_hep_ vs. _hip_, trivially revisited

[Jonathan Lighter]

I don't have a cite to hand, but "Hep! Hep! Hep!" was indeed in use in
the U.S. (at least so spelled in print) during World War I. (I can't
say that I've ever seen it in British writing.)

It seems plausible because it's obviously a reduced form of "Left!
Left! Left!"  It presumably antedates 1918.

I became familiar with "Hep two three four!" as a kid - possibly from
watching _You'll Never Get Rich_, starring Phil Silvers as Sgt. Ernie
Bilko, who would fit right into Congress today.


JL

On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 10:26 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      _hep_ vs. _hip_, trivially revisited
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "Hep 2-3-4"
>
> A rockabilly side recorded by George Manis and released in 1959 on the
> Eclaire label.
>
> It's probably not a bridge too far to assert that this title is, at
> some level, evidence for the claim of the one-time existence of
> "_Hep_! Two! Three! Four!" as a form of the military dismounted-drill
> cadence-count, with whose existence I am familiar only from a post to
> this listserv.
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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