Okey Dokey?

A restaurant in Houston’s Heights specializing in British food calls itself “Hunky Dory,” which means “quite satisfactory or very fine.” Apparently lifted from the title of a 1971 David Bowie album, it’s an odd name for an establishment serving fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, and spotted dick, since “hunky dory” is an Americanism. Beyond that, the experts can’t tell us much with any certainty.

Its earliest usage was in the 1860s. With a slightly different spelling, it appeared in the lyrics of a song used by the Christy Minstrels from 1862:

            One of the boys am I,
            That always am in clover;
            With spirits light and high,
            'Tis well I'm known all over.
            I am always to be found,
            A singing in my glory;
            With your smiling faces

            ‘Tis then I'm hunkey dorey.

The Galveston Daily News in a June 1866 article advised, “In the morning wash with Castile soap, in soft rain water, and you are all "Hunky-dore" - as fresh as a lily…”

The word hunky, without the dory, meaning “fit and healthy.” was around even earlier. A Civil War song in 1861 was called “A Hunkey Boy is Yankee Doodle,” and “hunkum-bunkum,” with the same meaning, was recorded in a newspaper as early as 1842.

“Hunk” probably derives from the Dutch word honk, meaning “goal” or “home,” in a children's game. From that usage it took on the meaning of “safe haven or place of refuge.”

There are at least a couple of theories about where “dory” came from. Most likely it is simply an instance of reduplication, the addition of a similar but meaningless sound to a word, often done, especially by children, to add colorful humor and emphasis. Examples of reduplication include “hocus pocus,” “hoity-toity,” “itty bitty,” “teeny-weeny,” and “mumbo jumbo.” According to that theory, though, the reduplication should have resulted in “hunky-dunky,” rather than “hunky dory.”

But some think “dory” is a bilingual pun, based on dori, a Japanese word for “street,” and honcho-dori, is a Japanese word for “main street,” or sometimes “easy street.” It was sometimes used by American sailors in Japan in the 1850s to refer to areas noted for easy virtue.

Critics of the Bard of Buffalo Bayou have never called his work “hunky dory.” Words that come to mind instead are “stinky-dinky,” “yucky-mucky,” and “lousy-wousy.”

            “Itsy bitsy, teenie weenie,

            Yellow polka-dot bikini”—

            Oh, how I wish those words were only mine!

            My royalties would go on forever,

            And with any luck I’d never

            Have to write another lousy line!

           

The Gin Game

I recently enjoyed an infrequent Martini—a drink sometimes called “Fred Astaire in a glass,” surrounded by a mystique of glamor, elegance, and mystery. The mystery consists largely in its origin and why it is called a “Martini.”

Made from London dry gin and dry vermouth, mixed in ice, with either an olive or a twist of lemon, and, in its earliest incarnations, other ingredients such as bitters and maraschino liqueur, the Martini originated in the 1880s, either in San Francisco or in New York, depending on which story you prefer. Its name may come from the brand of vermouth that was first used, Martini & Rossi, produced since 1863. Or it may have been born, under a slightly different name, in San Francisco, where the Occidental Hotel was serving a “Martinez cocktail” to patrons en route to the ferry to nearby Martinez, California. New Yorkers claim it originated at the Knickerbocker Hotel in 1912, when the chief bartender was Martini di Arma di Taggia.

The Martini’s ambrosial potency has elicited rapturous comments from many literary figures. E. B. White called it the “elixir of quietude.” Bernard De Voto said, “The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth, and one of the shortest lived….It is the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.” Ernest Hemingway wrote in A Farewell to Arms, “I never tasted anything so cool and clean…They make me feel civilized.” James Thurber opined, “One martini is all right, two are two many, and three are not enough.” 

The Martini has inspired poetry by Ogden Nash and Dorothy Parker and generated much controversy over whether it should be shaken (James Bond and Nick Charles) or stirred (Graham Greene and Auntie Mame), not to mention whether any concoction other than gin-and-vermouth may properly be called a Martini just because it’s served in a V-shaped glass. (The correct answer to the last question is no.)

Among the many notables who were partial to Martinis—W. H. Auden, Winston Churchill, Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Alfred Hitchcock, Noël Coward, and Presidents Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush, to name a few—one of the most notable was Britain’s Queen Mother, who died at the age of 101, although she really preferred her gin laced with Dubonnet rather than vermouth. Once, when she was being served tea at an official gathering, her tactless host blurted, “I understand that you would really prefer gin.” The Queen Mum drew herself up with dignity and replied, “I did not realize I had such a reputation. But, as I do,” she continued, “would you kindly make it a large one.”

