"fork *up*" (July 1837), and other slang

[Jonathan Lighter]

No. Because the dictionaries and thesauruses you use (I assume) are the
carefully edited kind that don't include ghost words, irresponsible
definitions, and all sorts of other errors. Furthermore, they assure you
(generally on the basis of evidence) that unless so noted, the words you're
using are not obsolete, archaic, or ultra-rare.

The phony use that Robin refers to is that of picking bizarre words from
crummily edited cant dictionaries (which are in no small part plagiarized
from earlier ones) and repeating them, sometimes with distortions, and often
with the imputation that they're current and used by everybody, or at least
everybody in the red-light district.

Here's a fabulous, unnoticed ex. In 2001 the A&E Network presented an
otherwise competent docudrama called _The Lost Battalion_, concerning a
(once) famous incident during the Meuse-Argonne offensive of 1918.  The
writer, James Carabatsos, had apparently gotten his hands on a copy of
Matsell or perhaps the _Slang Dictionary of New York, London, and Paris_
and, in an access of misinspiration,  has one of his "Bowery boy" characters
(in the Leo Gorcey sense)  spouting terms like "Daisyville' in the U.S. army
in 1918.  My flesh crawled more than most.

Judith Robertson has addressed cant plagiarizing in a 2004 article here:


http://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/12717a946757a6ee

and Julie Coleman inescapably devotes much of her _History of Cant and Slang
Dictionaries_ on the subject.

JL


On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "fork *up*" (July 1837), and other slang
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 2/28/2010 10:21 PM, Robin Hamilton wrote:
> >>"tip us the rhino" -- Not in OED as
> >>phrase.  rhino 1.  "Money. (Often ready rhino.)".  1688 and thereafter.
> >
> >Rhino for money first comes in recorded in Thomas Shadwell's _Squire of
> >Alsatia_ (presumably the 1688 reference).
>
> Yes.  "The Ready, the Rhino; thou shalt be rhinocerical, my Lad."
>
> >"Tip" would I'd guess be a bit
> >later, meaning "give".  But there would be an overlap in time when the two
> >terms would be used.
> >
> >Actually, I'm wrong on "tip", come to think of it -- it comes into "Of the
> >Budge" (often miscalled "The Budg and Snudge Song") about 1673 --
> >
> >... But
> >somehow "tip us the rhino" doesn't quite ring true.  "Tip us the ready" I
> >could live with, but while "tip" is definitely actual late 17thC+ cant,
> >widely attested, "rhino" always sounds a little literary to me.
>
> Does "rhinocerical" not sound literary to you?  :-)
>
>
> >>"post the poney" -- OED 1819 [not 17898], s.v.
> >>post, v.4:  J. H. VAUX New Vocab. Flash Lang. in
> >>Mem., Post or post the poney, to stake, or lay
> >>down the money.  [No other quotations.]
> >
> >I wouldn't put this past being something made up by the execrable Vaux.
> >Sounds like a variant of "pony up", meaning to hand over money or pay a
> debt
> >or reckoning.
>
> I forgot to look for "post the pony" without the "e".  The OED has --
> s.v. nap, v.3 -- "1828 'W. T. MONCRIEFF' Tom & Jerry I. 20 Blunt, my
> dear boy, is..to be able to flash the screens---sport the
> rhino---shew the needful---post the pony{em}nap the rent."
>
> So here, "sport" replaces "tip", and we have two additional phrases:
>
> "shew the needful" --  "needful adj.1 and n.":  "3. With the. ... b.
> colloq. The necessary funds; money, cash."  From a1777.
>
> "nap the rent" --  "rent", n.1, sense 2.d.a:  "(a) Money, cash, esp.
> that acquired by criminal activity or in exchange for homosexual
> favours."  From 1823.  "nap" probably v.3, sense 1, "To seize, catch;
> to arrest; to steal."  From 1665.
>
> >But the whole set of examples, if they date from 1920,
>
> They date, as I wrote, from 1837.  The issue number is 1921.
>
> >reads like a melange
> >of slang and cant garnered from various periods and almost certainly
> books.
> >Deeply phoney.
>
> Robin, why do you say "phoney"?  Because someone read the words in
> cant dictionaries and used them in a paragraph?  I often look for
> words in a dictionary (actually, first in a thesaurus), and then use
> them.  Does that make my use "phoney"?
>
> Joel
>
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