[Ads-l] Slight Antedating of "PIzzazz"

[Dan Goncharoff]

It strikes me that pizzazz went from fritz to glitz.

I wonder what vaudevillians we're doing with these words in their routines.

On Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 12:03 PM Peter Reitan <pjreitan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> A clothing in the Indianapolis Star of March 3, 1937, page 6, mentinos
> that a certain coat has “that indefinable dynamic quality which the Harvard
> Lampoon calls ‘pizazz.’”
>
> A magician in the late-1890s had an assistant he called “Pizzazzes.”  St.
> Paul Globe, Janury 17, 1898, page 4.
>
> Also, the word “pazaza” had a long run, beginning in the early 1900s.
> Used in a variety of ways, sometimes a fake name of a fake thing, sometimes
> a placeholder name for something funny, sometimes the name of an exotic
> location, sometimes the name of a club.  It still appeared into the 1930s.
>
> “On the pazzaz” seems to have meant the same as “on the blink”, from as
> early as 1907.
>
> Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows
>
> From: Ben Zimmer<mailto:bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
> Sent: Monday, September 12, 2022 12:34 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU<mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Slight Antedating of "PIzzazz"
>
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Slight Antedating of "PIzzazz"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> An item in the March 1937 issue of Harper's Bazaar titled "This Thing
> Called Pizazz" (pp. 116-7) appears to have inspired ad copy in the New York
> Times and elsewhere in late February. (The 2/26/37 NYT ad from The Tailored
> Woman and a 2/28/37 ad in the New York Herald Tribune from Bonwit Teller
> both credit HB for "pizazz.") It's fair to assume the March issue was
> circulating by the end of February, as is typical in fashion magazine
> publishing. Vogue's famous "September issue," for instance, hits
> newsstands in mid-August.
>
> I see the OED2 "pizzazz" entry used the HB item for its first cite:
>
> ---
> https://www.oed.com/oed2/00180470
> 1937 Harper's Bazaar Mar. 116/2 Pizazz, to quote the editor of the Harvard
> Lampoon, is an indefinable dynamic quality, the je ne sais quoi of
> function; as for instance, adding Scotch puts pizazz into a drink. Certain
> clothes have it, too.=E2=80=A5 There's pizazz in this rust evening coat.
> ---
>
> In the OED3 entry, this cite has been removed and replaced with the 2/26/37
> NYT ad, which Fred first shared here in 2010:
>
>
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2010-September/102735.htm=
> l
>
> Given that the NYT ad uses the same heading as the Mar. '37 HB item ("This
> Thing Called Pizazz"), it would make sense to credit HB as the earlier
> cite, on the assumption that the actual publication date preceded the cover
> date. But this is somewhat of a moot point now that Fred has located the
> 2/23/37 YDN cite that doesn't rely on Harper's Bazaar at all, suggesting it
> was already Ivy League slang. A search of the Harvard Lampoon archive may
> still trump the Yalies, however.
>
> As we've discussed in the past, "pizzazz" had a number of earlier variants.
> One of these is "pazzazza" (or "pazazza"), which appears in the databases
> with various slang meanings going back to c1902. (There was a musical
> recording called "The Pazzazza Promenade" in 1910.) This example from 1932
> indicates that "pazzazza" could be used with the same "peppy" meaning later
> associated with "pizzazz."
>
> ---
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/109405124/pazzazza/
> Evening News (Harrisburg, Pa.), Oct. 26, 1932, p. 10, col. 2
> "The Once Over" by H.I. Phillips [NY Sun column syndicated by Associated
> Newspapers]
> The presidential campaign is boring people. It lacks hot-cha. ... The
> campaign has had no pace, no pep, no pazzazza.
> ---
>
> Perhaps worth a bracketed cite in the OED entry.
>
> --bgz
>
> On Sun, Sep 11, 2022 at 9:36 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
> wrote=
> :
>
> > The origins of the word "pizzazz" are a bit mysterious.  The OED's first
> > citation is from the New York Times, Feb. 26, 1937, and the Times
> > attributed the term to the Harvard Lampoon and Harper's Bazaar.  But no
> o=
> ne
> > has found prior citations in the Lampoon or HB.
> >
> > A slightly earlier citation points to a different Ivy League school:
> >
> > 1937 _Yale Daily News_ 23 Feb. 4/3 (Yale Daily News Historical Archive)
> > That the Blues were potentially better skaters cannot be doubted, but
> > somehow they lacked the old pizzazz down on the Arena ice last night.
> >
>
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