Q: I’m wondering if the “polka dot” pattern has any connection to the “polka” dance.
A: Yes, we can connect the dots here. The term “polka dot” comes from the dance in 2/4 time (two quarter notes per bar), which was especially popular in the 19th century. During the polka craze, the name was often attached to fabrics, clothing, and fashion accessories as a marketing tactic.
As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, “The use of polka as a commercial name developed in the 1840s due to the huge popularity of the dance in that period.”
The name of the dance, according to the dictionary, was used “prefixed to or designating various items, esp. textiles, fashion accessories, or articles of clothing, as polka hat, polka pelisse, etc.”
Elsewhere in its entry for the noun “polka,” the dictionary mentions “polka jacket,” “polka gauze,” and “polka curtain-band” (for looping up curtains). The OED adds that the usage is “now historical except in polka dot.”
The first Oxford citation for “polka” used as a commercial prefix is from the Nov. 8, 1844, issue of the Times (London): “Splendid and magnificent novelties … the Czarina, the Polka Pelisse, and Marquise Pelerine.”
The dictionary’s earliest example for “polka dot,” which we’ll expand here, is from the May 1857 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book, a magazine published in Philadelphia: “Scarf of muslin, for light summer wear. It is surrounded by a scalloped edge, embroidered in rows of round polka dots; two full volantes, or flounces are edged with the same.”
As for the dance, it originated in the Czech region of Bohemia in the 19th century, according to the OED, and spread through Europe and the US. The dictionary says the name ultimately comes from polka, a Czech term for a Polish woman; it’s the feminine form of polák, Czech for Pole.
Oxford says the dance was “probably so named as an expression of sympathy with the Polish uprising of 1830-1” against the Russian Empire, but it adds that “the earliest English examples present difficulties.”
Although the dance may have been named for the Polish cadets who rose up against the Russians, the term “polka” had appeared a few years earlier in the US, apparently in reference to a musical composition used to accompany a dance rather than to a dance itself.
The dictionary says the use of “polka” for “a piece of music typically written in 2/4 time as the accompaniment to a characteristic dance” appeared first in Miss George Anna Reinagle Music Book for Fancy Tunes, an 1825 manuscript by Pierre Landrin Duport at the Library of Congress. The citation consists of the word “polka” alone. Duport was a French-born musician and dancing teacher in Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C.
The OED’s first clear example of “polka” used for the dance itself is from a letter written in 1837 by Mary Austin Holley, author of the first known English-language history of Texas. Here’s an expanded version of the citation:
“It was announced that a Mr. Karponky & his scholars would dance the grand Polka. He is a Pole—has taught 3,000 persons the Polka in these U.S.” From Letters of an Early American Traveller: Mary Austin Holley, Her Life and Her Works (1933), by Mattie Austin Hatcher.
Finally, here are a couple of obsolete polka terms cited by the OED, along with their earliest appearances: “polkery,” a noun for a polka dance party (“Morning polkeries in Grosvenor-square,” 1845) … “polkaic,” an adjective meaning polka-like (“He thought Offenbach too polkaic,” 1884).
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