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English English language Etymology Expression

When ‘stopping’ means ‘staying’

Q: I’m an old movie buff who likes to research some of the forgotten usages in pre-1950 movies. One usage I’ve noticed is “stopping” at a hotel (or a friend’s home or whatever) where today we would say “staying.” When did this change?

A: The use of “stopping” for “staying” isn’t quite so dead as you think. It still shows up once in a while, as in this post by a British tourist on Tripadvisor (Aug. 14, 2022):

“Hey all, we’re stopping at the Hilton Capitol Hill & I’m a keen runner. Are there any running routes (park based maybe) near there?”

You’re right, though, that the usage isn’t all that common these days. We compared two expressions, “stopping at the Waldorf” and “staying at the Waldorf” using Google’s Ngram viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books.

The results indicate that the two expressions were pretty much equally popular from the 1890s to the 1940s, when the “staying” version became the overwhelming favorite.

In the mid-16th century the verb “stay” came to mean “to reside or sojourn in a place for a longer or shorter period; to sojourn or put up with a person as his guest,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The first OED example, which we’ve expanded, is from a letter written June 5, 1554, by the Earl of Bedford and Lord Fitzwaters about the voyage of Prince Philip, son of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, to England for his marriage to Queen Mary I:

“And from Villa Franca unto St. James’, being distant forty leagues, with all the speed he can conveniently make, where he stayeth about two days” (from England Under the Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, 1839, by Patrick Fraser Tytler).

In the early 19th century, the OED says, the verb “stop” came to mean “to remain, prolong one’s stay in a place; to stay (to dinner, at home, with a person).”

The dictionary’s first citation is from The Mysterious Husband (1801), a novel by Gabrielli, pseudonym of Elizabeth Meeke: “If your Honour and you, Madam, will stop to dinner with us.” Meeke was the stepsister of the novelist Fanny Burney.

In looking into your question, we came across an article in the Dec. 24, 1978, issue of The New York Times about Claudio Carlo Buttafava, general manager of the Savoy Hotel in London.

The headline, “Stopping at the Savoy,” was a pun on “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” the 1933 jazz standard composed by Edgar Sampson.

And since we’re still in a holiday spirit, we’ll end with this version by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.

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English English language Etymology Expression Language Phrase origin Usage Word origin Writing

Why we’re in cahoots

Q: I don’t know if you care about older columns, but you may want to update your 2011 item about “cahoot.” It seems silly to say, as your source does, that this Western Americanism descends from French. Many (most?) Westernisms come from Mexican Spanish.

A: The term “cahoot” first appeared in the American Southeast in the early 19th century and didn’t show up in the West until decades later, so it’s unlikely that the usage comes from Mexican Spanish.

In the early days, the word was singular (“cahoot”) and could refer to either a legitimate partnership or a devious collaboration. It’s now used primarily in the scheming sense in plural constructions such as “in cahoots” and “in cahoots with.”

The first known use of the term, tracked down by the linguist Ben Zimmer, is from “Barney Blinn,” an anonymous sketch in a Georgia newspaper about a fictional backwoods orator:

“I ha’nt read newspapers for nothing–Gin’ral Government and the ministration are going in cahoot to undermine and overrule the undertakings of the free People of Georgia” (The Augusta Chronicle, June 20, 1827).

We found the following example, which appeared a year later in a public notice in a Mississippi newspaper:

“I have reason to beleve, that a certain clan, cahoote of connexion, and othrs residing in the vicinity of my residence are predisposed to create, unnecessary and illegal liabilities on me, thro, the agency of my wife, LOUISA HOLMES” (Statesman & Gazette, Natchez, July 24, 1828).

The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary, which we’ve expanded, is from a list of “provincialisms and vulgarisms” in “Md. Va. Ky. or Miss.,” with “improper” examples followed by “corrected” ones:

“Hese in cahoot with me. He is in partnership with me” (Grammar in Familiar Lectures, 1829, by Samuel Kirkham).

This South Carolina example, found by the language researcher Pascal Tréguer, is from a list of “cracker” slang: “Co hoot—Copartnership” (City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser, Charleston, May 14, 1830).

