For a lively three-star Reedsy Discovery review by Jennie Louwes of New Yorkers: A Feisty People Who Will Unsettle, Madden, Amuse and Astonish You, go here. (But it's too late to see her review as a video; that's over.)
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As always, for my other books, go here.
SURVIVAL
The latest development in New York City survival: Stores are covering their front windows with panels of wood. I see this up and down Bleecker Street, where all the designer clothing stores are shut. Why the wood? In case rioters come by and start throwing rocks at windows. Riots have plagued the West Village also, though my Eleventh Street block has been quiet.
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| New York City police ready for rioters, June 3, 2020. Janine and Jim Eden |
The famous Magnolia Bakery is still open and without wood panels, and announces that it is baking to celebrate 2020 graduates, home, Mom, doctors, nurses, teachers, neighbors, prom, and just about everyone and everything else. Their gooey goodies are obviously necessary to our well-being and the economy.
Another unforeseen development: The city is so quiet, the streets almost empty, and the parks unvisited, that the birds are reclaiming habitat and serenading us with song. The peak of the spring migration is over, but this is the nesting season, when males sound off to attract a mate and claim turf, and they can be heard now better than when the city emits its usual rumble and roar. The red-winged blackbird, flaunting its bright red shoulder patches, is livening the cattails with its vibrant konk-la-reee.
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| Andy Reago and Chrissy McClarren |
The common yellowthroat, a warbler, is repeating witchety witchety witchety in clumps of shrubs and grasses; the wood thrush, its breast boldly spotted, is giving out its haunting three-note call in the brush of the Central Park Ramble; and the long-beaked willet is calling out its name -- will will willet, will will willet -- over the ponds in the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. These are all old friends of mine; hunting them, I often trekked these habitats. Welcome back, songsters, and may your music lift our spirits; we could use a lift.
AMERICANISMS
These are expressions that mark the speaker as an American, or as someone trying to speak like an American. Some were uttered by persons of note, and others just came into existence, who knows how or why. But they all say something not just about the speaker, but also about the speaker’s country, its mindset, its mores, the way it intentionally or unintentionally presents itself to the world.
By way of contrast, when I was in England long ago, I remember signs saying KEEP BRITAIN TIDY. I cannot imagine such a sign in this country. America is just too big, too diverse, and too feisty to aspire to tidiness. Cleanliness, maybe, but tidy never.
And the Brits want to keep their language tidy, too. They cringe at Americanisms like “gas” for “petrol,” and “pants” for “trousers,” as well as some of the items listed below. Their language, they complain, is being “colonised” or even “killed” by Americanisms, though some of the words they disparage are actually English, not American, in origin. And the “stiff upper lip” so associated with the English is in fact an Americanism. Language plays tricks on us all.
So here, in no particular order, is my list of Americanisms, with my personal comments thrown in. I invite readers to make some additional suggestions of their own.
I feel like a million dollars. A French-born friend of my mother’s used this and other expressions to show how she was completely at home in American English.
Make the world safe for democracy! A World War I slogan, but the impulse persists, with both desirable and disastrous consequences.
Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable. Inscription on the base of a bigger-than-life statue of Daniel Webster in Central Park, expressing his views in the famous Webster-Hayne debate of 1830, when Webster, a senator from Massachusetts, debated Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina. Webster believed in a strong federal government, whereas Hayne upheld state’s rights, including the right to secede from the Union. Our Civil War (1861-1865), at a cost of over 618,000 lives, settled the issue, though Texas likes to forget this.
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| Simeon87 |
Lafayette, we are here. Attributed to General John J. Pershing, commander of the American forces sent to France in 1917, but actually spoken by a subordinate. Lafayette had helped us get our independence; now we would help his country in its war with Germany.
Pike’s Peak or bust. Sign on covered wagons heading west in the 1840s for Colorado and beyond.
I have seen the elephant. Sign on covered wagons coming back from the West in the 1840s, indicating disillusion with what they had found. Probably inspired by early circuses and road shows that displayed an elephant.
