Paul Dickson - Words from the White House: Words and Phrases Coined or Popularized by Americas Presidents

The Congress Dictionary: The Ways and Meanings of Capitol Hill
(with Paul Clancy)

The Dickson Baseball Dictionary
(second and third editions, The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary)

A Dictionary of the Space Age

Drunk: The Definitive Drinkers Dictionary
(updated as Intoxerated)

The Hidden Language of Baseball: How Signs and Sign-Stealing
Have Influenced the Course of Our National Pastime

Journalese: A Dictionary for Deciphering the News
(with Robert Skole)

Labels for Locals: What to Call People from
Abilene to Zimbabwe

Names: A Collectors Compendium of Rare and Unusual,
Bold and Beautiful, Odd and Whimsical Names

Slang: The Topical Dictionary of Americanisms

War Slang: American Fighting Words and Phrases
Since the Civil War

Words: A Connoisseurs Collection of Old and New, Weird
and Wonderful, Useful and Outlandish Words

Copyright 2013 by Paul Dickson

This electronic edition published in January 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

For information address
Walker & Company,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York,
New York 10010.

The images of Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding, the buck stops here, Herbert Hoover, Warren G. Harding with telephone, The Atlantic Fleet battleships, Bill Clinton, Calvin Coolidge, Theodore Roosevelt, the Monroe Doctrine illustration, The Muck Rake and Some of the Muck, Thomas Jefferson, Roosevelt For a New Deal, George H. W. Bush, Franklin D. Roosevelt March 4, 1933, Robert T. Hartmann, Woodrow Wilson, Barack Obama, and William McKinley appear courtesy of the Library of Congress
Prints and Photographs Division. All other photographs are from the
authors personal collection.

Published by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., New York
A Division of Bloomsbury Publishing

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR.

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First U.S. edition 2013

eISBN: 978-0-8027-4382-4 (e-book)

Necessity obliges us to neologize.
THOMAS JEFFERSON

As a means of introducing the presidents in their proper order, here they are listed along with some of their firsts, many of which involve the means of communication, from the birth of the post office to todays social media. The idea being to show the context into which they amended and enriched the language.

1. GEORGE WASHINGTON , 17891797First president.

2. JOHN ADAMS, 17971801First to live in the White House.

3. THOMAS JEFFERSON, 18011809First to wear long trousers.

4. JAMES MADISON, 18091817First to have had prior service as a congressman; first to have an inaugural ball.

5. JAMES MONROE, 18171825First to be wounded in battle; Rutherford B. Hayes would be the second.

6. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 18251829The first president to be photographed, but the photo was not taken while he was in office; the first and only president to have a son whose given name was George Washington.

7. ANDREW JACKSON, 18291837First to travel by train. On June 6, 1833, he traveled from Ellicotts Mills, Maryland, to Baltimore by the B&O Railroad. He was the first president born in a log cabina mark of humble distinction. (Chester A. Arthur was the last born in a log cabin.)

8. MARTIN VAN BUREN, 18371841First president born in the United States. All previous presidents were born before the United States became a country, although all were born in places that would later be parts of the United States.

9. WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, 1841First president to die in office. He served for a single month.

10. JOHN TYLER, 18411845First to become president upon the death of another. He was also the president with the most children: fourteen.

11. JAMES KNOX POLK, 18451849First president to have his inauguration reported by telegraph.

12. ZACHARY TAYLOR, 18491850First president to win office in an election that was held on the same day (November 7, 1848) in every state.

13. MILLARD FILLMORE, 18501853First president to have a stepmother.

14. FRANKLIN PIERCE, 18531857The first president born in the nineteenth century (1804). Pierce installed the first central-heating system in the White House. He is the only president to have said I promise instead of I swear at his inauguration.

15. JAMES BUCHANAN, 18571861First and only president who never married.

16. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 18611865First Republican president; first president with a beard and the first born outside the original thirteen colonies.

17. ANDREW JOHNSON, 18651869First to be impeached (acquitted by a single vote).

18. ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT, 18691877First president to view the Pacific Ocean (1852).

19. RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD HAYES, 18771881First president to graduate from law school; first White House telephone was installed, by Alexander Graham Bell himself, during the Hayes administration. First Easter egg roll on the White House lawn was conducted by Hayes and his wife.

20. JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD, 1881First left-handed president; first president to campaign in two languagesEnglish and German.

21. CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR, 18811885First president to take oath of office in his own home and the first president to have been accused (wrongly) of not being born in the United States.

22. GROVER CLEVELAND, 18851889First president to appear in a film. In 1895, Alexander Black came to Washington and asked Cleveland to appear in his photoplay A Capital Courtship. He agreed to be filmed while signing a bill into law.

23. BENJAMIN HARRISON , 18891893First president to have a Christmas tree in the White House.

24. GROVER CLEVELAND, 18931897First and only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms.

25. WILLIAM MCKINLEY, 18971901First to ride in an automobile.

26. THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 19011909First president to entertain an African-American guest at the White HouseBooker T. Washington. First president to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

27. WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT, 19091913First president of the Union of forty-eight states.

28. WOODROW WILSON, 19131921First president to earn a Ph.D.

29. WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING, 19211923First president to speak on the radio, as well as the first to have broad newsreel coverage, which means it can be argued that he was our first media president; first to own a radio and first to ride to his inauguration in an automobile.

30. CALVIN COOLIDGE, 19231929The first inaugural address broadcast by radio was that of Coolidge, on March 4, 1925. He was also the first born on the Fourth of JulyJuly 4, 1876. (Three presidents died on July 4th: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on July 4, 1826, and James Madison on July 4, 1831.)