"tarrel" in Hammett?

[Jonathan Lighter]

I'd be surprised if Hammett, a former Pinkerton op (1915-21), needed to
rely on Matsell.

JL

On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 9:39 AM, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "tarrel" in Hammett?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Ah, yes indeed. Thanks. Matsell defines it in plural, so that
> explains why I didn't find it in a Google Books search; silly
> of me not to think of this. And to have not checked _DU_.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
> OED
>
> On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 02:30:26PM +0100, Robin Hamilton wrote:
> > Hammett (or his English protagonist) had been reading George Matsell's
> > _Vocabulum_ (1859) where a "tarrel" is defined as 'a skeleton key'.
> >
> > Matsell is the only citation given in Partridge, _Dictionary of the
> > Underworld_ (1950 ed.), so it probably wasn't a very common term.
>  Partridge
> > has it as obsolete by 1900, but if he found it anywhere other than in
> > Matsell, he fails to indicate this.  I suspect the "obsolete by 1900" is
> > simply a guess or inference on Patridge's part.
> >
> > Robin
> >
> >> In Dashiell Hammett's 1924 story "The Golden Horseshoe," first
> >> published in _Black Mask_, a character (an Englishman) says:
> >>
> >>  The hotel-sneak used to be my lay... I was rather good at it.
> >>  I had the proper manner--the front. I could do the gentleman
> >>  without sweating over it, you know.... I had a rather
> >>  successful tour on my first American voyage. I visited most of
> >>  the better hotels between New York and Seattle, and profited
> >>  nicely. Then, one night in a Seattle hotel, I worked the
> >>  tarrel and put myself into a room on the fourth floor. I had
> >>  hardly closed the door behind me before another key was
> >>  rattling in it....
> >>
> >> Perhaps I'm missing an obvious dialect spelling or something,
> >> but what is _tarrel_ in this passage? I can't find another
> >> example of it anywhere, and it's not in the notes of the
> >> Library of America edition of Hammett's stories.
> >>
> >> Thanks.
> >>
> >> Jesse Sheidlower
> >> OED
> >
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