Missed-point dept. (origin of "Joe" (coffee)

[victor steinbok]

It's not 1911, but Tea and Coffee Trade Journal (1945) has a description:
"Silex is popular Joe pot". I won't bother you with unshortened links since
I am at a borrowed computer at the moment, without my usual settings. There
are a couple of other hits for "Joe pot" (among 145 raw), including 1980
William Manchester's Goodbye, Darkness, and a handful from 1946-9 (including
one that GB incorrectly tags as 1932), then a few more in the 1950s. The
term has been recently resurrected in novels and memoirs--at least,
according to GB. There is an apparently early citation (1943) in The Last
Man on Wake Island, if the publication date is correct. A couple of sources
suggest that "Joe pot" was not just a coffee pot or "coffee urn", but also a
coffee mug or cup, but that seems unlikely. A late Partridge edition cites
Manchester in identifying the source of expression as US sailors in the
Korean War, but that's much too late--it was certainly in use in the Pacific
by the middle of WWII to the point of being "beloved" and "ubiquitous", with
citations identifying sailors, marines, pilots, radio men. There is a GB hit
for Kendall's Dictionary of Service Slang (1944), but no preview.

VS-)

On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 9:20 AM, Gerald Cohen <gcohen at mst.edu> wrote:

>
> Hereąs an earlier one:
>
> 1911 ­ ŚOsgar and Adolfą cartoon by Condo; title: ŚEvery Little Melody Has
> Meaning of Itąs [apostrophe: sic] Owną; _The Tacoma Times_, Feb. 27, 1911,
> p. 4; [misspellings below: sic]
> First frame, Osgar to Adolf: łDiss moosik box shoult make you der orders
> plain, Adolf.  For instance, ven id plays łOld Black Joe˛ id means coffee
> mitoudt cream.  .˛
>
> This is mentioned in the book I co-authored with Barry Popik and David
> Shulman _Origin of the Term łHot Dog˛_, 2004. P. 105.
>
> Gerald Cohen
>

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