Happy Black Friday! Please treat all retail workers well and maybe do not make their days any worse than necessary >.> enjoy your time with family, if that’s a thing you do, and your leftovers, if that’s a thing you do, or sneaking leftovers to coyotes, if you have any pumpkin pie handy <coughs>
…Ugh. I wasn’t going to do an Etymology. I was going to do a note about history. Maybe I’ll still do that :P quick-like, though.
The thing about history is that it often leaves evocative gaps. I mentioned the idea of that negative space a few days back, a temptation to read into what isn’t said. I am positive that “geek” as we use it today had nothing to do with carnival sideshows. A good Kiwi friend mentioned that they’d never heard it used that way, but they had heard of “very low grade 70s exploitation films using the term geek for horror monsters.”
This tracks! The “geeks bite the heads off chickens” explanation really takes off during the slasher era of the 1970s and 80s. With computer/fantasy/sci-fi/etc geeks emerging in parallel, It’s tempting to read into the popularity of that urban legend a reaction to the social change brought about by a shift in cultural and economic power towards young, techy, weirdoes.
But I can’t prove that, because I don’t know where “geek” actually came from. I have a growing suspicion it came from nowhere: it’s a catchy, short word and—like dweeb, nerd, dork, etc.—any too-cute-by-half etymology is likely spurious.
So let’s talk about cowboys instead.
Somebody in a chatroom I’m in asked where “tootin’” comes from, as in “darn tootin’” and let me front-load this by telling you: I don’t know. Here we get into negative space again.
Papers from Hawaii to Pennsylvania are comfortable using the phrase “darn/durn/damn tootin’/tooting” beginning around 1910. It does not require explanation and is not written in a way that suggests the speaker is being particularly caricatured. Olathe, 1916:
And isn’t it a fact that they won sufficient glory to keep the Old Settlers Asociation alive for another year? Echo answers “You’re darn tootin.”
Baltimore, in an ad from 1913:
It’s hot; durn tooting hot, and for those who prefer a cold lunch, we have prepared the following
Hilo, in a writeup of the Eleventh Annual Chicago River Marathon in 1919:
Would you have rooted for them? You’re darn tootin’ you would; they were the prettiest girls in the race. Naturally, everybody rooted for them and naturally they won.
Vermont, a year earlier:
SEES SWANTON BOYS AT FRONT NOW OVERSEAS: Sergeant Lanouette, while holding big mitt for engineers memorial day game bumps into Harry Smith, James Slamon and Stuart Martin — “You’re damn tootin’ I’m from Swanton,” says he
It is tempting from this familiarity to assume that it was a widely known and used phrase. Mostly it seems to be used with a similar meaning to something like “that’s right” or maybe “damn straight.” But then, the Baltimore ad is kind of an outlier, isn’t it? There “tootin’” is serving as an intensifier to “darn,” rather than the other way around.
And in the other sense, “darn tootin’” is a complete phrase. You could say “it’s durn hot” and people would know what you mean, but Sergeant Lanouette would not have said “you’re tootin’, I’m from Swanton.”
“Tooting” as a verb (or an onomatopoeic adjective) is widely used from the 19th century on to describe the sound of a horn—initially a steamship, then later a train and (especially) an automobile horn. This ubiquity is a complication*, both because there are many cases of people complaining about being kept awake by the “darn tootin’” of a train, and because it’s also tempting to wonder if this was its origin.
* Amongst linguists, this is known as the “tootin’ common curse.”
The just-so story you’d see on the Internet, to make one up real fast, would be a story about the Baltimore & Ohio coming through town at 7:30AM every day and waking up town residents with such precision that it could be used as an alarm clock. “It must be time to get up, huh? There’s that darn tooting” becomes “the train is a darn-tootin’ rooster” becomes “you’re darn tootin’, we got up on time.”
But I don’t know, because it is not clear to me at all what “tootin’” actually means. It seems logical to assume that it does mean speaking, as in “boy, you said it! I would root for those swimmers!” and I believe that’s probably more or less the origin, but… who knows? It’s tough to find pre-“darn tootin’” examples of someone “tootin’ their mouth” or whatever, and when they do exist they’re a little pejorative.
