Early Citations for "Cool"

[Wilson Gray]

Thank you for your clarifying response, Ben. In the course of my life,
I've come to know quite well two Jerseyites, a woman from Paterson -
BTW, did you know that Paterson Falls is second only to Niagara Falls
in some feature that I've unfortuately forgotten? - and a guy from
Trenton. She speaks with what I would, in my ignorance, classify as a
New York accent, whereas the guy speaks what sounds to me like
ordinary English. Of course, I'm talking about the '60's, so I don't
consider my naive impressions from forty years ago to be valid today.
I just thought I'd throw them in as an FWIW. BTW, both speakers are
white.

-Wilson


On 9/29/05, 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 Thu, 29 Sep 2005 00:14:33 -0400, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
> >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.
>
> You're reading far too much into my use of the word "peculiar". I found it
> peculiar not on any prescriptive grounds but because a) this is the *only*
> construction in which Hurston used "cool" in a way that didn't have to do
> with temperature or self-control (based on an exhaustive search of her
> works), and b) I haven't seen a single citation for "what make it so cool"
> from any of Hurston's contemporaries. So I simply meant that it's peculiar
> *to Hurston*, at least in the pre-WWII era.
>
> >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.
>
> I don't doubt that she wrote "what make it so cool" because that's what
> she heard in her travels. Hurston was a careful ethnographer when
> recording the Floridian folklore of _Mules and Men_, and the dialogue in
> her short stories and plays is no doubt based on natural AAVE
> conversation. But I still find it odd that her use of "cool" in this
> particular way (possibly continuous with the earlier "audacious" sense
> and/or the later "excellent" sense) *only* appears in this particular
> cleft construction, and not in anyone else's writings of the time.
>
> >BTW, where did you learn your (native?) dialect of English?
>
> Exotic west-central New Jersey. (Native speaker, mother from Michigan,
> father from northern New Jersey.)  As I've mentioned previously, I grew up
> in the part of NJ that lacks the "short-a split", sandwiched between the
> short-a-splitting NYC and Mid-Atlantic regions.
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>


--
-Wilson Gray