And here’s an example from a February 1839 speech on the floor of the House of Representatives by Rep. Alexander Duncan, a Democrat from Ohio:

“Only think of this! A rank Abolition Whig from the North in ‘cahoot’ with a rank anti-Abolition Whig from the South” (from the Congressional Globe, predecessor of the Congressional Record).

The OED cites a different passage from the same speech: “I will splice the member from North Carolina to you, and for a short time will consider you one person, or in ‘cahoot.’ ”

The first Oxford citation for the plural “cahoots” is from a manuscript diary of G. K. Wilder (1862): “Mc wished me to go in cahoots in a store.” And “cahoots” it’s been ever since.

In his Dictionary of Americanisms (1848), John Russell Bartlett describes “cahoot” as a term used in “the South and West to denote a company or union of men for a predatory excursion, and sometimes for a partnership in business.”

However, the only Western example cited by Bartlett is from what we would now consider the Midwest. The passage, from a humorous newspaper sketch, describes an encounter on a Mississippi steamship:

“One day, the confidential hoosier took him aside, told him that there was a ‘smart chance of a pile’ on one of the tables, and that if he liked, he (the hoosier) would go in with him—in cahoot!” (from “A Resurrectionist and His Freight,” by J. M. Field, in The St. Louis Reveille, March 9, 1846).

The earliest example we’ve seen for “cahoot” used in the region now considered the West is from a newspaper in the Oregon Territory:

“I’m much obleeged to ye, sir; but old Betsey Baker (Betsey Baker was the name he gave to his own rifle) hev ben so long in cahoot together, that I hev a kind of efiction for the old lady” (from the Oregon Spectator, Oregon City, Oct. 18, 1849).

As for the origin of “cahoot,” the OED, an etymological dictionary updated regularly online, says the term is “probably a borrowing” from cahute, French for a hut or shack, and notes that “cahute” meant a cabin in the Scottish English of the 1500s.

The dictionary has two 16th-century citations (the earliest is from 1508 and describes a “foule cahute,” or foul cabin, on a ship).

Other modern etymological references are more hesitant than the OED to link cahute and “cahoot.” Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, for example, says “cahoot” is “of uncertain origin; occasionally thought to be borrowed from French cahute cabin.”

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang and Green’s Dictionary of Slang have similar entries. Green’s also has the French term cohorte, which gave English the word “cohort,” as a possible source of “cahoot.”

The OED doesn’t indicate how an obsolete Scottish term of French origin came to mean a partnership or conspiracy in the American South of the 19th century. The idea perhaps is that the cabin suggests people working together in private.

We’ve searched newspaper and book databases for the use of “cahoot” in various spellings by Scottish and Latin American immigrants  in the late 18th century and early 19th.

We also checked such sources as Dictionaries of the Scots LanguageDiccionario Etimológico Castellano En Línea, and Dictionary of American Regional English for hints of a possible Spanish or Scottish connection to the American usage. No luck.

We’d describe the origin of “cahoot” as uncertain.

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English English language Etymology Expression Language Phrase origin Usage Word origin Writing

The rustle of a print dress

Q: Sometimes in books set in the 1920s and ’30s, mainly in Agatha Christie’s books, I’ll see a reference to a maid wearing a “print dress,” but the dress actually seems to be a solid color. Can you shed any light on this?

A: As far as we can tell, the term “print dress” has always meant a garment made of a fabric with a printed design, though it’s often used without describing the design or the color.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the adjective “print” here has referred to a garment “made of printed fabric” or a fabric “bearing a printed pattern or design” since the usage first appeared in the mid-19th century.

The OED’s earliest citation for the phrase “print dress,” which we’ve expanded, is from Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe:

“Fanny herself was arrayed in a very pretty print dress, which her father had brought home in a recent visit, with a cape of white muslin.”

The dictionary includes an earlier example of “print” used to describe curtains: “a cylinder fall writing desk, sets of modern cotton print window curtains, 2 chimney glasses” (from an ad listing property “of a Gentleman quitting his residence,” The Times, London, May 8, 1820).

