World Wide Words -- 01 Oct 16

[Michael Quinion via WorldWideWords]

World Wide Words

Issue 928: Saturday 1 October 2016

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Feedback, Notes and Comments

Two pieces in this issue are rewrites of ones created more than a decade 
ago and which have been updated as a result of new information.

Tomfoolery

Q /From Joe Brown/: I was wondering where the phrase /Tom Foolery/ came 
from?

A I would write it as one word, /tomfoolery/, and my ordered ranks of 
dictionaries tell me I’m right. But it often turns up in print in the 
way you have written it, or as /Tom foolery/ or /tom-foolery/ or 
/Tom-foolery/. Such forms show that their writers still link the word 
with some fool called Tom, even though they may not know who he was.

It is sometimes claimed that the original Tom Fool was Thomas Skelton. 
He was a jester, a fool, for the Pennington family at Muncaster Castle 
in Cumbria. This was probably about 1600 — he is said to be the model 
for the jester in Shakespeare’s /King Lear/ of 1606. In legend, he was 
an unpleasant person. One story tells how he liked to sit under a tree 
by the road; whenever travellers he didn’t like asked the way to the 
ford over the River Esk, he would instead direct them to their deaths in 
the marshes. Another tale links him with the murder of a carpenter who 
was the lover of Sir William Pennington’s daughter.

So much for stories. In truth, Tom Fool is centuries older. He starts 
appearing in the historical record early in the 1300s in the Latinate 
form /Thomas fatuus/. The first part served even then as a generic term 
for any ordinary person, as it still does in phrases like /Tom, Dick or 
Harry/. The second word means stupid or foolish in Latin and has 
bequeathed us /fatuous/ and /infatuate/, among other words. By 1356 
/Thomas fatuus/ had become /Tom Fool/.

Around the seventeenth century, the character of Tom Fool shifted 
somewhat from the epitome of a stupid or half-witted person to that of a 
fool or buffoon. He became a character who accompanied morris-dancers or 
formed part of the cast of various British mummers’ plays performed at 
Christmas, Easter or All Souls’ Day.

A /tom-fool/ was more emphatically foolish than an unadorned fool. 
/Tomfoolery/ was similarly worse than /foolery/, the state of acting 
foolishly, which had been in English since the sixteenth century. 
Perhaps oddly, it took until about 1800 for /tomfoolery/ to appear. It 
had been preceded by the verb to /tom-fool/, to play the fool.

Fair to middling

Q /From John Rupp, Dallas, Texas/: I have often heard the phrase /fair 
to Midland/ (middlin’?) in response to the inquiry ‘How are you doing?’ 
Any ideas on the origins of this phrase?

A As you hint, the phrase is more usually /fair to middling/, common 
enough — in Britain as well as North America — for something that’s 
moderate to merely average in quality, sometimes written the way people 
say it, as /fair to middlin’/.

With an initial capital letter, /fair to Midland/ is a Texas version of 
the phrase, a joke on the name of the city of Midland in that state. A 
Texas rock band called themselves /Fair to Midland/ after what they 
described as “an old Texan play on the term ‘fair to middling’”. 
American researcher Barry Popik has traced it to May 1935 in a report in 
the /New York Times/, “Dr. William Tweddell ... is what might be called 
a fair-to-Midland golfer.”

But we do occasionally see examples of /fair to midland/ in American 
contexts without a capital letter and without any suggestion of humour:

While overall attendance was fair to midland — the championship session 
drew about 800 — the Bartlett student section was outstanding.
/Daily Herald/ (Arlington Heights, Illinois), 31 Dec. 2011.

This lower-case /fair to midland/ version is recorded in Massachusetts 
in 1968, which suggests that even then it had already lost its 
connection with Texas. It might be folk etymology, in which an 
unfamiliar word is changed to one that’s better known. But it’s an odd 
example, as /middling/ isn’t so very uncommon. It may be that people 
tried to correct /middlin’/ to a more acceptable version that lacked the 
dropped letter but plumped for the wrong word.

