_hep_ vs. _hip_, trivially revisited

[Jonathan Lighter]

IIRC, a presumed (and almost certainly erroneous) derivation of "hep"
from "Hep!" was suggested in Berrey & Van den Bark's _American
Thesaurus of Slang_, 2nd ed., 1953.

JL

On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 6:21 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: _hep_ vs. _hip_, trivially revisited
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 8:41 AM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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 didn't mean to imply that I, by any means, doubt the (former?)
> existence of this usage. As usual, I forgot that there are some people
> who lack the ability to read my mind. In '59, I was, coincidentally,
> on active duty in The War and, at that time, according to both The
> Soldier's Guide and my personal experience, the sound to be used was
> _HUT!_. If a contemporary piece of music uses, instead, _HEP!_, in the
> relevant environment, then it's a reasonable assumption, IMO, that the
> former is a neologism and the storied latter is an older form that the
> singer was familiar with from hearing WWII veterans et sim. of his
> acquaintance speak of it or even from personal experience. In those
> days, it was no big deal for *any* random male of the right age to
> have had military or even combat experience.
>
> Guys didn't merely *tell* war stories. Rather, they *exchanged* war stories.
>
> It's certainly the case that *I* have never heard _hep_ used in
> calling the cadence, but, WTF?
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> Soldiers were still wearing insignia and other elements of dress from
> WWII and we were still eating C-rations from that era. Why couldn't it
> be the case that, somewhere, some field first sergeant wasn't still
> using the old way of calling cadence?
>
> I didn't - and haven't, even yet - checked HDAS. But I included the
> info WRT to the record, just in case that it might have some
> nanovalue, the record's title being a pun that its hearers, in 1959,
> were clearly expected to understand immediately.
> --
> -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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