[Ads-l] Antedating of "Copacetic"

[Laurence Horn]

The "copathetic" variant and, less clearly, that of "copesthetic" suggest
influence from "sympathetic". (And now I'm wondering why my spell-check
flags the first of these and not the second.)  Google's Al tells us
"Popular theories suggest it evolved from Yiddish (*kol b'seder*),
Louisiana French (*coupe-sétique*), or was simply coined by entertainer
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson."

LH

On Mon, Jul 20, 2026 at 7:19 PM Shapiro, Fred <
00001ac016895344-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest citation for the word "copacetic"
> or "copasetic" is from Irving Bacheller's 1919 novel A Man for the Ages.
> The Bacheller book has proven to be very difficult to antedate.
>
> Now the lexicography and research team of the forthcoming Oxford
> Dictionary of African American English has uncovered prior use of this word
> (in a spelling variant):
>
> 1918 Urbana (Illinois) Daily Courier 10 July 4/7 (Newspapers.com)  Reports
> Crops Favorable.  R. C. Lindsey made a trip to his farm west of Pesotum
> last night and reports everything as being "copesthetic."  Ceph made the
> trip in his new flivver and claims it to be a fast little scamp.
>
> I have found another antedating, also a spelling variant, as well:
>
> 1919 Chicago Defender 26 Apr. 9/1 (Newspapers.com)  Jimmy Nelson and Ben
> Harris put on a Virginia ham supper at their cafe last Friday night,
> without beans, and every one went home feeling copathetic, whatever that
> means.
>
> I regard this as an antedating of the OED's 1919 cite because the first
> mention of the serialization of A Man for the Ages in the papers covered by
> Newspapers.com was on June 25, 1919.
>
> It seems that "copacetic" in one of its spellings may have been coined in
> Illinois.  I also wonder whether the word, which was later popularized by
> the famous Black entertainer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, might have
> originated in the African-American community.  My primary basis for such
> speculation is the early occurrence in the Chicago Defender Black newspaper.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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