[Ads-l] Antedating of "Copacetic"

[Rich Lowenthal]

Bill Robinson claimed to have invented the word when he was a small 
child in Richmond. It's possible that he did and the word was picked up 
by others after Robinson used it on the vaudeville circuit. Obviously, 
there's no written evidence from Robinson's early years.


------ Original Message ------
>From "Laurence Horn" <00001c05436ff7cf-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
To ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Date 7/20/2026 7:58:15 PM
Subject Re: Antedating of "Copacetic"

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

-- 
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
www.avast.com

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