1909 use of slang "cool"?

[Grant Barrett]

On his blog David Black asks the question, "Is this an early use of
the slang 'cool'?" It's a 1909 use that looks fairly solid. The
writing style of the book is loose and slangy, the main characters are
young men and women, the subject matter is partly criminal, partly
social, partly mysterious.

Black's post:

http://dablog.rubypal.com/2009/3/21/is-this-an-early-use-of-the-slang-cool

Below I quote his post in full. He gives 1906 as the date, but the
earliest in the Library of Congress or elsewhere is 1909.

> Here’s a passage from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart,
> published in 1906. I’ve included some context but the main thing I’m
> interested in is the appearance of the word “cool” in the second
> paragraph.
>
>>     “Nonsense,” he said. “Bring yourself. The lady that keeps my
>> boarding-house is calling to me to insist. You remember Dorothy,
>> don’t you, Dorothy Browne? She says unless you have lost your
>> figure you can wear my clothes all right. All you need here is a
>> bathing suit for daytime and a dinner coat for evening.”
>>
>>     “It sounds cool,” I temporized. “If you are sure I won’t put
>> you out--very well, Sam, since you and your wife are good enough. I
>> have a couple of days free. Give my love to Dorothy until I can do
>> it myself.”
>
> I can’t see what “cool” means in the second paragraph, other than
> “cool” in the slang sense that we use it. My understanding is that
> “cool” in that sense started, or at least came into common usage,
> during or after World War II. In any case, 1906 seems insanely early
> for it.
>
> But what else could it mean in the quotation above? The wardrobe
> described in the first paragraph doesn’t suggest a particularly cool
> climate. Is there some other nuance of the word I’m not getting?

I suspect this is more likely to fall under the sense defined by Jon
Lighter as "insolent, impudent, unabashed; daring," which HDAS dates
to 1825 (and which roughly corresponds in OED to cool adj. sense 2d,
dated to 1723 in the March 2009 draft revision), rather than under the
sense "superlative, exciting, enjoyable; satisfactory, acceptable,"
which seems to be the sense that Black believes it falls under, dated
to 1933 by both HDAS (sense 3a) and OED (senses 8b and 8c).

The Rinehart book can be found in full here:

http://tinyurl.com/d8ngdt
http://www.classicreader.com/book/724/27/

A summary is here:

http://greatpenformances.wordpress.com/2009/03/04/the-man-in-lower-ten/

Thanks to Erin McKean for bringing David's post to my attention.

Grant Barrett
gbarrett at worldnewyork.org

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