zander

Comments by zander

• zander commented on the word sockdolager

  Answers.com sez:Origin: 1827

  Entering the vocabulary by at least 1827, sockdolager was already well enough established in American slang to be included in a glossary published in the Virginia Literary Museum on January 6, 1830: "'sockdolager,' 'a decisive blow'--one, in the slang language, 'capable of setting a man thinking.'" It also could mean something or someone big. "There is but one 'sogdollager' in the universe," James Fenimore Cooper wrote in 1838, "and that is in Lake Oswego."

  Sockdolager was just one of the outrageous ten-dollar words coined early in the nineteenth century that sprang from the exuberance of the expanding new country. Others were absquatulate for "depart," callithumpian for "a noisy parade," hornswoggle for "cheat," and other s-words like slumgullion for "something disgusting," snollygoster for "a political jobseeker," and slangwhanger for "a partisan speechmaker," as well as skedaddle and SHINDIG (1857), which both survive today.

  On April 14, 1865, sockdolager was a key word in a tragic moment of American history. The Englishman Tom Taylor used it in his comedy, Our American Cousin, to Americanize the play's hero when he spoke the line that got the most laughs: "Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, you sockdologizing old man-trap." As the audience roared, John Wilkes Booth pulled the trigger. Those were the last words President Abraham Lincoln ever heard.

  August 2, 2009

• zander commented on the word thimble

  It's also a metal or plastic eye spliced into the end of a wire or line. When a shackle is inserted, the thimble protects the line or wire against chafe.

  August 2, 2009

• zander commented on the word trull

  A woman prostitute.

  Perhaps from German Trulle, from Middle High German trulle; akin to Old Norse troll, creature, troll.

  August 1, 2009