the great "cool" debate

[Jonathan Lighter]

None checked OED. None checked HDAS either.

The futility. The futility.

JL

On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 7:34 AM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: the great "cool" debate
>
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>
> Ben Zimmer writes: Why couldn't she [Mollie Garfield] have been impressed
> by her suitor's audacity?
> Perhaps so.  The letter to TLS gives the writer's street address, and I
> will write to ask his source
>
> Victor Steinbok writes: It seems a part of the problem in TLS is that a lot
> of people are
> talking at cross purposes and not really identifying the same item.
> Given the snippets of the review--not having read either the book or
> the review--I have no idea what the reviewer was complaining about as
> being anachronistic.
> I thought I made it clear that the reviewer didn't indicate what sense of
> "cool" he had in mind.  It's also clear that just about all of the likely
> meanings were current in the 1930s and earlier.
>
> As for "people talking at cross purposes":
> The moral of my posting was that mothers shouldn't let their children grow
> up to be lexicographers.  It may bring fame and great wealth, but in the
> end, the electrons their work is printed on will just gather dust, unused.
>  Here we have a discussion pursued in the most widely circulated
> intellectual/literary weekly in the English language -- in 7 of the last 10
> or 11 issues?, I didn't keep score -- and none of the writers checked the
> OED.  If they had, they would have seen that the quotations they submitted,
> though recondite, some of them, illustrate meanings that are well documented
> for centuries.
>
> Actually, until proven otherwise, I'm going to keep on thinking of Mollie
> Garfield as a hip chick on the mellow side.
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Date: Sunday, April 4, 2010 6:45 pm
> Subject: Re: the great "cool" debate
>  To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> > On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 6:04 PM, George Thompson
> > <george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > >        A discussion has been raging since January in the TLS
> > (formerly Times Literary
> > > Supplement) on the history of the "contemporary sense" of the word
> > "cool".  (There's
> > > an antedating here for those who persevere to the end.)
> > [snip]
> > >        Finally, a letter from Allan Peskin contributes something of
> > interest.  "In 1881,
> > > President James A. Garfield's teenage daughter, Mollie, wrote to a
> > friend about her
> > > girlish crush on her father's private secretary, Joseph
> > Stanley-Brown.  "Isn't he cool!
> > > she gushed.  Considering that she would marry him as soon as she
> > came of age,
> > > she could hardly have been using "cool" to convey [impudent]."  This
> > is presumably
> > > OED's 8a (HDAS 2): sophisticated, stylish, which both dictionaries
> > date to 1918 --
> > > HDAS first item from the U. S is 1924.  HDAS's quotations from 1924,
> > 1925 & 1944
> > > are all from black sources; its quotations from 1944 (2nd) and 1945
> > from military
> > > sources.  Mollie must have been a cool chick.
> >
> > We have to take Peskin's word on this, since the only reference I can
> > find to Mollie's letter is in Peskin's own biography of Garfield. We
> > would, of course, want to know the context of Mollie's remark --
> > without any further information, I don't see why this couldn't fall
> > under OED's sense 2d ("assured and unabashed where diffidence and
> > hesitation would be expected; composedly and deliberately audacious or
> > impudent in making a proposal, demand, or assumption," from 1723). Why
> > couldn't she have been impressed by her suitor's audacity?
> >
> >
> > --Ben Zimmer
>  >
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