In the 17th century, “print” was used as a noun in a similar sense, which Oxford defines as “a printed (usually cotton) fabric; a piece of such fabric; the pattern printed on the fabric. Also: a garment or other article made from printed fabric.”

The dictionary cites a list of items in a 1679 probate inventory: “36 tufted fringe … 5 score and 13 yards of print … 8 Hand fringes” (from Probate Inventories of Lincoln [England] Citizens, 1661-1714, edited by J. A. Johnson in 1991).

Middle English borrowed the noun from Anglo-Norman and Middle French, where preinte referred to an “impression or imprint made by the impact of a seal or stamp.”

Getting back to your question, in The Body in the Library (1942), Agatha Christie uses “print dress” without any additional information in describing the early morning household noises as Mrs. Bantry awakens at Gossington Hall:

“They would culminate in a swift, controlled sound of footsteps along the passage, the rustle of a print dress, the subdued chink of tea things as the tray was deposited on the table outside, then the soft knock and the entry of Mary to draw the curtains.”

But when additional information is given in some other Christie works, the dress is clearly made of a fabric with a printed pattern, as in these examples:

“A real chambermaid looking unreal, wearing a striped lavender print dress and actually a cap, a freshly laundered cap” (At Bertram’s Hotel, 1965).

“ ‘My dear,’ he exclaimed, ‘do you see what she’s got on? A sprigged print dress. Just like a housemaid–when there were housemaids’ ” (“Greenshaw’s Folly,” a short story in The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, 1960).

We couldn’t find examples of the phrase “print dress” in Christie’s novels from the 1920s or ’30s, but here’s one from Sweet Danger (1933), by Margery Allingham:

“Her costume consisted of a white print dress with little green flowers on it, a species of curtaining sold at many village shops. It was cut severely, and was rather long in the skirt.”

When one color is mentioned, it probably refers to the background or the predominant color. Here’s an example from Jacob’s Room (1922), by Virginia Woolf: “Not that any one objects to a blue print dress and a white apron in a cottage garden.”

A design is assumed even if no color or pattern is described: “Poor Cecily! To go to church in a faded print dress, with a shabby little old sun-hat and worn shoes!” (The Golden Road, 1925, by Lucy Maud Montgomery).

The OED’s most recent example for “print dress” is from Timebends: A Life, a 1987 memoir by the playwright Arthur Miller. In this passage, Miller describes the dress worn by the grandmother of his first wife, Mary Slattery, at their wedding reception in 1940:

“She wore a flowered blue cotton print dress, high-crowned tucked bonnet of the same material with a visor ten inches deep.” (We’re quoting from the hardcover original; Oxford cites a shorter version in the 1988 paperback.)

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The purple haze of autumn

Q: I’ve always assumed that the expression “purple haze” (a variety of marijuana) comes from the 1967 Jimi Hendrix song “Purple Haze.” But I recently saw the phrase in Booth Tarkington’s 1918 novel The Magnificent Ambersons and I can’t tell what it means there.

A: For hundreds of years, the expression “purple haze” has been used literally to describe the sky at twilight, the air in autumn, and other atmospheric conditions.

The earliest example we’ve seen describes the evening sky: “As far as the eye could reach, mountains overtopped mountains, till the summits were undistinguishable in the purple haze of approaching night” (Sketches of India, 1750, by Henry Moses).

And here’s an example from Ann Radcliffe’s novel The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794): “The sun was now sunk behind the high mountains in the west, upon which a purple haze began to spread, and the gloom of twilight to draw over the surrounding objects.”

This description of the atmosphere at sea when gale winds begin to wane is from “Marine Scenery,” an account in The Naval Chronicle (January-June 1799), edited by James Stanier Clarke and John McArthur:

“When a gale of wind has in some degree abated, I have generally noticed a beautiful effect to arise from the purple haze which is cast around, and is finely contrasted with the dark clouds that are going off in sullen majesty.”

And this passage is from Charles Dickens’s novel Great Expectations (1861): “There was the red sun, on the low level of the shore, in a purple haze, fast deepening into black.”

