The American Dialect Society

Biography of the Word 'Insinuendo'Author(s): Harold WentworthSource: American Speech, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Feb., 1934), pp. 76-78Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/452002 .

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76 AMERICAN SPEECH

One of New York City's new hotels advertises that it has the "sleepingest beds imaginable."

Vaude for 'vaudeville' has been in

currency as a noun for some time. Now it is an adjective too, as in "The Thea-' ter opens with a vaude policy for the first time in seven years."

In Birmingham on September 17, Dr.

Sterling J. Foster, chairman of an Asso- ciation Opposed to Municipal Owner-

ship, warned his hearers that "if a certain fatal mistake is made, taxes will be upped on every house in the city."

A contributor from Ohio records a new meaning for socialize in colloquial and newspaper usage, i.e., to engage in social activities. "Did you socialize much in Atlantic City?" he heard in New York, and in Bridgeport, Con- necticut, "I am not going to socialize much this winter."

Orderette, a term used by salesmen for small orders, testifies to the con- tinued vogue of the diminutive -ette.

Compare blousettes, featurettes (of film or vaudeville entertainments), etc.

Plutogogue, on the model of dema-

gogue, appears in the issue of the Path- finder for April 4, 1933-

The noun holiday is now taking on

usage as a verb. "The Murphys holi-

dayed this summer at Nantucket," said a society column. Compare vacationed and week-ended. Over is another recent

newspaper verb, "He overed his long illness after all."

Apropos of the walkathons, com-

pounded of walk and marathon, so

popular in 1932 and 1933, a contribu-

tor suggests that talkathons will be

longer lived, especially in legislative halls. Superwalkathons have also made their appearance.

In a syndicated newspaper column of December 19, 1931, 0. O. McIntyre coins hoodus, you-know, ipses, and

gazunkus to replace such terms as

thingumbob, dingus, gadget, etc. A list of more than a hundred of these was

printed in American Speech (VI, 257), and the number is still growing.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE WORD 'INSINUENDO'

Occasionally one hears or reads the word insinuendo, a playful substitute forinsinuation orinnuendo that means no more than they. Sometimes he who uses it pauses to take parenthetic credit for its birth, but the credit must be shared. The elusive history of insin- uendo goes back some fifty years, prob- ably much farther.

What one may with hesitance call its first use occurs in Samuel Butler's The

Way of All Flesh, in Mrs. Judd's mono-

logue in a cab: "'Old indeed! There's many a good tune played on an old fiddle. I hate his [Pryer's] nasty insin- uendos.' "(Chap. 61, p. 297.) According to Streatfeild, Butler began writing the book about 1872, completed it in 1884, and never revised it; so the approxi- mate time at which he coined the word is established. But did Butler coin it or hear it in London or remember it from his reading?

The second known use cannot have resulted from the first: The Way of All Flesh lay in manuscript till 1903, and the next 'coiner' of insinuendo, an Aframerican politician, certainly never saw the unpublished novel. In 1888

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MISCELLANY 77

Brander Matthews wrote: "Could I not damn with faint praise and stab with

sharp insinuendo - to use the labor-

saving and much-neededword thought- lessly invented by the sable legislator of South Carolina . . . ?" ("The True

Theory of the Preface," in Pen and Ink, p. 57.) It did not appear, however, in

John S. Farmer's Americanisms Old and New (London, 1889). Matthews's somewhat hasty record of it (the word is neither "much-needed" nor "labor-

saving") fell into the hands of a philolo- gist, Hans Oertel, to whom it was an instance of "language contamination."

(Lectures on the Study of Language, 1901, p. 172.)

The next year one Leon Mead, hav- ing written to many authors to learn what new words they had coined and used in print, threw their replies to- gether into a book, Word-Coinage, in which he announced that Ruth Put- nam had coined insinuendo in conver- sation (p. 102). A recent similar case is Franklin D. Roosevelt's sloganeer, a word used in his Columbus, Ohio, ad- dress in August, 1932. Word Study, the Webster trade-pamphlet, quoted him two months later under the caption "Franklin D. Roosevelt Invents." Soon Mr. C. M. Newman pointed out that Richard Connell had published a story, "Once a Sloganeer," in the Saturday Evening Post in 1922. Mr. Connell be- lieves that he coined sloganeer. It re- mains to be proved, and it probably will be, that, like the subject of this sketch, sloganeer had a still earlier coinage.

