[Ads-l] Origins of "Bulldyke" and Related Terms

Thu Mar 28 00:43:28 UTC 2024

Even more opaque?

1899_Prison Mirror_ (Stillwater, Minn.) (June 8) 3: What is Yellow Kid's
right name? Please say whether he is a German,Swede, Jew, or a Bulldiker.
...[B]eyond a reasonable doubt he is a Bulldiker.

1903 _Shreveport Times_ (Apr. 20) 2: Wonder why they call that fellow
"Smitty" [a baseball player] mighty in Birmingham.  He must be some kind of
a bull-diker.

JL

On Wed, Mar 27, 2024 at 8:32 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

> As I hope I have made clear over the years, I am not one to cling to a pet
> theory when evidence is found contrary to the theory.  Thanks, Dave, for
> illuminating the question of Harvey Neal's sex.  I had attempted to find
> other articles about Harvey Neal, but didn't go far enough in time.  Do you
> still feel that, as you wrote in 2020, "bulldike" seems to have originated
> in Black slang ?
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of
> dave at wilton.net <dave at WILTON.NET>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2024 6:56 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Origins of "Bulldyke" and Related Terms
>
>
> The Muscatine article is a reprint of a piece that appeared in Chicago's
> Daily Inter-Ocean the previous day. It was reprinted in a number of other
> papers as well.
>
> Harvey Neal shows up in two other Daily Inter-Ocean articles. One on 12
> November 1892 when Hattie Washington stabbed him in the back with a small
> knife (Good for her, I say; he sounds like a delightful fellow). As in the
> earlier article, this one does not specify Neal's gender. But the second
> article, 29 May 1896, reporting on Neal's being arrested for another
> matter, clearly identifies him as a Black man. It is possible, I guess,
> that Neal could have been a trans-man, but I doubt 1890s newspaper editors
> were so enlightened as to take care not to misgender him.
>
> Unless "bulldyke" had some slang currency in the sense of an overly
> masculine person, I think that Neal's nickname is unrelated to the later
> use of "bulldyke."
>
>
> “A Negress Runs Amuck.” Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), 28 July 1892, 9.
> NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.
>
> “Brief Mention.” Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), 12 November 1892, 7.
> NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.
>
> “Celestial and Negro Quarrel.” Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), 26 May 1896,
> 8. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.
>
> [
> https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wordorigins.org%2Fbig-list-entries%2Fdyke&data=05%7C02%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7Ceff808d23b8d40a7f7c508dc4eb1270d%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C638471769972372897%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=VNrPL%2FLzAwjOosZsavwB4WzJ9zSWDXKtBJGYzVB6f2A%3D&reserved=0
> <https://www.wordorigins.org/big-list-entries/dyke> ](
> https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wordorigins.org%2Fbig-list-entries%2Fdyke&data=05%7C02%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7Ceff808d23b8d40a7f7c508dc4eb1270d%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C638471769972381351%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=DGVdajaal7jgSWIqaF26CrhjB%2FqARA7Ym6zMWyYEzxc%3D&reserved=0
> <https://www.wordorigins.org/big-list-entries/dyke> )
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2024 2:43pm
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: [ADS-L] Origins of "Bulldyke" and Related Terms
>
>
>
> One of the most interesting word-mysteries involves the origins of the
> word "bulldyke" and related terms such as "bulldyking," "bulldyker," and
> "bulldagger." The Oxford English Dictionary's first use for "bulldyker"
> (contributed to them by me) is from J. Richardson Parke's book Human
> Sexuality (1906): "In American homosexual argot, female inverts, or lesbian
> lovers, are known euphemistically as 'bulldykers,' whatever that may mean:
> at least that is their sobriquet in the 'Red Light' district of
> Philadelphia." Their chronologically next citation from this group of words
> is "She stated that she had indulged in the practice of 'bull diking,' as
> she termed it. She was a prisoner in one of the reformatories, and there a
> certain young woman fell in love with her." (Medical Review of Reviews
> [1921]) None of the OED citations shed any light on the meaning of the
> "dyke" component of the word.
>
> A search for "bulldyke" on Newspapers.com pulls up a July 29, 1892 article
> in the Muscatine (Iowa) News-Tribune, beginning with the following
> remarkable passage: "CHICAGO ... With an idea of killing off a greater
> portion of the women in the levee district, Hattie Washington, a colored
> woman, started out at 3:30 o'clock Wednesday afternoon with a big revolver
> in her hand. She went to Blanche Alexander's place, at 101 Custom House
> place, in search of Belle Watkins, who, she said, had won the affections of
> Harvey Neal, alias 'Bulldyke.'" Is this the same "bulldyke" term later
> commonly used for "mannish" lesbians? Commentators writing about the 1892
> article have suggested that Harvey Neal's name may disprove his having been
> a "bulldyke" in the later meaning, but that it is more likely that Harvey
> was a lesbian who had assumed a typically male name.
>
> There is a bizarre additional angle to the Harvey Neal question.
> Immediately adjacent to the article in the Muscatine newspaper appears a
> story about the murder of Freda Ward by Alice Mitchell. Alice Mitchell and
> Freda Ward were lovers, and Ward's highly publicized murder was the
> incident that first brought lesbianism into widespread public
> consciousness. I imagine that the placement of the two items in the
> newspaper was purely coincidental, but it almost seems like the Muscatine
> News-Tribune had some kind of special focus on lesbianism.
>
> I should point out that the OED mentions the Hattie Washington incident
> (citing to an identical report in the Chicago Inter Ocean, July 28) in an
> etymological note. They ask the reader to "compare the following isolated
> early use as a nickname for a person who is confirmed to be male in another
> part of the story." However, there is no mention of Harvey Neal in any
> other part of the story in either newspaper.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
>
>
>  1.
>
>
>
>
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