People often ask where the topics
for my monthly letters come from. This
month, I am on a thread of words that I used to hear a lot when I was a kid but
seldom hear anymore today. I heard one
of these terms in a movie and it triggered the recollection of others.
Moxie: Back in the 1980s, I had my first supervisory position
as Manager of Total Quality Management. With two managers having left the
company, I was given my department and the other manager's department to
manage. Needless to say, I was familiar with the people and responsibilities
of the department I was working in. The other department was Quality
Auditing. Most of the men (yeah it was in the days of all male
engineering departments) in that department were older than me. They were
actually close to retirement. Their job was to travel to our plants and
those of our suppliers to ensure all were adhering to our quality standards and
protocols. Given their age, my age, and me being a management newbee
would have made this a bit of a challenge for me. The nature of their
jobs had these guys traveling about 60% of the time. As a result, I had
some direct reports that were also incredibly independent and not entirely
disposed to take direction from anyone let alone me.
One of these auditors was named Jack. Jack was probably close
to my Father's age and, the best I can explain it, is that Jack looked like a
cross between William Powell in visage and Sydney Greenstreet in physique.
Jack and I had lunch every once in a while well before I was his interim
manager. Mostly Jack would pontificate in a most entertaining way about
business, quality, the good old days of American business, and what the heck
was wrong with business, society, and the government of those times.
Jack came into my office to
congratulate me on being named his interim boss and bring me up to speed on his
activities and travel plans. At the end of the discussion, he looked me
square in the eyes said he appreciated my attitude which he noted was different
than others my age and younger. Then, he said, "You know what this
upcoming generation is lacking?" I said, "I am not sure, tell
me." I had no clue what he was going to say. Part of me hoped
it would be wise and enlightening. Jack leaning forward, very serious,
staring me straight in the eye and said one word: "Moxie."
Really? Moxie? I had
not heard anyone use that term in years.
I was not sure what it meant.
I thought it was a combination determination with a dash of independence
and a sprinkle of sass. From somewhere in the recesses of my memory, I
also thought it was, of all things, a soft drink brand.
From dictionary.com
moxie—noun
Slang.
1.
vigor; verve; pep.
2.
courage and aggressiveness;
3.
nerve.
skill; know-how.
skill; know-how.
1908,
popularized by Moxie, trademark name registered 1924 for a bitter non-alcoholic
beverage; the word was used as far back as 1876 as the name of a patent
medicine advertised to "build up your nerve," and it is perhaps
ultimately from a New England Indian word.
Moxie was indeed a soft drink
brand. It began in the 1880s and mirrored the history of Coca Cola.
In fact, Moxie outsold in Coke in the 1920s. It was created by Dr.
Augustin Thompson. Many of the first soft drinks were elixirs that touted
health benefits. They often included ingredients such as cocaine to
provide the “vim and vigor’ touted in the advertising. Dr.
Thompson created a drink without any harmful ingredients. The secret
ingredient he used is gentian
root and was supposedly brought back to the US from South America by one,
very fictitious, Lt. Moxie.
In the 40s and 50s, Moxie’s
decline was due to a variety of factors.
It had a kind of bitter taste that was only popular in the northeast. In 1939, Frank Archer the mover and shaker
that ran the company and grew the brand passed away and the company never had
the same caliber of leadership. In the
1940s, they reformulated the drink and launched “New Moxie.” It was a total failure. Apparently, Coca Cola did not learn this
lesson with their launch of New Coke almost 40 years later.
Moxie is still around. They even have a website where you can learn
more about the history of the soft drink:
http://www.drinkmoxie.com/. You can buy a Moxie t-shirt that says:
You’ve either got it or you don’t
Moxie
In World War II, the company had a
slogan: What this country needs is
plenty of Moxie.
I do believe that is what Jack was
trying to get across to me. I do believe
he was right… when he made his comment to me, not too many people had any clue
what Moxie was.
Conniption: Having forayed
down the Moxie path, I was thinking of other terms that are no longer in
vogue. That is, I was thinking of terms
my parents used when I was a kid that I no longer hear anymore today. People had a lot more conniption fits back in
the day than they have now. Today a
person having a conniption fit would more likely be labeled as having Road
Rage, Freaking Out, or some other youthful slang that I am not familiar with.
From dictionary.com
Often, conniptions. Informal. a fit of hysterical excitement or anger.
Also called conniption fit.
Origin:
1825–35, Americanism; origin uncertain
1825–35, Americanism; origin uncertain
This definition was rather
unsatisfying. The dictionary.com people
must have thought so too, so they included the following which sheds a bit more
light on this connipitive thing.
For a word that has such an official
ring to it, there is surprisingly little information on where the terms
conniption or conniption fit originated from. The word did not appear until the
19th century and is virtual unused in the United Kingdom, leading most scholars
to conclude that the etymology of conniption fit lies in the United States.
