[Ads-l] Birth of the Cool

[Shapiro, Fred]

One of the most prominent modern slang terms is "cool."  After the word's beginnings referring to temperature, it acquired many slang senses.  The most important sense was a general approbation associated with Black speech -- the Oxford English Dictionary cites the Black writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston as its first use (1933).  Below are the 1933 citation and other uses by Hurston:

1933 Zora Neale Hurston in Story Aug. 63 (OED)  And whut make it so cool, he got money 'cumulated.  And womens give it all to 'im.

1934 Zora Neale Hurston Jonah's Gourd 146 (Internet Archive)  Us pays him to preach and he kin sho do that.  De best ub de State, and whut make it so cool, he's de bes' lookin'.

1935 Zora Neale Hurston Mules & Men 33 (Historical Dictionary of American Slang)  Man, you know Ah don't go nowhere unless Ah take my box [guitar] wid me ... And what make it so cool, Ah don't go nowhere
unless I play it.  [Hurston uses "what make it so cool" four other times in Mules & Men.]

Ben Zimmer has questioned whether Hurston's usage represents the "general approbation" sense of "cool," stating that it "could just as easily fall under the older 'unabashed, audacious' sense."  Ben is almost always right in his assertions, but I believe there is evidence that the Hurston citations are part of a continuity with the "general approbation" sense of "cool" and cannot all be explained as meaning "audacious."  (This is not a radical opinion, since the OED and the Historical Dictionary of American Slang have made the same judgement.)  Here are other cites I or Ben himself have found:

1932 Atlanta Daily World 3 July 2/1 (Newspapers.com)  (heading) What Makes It So Cool !  [The heading seems at first to refer to literal temperature in a movie theater, but the body of the article may be extending
"cool" into a pun with praise of two films.]

1934 Atlanta Daily World 6 Sept. 5/4 (Newspapers.com)  But what makes it so COOL is that if any of the other contenders failed to do as well as win all their games but one, Tuskegee could afford to lose their games
and yet have a possibility of tying for the title.

1936 The Rogers-Post (Sebring, Fla.) 22 Aug. 4/2 (Internet Archive)  TWISTED COMPARISONS ... Favorite Expressions: ... what makes it so cool.

1938 Atlanta Daily World 6 Dec. 3 / 4 (Newspapers.com)  The band's mistress of
ceremonies, Joan Lunceford, is one of the "smoothest articles" in
front of an orchestra you ever saw ... and such swing-singing!  Many
call her the equal of the famous Blanche Calloway.  And what [illegible]
cool is that she's as fe[illegible, but probably "feminine"or "feminine in"] directing the band as
she'd be in an evening gown -- which is something.




1939 New York Amsterdam News 13 May 20/1 (ProQuest)  Ever see a Joseph's coat?  Well, it's multi-colored, but cool, Jack, cool!  Ever see a Harlem cat
in one?  It's a sight, Jack, a screamin' sight!

1941 Savannah Tribune 12 June 5/2 (Genealogy Bank)  It is truly hot weather now, and you really don't have to look for Aunt Hager's children any more.  Chile, you can see 'em swinging everywhere if you just step out.  And, what makes it so cool they'll swing with you in a minute if you're in the mood.

The key phrase in this history was "what makes it so cool."  Hurston presumably picked this up from African Americans in her ethnographic studies in the South in 1927-1932.  The phrase also was printed in
three articles in the Black newspaper Atlanta Daily World in the 1930s.  The 1934 article is particularly important.  In that article "what makes it so cool" appeared in a discussion of a college football ranking
formula.  The use of "cool" there cannot be interpreted as meaning "audacious."  Even more important is the 1936 citation, which clearly indicates that "what makes it cool" was an established expression.

The 1938 Atlanta article unfortunately has some illegibility in the online sources, smack in the middle of the crucial sentence.  There is every reason, however, to surmise that "And what [illegible] cool" was actually "And what makes it so cool."  The spacing of the illegibility appears to match that of "makes it so."

All in all, these citations seem to me to suggest the development of a "general approbation" sense of "cool" that was current among Southern Blacks by the early 1930s, perhaps well before the early 1930s.  I believe that the Zora Neale Hurston citation(s) should remain at the beginning of the "general approbation" sense in the Oxford English Dictionary, and should be placed at the beginning of such a sense in the forthcoming Oxford Dictionary of African American English.  They should not be included with the "audacious" sense or any other sense of "cool."

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