"salting"

[George Thompson]

My many fans will be disappointed to find that there is nothing at all indecent about this posting.

Salting. -- A new and unprecedented scheme to knavery has been invented in the gold regions of the South. . . .  It consists of sprinkling judiciously a few penny weights of gold in places which have all other signs of containing the precious metal, except the gold itself.  When the lucky spot is pointed out to the gold hunter, and it is "panned" as the term goes, particles of gold salted in a proper way [are found].  ***
Morning Courier & New-York Enquirer, October 17, 1832, p. 2, col. 3  [The end of the last sentence quoted is garbled beyond explication.  The article concludes with an instance of a man who paid heavily for land that had been salted, and after more than a year's effort, had found only a few dollars worth of gold.]

"salting", vbl noun:
1856 Santa Barbara (Calif.) Gaz. 21 Feb. 2/5 The best yield I have seen is eighteen cents to the pan, and this was without any ‘salting’. 1869 ‘MARK TWAIN’ Lett. (1917) I. 164 When it was discovered that those lumps were melted half dollars and hardly melted at that, a painful case of ‘salting’ was apparent.
"salt", verb #1:
9. Mining slang. To make (a mine) appear to be a paying one by fraudulently introducing rich ore, etc., into it, sprinkling gold dust in it, etc. Also transf. and fig.
1852 in Pioneer (San Francisco) (1855) Mar. 146 The quicksilver which was procured at the Ranch, for the testing of the quartz, the victims declared was ‘salted’; and they accused the Rancheros of conniving at the fraud.

And, as a bonus:
"pan", verb #3
2. orig. U.S.
 a. trans. To wash (gold-bearing gravel, sand, etc.) in a pan, in order to separate the gold; to separate (gold) from gravel, etc., by washing in a pan. Originally with out, now freq. with off.
1839 Amer. Railroad Jrnl. 8 99 Old machines are invariably burnt up, and the ashes ‘panned out’ for the fine gold that has lodged in the joints of the wood.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
Date: Friday, September 10, 2010 1:03 pm
Subject: gamesmanship = 'sportsmanship'
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> 2002 Ruth Glancy _Thematic Guide to British Poetry_ (Westport, Conn.:
> Greenwood Press) 265: The famous old expression that the Battle of Waterloo
> was won on the playing fields of Eton summed up the long-held belief that
> the principles of gamesmanship and good manners taught in the schools
> of
> young gentlemen were all that were needed to defeat the barbarous enemy.
>
> The association of "gamesmanship" with "good manners" and "young gentlemen"
> in opposition to the "barbarous enemy,"  as well as the general
> context of
> the passage, scotches the idea that what's meant is the usual sense of
> "gamesmanship."
>
> In 2002  Prof. Glancy was Associate Professor of English at Concordia
> University in Alberta.
>
> JL
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org