JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
This unusual promotional featured the perentially unsmiling and striking face of TAD (Thomas A. Drogan, 1877-1928), a cartoonist and sports writer and major contributor to the American slang vernacular.
[Source: advertisement in Moving Picture World, January 1919]
His contriubtions included such words/expressions as "appelsauce" (as an expression of hearing nonesense), "cake-eater", "cat's meow/pajamas (expressing high praise), "cheaters" (for eyeglasses), "dogs" (for feet),"dumbbell" (an unkind and slippy word for a not-smart person), "dumb Dora", "drugstore cowboy" (for a do-nothing/loafer), "finale hopper", "hard boiled" (for a street- and ordinary-tough, or detective), "nickel nurse" (a great nickname for a miser/cheap person), "skimmer" (for a hat), and of course the immortal phrases "Yes, we have no bananas" and "You tell 'em!"
H.L. Mencken gives TAD a skimmer-tip in his fantastic (and now somewhat forgotten?) The American Language:
"Toward the end of 1933, W.J. Funk of the Funk and Wagnalls Company, publishers of the Standard Dictionary and the Literary Digest, undertook to supply the newpapers with the names of the ten most fecund makers of American slang then current. He nominated T.A. (Tad) Dorgan, the cartoonist; Sime Silverman, editor of the theatrical weekly, Variety; Gene Buck, the song writer; Damon Runyon, the sports writer; Walter Winchell and Arthur (Bugs) Baer, newspaper columnists; George Ade, Ring Lardner and Gelett Burgess."--(H.L. Mencken, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the U.S., Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1936: 560.)
Comments