As for the use of “purple haze” in The Magnificent Ambersons, we assume Booth Tarkington is describing the smoky air from the burning of autumn leaves in his fictional Midwestern city:

“When Lucy came home the autumn was far enough advanced to smell of burning leaves, and for the annual editorials, in the papers, on the purple haze, the golden branches, the ruddy fruit, and the pleasure of long tramps in the brown forest.”

The phrase took on several figurative senses later in the 20th century, including its use for LSD and marijuana.

In an entry for “purple haze,” the Oxford English Dictionary defines the phrase as a slang term for “Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), used as a recreational drug.”

The dictionary cites the 1967 sheet music for the Jimi Hendrix song “Purple Haze” as the earliest recorded example of the usage: “Purple haze was in my brain, / Lately things don’t seem the same.”

However, the lyrics on the single (March 17, 1967) are somewhat different from the sheet music cited by the OED: “Purple haze all in my brain / Lately things just don’t seem the same.”

It’s uncertain what Hendrix meant by “purple haze.” As Harry Shapiro and Caesar Glebbeek explain in Jimi Hendrix: Electric Gypsy (1995), “Every time he was asked about this song, he gave a different answer.” Here are a couple of examples given:

“I dream a lot and put a lot of dreams down as songs. I wrote one called ‘First Around the Corner’ and another called ‘The Purple Haze,’ which was all about a dream I had that I was walking under the sea” (New Musical Express, Jan. 28, 1967).

“He likes this girl so much that he doesn’t know what he’s in, ya know. A sort of daze, ah suppose. That’s what the song is all about” (Dundee Recorder, April 7, 1967, from an interview after an April 6 performance at the Odeon Cinema in Glasgow).

Shapiro and Glebbeek also cite “purple haze” references in works of science fiction and mythology that influenced Hendrix, and conclude that the song “was almost certainly a pot-pourri of ideas that parcelled up into one song.”

No matter what Hendrix meant by “purple haze,” many listeners thought it referred to a psychedelic experience, and the phrase came to be a slang term for LSD.

The March-April 1970 issue of Microgram, a journal of the US Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, includes “purple haze LSD” in “a glossary of ‘street’ names for drugs and related products.”

The OED notes that the amphetamine Drinamyl (dextroamphetamine and amylobarbitone) had earlier been called “purple heart” in British slang, a reference to its color and shape.

The earliest Oxford citation for the British usage describes Drinamyl as “a Schedule 1 poison known in the trade as ‘purple heart’ ” (The Guardian, March 23, 1961).

Getting back to “purple haze,” the phrase is now also a slang term for various strains of marijuana known for their high THC content and purple or purplish leaves.

The earliest example we’ve seen is from “The Lehigh Drug Subculture,” an article published May 7, 1993, in The Brown and White, the student newspaper at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA.

The phrase appears in a list of terms associated with cannabis, including “bong, hit, hooch, doobie, grass, gange, take, smoke, marijuana, kind, northern lights, Seattle, tasty buds, purple haze, blunt.”

The earliest example we’ve found where “purple haze” is clearly described as a variety of marijuana, is in “Epidemiologic Trends in Drug Abuse,” a June 1999 report for the National Institute of Drug Abuse:

“Several varieties of marijuana are plentiful on the streets of New York, including ‘hydro,’ ‘brown chocolate,’ ‘Cambodian-red,’ and ‘purple-haze.’ They vary in type of cultivation, color, and point of origin. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) levels are reportedly rising in Atlanta and high in Houston and Los Angeles, where sinsemilla with a THC level of 25-30 percent continues to be common.”

In Green’s Dictionary of Slang, the lexicographer Jonathon Green lists “purple haze” with two senses: “1. LSD” and “2. a strong variety of cannabis.”

The collaborative online dictionary Wiktionary defines the marijuana sense as “one of numerous strains of cannabis known for their high THC content and recognizable by the color of their leaves, which vary from solid purple to flecked violet.”

We’ll end with a picture of purple haze from “A Rainbow of Cannabis: What Different Colors Tell Us About a Strain” (Oct. 16, 2020), an article on the website of The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, WA:

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