Oh, johnny

I know that hospital gowns hereabouts are familiarly known as "johnnies" -- and if any garment calls out for a familiar name, it's this one -- but until I heard from Sara B., looking for more information, I had no idea this word was a New England regionalism.

"I am a nurse who for years has tried to find the origin of the word," she wrote. "I was told this was due to doctors training in Mass. General where the term was first used." The origin story she'd heard was that the open-back gown allowed easy use of the toilet, or "john," an explanation so simple it's almost guaranteed to be false. (And think about it: Does anything else about the johnny suggest that it's designed for the patient's comfort?) 

But the Boston part is true, says the Historical Dictionary of American Slang: Johnny is "Common in Boston area hospitals from ca1900, but apparently unknown elsewhere."

Johnny is of course a very common word, both as a name and as a slang term: Among the senses HDAS gives it are a young fellow, long underwear, an Army recruit, a fool, a servant, a Chinese man, and a policeman, and that's before you start on the Johnny Rebs and stage-door Johnnies and Johnny collars. So I searched for "hospital johnnies," which turns up in Google News cites starting in 1950, almost always in New England newspapers, though one 1953 mention is in the St. Petersburg Times.

I would expect johnny to have spread a bit, if only among hospital staff, given the number of doctors exported by New England medical schools. But if there's a record of its coinage (and I wouldn't bet on it), someone else will have to dig it up. If you have a clue I can pass on to Sara B., please share it.

And yes, aren't you glad to know you can sew your own hospital johnny? The pattern is for sale at Butterick.com and here.

Etymological quackery

Tomorrow's Word column revisits the duck tape/duct tape argument, and none too soon: Since the last round -- Safire and I* both wrote about it in 2003, Michael Quinion in 2005 -- the notion that "duck tape" evolved into "duct tape" has gained adherents (to judge by Web cites). This is no doubt because the official history of Johnson & Johnson (which claims to be the tape's inventor) has now endorsed it:

The tape was originally called duck tape, for its water-repelling properties. (Duck ...water ... get it?) And, as the story goes, the fabric used to make the tape was called cotton duck. Soldiers soon discovered that the tape was incredibly useful in repairing just about anything that needed repair, from jeeps to planes to tents to boots. As time went on, "duck" morphed into "duct" because of its use in the postwar building industry to help connect … you guessed it … ductwork for heating and air conditioning. 

But I still couldn't find a shred of evidence for this, so I asked the J&J librarian, Margaret Gurowitz, what it was based on. Her reply, which  arrived after the column went to press, says, essentially, that there is no evidence -- it's just company folklore.

Unfortunately, I don't have any additional information on the transition from "duck" to "duct" tape. ... Because duct tape was invented as a wartime product for the military during World War II, there was no product launch and publicity of the kind that would happen with most products. ... The story about it being originally called "duck" has been passed down verbally here, and it also can be found on the many websites devoted to duct tape. Since it was originally developed as a waterproof tape to keep ammunition cases dry, and it was said to have been made using cotton duck fabric, the story of the origin of its name does make sense.

In fact, I found evidence that J&J had developed silver duct tape (and used it on ductwork) by 1938, well before it would have been needed for ammunition cases. So if anything, the story is shakier than it was last time I looked.** As I conclude in the column, there was a fabric tape (duck tape), and later there was a sticky tape (duct tape), but "explanations" of their connection are still just guesswork.

 *Behind a paywall at the Globe, but reproduced here.

**Update: Dammit, Michael Quinion, whose eyes are clearly better than mine, points out that the pub date of this article is not 1938 but 1958. Doesn't affect the conclusion, but puts a serious dent in my satisfaction. However, a 1958 date is evidence of a different sort: The article shows men taping ductwork and describes the tape as silver colored, but does not call it "duct tape" (or "duck tape" either).

Mary Schmich stiffed again?

I hope I'm wrong about this, but I think "All Things Considered" just reported on Mary Schmich's famous 1997 column, popularly known as "Wear Sunscreen," without mentioning her name or authorship. Audio isn't up yet, but here's the intro on the NPR website:

In the late 1990s, a manifesto falsely attributed to Kurt Vonnegut made the rounds of e-mail boxes. It came to be known as "Wear Sunscreen" — and even spawned a hit music video from movie director Baz Luhrmann. A similar, but more vicious, manifesto is now going viral. It was penned by firebrand NYU professor Scott Galloway to a student who arrived to his class an hour late. We give this latest diatribe the Luhrmann-like musical treatment.

The original Chicago Tribune column is here. Like I say, I hope I misheard; what kind of reporter would mention the misattribution and not the true source? (I know, I know, all kinds of reporters would. But it's not OK.)

Update, 7:30 p.m.: It's even stranger than I thought; the report mentions that the original "essay" came from the Chicago Tribune, but it does indeed leave out the author's name (while mentioning Vonnegut and Luhrman!). Bizarre.

Does NGD need a name change?

The spirit was willing: For National Grammar Day, it was marching with Mark Liberman and the Modal Auxiliary Corps in their assault on the Dark Tower of official peevology. But the flesh was weak, laid low by a nasty bronchitis as grimly persistent as the over/more than myth. Between coughing fits, though, I roused myself to enjoy the NGD observances of my fitter compatriots.

Neal Whitman, for example, argued that singular they is here to stay, so why not adopt a sensible set of rules for it? "Everyone did their best" -- fine. "If someone was pregnant I would be sympathetic to them" -- silly. (The piece is at Visual Thesaurus, subscription $19.95 a year, 14-day free trial available.) And Gabe Doyle used the occasion to debunk 10 usage beliefs (about hopefully, which/that, healthy/healthful, etc.) that thoroughly deserve debunking.

