"salting"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Characteristically American and another antedating bonanza.

JL

On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 5:08 PM, 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:      "salting"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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."
> >
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-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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