70. Schmooze — a Yiddishism (19th century)
It’s the initial two sounds that give schmooze away as a Yiddish word. English words traditionally don’t allow the sound sh to appear before a consonant. A combination of s + consonant is fine, as in spin, still and skin. But if anyone said shpin, shtill and shkin, we would think they had a speech defect — or were engaging in a bad imitation of Sean Connery.
Things changed in the late 19th century, when a new kind of loanword arrived from Yiddish. English previously had borrowed few words from this language — matzo (‘unleavened bread’) was a very early one, first recorded in 1650. But we don’t find much evidence of them in writing until the 19th century, when we get such words as kibosh (‘finishing off’, 1836), nosh (‘food’, 1873) chutzpah (‘brazen impudence’, 1892), pogrom (‘organised massacre’, 1891) — and schmooze (‘leisurely intimate chat’, 1897).
Schmooze wasn’t alone as the century turned. Apart from its derived forms (schmoozer, schmoozing), it was accompanied by several other words beginning with schl- or schm-, such as schlemiel (‘clumsy person’) and schmuck (‘objectionable person’). During the 1920s and ’30s we find schlep (‘haul, toil’) and its related forms, such as schlepping and schlepper (‘person of little worth, scrounger’), schnozzle and schnozz (‘nose’) and schmaltz (‘melted chicken fat’), schmaltzy and schmaltziness, whose ‘greasy’ connotations led to the word coming to mean ‘excessive sentimentality’, especially when talking about writing, music and song. Schm- in particular seems to have caught on, because by the end of the decade we find it being used in a remarkable way, forming nonsense words.
‘There’s a crisis,’ says one person, and another disagrees. ‘Crisis-schmisis!’ The usage conveys scepticism, disparagement or derision. There’s no crisis, and the first speaker is stupid to suggest there is one. It’s a simple sound substitution, and it became hugely popular, especially in the USA. Spelling varies, with words often appearing with shm-, but all kinds of words have been modified in this way, as in surveillance-shmurveillance, marathon-schmarathon, fancy-shmancy, baby-schmaby and holiday-schmoliday. It even led to a proper name. Joe Schmoe is a fictitious name for the ordinary American guy.
71. OK — debatable origins (19th century)
The little word OK has a linguistic reputation that belies its size. Over a thousand words in English have an etymology which, in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary, is ‘origin unknown’. Nobody knows where bloke comes from, or condom, gimmick, nifty, pimp, pooch, queasy, rogue or skiffle. Theories abound, of course, some very ingenious. Did nifty arise as a shortened form of magnificat? Is gimmick from magicians’ use of gimac, an anagram of magic? But no word has attracted more theorising than OK.
Is it from Scottish och aye? Is it from French au quai (the goods — or girls — have safely arrived ‘at the quayside’)? Is it from Choctaw oke (‘it is’)? Is it from Wolof okeh (‘yes’). Is it from Latin omnis korrecta (‘all correct’, sometimes written by schoolmasters on homework)? Is it from the Greek letters omega + khi (an early incantation against fleas)? Is it from Obediah Kelly, a railwayman who used to authorise freight movements with his initials? There are dozens more.
15. Residents of an estate in Fulham, London, celebrate the Queen’s silver jubilee in 1977. Decades later, the slogan shows no sign of disappearing. When Kate Middleton married Prince William in 2011, the Mail on Sunday carried the headline: ‘The Middle Class Rules OK.’ Thanks to a fine piece of research by American lexicographer Allan Walker Read, we now know that all of these theories are wrong. It first appeared in 1839 in a Boston newspaper, where there was a vogue for inventing humorous abbreviations using initial letters — an early instance of a language game. KY, for example, would be used for the phrase know yuse (= ‘no use’). And OK comes from oll korrect, a humorous adaptation of the words all correct.
Why didn’t it disappear, like the other abbreviations did? Because in 1840 it came to be associated with a totally different use — as a slogan during the 1840 US elections. It was the shortened form of Old Kinderhook, the nickname of President Martin Van Buren — Kinderhook being the name of his home- town in New York State. There was a Democratic OK Club, with its members called the OKs, and they had a war-cry: ‘Down with the Whigs, boys, OK!’
The combination of the two usages, in a very short space of time, resulted in the rapid use of OK as an interjection meaning ‘all right, good’. Other senses soon developed, such as ‘fashionable’ (the OK thing to do) and ‘trustworthy’ (He’s OK). A century on, and the word was still developing new uses, such as ‘comfortable’ (Are you OK with that?). In British English, it received huge graffiti exposure during the 1970s, when the fad of saying that someone or something rules OK (= ‘is pre-eminent’) was seen on walls all over the country.
But OK has a linguistic reputation for a second reason: the number of variant forms it has accumulated over the years. There are variant spellings (okay, okey), a shortened version (’kay) and several expanded forms (okie-dokie, okey doke(s), okey- cokey). Today, I suppose it’s the basic OK form which is most often encountered, thanks to the dialogue button on our computer screens. Press OK and something will happen!
72. Ology — suffix into word (19th century)
Suffixes, unlike prefixes (§87), are reluctant to become independent words, so when we find it happening, it’s a notable moment. Ology is probably the most famous member of what is a very small club.
There have been -ology endings for a long time. Theology and astrology are two of the oldest, from the 14th century. More recent formations are sociology and ecology. Humorous and creative coinages abound, from James Joyce’s codology (‘hoaxing’) to the dragonology of some children’s books and the quirky titles of internet sites, such as
