Early Citations for "Cool"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 16:55:29 -0400, Fred Shapiro wrote:

>The BBC WordHunt program has asked me about early citations for the
>jazz-related slang sense of "cool," specifically they want to know about
>pre-1948 citations plus any U.S. newspaper citations of the term before
>1960.  Can anyone supply any such citations beyond what is listed in
>HDAS?

HDAS includes a 1935 cite from Zora Neale Hurston, but I'm not so sure
it's continuous with the post-WWII jazz-related sense. Hurston favored the
peculiar cleft construction "what make it so cool" in a number of her
works, both fictional and ethnographic, from 1933 to 1943:

  And whut make it so cool, he got money 'cumulated.
  -- "The Gilded Six-Bits" (Story Magazine, 1933)

  De best in de State, and whut make it so cool, he's de
  bes' lookin'.
  -- _Jonah's Gourd Vine_ (1934)

  Man, by the time he's ten years old I'be be shame to play
  in front of him. And what make it so cool, he's going to
  look just like me.
  -- _Spunk_ (1935)

  "Got yo' guitar wid you, Johnnie?"
  "Man, you know Ah don't go nowhere unless Ah take my
  box wid me," said Johnnie in his starched blue shirt,
  collar pin with heart bangles hanging on each end and
  his cream pants with the black stripe. "And what make
  it so cool, Ah don't go nowhere unless I play it."
  -- _Mules and Men_ (1935)

  "Now me, wouldn't let you fix me no breakfus'. Ah git up
  and fix malt own and den, whut make it so cool, Ah'd fix
  you some and set it on de back of de cook-stove so you
  could git it when yo' wake up.
  -- _Mules and Men_ (1935)

  "Why you say dat? Ain't I got de prettiest wife in de
  world. And what make it so cool, she's de sweetest wife
  God ever made."
  -- _Mules and Men_ (1935)

  "Y'all lady people ain't smarter than all men folks. You
  got plow lines on some of us, but some of us is too smart
  for, you. We go past you jus' like lightnin' thru de
  trees," Willie Sewell boasted. "And what make it so cool,
  we close enough to You to have a scronchous time, but
  never no halter on our necks. Ah know they won't git none
  on dis last neck of mine."
  -- _Mules and Men_ (1935)

  "He was top-superior to the whole mess of sorrow. He
  could beat it all, and what made it so cool, finish it
  off with a laugh."
  -- "High John the Conqueror" (1943)

Based on context, it seems possible that Hurston's "what make it so cool"
meant something like "what makes the thing I'm talking about especially
audacious", connected to the older sense of "cool" found in HDAS def 1. I
think it's significant that Hurston didn't include "cool" in her glossary
of "Harlem Slanguage" (in _The Complete Stories_), though she does have
"cold" as an intensifying adverb.

According to those present at the creation, the jazz sense of "cool" was
first used by Lester "Pres" Young, probably in the early '40s. See, e.g.,
_Birth Of The Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant Garde_ (searchable
on Amazon), by Lewis MacAdams:

        In the documentary _Song of the Spirit_, a Young
        biographer, Douglas H. Daniels, claims that Young
        coined the phrase "that's cool."  Jackie McLean, the
        great bop alto player, agrees: "Anyone who tells you
        otherwise is bullshitting," he warned me.  "Lester
        Young was the first."


--Ben Zimmer