All the early examples of /fair to middling/ I can find in literary 
works are similarly American, from authors such as Mark Twain, Louisa 
May Alcott and Artemus Ward. To go by them, it looks as though it became 
common on the east coast of the US from the 1860s on. However, hunting 
in newspapers, I’ve found examples from a couple of decades before, 
likewise from the east coast. This one was in a newspaper review of the 
current issue of /The Ladies’ Companion/:

These three articles are the best in the present number — of the rest, 
most are from fair to middling.
/Boston Morning Post/, 6 Feb. 1841.

The earliest of all I’ve so far found comes from an article in the July 
1837 issue of the /Southern Literary Messenger/ of Richmond, Virginia: 
“A Dinner on the Plains, Tuesday, September 20th. — This was given ‘at 
the country seat’ of J. C. Jones, Esq. to the officers of the Peacock 
and Enterprise. The viands were ‘from fair to middling, we wish we could 
say more.’”

So the phrase is American, most probably early nineteenth century. But 
where does it come from? There’s a clue in the /Century Dictionary/ of 
1889: “Fair to middling, moderately good: a term designating a specific 
grade of quality in the market”. The term /middling/ turns out to have 
been used as far back as the previous century both in the US and in 
Britain for an intermediate grade of various kinds of goods — there are 
references to a middling grade of flour, pins, sugar, and other commodities.

Which market the /Century Dictionary/ was referring to is made plain by 
the nineteenth-century American trade journals I’ve consulted. /Fair/ 
and /middling/ were terms in the cotton business for specific grades — 
the sequence ran from the best quality (fine), through good, fair, 
middling and ordinary to the least good (inferior), with a number of 
intermediates, one being /middling fair/. The form /fair to middling/ 
sometimes appeared as a reference to this grade, or a range of 
intermediate qualities — it was common to quote indicative prices, for 
example, for “fair to middling grade”.

The reference was so well known in the cotton trade that it escaped into 
the wider language. Some early figurative appearances in newspapers 
directly reflect the market usage:

Twenty-five cents a line, then, may be quoted as the present commercial 
value of good poetry ... fair to middling is probably more difficult of 
sale.
/New York Daily Times/, 29 May 1855.

I have only the opinions of some who patronized her entertainments, who 
profess to be judges of such things. Verdict, as the Price Current says, 
“fair to middling with downward tendency.”
/The Wabash Express/ (Terre Haute, Indiana), 18 May 1859.

The figurative term starts to appear in Britain in the 1870s, but early 
examples are all in stories imported from across the Atlantic. Even that 
seemingly most home-grown British composition, Austin Doherty’s /Nathan 
Barley: Sketches in the Retired Life of a Lancashire Butcher/ of 1884, 
written in local dialect, includes it in the speech of an old school 
fellow who had emigrated and made his money in Michigan. So it was known 
but labelled as an Americanism. It took until the twentieth century for 
it to begin to be used unselfconsciously.

So help me Hannah

Q /From Jon S of Mississippi/: By any chance do you know the origin of 
the American expression, /So help me Hannah/? It used to be heard more 
often in days gone by, and people today may have never heard of it, but 
it’s an old saying that I cannot find the origin of.

A I can’t provide a definite origin but I can give some pointers.

/Hannah/, as a personal name, sometimes with the spelling pronunciation 
“Hanner”, has been used in the US in various colloquial sayings since at 
least the 1870s. They include /that’s what’s the matter with Hannah/, 
indicating emphatic agreement, of which John Farmer wrote disparagingly 
in his /Americanisms/ of 1889, “A street catch-phrase with no especial 
meaning. For a time it rounded off every statement of fact or expression 
of opinion amongst the vulgar.” Another, /since Hannah died/, was a 
reference to the passage of time.

The earliest on record is /he/ /doesn’t amount to Hannah Cook, /later 
often abbreviated to /he/ /doesn’t amount to Hannah /and 
also//appearing//as/not worth a Hannah Cook/.

Mr. Sweeney rose again to explain the mysteries of printing ballots the 
evening before election, and added that the acceptance or rejection of 
the investigating Committee’s report “didn’t amount to Hannah Cook,” 
because it made no recommendations.
/Boston Daily Globe/, 9 Sep. 1875.

