a naughty verb and noun "jazz," which the first may have
> taken up in all innocence. Cf. the *precisely* comparable
> situation today with the word "spunk," which in Britain has become
> a verb meaning "to
> ejaculate."
>
> SWAGes facio cum cogitem, ergo sum.
>
> JL
>
> George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------
> ------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: George Thompson
> Subject: Re: 1913 "jazz"; was: Terror Dome; Dallas Morning News
> (1885-present?)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------
>
> Bill Mullins asks "At what date do citations for "jazz" get
> interesting?"
>
> I have been putting together a strictly chronological list of all
> passages containing "jazz" and jazz-related words, with an index
> to the
> words. Ths sources are OED, HDAS, ADS-L, Gerry's articles in Comments,
> and whatever I have turned up either by searching Proquest, by
> browsingNYC newspapers or by checking the references in the few
> books on early
> jazz that are based on newspaper research rather than oral history,
> autobiographies, &c.
>
> Interesting words are:
> jasbo (jazbo, jazzbo, jazz bo) before Los Angeles Times, August 17,
> 1914. Someone here proposed that "jasbo" was derived from the rustic
> first name "Jasper", then became assimilated to "jazz" and the meaning
> changed from 'blockhead" to "jazz fiend" I like this proposal, and
> must check the archives to see who offered it.
>
> jazz (jass, jaz, jas) has four basic early meanings
> #1 nonsense, foolishness, low comedy: Los Angeles Times, April 2,
> 1912 (This is Ben Henderson's "jazz curve" I posted here a year or so
> ago; if you want an indisputable
> jazz = nonsense, then San Francisco Bulletin, March 3, 1913
> #2 vigor, energy, &c: San Francisco Bulletin, March 6, 1913
> #3 the music: Chicago Daily Tribune, July 11, 1915
> #4 sex: The first indisputable instance is a letter written by John
> Dos Passos, November 11, 1918 and published many years later;
> there are
> a few earlier instances when a situation is said to be "jazzed up" and
> the words "fucked up" could be substituted, but that was likely not
> intended. A novel published in 1917 is the earliest. But any instance
> before 1921 of a writer declaring "jazz" to be an offensive word
> or a
> vulgarity would be interesting. There are several statements from the
> mid-1920s that the word's original meaning was "fornication", by
> peoplewho seemingly might know, but it seems odd that the word was
> printed in
> newspapers in dozens of cities around the country from 1913 and after
> without the editors showing any sense that they were laying themselves
> open to criticism for using a dirty word.
>
> jazz band: Chicago Herald, May 1, 1916
> jazz club: "Spiker 25 Dec. 10/3 1917" (from the OED: presumably a
> limey source -- it would be nice to have an American source)
> jazz dance (dancer, dancing); New York Times, March 8, 1917 (dance)
> jazz hound (or 1 word): Chicago Daily Tribune, October 12, 1917
> jazz man (or 1 word): Amer. Mercury Apr. 392/1 1926 (from the OED -
> -
> probably beatable)
> jazz orchestra: Variety, October 27, 1916
> jazz record: a letter by Hart Crame, written December 5, 1923,
> from the
> OED -- this should be beatable
> jazz singer: Chicago Defender (Nov 4) 1916
> jazzer: Washington Post, April 12, 1896, as the name of one of the
> speakers in a joke -- it is a real though uncommon name; otherwise
> Variety, March 16, 1917, for a person who plays or dotes on jazz
> jazzy: Chicago Daily Tribune, July 11, 1915
>
> Naturally, all these combinations might appear as "jass", though it
> appears that by the end of 1917 the spelling "jazz" had become
> established.
>
> There were a hell of a lot of false positives in Proquest from the
> late19th C. I suspect that the OCR thinks that the name "James" is
> closeenough for jazz.
> By the way, what does Fred know, and when did he know it, about "close
> enough for jazz"?
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mullins, Bill"
> Date: Tuesday, September 6, 2005 3:54 pm
> Subject: Re: 1913 "jazz"; was: Terror Dome; Dallas Morning News
> (1885-
> present?)