cool

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 2/15/07, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com> wrote (in
unreadable HTML):
>
> On September 28, 2005, Ben Zimmer in a thread on the jazz sense of "cool" wrote:
> > "Cool" hit the mainstream c. 1952, when white teenagers across the country
> > started using the word.
[snip]
>
> I found a possibly related sense of "cool" from 1861:
> Charles Dickens _Great Expectations_  published as a serial December 1, 1860
> through August 3, 1861
> Chapter 57
> <quote>
> [Joe says to Pip, who is the narrator] "<snip>But she had wrote out a little coddleshell
>  in her own hand a day or two afore the accident, leaving a cool four thousand to Mr.
> Matthew Pocket.  And why, do you suppose, above all things, Pip, she left that cool
> four thousand unto him?  'Because of Pip's account of him the said Matthew.' <snip>
> And a cool four thousand, Pip!"
>  I never discoverd from whom Joe derived the conventional temperature of the four
>  thousand pounds, but it appeared to make the sum of money more to him, and he
> had a manifest relish in insisting on its being cool.
</quote>

Don't think this is directly related to the later jazz sense of
"cool", but it may have been one of several contributing factors. See
sense 7 in the latest OED entry, which includes the Dickens citation
as well as others back to 1728:

-----
    7. colloq. Applied to a large sum of money.
  [Of doubtful origin: perhaps originally 'deliberately or calmly
counted, reckoned, or told', and hence 'all told,' 'entire', 'whole';
but it became a mere phrase, helping to contribute emphasis or reality
to the amount.]
1728 J. VANBRUGH & C. CIBBER Provok'd Husband II. i. 31, I just made a
couple of Betts with him, took up a cool hundred and so went to the
King's Arms. 1749 H. FIELDING Tom Jones III. VIII. xii. 263 He had
lost a cool hundred, and would play no longer. 1771 T. SMOLLETT
Humphry Clinker (1815) 201 My table alone stands me in a cool thousand
a quarter. 1844 B. DISRAELI Coningsby II. IV. v. 54 Lord Monmouth had
the satisfaction of drawing the Whig Minister at Naples into a cool
thousand on the event. 1861 DICKENS Great Expectations III. xviii. 303
She left that cool four thousand unto him. 1870 'W. BRADWOOD' The
O.V.H. 264 To save me a cool seven hundred a year.
-----


--Ben Zimmer

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