Word Histories

BY CRAIG M. CARVER

hassle

The tapes of General Manuel Noriega’s prison telephone conversations which were released last December contained many cryptic exchanges, like this one between Noriega and Norma Amado, the mother of his mistress. Amado: “No, I ended up without lunch because ...”Noriega: “Yes, yes, yes.” Amado: “Too cold ... a hassle.”Noriega: “Ah, uh-huh, the weather there is bad?” Amado: “Yes, yes, yes.” Whether this conversation was really about large transfers of cash, as the government of Panama thought, or simply about missing lunch, Amado’s use of hassle (a problem, difficulty, argument) shows how far afield this word has spread since it originated, probably in English and American dialect. In the southern United States to hassle is “to pant or breathe noisily.” The English dialect version, which may be the source of the American, is hussle, meaning “to wheeze or breathe roughly” (“Jest listen to un how he hussies"—English Dialect Dictionary). Because heavy breathing often accompanies quarrels, this sense of the verb hassle may have led to the noun, meaning some form of difficulty. This latter sense first appears in the 1940s in a jazz context ("Building bands is getting to be a habit with Freddie Slack. He broke up his last few after booking hassels"—Down Beat, 1945). An alternative etymology for hassle holds that it is a blend of haggle (to wrangle or dicker) and tussle (a fight or scuffle).

peddle

The Senate Ethics Committee’s investigation of the socalled “Keating Five” — the five senators accused of improperly intervening with regulators on behalf of Charles Keating and his Lincoln Savings and Loan—largely exonerated Senator John Glenn. But Glenn did not escape unscathed: he “exercised poor judgment,” the committee concluded, though his “actions were not improper.” In response Glenn wondered “whether the committee’s judgment was the result of oldfashioned horse sense or oldfashioned horse-trading,”and then added emphatically, “John Glenn does not peddle influence, period.” “Peddle influence” is of course a permutation of “influence peddling” (1972), which in turn is from “influence peddler” (one who, for a fee, uses his connections to get contracts and favors from government officials), first recorded in 1949. Peddle itself might appear to derive from the Latin pedalis (of the foot), with reference to the walking that a pedlar or peddler does selling his wares—but in fact it does not. Peddle probably derives from ped or pedde (a wicker basket), the container peddlers once used to carry their goods (“Peds or Panniers carried on the backs of Horses, on which Haglers use to ride and carry their Commodities”—Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England, 1661). Ped, whose origin is unknown, yielded pedder (a peddler), which survives only in dialect, and then peddler.

shenanigan

The 1990 census revealed that the country’s largest city, New York, grew even larger during the 1980s. But the census count was not big enough for Mayor David Dinkins, who accused the Census Bureau of “statistical shenanigans” that masked some of the city’s growth. Shenanigan (mischief, trickery, nonsense, foolery) seems to have, as H. L. Mencken put it, an “Irish smack” to it. The -gan ending, for example, looks like an Irish diminutive suffix. One proposed origin is the Irish sionnachuighim (I play tricks), from sionnach (fox). Though the semantics fit well enough, the Irish word is just too different in pronunciation to be a plausible origin, and the true origin is unknown. Shenanigan entered the American vocabulary around 1855, in California, when it appeared in the small San Francisco newspaper Town Talk (“Are you quite sure? No shenanigan?”). The California pedigree has led at least one etymologist to look for an origin in American Spanish. An 1887 poster advertising a land sale at Palomar, in Los Angeles County, suggests one possibility: “Grand Railroad Excursion and Genuine AUCTION SALE! NO CHENANEKIN!!!” In Mexican Spanish chanada is a shortened form of charranada (a trick played on someone for the sake of mere diversion). Another educated guess seeks the origin in the German slang schinägeln (to work or toil, especially under strain). Proponents of the schinägeln theory claim that because hard labor is often done without enthusiasm, the worker striving mainly to give the impression of activity, a sense of trickery may develop. Admittedly, this explanation itself seems to toil under strain.