Returning to insinuendo: it is not in Sylva Clapin's New Dictionary of Americanisms (N. Y., 1902). From the

publication of Mead's book till now

the word has been a beanbag among philologists, though not among lexi- cographers, as will appear presently. How often in this period it has ap- peared in speech, newspapers, short stories, and novels, my few citations hardly show. In 1906 Notes and Que- ries (March 3, p. 170) cited it, and G. A. Bergstr6m, of Lund, Sweden, in his doctorly On Blendings of Synonymous or Cognate Expressions in English cited Notes and Queries' citation and there dropped the matter. On July 9, 1913, insinuendo was printed as "an

original coinage in the Boston Tran- script" (Pound, op. cit. infra, p. 35) and then in Dialect Notes, Vol. 4. The next year, in her Blends: Their Relation to English Word Formation (Heidelberg), Professor Louise Pound entered the word, summarizing Matthews, Mead, the Boston Transcript, and Notes and Queries. Crabb's English Synonymes (1917) and Putnam's Word Book (1920o) do not give it. About 1926 the present writer heard the word coined again, perhaps independently,-and at the same time the unknown, nearly synony- mous hintimation.

The rest of the record is negative, the reigning wordmen having unanimously ignored the word, or perhaps rejected it after consideration. One will prob- ably not find it in Webster's New In- ternational Dictionary (191o, 1927), for it is well hidden under contamination and is not cross-referenced. Nor is it listed in H. W. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), G. P.

Krapp's A Comprehensive Guide to Good English (1927) under "Language Mutilation," Funk and Wagnalls' Standard Dictionary (1928, 1933), H. C.

Wyld's A Universal Dictionary of the

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78 AMERICAN SPEECH

English Language (1932), The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1933), and for that matter, the original New Eng- lish Dictionary. (Attention of Messrs. Knott, Long, Vizetelly, Onions, Craigie, Wyld.)

HAROLD WENTWORTH

Cornell University

NAMES FOR CITIZENS

The query in your issue of February (1933, P- 72) and the comment upon it in that of October (p. 78), has reminded me that I once set out to collect the names which could be applied to citi- zens of different American cities. My method seemed to me a brilliant one, and I still think that it was, theoreti- cally. I collaborated with a friend who was a man of influence in a large news bureau. He sent out a circular letter from his office to news bureaus all over the country requesting the informa- tion; after it came in, he was to use it for a news article and then turn it over to me. Unfortunately the bureaus responded sometimes perfunctorily, sometimes not at all, so that neither of us was able to do what had been planned. Nevertheless I think that a few notes on what data I procured might be interesting.

Two rules seemed to be universal: (1) if the city ends in -ia, add n for the citizen, e.g., Centralian; (2) if the city ends in -on, add -ian, e.g., Lawtonian.

Cities ending in -i add -an (Miamian); cities ending in -y change -y to -i and add -an (Kansas Citian).

Cities ending in -o or sounded -e gen- erally add -an (Albuquerquean, Santa F6an, El Pasoan, Muskogeean).

For cities ending in -a (not preceded by i) there seems to be some doubt. The

usual procedure is to add -n (Topekan, Tacoman, Omahan, Yakiman, Augus- tan, Wichitan, Tulsan, Pawhuskan). But Walla Wallian was given. Also the correspondent for Atlanta expressed himself thus:

Atlantan (at night). Atlantian (by day)- for the AJ Constitution religiously sponsors the former, and the AJ Journal the latter! I

prefer the former, as it is less 'mouthy.'

I should agree with the correspondent, but compare Duluthian.

For cities ending in a consonant or silent e the suffix -ite was most com- monly given (Seattleite, Spokanite, Lin- colnite, St. Josephite, Leavenworthite, Normanite, St. Paulite, Superiorite). In some cases the correspondent com- mented-"rare." This ending is still, I think, considered occasional and quasi- humorous.

Although New Yorker, Detroiter and other -er endings are firmly established, none of these was included in the re- sponses which I received. This was rather surprising to me, but seems to show that this suffix is not active in this usage. I might add the comment of a Wisconsin correspondent:

Oshkosh is stumped by its own name, the press there sticking to "Oshkosh man" or "Oshkosh woman." The name is of Indian origin, so that "Oshkosher" might not be kosher.

Two names were obviously foreign formations, viz., New Orleanean and Minneapolitan.

One correspondent listed several cities of his territory with the remark that he had never heard of any special name applied to their citizens.

Aside from mere curious interest this problem seems to me of some impor- tance. It would obviously be useful to

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