God’s country. That beautifully satisfying locale that you once saw and hope to return to, or that exists in your imagination. Implies a country where people travel a lot and get displaced. Also, a people who dream of better. Inevitably, a magnet for hope and heartbreak. Years ago when I was a graduate student at Columbia, I often had a beer (or two or three) at the West End bar on Broadway. There, entertaining us with his tales of “making out” — seducing every woman in sight — was an amusing young dude who found in the rest of us the audience that his ego and libido required. He was from somewhere in the West, and one night, referring to it, said quite seriousky, with a touch of nostalgia, “That’s God’s country.” His momentary seriousness astonished me, but he soon resumed his tale of penile successes.
There’s a sucker born every minute. Attributed to Phineas T. Barnum, the nineteenth-century showman and circus impresario, and prince of humbug. He displayed fake freaks and exotic animals to a seemingly naive public (“suckers”), some of whom knowingly went along for entertainment and the joke.
The business of America is business. A saying of Calvin Coolidge, U.S. president from 1924 to 1928. So dull, visionless, and reticent a man that he became legendary. But let’s face it, America is devoted to capitalism and the work ethic.
Keep your shirt on. Stay calm, don’t get angry or excited. Possible explanation: In the nineteenth century clothes were expensive, so many men owned only one or two shirts.
Beats me. I don’t know, I don’t understand. Origin unknown.
That gets my goat. To make someone annoyed or angry. Origin unknown.
It isn’t over until the fat lady sings. Don’t presume to know the outcome of an event still in progress. I always thought it came from vaudeville, but it’s a newbie and relates to -- of all people -- Richard Wagner. His interminably long but sporadically brilliant Ring cycle isn’t over until Brünnhilde, often sung by a buxom soprano, has sung her last note. Probably first used by U.S. sportscaster Ralph Carpenter in a 1976 interview, referring to a tight basketball game or season, though other explanations abound.
Fuhgeddaboudit. Brooklynese for “forget about it,” meaning it’s unlikely. Another newbie, attributed to the 1960s TV show “The Honeymooners,” set in Brooklyn. But I wonder if it didn’t originate much earlier.
Baloney! Nonsense, claptrap, bunk. Dates from 1922. Linked to the bologna, a large smoked meat sausage typically made from leftover scraps of meat.
He struck out, It’s the ninth inning, A curve ball, Touch base, A whole new ballgame, etc. From baseball, the most American of sports, and in my opinion, the dullest.
Normalcy. That’s where Warren G. Harding, U.S. president 1920-1923, wanted us to return, though it should be “normality.” Since Harding was another of our least brilliant presidents, and surrounded by crooks when in office, I avoid his creation and insist on “normality.”
Okay. Totally American, though now understood worldwide. Long ago, when a friend and I were bargaining for serapes in the open-air market of Oaxaca, Mexico, after a long haggle we failed to get our price and started to walk away. Faced with the loss of a sale of three serapes, the Mexican vendor, a shrewd little man whose gold fillings twinkled in the sun, rushed after us and said, “Okay.” There are many stories about the expression’s origins. Probably came from “orl korrect,” a humorous misspelling of “all correct,” circa 1840.
To go the whole hog. To go all the way, to do something. Possible origin: Butchers used to use every part of the animal. The skin was tanned for leather, and the hooves were pickled. To go the whole hog was to use every part of the animal.
To face the music. To accept the consequences of one’s actions. Possible origin: A disgraced military officer was “drummed out” of his regiment. Or: An actor going onstage faces the orchestra pit. Dates from the 1830s.
To keep one’s cool. To stay calm, not be upset or angry. This use of “cool” as a noun dates from the 1950s or earlier. It may be significant that in the 1940s Miles Davis called his music “cool jazz,” to differentiate it from the “hot jazz” that originated in New Orleans in the early 1900s and came North. (And if you want to start a passionate debate that has no end, just ask the origin and history of the word “jazz.” There are many answers, some of them deliciously naughty.)
Americanisms that are no longer (thank God) used:
- “Bone pit” for cemetery.
- “Tooth carpenter” for dentist.
- “To give someone the mitten” for “to throw someone [a boyfriend or suitor] over.”
Coming soon: "Blood."
© 2020 Clifford Browder
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