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou doesn’t drink Martinis very often, as they do strange things to his libido, which is not a pretty sight.

            I always adore a Martini,
            That tang on the tongue till it tingles—
            But once, from my glass, came a genie
            Saying, “Barman, pour doubles, not singles.”

            The first drink he shook, then he stirred one,
            By then I was going full throttle.
            And when I had finished my third one,
            I said, “Hell, just hand me the bottle.”

Beguine Your Pardon

Why did they begin the beguine? This West Indian dance, probably best known from Cole Porter’s 1935 song “Begin the Beguine,” is a combination of Latin folk dancing and French ballroom dance, similar to the rumba, fairly slow in tempo and featuring a sensuous roll of the hips. It originated in the French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. 

 

Some of the folks who are paid to study word origins say it is derived from the French colloquial word béguin, which can mean “flirtation,” “infatuation,” or a “boyfriend or girlfriend.”  Its original meaning was a a “child’s bonnet” and before that, i.e. the 14^th century, a “nun’s headdress.” Others say, “bosh!” (or some similar word to that effect), the origin of beguine is in Creole Beke or Begue, which means “white person,” and Beguine is its female form. 

 

There is another kind of Beguine, the name of a member of a medieval spiritual order for laywomen, founded in 1180 in Liège in the Low Countries. They are believed by some to have taken their name from Lambert le Bègue, a priest who was instrumental in their establishment. He was also sometimes known as “Lambert the Stammerer,” undoubtedly because of some speech impediment. 

Others, however, say the name stems from St. Begga, a 7th-century Frankish nun, or possibly from the Saxon word beggen, meaning “pray.” These Beguines were not known to engage in hip-swinging Latin dances, so the two kinds of beguine are probably not related.

A male order founded in imitation of them in the 1220s was known as the Beghards. They were itinerant mendicants who gave rise to the word beggar.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou has never learned to dance the beguine.  But after a few Chardonnays, he can execute a mean box step

            There once was an old college dean            

            Who just loved to dance the beguine.

                        But when he did dips

                        And rotated his hips

            The students all called it obscene.           

Who’s Hue?

A weekly publication asked, “Can you imagine the ‘family values’ hue and cry” if Hillary Clinton was accused of the sexual comments of which Donald Trump was guilty on that infamous tape? That got me to thinking, not about how unlikely such an eventuality would be, but about “hue and cry.” The phrase means to “make a noise.” The “cry” part seems obvious enough, but what is a “hue”?

There is some difference of opinion on that question. One source says its an onomatopoeic word, probably from the Old French heu, suggesting a “hoot.” Others think the phrase is an Anglicization of the Latin term hutesium et clamor, meaning “sounding a horn and shouting.” Still others attribute the source to the Old French huer (“shout”) and crier (“cry”).

The phrase apparently originated in the 13^th century, probably in the Statute of Westminster of 1285, which provided that anyone witnessing a crime should make a “hue and cry” against the fleeing criminal from one town to the next until the evil-doer was apprehended and delivered to the sheriff. All that hueing and crying must have made for awfully noisy law enforcement.

There is a constant hue and cry against the Bard of Buffalo Bayou, but he only hears what he wants to.

                        There was an old fellow from Rye,

                        Always making a big hue and cry.

                                    When asked why the noise,

                                    He lost all his poise

                        And confessed that he, too, wondered why.

Poodle Doodles

“Too many people still think of Liszt as a long-haired, pianistic poodle-faker, seducing aristocratic ladies with superficially glittering pieces that have more notes than substance,” said an article in The Daily Mail. Whatever you may think of Liszt’s music, what do you think of his poodle-faking? And what is a poodle-faker?

It’s defined as a man who seeks out the company of upper-status women to advance himself socially or professionally.The term originated in the British Army around 1900 and alludes to the attempts of young officers to insinuate themselves into the favor of influential women in the manner of a lap dog, or “poodle.” The poodle, from the German Pudel (puddle), is a breed developed to retrieve game from the water.

The Bard of Buffalo Bayou aspires to be a poodle-faker, and for many years he has led a dog’s life.

       A social-climbing noodle-baker

       Knows how to be a poodle-faker,

              And if a lady is loath      

              To plight him her troth,

       Somehow that dude’ll make her.