Tenny Runners (tennis shoes) (1965)

[hpst@earthlink.net]

JL,

We called them sneakers or sneaks as well along with gym shoes. Those along
with tennies were more generic terms than chucks or keds which referred to
specific brands although they spilled over, especially chucks.

I also recall hearing them called gumshoes although mainly by older people
who also used the term for rubbers or galoshes which we hated to wear since
only a sissy would wear them to school, and quite often the teacher would
have to help you take them off and put them back on, an embarrassment if
there ever was one. It was even worse than being forced to wear a raincoat
to school.

I picked this up online which seems to support my idea that only people of
my grandfather's age -- he was born in 1888 -- used the term when I was
growing up if indeed I have ever grown up which is subject to debate among
those who know me.

This is originally from The Word Detective.

It turns out that the original "gumshoes" of the late 1800's were shoes or
boots made of gum rubber, the soft-soled precursors of our modern
sneakers... At the turn of the century "to gumshoe" meant to sneak around
quietly as if wearing gumshoes, either in order to rob or, conversely, to
catch thieves. "Gumshoe man" was originally slang for a thief, but by about
1908 "gumshoe" usually meant a police detective, as it has ever since.

Then there is Gummo Marx. (from the Wikipedia)

He was given his nickname because he had a tendency to be sneaky backstage,
and creep up on others without them knowing (like a gumshoe). Another
explanation cited by biographers and family members is that Milton, being
the sickliest of the brothers, often wore rubber overshoes, also called
"gumshoes," to protect himself from taking sick in inclement weather.

Take your choice but again it points to era in which the terms were common
and the reason I might have heard them as a kid.

And yes, in terms of another upload I do remember hightops, but hey :-) I
can only remember so many terms we used for the damned things at once which
brings up another topic for discussion.

Does anyone know of any other article of apparel which has so many
different terms applied to it?

Page Stephens

> [Original Message]
> From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: 9/22/2006 11:08:34 AM
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Tenny Runners (tennis shoes) (1965)
>
> The only terms I recall hearing in NYC in the '50s were "sneakers"
(mostly for the low-quarters but applicable to either), "tennis shoes"
(low-quarters only), and "gym shoes" (almost exclusively the
high-quarters). "Basketball shoes" may have been in use for the "hightops"
(is that a recent coinage?) but I'm not sure.
>
>   US Keds were the prestige brand, but PF Flyers had their aficionados
too.
>
>   There was a superstition, supposedly based on some weird parental
injunction, that if you wore sneakers too often, your eyesight would
deteriorate, eventually to the point of blindness "because of the rubber in
the soles."  The hightops had thicker soles and were therefore more
dangerous and "macho" (another unknown word at the time: there was no
concise synonym).
>
>   I will leave to more experienced Freudians the explication of all that.
>
>   JL

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org