Early Citations for "Cool"

[Wilson Gray]

Ben, WRT "... the peculiar cleft construction 'what make it so cool'
...," what makes this construction so "peculiar" to you? I've used it
and its congeners just about since I've been able to speak what I
thought was English. Yet, somehow, the peculiarity of it has escaped
my notice over all these years. Apparently, my command of prescriptive
English is far less than I've flattered myself that it is. And I
seriously doubt that Hurston "favored" this construction. Rather, she
merely wrote what she heard in her day and which I continue to hear
and use in my day. I simply can not see anything about this
construction that would make it sound "peculiar" to a speaker of any
other dialect of English. OTH, I was shocked back in 1960 to discover
that no other person in my company of approximately 400 GI's, 99.44%
white, at the old Army Language School, had ever heard the expression
"fuck over
[someone] (not to be confused with the far later "fuck [someone]
over." Now, that's aa peculiar construction!

BTW, where did you learn your (native?) dialect of English?

-Wilson

On 9/28/05, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at rci.rutgers.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Early Citations for "Cool"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>


--
-Wilson Gray