[Ads-l] Birth of the Cool

[Stephen Goranson]

Though I am not an expert on Zora Neale Hurston (one of my sisters may be)
nor coolness, I note that many papers, letters, etc., of hers are at U.
Florida and in other archives. For example, on a brief online search,
here's a relevant-or-not 1930 play which she co-wrote with Langston Hughes,
Mule Bone:
  "Sister Lewis: (to men holding Mrs. Taylor) I don’t see how come y’all
won’t let old Lucy Taylor a loose. Make out she so bad, now. She may be red
hot but I kin cool her. I’ll ride her just like Jesus rode a jackass."
The earliest relevant uses may be in archived ephemera (?)
scg


On Sun, Nov 9, 2025 at 12:28 PM Shapiro, Fred <
00001ac016895344-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> I guess it was not necessary for Hurston to have picked up "what makes it
> so cool" from her ethnographic studies.  She grew up in the South and could
> have been familiar with the phrase in her youth.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of
> Shapiro, Fred <00001ac016895344-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Sent: Sunday, November 9, 2025 8:57 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Birth of the Cool
>
> 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."
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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