Ralph Keyes - I Love it When You Talk Retro: Hoochie Coochie, Double Whammy, Drop a Dime, and the Forgotten Origins of American Speech

I LOVE IT WHEN YOU
TALK RETRO

Also by Ralph Keyes

The Quote Verifier

The Post-Truth Era

The Writers Book of Hope

The Courage to Write

Chancing It

The Height of Your Life

Nice Guys Finish Seventh

Sons on Fathers

We, the Lonely People

The Innovation Paradox (with Richard Farson)

Timelock

The Wit and Wisdom of Harry Truman

The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde

Is There Life After High School?

Hoochie Coochie,
Double Whammy,
Drop a Dime,
and the Forgotten Origins
of American Speech

RALPH KEYES

ST. MARTINS PRESS NEW YORK

Picture credits are as follows. (Those whose source is not credited are either in the public domain or are from the authors personal collection.)

2008 Jupiterimages corporation: 27 Rasputin; 29 gauntlet; 100 jib sails; 105 Duesenberg; 138 icebox; 140 breadbox; 164 logjam; 165 dovetail; 177 telegram; 184 boys playing marbles; 185 Erector set; 186 brass ring; 189 Punch & Judy; 217 Sad Sack; 238 juggernaut; 249 brass knuckles.

Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. 46 whistlestopping; 258 Buck Stops Here; 90 Wally Pipp. Courtesy Ted (a.k.a. BlackSoxFan); 94 Gorgeous George. Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum; 109 Tabloid. Wellcome Library, London; 153 Pet Rock. Courtesy Mike Harding, Montara Ventures; 158 Moxie song. Courtesy Ira Seskin; 160 Clara Peller. Wendys International, Inc.; 193 Frank Merriwell. Stanford University Dime Novel and Story Paper Collection; 199 Queen for a Day. Courtesy Geraldine McConville-Holdsworth and Shawn Hanley; 211 Alphonse & Gaston. Courtesy Mort Walker; 235 Mae West. From Jon Tuska, The Films of Mae West (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel, 1975), by permission of Jon Tuska; 257 Malaeska. Courtesy University of Oklahoma Press.

RETROTALK . Copyright 2009 by Ralph Keyes. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Keyes, Ralph.

I love it when you talk retro : hoochie coochie, double whammy, drop a dime, and the forgotten origins of American speech / Ralph Keyes.1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-34005-6

ISBN-10: 0-312-34005-2

1. English languageTerms and phrases. 2. English languageIdioms. 3. English languageFigures of speech. I. Title.

PE1689.K49 2009

422dc22

2008030157

First Edition: April 2009

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my sons David and Scott,

who helped me with this book,

as theyve helped me with so many things.

This book can be browsed, read straight through, or used as a work of reference. Its written with all those possibilities in mind. Ive tried to make the text as engaging as possible for those who wish to read it straight through. For ease of browsing in particular, key words and phrases are highlightedprincipal ones in bold, the others in italics. All principal words and phrases are indexed at the end to make looking them up easier. Sources consulted are also listed at the end.

When I play twenty questions people ask is it bigger than a breadbox? but I dont know what to say because I dont know how big a breadbox is and it really bothers me. Please help! How come everyone else knows stuff like this but not me??? Was I absent that day at school or what???

query to a website

A list compiled every fall at Beloit College attracts much attention. This list gathers cultural references that might puzzle first-year students. You sound like a broken record, for example, doesnt make much sense to a generation that grew up with iPod buds in their ears. Terms such as stuck in a groove and flip side could also be puzzling. Todays eighteen-year-olds may not know who Ma Bell is, why 1984 was a year to be concerned about, or how to get to Peyton Place.

Watergate is problematic too. Three decades after the break-in at that office complex in Washington, D.C., a South Carolina high school teacher asked students in her government class what Watergate referred to. Some had a vague idea that it had something to do with Richard Nixon. Others thought it referred to a fight between the British and Americans in 1789, or that it happened in the mid-1900s, or the late nineteenth century, and could have involved bribery, or the Clintons, or Vietnam, or possibly World War II.

And it isnt just not-so-current events that can be perplexing. In Ohio, thirty-seven students in a Canton high school class were polled about their familiarity with everyday items barely a generation old. None knew what 45 rpm referred to. One fifteen-year-old thought it might be a term for modem speedthe rate per minute perhaps. Another fifteen-year-old guessed that 45 rpm referred to the rotations per minute of a car wheel. These teenagers were vaguely familiar with vinyl records (You mean those giant black discs? My parents have some in the basement.) and rotary phones, because a few of their grandparents still used them. On the other hand, they could only speculate that a fuzz buster might be some sort of vacuum cleaner.

Not just young students but recent immigrants are liable to be puzzled when dated allusions come up. Thats what a Harvard graduate student named Michele Gordon discovered when she surveyed twenty colleagues about their familiarity with common American expressions such as Put your John Hancock there, The buck stops here, and Youre not in Kansas anymore. Half of her subjects were native-born, half English-speaking students from countries such as Denmark, Switzerland, and Nigeria. Even when they realized what such expressions meant, her foreign-born subjects seldom knew why. Although most had heard the name John Hancock, none could say why his name was synonymous with signatures. As for not being in Kansas anymore, Gordon assumed that because The Wizard of Oz runs so often on television, her foreign-born group would be familiar with this expression and its meaning. She was wrong. Although some had a general idea that it meant one was no longer in a rural environment, they missed the broader connotation of leaving a provincial setting for one thats more cosmopolitan. None realized that this catchphrase came from a movie. One guessed that it originated in the Broadway musical Oklahoma.

The foreign-born participants in Gordons study were taken aback by their lack of familiarity with these allusions. Some figured the references were likely to puzzle most Americans as well. But native-born participants did not find the expressions puzzling at all. Most found their meaning obvious. Asking about them was a silly exercise one told Gordon.

It wasnt. Even though American discourse is filled with references we assume everyones heard of, everyone hasnt. Those who were born after whats alluded to took place, who grew up in another country, or who simply dont know what it refers to, get left out in the conversational cold. After seeing Ka-Ching in a newspaper headline, an elderly New Yorker assumed this expression came from China and asked several Chinese acquaintances what it meant. Michele Gordon herself had no idea why The buck stops here refers to the final point of responsibility. (It comes from the old poker players expression