This early appearance in a Boston newspaper supports the general opinion 
that it’s of New England origin. John Gould suggested in his /Maine 
Lingo/ of 1975 that it derived from seafaring: “A man who signed on as a 
hand or cook didn’t have status as one or the other and could be worked 
in the galley or before the mast as the captain wished. The hand or cook 
was nondescript, got smaller wages, and became the /Hannah Cook/ of the 
adage.” The story sounds too much like folk etymology to be readily 
swallowed.

/So help me Hannah/ is a mildly euphemistic form of the oath /so help me 
God/, which starts to appear in print in the early twentieth century. 
/Hannah/ here seems likely to have been borrowed from one or other of 
the earlier expressions. It became widely used in the 1920s and 1930s.

“By hell, Chief,” he drawled, drawing a huge clasp-knife from his
pocket, “I been grazin’ on this here Alasky range nigh on to twenty
yars, and so help me Hannah, I never did find a place so wild or a
bunch o’ hombres so tough but what sooner or later all hands starts
a-singin’ o’ the female sect.”
/Where the Sun Swings North/, by Barrett Willoughby, 1922.

After the Second World War, the American firm Hannah Laboratories 
produced a salve with the name /So help me Hannah/. Some people have 
pointed to this as the origin of the expression, though the firm was, of 
course, merely exploiting a phrase that had long since become part of 
the common language.

Elsewhere

*OED history revealed.* I have this week spent much time that I should 
have been devoting to other things in dipping into Peter Gilliver’s 
scholarly work /The Making of the Oxford English Dictionary/. It tells 
the story from its prehistory, through the long and often difficult 
process of creating the first edition, its supplements and the second 
edition, to the early stages of the research into OED3. Uniquely among 
OED historians he is an experienced lexicographer, who has worked on the 
OED and other Oxford dictionaries since 1987. His heavily footnoted text 
is a testament to the depth of his decade of investigation; it’s not for 
the casual reader but will repay anyone with a serious interest in the 
story behind one of Britain’s greatest treasures. (Hardback, already out 
in the UK, £40; to be published in the US on 25 October at $65.)

*Slang dictionary goes online.* While we’re on national treasures, it’s 
timely to mention Green’s /Dictionary of Slang/ (reviewed by me in 2010 
<http://wwwords.org/gdos>), a magisterial three-volume creation by 
Jonathon Green, which one writer has called the OED of slang (53,000 
headwords, 110,000 slang terms, 410,000 examples of usage). The work is 
going live online <https://greensdictofslang.com/> on 12 October with 
comprehensive search facilities. If you wish only to check a headword, 
an etymology and a definition, the site is free; if you want to access 
the full work and timeline of development, you can take out an annual 
subscription, currently £49.00 ($65.00) for single users, £10.00 
($15.00) for students. Just like the OED, online publication means that 
the work is continually being updated; nearly 30% of the print book has 
been revised, augmented and generally improved, and as just one example, 
early quotations for various senses of /dope/ which I unearthed while 
writing my piece of 6 August and sent to Jonathon have already been 
incorporated into the entry.

*Origin of /slang/.* What is perhaps most interesting about slang is 
that the origin of its name has long been debated and still isn’t firmly 
established. Some experts have argued for a link to the English verb 
/sling/, to throw, with the implication that it’s disposable or 
throw-away language. Modern dictionaries say this is improbable but have 
nothing to put in its place, falling back on phrases such as “origin 
unknown”. In 2008, in his /Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology/, 
Professor Anatoly Liberman suggested it came from another sense of 
/slang/, a narrow strip of land, which he linked to various words of 
Scandinavian origin that imply a group of travellers, tramps or hawkers. 
He argued that the progression of sense is “A piece of land -> those who 
travel about this territory (first and foremost, hawkers) -> the manner 
of hawkers’ speech -> low class jargon, argot.” Prof Liberman has this 
week repeated his argument in his Oxford Etymologist blog 
<http://wwwords.org/slang>. Not everyone is as yet convinced.

Joe Soap

Q /From Steve Campbell/: My dear old mother would occasionally use the 
expression /Who do you think I am, Joe Soap?/ We migrated to Australia 
from the Old Dart <http://wwwords.org/olda> in 1951 and I’ve never heard 
it used by Australians. What is its origin and is it still in use in the UK?