According to the Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins by
William and Mary Morris, the word conniption is most likely the creation of an
imaginative American who coined the term in an attempt to sound educated with a
bit of pseudo-Latin. The folks over at Podictionary did a
pretty cool podcast about the etymology of the word conniption last year that
suggested that the word was first used to describe a woman by the name of Aunt
Keziah who lost her cool in the 1800s. She and the rest of her neighbors in a
small town of New England were waiting for a scheduled visit by President
Andrew Jackson that was canceled with very little notice, at which said
conniption fit did ensue.
Copacetic: Here is another
word that seems to belong in black and white B-movies of the 1940s and
50s. “Everything is copacetic.” That is the only way I have ever heard this
word used. Everything is just fine. A-OK.
Copacetic sounds so high brow. It
is like the combination of two Latin words copus and cetus meaning A and OK or
vice-versa. But no, this word too is
slang. Again from dictionary.com
adjective Slang.
fine; completely satisfactory; OK.
Origin:
1915–20, Americanism; of obscure origin; popular attributions of the word to
1915–20, Americanism; of obscure origin; popular attributions of the word to
Louisiana French, Italian,
Hebrew, etc. lack supporting evidence.
Last time I heard this word was in
the movie Notting Hill. I have never really used this word though I
do hear others of my generation use it every once in a while.
Discombobulate: This is the
word that heard in a movie. It was in 42 the film that documented the
baseball life of Jackie Robinson. Early in the movie when Jackie was playing for
the Montreal farm team of the Brooklyn Dodgers, they played an exhibition game
against the Dodgers. Jackie was walked
because the pitcher refused to give a black man a pitch he could hit. Jackie promptly stole second and then third
base. He took a daring lead off of third
to the point that the frustrated pitcher dropped the ball and was called for a
balk. Robinson was awarded home plate
and scored a run. A young boy in the
stands told his mother that Jackie “discombobulated the man!”
These days’ people are confused,
in disarray, or disoriented these days but seldom discombobulated. We have a more official definition thanks to
dictionary.com:
verb
to confuse
or disconcert; upset; frustrate: the speaker was completely discombobulated
by the hecklers.
Origin:
1825-35,
Americanism, fanciful alteration of discompose or discomfort
I had a Uncle that loved to use
this word. Until the Jackie Robinson
movie, I had not heard discombobulate used for years.
Groovy: My generation is not
immune to having coined or used terms that are no longer used. Back in the heyday of Hippiedom and the
counter culture, the word groovy was bandied about with irritating
frequency.
Slang.
1. Highly stimulating or attractive;
excellent: groovy music; a groovy car.
2. inclined to follow a fixed routine.
I never liked this word and I am
not so sure why. Out of all the slang,
jargon, and blah blah of those crazy days of adolescence and coming of age, I
just found groovy irritating. I did not
like the way it was used and abused. I
did not like the pretension and kind of sarcasm that under lied the use of
it. I especially hated how the mass media
took it over and used it in advertising so quickly. Needless to say I was happy to see this term
have a very short life and be relegated to the junk heap of slang.
Musician Slang: There are slang terms that have staying power. I use “cool” and call all my close friends
and musical buddies “baby” all the time.
A couple of years ago while still
living in Connecticut, I booked a wedding.
The folks hiring our band said they had an uncle who was a jazz pianist
and would it be OK if he sat in a jammed with us. Our response was, “Yeah… OK.” In all my years of musical experience, I have
learned one thing: never have any
expectations in situations like this.
The uncle might be an awesome player that it would be an honor to play
with or he might have been a total bust.
There is no way to predict.
On the day of the wedding, we met
the uncle. He was indeed a cool dude. He
was an old school jazz player from I am guessing the beatnik era. He kept referring to us “cats.” “I love the music you cats play.” I kept calling him baby in return. I had never been called a “cat” before. It was kind of cool. I had not heard anyone use that term outside
of a movie ever before or ever since.
Back in my days of playing music
in Detroit with the Johnites, we had a full vocabulary of terms and nicknames. We called our musical pay “geetus” which we
borrowed from The Three Stooges. Most of
words were either idiotic or off color.
Often they were both. One day
when we were counting all the words we had made up and it dawned on us that WE
did not make them up. All the words and
terms we used came from our drummer Mike Mossoian.
Yes, as this letter draws to a
close, it is time to bring Ara Topouzian into the mix. Whenever I call or get a call from Ara, we do
not say hello. We say “loogid.” Loogid is a contraction and slang for “look
it.” How and why did we ever come to
this manner of salutation? We happen to
know, what I can only call a character, in the Armenian community of
Detroit. He seems to prefix every
sentence with a drawly “look it.” As we
noticed this, and as we are basically infantile, we started emulating his
habit. At this point, we probably say it
more than he does. We even have people
that never met the originator of this salutation using it.
Thanks for reading this groovy bit
of discombobulated musings and meanderings in the world of slang.
