antedating (?) of "hep" 1907 (Hip and hep)

Sat Sep 6 19:09:19 UTC 2008

"The Amboy Dukes"?! I saw that movie, too! I found it bleeping
riveting! It changed my entire perception of the Greater New York City
Metropolitan Area and made me satisfied with just seeing pictures of
the Empire State Building.

Of course, today's street gangs would die laughing at zip guns, clubs,
and bicycle chains.

-Wilson

On Sat, Sep 6, 2008 at 6:58 AM, Paul <paulzjoh at mtnhome.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul <paulzjoh at MTNHOME.COM>
> Subject:      Re: antedating (?) of "hep" 1907 (Hip and hep)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> paul johnson wrote:
> That's the shoe!  First made popular to me by "The Amboy Dukes" by
> Irving Shulman. (Boy I thought they were hep)
>  Good looking and made for street fighting.
> To be honest, anything south of Joliet was Terra Incognito to us back
> then, then i met this girl and......
> Wilson Gray wrote:
>> "Brogans"? What style of shoe was that? 'Cause, as it says on Bo
>> Diddley's jam, _Hey, Man_, "Them ain't no shoes. Them brogans!"
>> [brog&nz] or _bro-gans_, by which was meant "workshoes."
>>
>> There was a kind of big, heavy, but cool dress-shoe - usually wingtips
>> with outside welt and double-stitched soles noticeably wider than the
>> shoes' uppers - called "floats," originally a nickname for
>> Florsheim's, popular in Saint Louis, Missouri. (Back in the day,
>> Chicagoans would ask you where you were from. If you answered merely
>> "Saint Louis," Chicagoans would then ask, "Illinois or Missouri?",
>> though they knew damned well that it's *East*..., known merely as
>> "East Side" to Saint Louisans, that's in Illinois. They just liked to
>> mess with us hix from the stix. From the POV of black Louietowners,
>> Chicago was "The City.") These were worn with the Mister B collar and
>> the one-button roll.
>>
>> Anyway, does that sound like what you mean by "brogans"?
>>
>> -Wilson
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 6:13 PM, Paul <paulzjoh at mtnhome.com> wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Paul <paulzjoh at MTNHOME.COM>
>>> Subject:      Re: antedating (?) of "hep" 1907 (Hip and hep)
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> paul johnson wrote
>>>  paulzjoh at mtnhome.com
>>>
>>> hip vs hep
>>> In my misspent (happily, I may add) youth when I had a grey flannel one
>>> button roll, a black Mr B collar, Flagg Bros Brogans, a key chain 3/4 of
>>> the way to my knees, two inch cuffs, and a charcoal porkpie, I clearly
>>> remember the shift in Chicago from Hep to hip at about 1948 to 50. You
>>> were a hepcat in the '40's and had morphed into a hipster by '52 at the
>>> latest.
>>>
>>> George Thompson wrote:
>>>
>>>> [The  Actor's Boarding House and Other Stories, By Helen Green] was
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> published in 1907 but it says that the stories have all appreared in (NY?)
>>>>> Morning Telegraph (in 1906?).
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Yes, a New York paper.  I'm the world's foremost authority on Helen Green, and some years ago I tried to find a file of the Telegraph for the years she wrote for it (1905-1910 or thereabouts), but didn't succeed.  As I recall, the NYPL had it up to 1905, and after 1910.  It could be a good source for slang, since it devoted itself to the raffish elements of NYC culture.
>>>> In its later decades, it was strictly a horse-player's organ, and was bought out and killed by the still-extant Racing Form in the 1950s.  But the Form doesn't have a file of the Telegraph from before the 1930s.
>>>> Not to be confused with the NY Telegram, by the way.
>>>>
>>>> If SG has actually read The Actors' Boarding House, I will buy him a beer, should we ever meet.  We Helen Green fans are a small group, but intensely collegial.
>>>>
>>>> GAT
>>>>
>>>> George A. Thompson
>>>> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
>>>> Date: Friday, September 5, 2008 11:32 am
>>>> Subject: Re: antedating (?) of "hep" 1907
>>>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Quoting Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, Sep 05, 2008 at 08:34:47AM -0400, Stephen Goranson wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> OED has 1908 for slang "hep" {and a 1941 "Joe Hep" mention) and 1904
>>>>>>> for "hip."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> At the Actor's Boarding House and Other Stories, By Helen Green (NY:
>>>>>>> Brentano's.
>>>>>>> 1907).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> p. 31 "I'm hep," said Terence, briefly, feeling in his pocket for
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>> the short
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>> billy which had won him so many scraps over on "the Avenoo."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> HDAS cites this example from Green, along with four or more
>>>>>> earlier examples of _hep_ (depending on how you regard the
>>>>>> dating of this and other books).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Jesse Sheidlower
>>>>>> OED
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, thanks, I should have checked there. Now that I have, it still
>>>>> appears that
>>>>> the collocation Joe Hep in this sense may be an antedating. The book was
>>>>> published in 1907 but it says that the stories have all appreared in (NY?)
>>>>> Morning Telegraph (in 1906?).
>>>>>
>>>>> Stephen
>>>>>
>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>>>>>
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>>>>
>>> --
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>>> And an eel bites your knee
>>>   That's a moray!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> .
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>> -----
>> -Mark Twain
>>
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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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>
> --
> When you swim in the sea
> And an eel bites your knee
>   That's a moray!
>
>
>
> .
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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