Another dating for positive "uptight," if anyone cares

[Wilson Gray]

I don't know "up tight" in the meaning, "strait-laced." It could be
that it was peculiar to New York, an option that I should have
immediately considered.

FWIW, in Saint Louis, back then, Hart, Schaffner & Marx was considered
to be the epitome of hip, middle-class dress, probably because Brooks
Bros. had no shop in Saint Louis, though the company condescended to
have a shop in <choke!> Kansas City.

-Wilson

On 2/2/08, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Another dating for positive "uptight," if anyone cares
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Feb 2, 2008 10:38 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Feb 2, 2008 6:19 PM, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > > What do you suppose "up( )tight" meant to Ammons et al. in 1961? In a
> > > jazz lexicon published in the June 25, 1961 New York Times Sunday
> > > Magazine ("The Words for the Music", p. 39), Elliot Horne defined "up
> > > tight" as "the Brooks Brothers manner of dressing." So did the
> > > approbation originally apply to clothing before being extended to
> > > other excellent things (as in Stevie Wonder's 1966 usage)?
> >
> > I don't think that's approbative. Brooks Brothers was the very emblem and
> > summit of straight (= unhip) / corporate / office style. Look at the song
> > "I'll Know" from Guys and Dolls [opened November 24, 1950 -- Wikipedia].
> > True, that was 1940s gamblers, per Damon Runyon and Frank Loesser, not 1960s
> > jazz, but that Horne cite can't be taken as approbative without further
> > evidence.
>
> So then "the Brooks Brothers manner of dressing" would, from the
> hipster's perspective, be more along the lines of OED sense 1b,
> "characteristically formal in manner or style; correct, strait-laced."
> It's interesting that these various senses of "uptight"
> ('excellent'/'tense'/'strait-laced') were apparently all in the mix
> early on. (That is, if 1961 counts as "early on" -- I continue to
> discount the _Postman Always Rings Twice_ cite as an irrelevant
> outlier.)
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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