So maybe “darn tootin’” didn’t originally mean “you said it!” but something more like “you shut your mouth for saying otherwise!”? But then, there are earlier uses of it in which it does not seem to mean anything vocal at all. From an 1844 Massachusetts paper:
The Editor of the Eagle considers it beneath his “dignity! to be ‘tootin’ off to sleigh-rides,” or he would administer a little advice to those who are so undignified as to indulge that delightful recreation. The gentlemen who thus show their politeness to the opposite sex, he says “seem to be trained around by the ladies just like drones in a bee-hive,” &c. This is a compliment to many Ladies and Gentlemen of our village that will be duly appreciated, and it places the “DIGNITY” of our neighbor beyond dispute! Wonder if he ever condescends to discuss the “poetry of motion.”
The OED, normally a reliable stalwart, gives a definition of “toot” as “to drink copiously” from the 17th century, and then by the late 19th century specifically “to go on a spree,” with the 1890 citation from Miss Nobody: “Spreeing, gaming, and tooting all night.”
Anyway.
There’s another snag, which is that before “tootin’” shows up with “darn,” it shows up with “rootin’,” as in “rootin’, tootin’.” This is somewhat older. How much older, I don’t know? And this is why, not to bury the lede, I started writing this at all :P Because the Internet says that “rootin’ tootin’” is probably English, and indeed its earliest use that I can find is from an 1870s dictionary of Lancashire dialect.
So if you were assuming it said by a cowboy, you should really be imagining it said by Sir Ian McKellen. The dictionary defines “rootin’” as “meddlesome, inquisitive” with the example sentence given as “He’s a rootin’ tootin’ sort of chap.” (…generic ‘he,’ not Sir Ian. I assume).
The leading theory there would be that “rootin’, tootin’” crossed over with British immigrants after the American Civil War, and thence to the Old West. Buuuuut here’s the snag within a snag. From the example sentence there, I have the impression that the point is that the “chap” is the sort to gossip—to pry, and then to run his damn fool mouth. A Cheshire paper, in 1878:
When the defendant Percival came up to him and asked him what he was doing there, and he replied “nothing,” upon which Percival said, “You’re always rooting and tooting about, and watching and telling the police, and then struck him on the breast and knocked him into the hedge.
Or possibly someone who is meddlesome and a bit of a lout, just a generally unpleasant person (see the “tootin’” as in “go out on a spree” sense. From another Lancashire paper, in 1878:
Well; th’ mornin’ after owd Bob had turn’t this sign th’ wrong side up, these two coom trailin’ down th’ street together, soon after break o’ day, scrattin’ their yeds, an’ tootin’ about for th’ first alehouse dur that oppen’t!
Which is to say that I think “rooting” and “tooting” probably both meant something concrete in Lancashire, to the extent that anything in the previous excerpt can be said to mean something. When it appears in the States, though, it’s generally as part of a larger construct. The Galena, Kansas Weekly Republican from November 2nd, 1883 is illustrative:
Never before in the history of Short Creek was Hallow-e’en so generally observed. The whole town was up in arms, and such a hooting, shooting, tooting, rooting, sooting never before was known. The young people enjoyed themselves to their hearts’ content, while we old heads clapped our hands and said, “Go it while you’re young!”
Or from 1887, in North Dakota:
”I’m a hooting, rooting, nooting, tooting, shooting son of a sea cook from Missouri—look out for me—whiz, whang whang, bang, bang” are some of the familiar sounds that greet the ear at Minot, in the witching hours of the night.
Obviously many of these words mean things normally, but in the colloquial sense I don’t think it’s necessarily clear that “nooting” or “sooting” is meant to have a definition, or that the Short Creek kids were literally shooting anything. So while it’s possible that the British brought “rooting and tooting” over to America, it’s also quite possible that they brought the words but not any intrinsic meaning to them.
Which leads to the other possibility, which is that “darn tootin’” as a phrase does not really have an etymology: it is a silly-sounding intensifier, like the much older “sure as shootin’” or the much more recent “damn skippy,” with a lot of interesting possibilities that imply an origin, and therefore create an interesting narrative, but fail to come out and land it.
I don’t know. Right now I am split between that explanation and the “amen, you said it!” one. The second seems more logical. The first “feels” more accurate. I do suspect that it is more accurate to say that “rootin’ and tootin’” appeared first in England rather than originating there, but maybe something else will turn up!