[Ads-l] Another nouning: "cozy", in the mystery subgenre sense

[Stanton McCandlish]

Garson O'Toole:
>  Year: 1977
> ...
> ...  the Cozies surfaced in England ...

1977! So much for my social-media hypothesis, though I suppose the
commonness of adjective-nouning in that environment could still be an
influence on present usage.


On Fri, May 17, 2024 at 6:31 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Interesting topic, Stanton. Back in 2012 I posted a pertinent message:
>
> Word: cozy, cozies - mystery story or genre
>
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2012-September/122383.html
>
> The old message started with an adjective citation in 1958. The
> message also included a 1977 citation containing the phrase "the
> Cozies" which apparently was using "cozy" as a noun.
>
> Year: 1977
> Book: Murder Ink: The Mystery Reader's Companion
> Author: Dilys Winn
> Published: Workman Publishing, New York
> Chapter 1: The Mystery History
> Section: From Poe To the Present
> Quote Page 3 and 4
> Database: Internet archive; verified with scans
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> Of course, the Doyenne of Coziness is Agatha Christie, and the first
> book in the canon is The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Coziness,
> however, took another ten years to reach full kitsch, which happened
> when Miss Marple arrived in The Murder at the Vicarage.
>
> Alternately titled the Antimacassar-and-old-Port School, the Cozies
> surfaced in England in the mad Twenties and Thirties, and their work
> featured a small village setting, a hero with faintly aristocratic
> family connections, a plethora of red herrings and a tendency to
> commit homicide with sterling silver letter openers and poisons
> imported from Paraguay. Typical Cozy writers include: Elizabeth
> Lemarchand, Margaret Yorke, V.C. Clinton-Baddeley . . .
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson
>
> On Fri, May 17, 2024 at 8:49 PM Stanton McCandlish
> <smccandlish at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > This won't be news to readers of mystery novels, but a *cozy*, sometimes
> > spelled *cosy*, is a mystery story in which explicit depictions violence,
> > sex, and other "hard-boiled fiction" themes are kept out of the narrative
> > and left in the background to the reader/viewer's imagination.
> >
> > This is not directly descended (as far as I can tell) from either of at
> > least two noun uses of *cozy/cosy* that I'm aware of: 'a nook', as in
> "I'm
> > sitting in my kitchen's breakfast cozy"), and 'an insulating cover' ("You
> > need to wash that stained tea cosy"), with the latter more often taking
> the
> > *s* (probably because *cosy* in that sense is primarily a British usage,
> > American writer-cartoonist Edward Gorey's *The Haunted Tea-Cosy*
> > notwithstanding, and the preferred British spelling is *cosy*).
> >
> > In the fiction case, it's a shortening of *cozy mystery*, *cozy
> fiction*, *cozy
> > novel*, where *cozy* is serving the expected adjective role.
> >
> > They all surely derive ultimately from the same adjective for
> 'comfortable;
> > warm; intimate, close-quartered'.
> >
> > Examples of the mystery-fiction nouning show up sometimes in the actual
> > titles of the works, e.g. *Playing with Poison: A Humorous and Romantic
> > Cozy*. But more often it is still adjectival, e.g. *Bunburry: A Cosy
> > Mystery Series, Vol. 13 - Lost and Found*. So, I suspect the nouning is
> > recent, and an outgrowth of shorthand expressions on mystery webboards.
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org