[Ads-l] "the skinny" redux

[Ben Zimmer]

Back in 2019, Stephen Goranson started a thread on "the skinny" =
"information, news, gossip," noting that "skinny" was US Naval Academy
slang for the physics and chemistry department.

https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2019-August/155333.html

Stephen gave various examples from Lucky Bag, the Naval Academy's yearbook,
but didn't include this one:

---
https://archive.org/details/luckybag1932unse/page/142/mode/1up?q=skinny
Lucky Bag, 1932, p. 142
[Student bio of Harold Edward Baker]
If you don't get the skinny of things, Eddie can usually set you right.
---

This cite is mentioned in a Grammarphobia post by Patricia T. O'Conner and
Stewart Kellerman. The entry was originally posted on Grammarphobia in Jan.
2011 but was updated in June 2021.

https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2011/01/skinny-2.html

As Pat and Stewart suggest, this appears to be the earliest known cite for
"the skinny" in the informational sense, antedating the 1938 example given
by JL later in the 2019 thread (see below). The 1938 cite has also been
added to the OED's online entry.

--bgz

On Sun, Sep 15, 2019 at 5:54 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The earliest discovered exx. of "the skinny," acc. to HDAS, appear in the
> adventure memoir, _The Rolling World_ (Boston: Houghton, 1938), by Richard
> [Matthews] Hallet.  Hallet (1887-1967), from Boothbay Harbor, Maine, had
> two degrees from Harvard when in 1912 he decided to ditch his law career
> and go to sea.  His book mainly covers the period of 1912 to about 1932 and
> recounts as well time he spent in Australia and Arizona.
>
> Hallet uses "the skinny" at least twice, in a book published decades before
> the term went mainstream. It seems significant, however, that the word is
> neither defined nor placed within quotes:
>
> P. 287:  "But the elfin corners of Lehua's mouth suggested her gift of
> improvisation. Had she really given me the skinny of an actual legend from
> the archives of her race, or was she wafting me the native poetry of her
> soul?
>
> P. 332:  "We lit our pipes.  I gave him the skinny of a yarn I had written
> of this western country. It was called 'The Snap of the Cap,' and had to do
> with a man who had fallen in love with a girl out here somewhere in these
> mountains."
>
> What may also be significant is that both exx. are "assigned" to the period
> after 1928, when Hallet accompanied Navy Secretary Curtis Wilbur to Pearl
> Harbor in the battleship _California_. (He met "Lehua" on Oahu.) It is thus
> possible that Hallet picked up a word that already had notable currency in
> the Navy, or at least in _California_.  That could explain the absence of
> definition or quotation marks.
>
> But so could a lot of things.
>
> The ex. on p. 287 is easily interpreted as "the real truth," as is now
> common, but the second ex. is not; there "the skinny" seems to mean, more
> precisely, the (bare?) basic facts.  Get it? "Skin-ny."   (Don't blame me;
> I didn't make the usage up.)
>
> Of course, the pre-existing naval currency of "Skinny"  at Annapolis as
> "physics and chemistry" ("hard sciences" as Stephen observes) wouldn't have
> hurt the rise of the new meaning.
>
> JL
>
> On Sun, Sep 15, 2019 at 3:54 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > The earliest discovered exx. of "the skinny," acc. to HDAS, appear in the
> > memoir, _The Rolling World_ (Boston:
> >
> > On Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 5:50 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <
> > adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>  Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >> > Garson,  that seems to be the glossary appearing in Lee's "Fag-Ends."
> >> >
> >> > The book's pub date is 1878, but the copyright is 1877.
> >> >
> >> > Significantly, even if P. J. Dashiell was still in school in 1877, Lee
> >> > alludes to a professor nicknamed "Skinny" on p. 41.
> >>
> >> Here are some links into HathiTrust plus a Google Books link
> >>
> >> Fag-Ends From the Naval Academy
> >> https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015016768346
> >>
> >> The Last Section - Page 41
> >> https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015016768346?urlappend=%3Bseq=95
> >>
> >> A Dictionary (Second page of dictionary which lists skinny) - Page 99
> >> https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015016768346?urlappend=%3Bseq=215
> >>
> >> Fag-Ends From the Naval Academy
> >> https://books.google.com/books?id=NtExAQAAMAAJ&
> >>
>

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