But there was plenty of evidence to buttress Arnold Zwicky's pessimism about a good-guy takeover of NGD. One of the day's lowlights, noted by Geoff Pullum, was the grammar poem that won the NGD poetry contest. (Perhaps it won because the other, better efforts were mostly about punctuation?) The New York Times's Learning Network blog bravely suggested we reclaim the holiday: "Boycott the red pen that ensnares us in syntactical games of right and wrong, and pick up a piece of literature, any piece of literature, and explore the English language with fresh eyes." Within the first 10 comments, though, we find "I was taught in school that you should never use 'But' to start a sentence" and, even sadder, "As a college professor, I’ve seen my fair share of  'your' instead of 'you are,' 'to' instead of 'too,' and other fundamental grammar errors." (That's not grammar, Professor.)

HuffingtonPost showed itself equally ignorant, offering 11 photos alleged to show "The WORST Grammar Errors Ever" and inviting readers to vote on them. Most of the 11, however, were the usual banal punctuation and spelling errors -- "student's for McCain," "Its the Law," brakes for breaks, their for they're. The only clear example of grammatical error -- a sign reading "Now we taking job application" -- seems very likely to be the work of a non-native speaker. (I hope that some of the 627 commenters have also made this point, but I can't bear to look, not till I get my strength back.)

All this makes me think that the problems with National Grammar Day may be baked into its very name. Most usage complaints are not about grammar at all; shouldn't an observance dedicated to spreading enlightenment start out by making this clear? Or should NGD simply be renamed, more accurately, National (Get Over Your) Peeve Day? 

Annals of peevology: "Fix"

A true scholar, Maximilian Schele de Vere was usually more interested in explaining than in denouncing language. But in "Americanisms: The Language of the New World" (1871), he joined in the widespread condemnation of our national fondness for fixing things:

Fix, to, may be safely called the American word of words, since there is probably no action whatever, performed by mind or body, which is not represented at some time or other by the universal term. It has well been called the strongest evidence of that national indolence which avoids the trouble of careful thought at all hazards, and of that restless hurry which ever makes the word welcome that comes up first and saves time.

Whatever is to be made, whatever needs repair, whatever requires arrangement -- all is fixed. The farmer fixes his gates, the mechanic his workbench, the seamstress her sewing-machine, the fine lady her hair, and the schoolboy his books. The minister forgets to fix his sermon in time, the doctor to fix his medicines, and the lawyer to fix his brief. At public meetings it is fixed who are to be the candidates for office; rules are fixed to govern an institution, and when the arrangements are made, the people contentedly say: "Now everything is fixed nicely." Americans must have had an early weakness for the word, for already, in 1675, the Commissioners of the United Colonies ordered "their arms well fixed and fit for service." (Quoted by J. R. Lowell.)* It is not to be wondered at, after this, that Americans should be so continually in a fix -- an expression which, in England only slang, is here used in serious language.

"A poor woman and her orphan chicks,
Left without fixtures, in an awful fix." 

*Schele de Vere (and Lowell) were mistaken in calling this fix an American invention, according to the OED. Its earliest citation for the sense -- "To adjust, make ready for use (arms, instruments, etc.); to arrange in proper order" -- comes from Pepys's Diary (1663): "I found ... the arms well fixed, charged, and primed." But the 19th-century usagists took for granted that most extensions of fix beyond the basic meanings --  "attach, fasten, set" -- were the work of American yokels.

News to me: "Shed one's wedge"

A Guardian article on literature's Top 10 Unreliable Narrators (thanks, Chris!) includes this paragraph on Martin Amis's 1984 novel "Money":

John Self is one of literature's most repulsively addictive narrators. The book might be* subtitled "A Suicide Note", but it is in fact a love story, with Self dreaming up ever more extravagant ways to shed his wedge while pursuing entirely corruptible Selina Street, among others. The fact that Self might never have actually existed, revealed towards the end, is Amis's sly take on the death of the self.

Um, "ways to shed his wedge"? Sounds dirty, but that's probably just because of all the other phrases in which a guy is said to be X-ing his Y. My second guess was that it meant "commit suicide," as in "shuffle off this mortal coil." I figured the Internet would clear it up in seconds, but no -- the usage is surely there, but it's buried in heaps and heaps of wedge issues and golf wedges. Ditto for Nexis cites.

But yes, the OED has the answer, in a 1993 addition: A wedge is slang, originally criminals' slang, for "A wad of bank notes; hence, (a significant amount of) money." Among the citations is one from the Times of London, 1981: "Top villains ... share an idiosyncratic argot (‘wedge’, for example, for a stack of money)." Did the thin end of this wedge ever make its way into American usage, I wonder, or is it strictly a British thing?


*I would probably have written "the book may be subtitled A Suicide Note"; I'd be tempted to read "might be subtitled" as meaning "could be," but in fact, that is the subtitle.

The return of Grammarnoir

I once was wary of National Grammar Day, founded in 2004 by Martha Brockenbrough's Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG), thinking of it as just another excuse for ignorant kvetching. Then, last year, John McIntyre redeemed the March 4 holiday by making it the occasion for a grammar-based pulp fiction serial. The holiday looms again, and this year's dark tale, "Pulp Diction," is already under way (Part 2, with a link to Part 1, is here).

If you haven't read it, or even if you have, you may want to start with last year's "Grammarnoir," in which I was honored to have a cameo as a language moll lurking about in a dark raincoat.

Speaking of mysteries, is anyone minding the store at SPOGG? The National Grammar Day website is a year out of date: "WHO HAD THE WORST GRAMMAR IN 2008? FIND OUT!" it blares. The list of links is full of outdated and abandoned sites. Martha may not be locked up "in the Big House," except in the plot of last year's "Grammarnoir," but do the forces of evil have her tied up in a windowless, wireless-free room somewhere?