It’s been a week of Twitter gold—and who would win in a fight between a snollygoster and a snallygaster? |
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POPULAR THIS WEEK GOING FOR GOLD Some news (entirely fake, of course) broke this week involving the US President-Elect, the Moscow Ritz Carlton Hotel, and some hidden cameras—all of which led to some very creative hashtags trending on Twitter. Entirely by coincidence, the word inaurate, defined as “to cover something in gold”, turned out to be one of this week’s most popular tweets. Elsewhere this week, we found out: * FYI, there’s a blog on its way about the story behind the original ultracrepidarian, which (as some of you will doubtless know) involves an Ancient Greek artist, a passing cobbler, and a misshapen sandal. Put like that, it sounds almost as bad as that Moscow thing. |
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NEW ON THE BLOG SNOLLYGOSTER Towards the end of 2016, we asked you all to vote for our very first Word of the Year. After a year of tragic losses, Brexit shenanigans, political mendacity and all-round trumpery, we narrowed things down to a shortlist of just five words. Epicedium, whipmegmorum, cacafuego and toad-eater all fell at the final hurdle, which meant that—polling more than two-fifths of all the votes cast—snollygoster was crowned the HH Word of 2016. Loosely defined as “an unscrupulous person” or more specifically, “a politician who will do anything to achieve public office”, snollygoster really is the word of the moment. But where on earth does it come from? Well, although we attached a quote (pictured above) from the 1895 Indianapolis Journal to our original snollygoster tweet, the word itself has been with us slightly longer: the Oxford English Dictionary has unearthed its earliest record in an 1846 edition of the Kentucky Commonwealth that referred to “a rale [real] propelling double-revolving locomotive Snolly-Goster, ready to attack anything”. Well, quite. Elsewhere, a plantation-workers’ dance published in 1863 included the line “We am the snolly-gosters / An’ lubs Jim Ribber oysters”, while a sheet music catalogue published by a New York piano-maker in 1870 listed a song for sale entitled Snollygoster Ebenezer. The word seemingly fell out of use in the early twentieth century, but was temporarily rescued from obscurity by none other than Harry Truman, who used it (supposedly followed by the words, “Better look that word up—it’s a good one”) in an electioneering speech to the press in 1952. Which brings us neatly to this, from the very next year: Gorilla-Like Beast Seen Roaming Woods Near Elkton, In Md.’s “Snallygaster” Country —The Washington Post (1953) That’s a front-page headline from an edition of The Washington Post that hit newsstands on 28 August 1953. Nope, snallygaster is not some later spelling variant of snollygoster. And no, Maryland’s “Snallygaster Country” is not some kind of rural retreat for Washington’s most disreputable public statesmen. The snallygaster was something altogether different. |
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According to local folklore, the snallygaster was a legendary monster—a giant, bloodthirsty dragon-like creature—that was said to inhabit the hills surrounding Maryland and the District of Columbia, where it prayed on livestock and young children. Tales of bizarre creatures living in the Maryland hills have been recorded ever since the area was settled by Dutch and German immigrants in the early 1700s, and it’s that cultural heritage that has led to the fairly convincing theory that snallygaster is a corruption of the German schnelle geister, meaning “quick spirits” or “quick ghosts”. But what does all that have to do with dishonest politicians? Well, one popular explanation claims that snollygoster is probably a corruption of snallygaster—so while the snallygaster was busy creeping its way around the Maryland hills looking for its next meal, the snollygosters of nearby DC were creeping around Capitol Hill looking for their next opportunity to snatch public office. Seemingly, the word simply migrated from one insidious monster to the other, albeit with a slightly rejigged spelling. The problem with that, however, is that there just isn’t the evidence to back it up. So far, the earliest known written records of the snallygaster-with-an-A only date back to mid-1900s, when the word (a true product of its time, if ever there was one) was used as the name of a malevolent monster supposedly invented to scare former slaves from voting in local elections. Until evidence of the snallygaster is found that predates the snollygoster-with-an-O of the mid-1800s, it seems unlikely the the politician is the later of the two. It’s possible that snollygoster is still derived from schnelle geister, of course, but drawing a connection between “quick spirits” and personal or political underhandedness is tricky. Instead, it could be the case that snollygoster is—well, just a made-up word. Nineteenth-century American slang was a notoriously fertile hot-bed of linguistic jiggery-pokery, with ever more nonsensical words falling in and out of fashion and being invented, essentially at random, merely to outdo one another: The first and largest group of adjectives [in turn-of-the-century slang] includes those with the suffixes –ious, –ous, and –us. Under this group are found such words as “flambustious,” “grandilious,” and “humgumptious”; also the group “galoptious,” “galloptious,” “goluptious,” “goloptious,” and “galopshus,” variants having the same meaning. The facetious terms “gobsloptious,” “gobersloptious,” “globsloptious,” and “supergobsloptious,” “superglobsloptious,” “superglobbersloptious,” and “supergobosnoptious” seem to be variant forms differing because of the desire of one person to outdo another in the force of his terms of eulogy. —Dialect Notes (1913) Could it be that snollygoster is just a made-up nonsense word—albeit one with an undeniably useful meaning? It’s certainly possible. And frankly, it wouldn’t be the first time something to do with politics has turned out to be entirely fictitious... |
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TEMPLATE 3 And finally, just for our subscribers: only one English dictionary word fits each of the templates below. What are they? U_ _R_ _S_ _T_ _ V_ _ _G_ _Y _ _YR _ _K_ _ [Answer to last week’s puzzle: GODDAUGHTER, UNDERSTUDY, TAXPAYER* * Kudos to anyone who, quite rightly, suggested that either myxocyte or auxocyte were possible instead of taxpayer. Blimey, there are some good vocabularies out there...] |
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