A It remains moderately common in Britain but its meaning has shifted 
since your mother learned it. She would have had in mind a stupid or 
naive person, one who could be easily put upon or deceived. These days 
it refers to a typical individual, the archetypal person in the street.

The full judgement will be published in a week or two and the ordinary 
Joe Soap will take hours to read it and understand.
/Daily Mirror/, 9 Sep. 2015.

This sense is now known outside the UK, especially in North America.

Your mother’s sense is usually regarded as services slang from the 
Second World War, most often associated with the Royal Air Force:

Joe Soap was the legendary airman who carried the original can. He 
became a synonym for anyone who had the misfortune to be assigned an 
unwelcome duty in the presence of his fellows, or to be temporarily 
misemployed in a status lower than his own. “I’m Joe Soap,” he would say 
lugubriously, and I’m carrying the something can.”
/Royal Air Force Quarterly/, 1944. “Something” may be read as a polite 
substitute for a more forceful epithet. See here for /carry the can/ 
<http://wwwords.org/crtcn>.

The term certainly became popular during the war but there’s evidence it 
was known earlier in the naive sense:

I ain’t no Joe Soap to go a-believin’ of all their yarns.
/Blackwood's Magazine/, 1934. The writer who quoted this added, “Who Joe 
Soap was I have never discovered”, which suggests it wasn’t then widely 
known.

What might be an earlier services connection is the song /Forward Joe 
Soap’s Army/, which featured in Joan Littlewood’s musical /Oh What a 
Lovely War/ and in the film made of it. Despite claims that the songs in 
the play were authentic First World War creations, I can find no 
reference to it before the play was first performed in 1963.

However, it wouldn’t have been an anachronism, since the phrase can be 
traced to the nineteenth century as a generic name for someone unknown, 
or a pseudonym that was adopted by somebody wanting to stay anonymous.

A man whose real name is unknown, but who is known in the district as 
“Joe Soap,” had on Tuesday evening crossed a field near Meltham, to get 
to Bingley Quarry, but in the dusk, mistaking his position, he fell into 
the quarry, and was killed.
/Leeds Times/, 21 Sep. 1878.

Witness then went across the road to him and told him to be quiet, and 
defendant who was using very bad language, put on his coat and got into 
his trap. Witness then asked him his name and he said “Joe Soap, that 
will do for you.”
/Chepstow Weekly Advertiser/, 13 Apr. 1907.

Nobody knows for sure where this generic name comes from.

The first part has been widely used to refer to an ordinary person — 
/Joe Bloggs/, /Joe Blow/, /Joe Sixpack/, /Joe Average/, /ordinary Joe/, 
/Joe Doakes/, /Joe Public/ — there are lots of examples, though most of 
them originate in North America. /Joe/ was noted in Britain as a generic 
term in 1846, albeit in a different sense, when it appeared in /The 
Swell’s Night Guide/: “Joe, an imaginary person, nobody, as Who do those 
things belong to? Joe.” The unknown-person sense of /Joe Soap/ might 
have come from it.

It is usually assumed that the second part is rhyming slang for /dope/, 
a stupid person, though this would have been improbable in the 
nineteenth century. Though a couple of examples of /dope/ with that 
meaning are recorded from the dialect of Cumberland in the 1850s, it 
wasn’t then widely known in Britain. In that sense it was imported later 
from North America.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

/My thanks to Peter Morris, Garson O’Toole and Jonathan Lighter of the 
American Dialect Society for their contributions to revising this article./

Sic!

• A confusing headline in the /Boston Globe/ online on 11 August left 
readers, among them Bart Bresnik, wondering who was searching for whom: 
“Woman found abandoned in hospital as baby searches for mom.”

• The website of a hotel in California left Michael Boydston feeling it 
may be providing more than he was looking for: “Nestled in your opulent 
guest room with luxurious bedding and special amenities, the Drisco’s 
thoughtful staff will be there to anticipate your needs and carry out 
your wishes.”

• Department of too much information: “Portis told us everything. Then 
Princess Cire told us the rest.” (/Behind the Throne/, by K B Wagers, 2016).

Useful information

*About this newsletter.* /World Wide Words/ is written, edited and 
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World Wide Words Newsletter 928
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