the great "cool" debate

[Jonathan Lighter]

Nice work, Ben.

JL

On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 11:27 PM, Benjamin Zimmer <
bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: the great "cool" debate
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> My latest On Language column is on the TLS "cool" debate:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/magazine/30FOB-onlanguage-t.html
>
> Many thanks to George Thompson and the other participants in the ADS-L
> thread for the inspiration.
>
> You can also catch me rambling about "cool" on WNYC's "The Brian Lehrer
> Show":
>
> http://beta.wnyc.org/shows/bl/2010/may/27/word-play/
>
> And there's even more on "cool" in my latest Word Routes column:
>
> http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2295/
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
> On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 6:34 PM, Benjamin Zimmer
> <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> >
>  > 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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