Terms Which Have Disappeared

[Shangas]

There was a signal outside every railroad station in the US in the early days, it was a cannon ball hanging by a chain from a pole.

The station master could raise and lower the ball as a signal to the engineer on passing trains.

If the ball was at the bottom it meant " danger ahead - stop for instructions".

In the middle it meant "proceed with caution"

At the top of the pole it meant "track clear -no danger ahead".

So, if you had the last signal you could "high ball it". In other words go as fast as you pleased.

I have never heard of such a thing. What a fascinating nugget of information.

See this is why I love this forum. You learn quirky stuff like this, every day.

 

[Stearmen]

There were also many "boy" titled jobs in the Era that were often held by grown men -- elevator boys, delivery boys, messenger boys, bellboys, even batboys. The Brooklyn Dodgers had a longtime batboy who was married with two children, and older than many of the players on the roster.

When I was flying, we had "Line Boys!" They were the ones out on the ramp that guided you in to your parking spot and refueled your plane. Never mind most were grown men, and the resat were grown women.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Best Boy" is still a term used in moviemaking, referring to a top assistant to the set electrician or camera-crew manager. There was an effort at one point to abolish the title as sexist/racist -- but the best boys themselves insisted on keeping it, citing its long tradition.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I fail to see what the kerfuffle over 'boy' is. We use it even now. Hell, we even use 'girl'. It means nothing. It's just like "dude", "guy", "Chaps", "Lads"/"Lasses" etc. Meh.

"Boy" has a complicated racial history in the US. It was frequently used, especially but not exclusively in the South, as a way of infantilizing African-American men -- to address a black man as "Boy!" was a way of keeping him in his place, and denying him his identity as an independent adult in a way that saying "hey, you" or "hey Mac" did not. Because of this, *any* use of "boy" has become highly suspect in US speech, even though it was, as we've said, widely used in the Era in ways that had nothing to do with race or social power.

Essentially, who is saying "boy" to whom, and under what circumstances, defines the meaning. If used by a person with power toward a person without power, it can be highly offensive regardless of the racial context. But when used among peers -- "how you boys doin'?" -- it has far less signficance.

 

[MikeKardec]

It would be interesting if someone would weigh in from Europe or the UK, Malaysia, Indonesia or India. I have a suspicion Boy was colonial-speak for subject peoples in other parts of the world too.

No end of nasty jokes have been made about the title Best Boy in the film biz ... but since they are the second to only the "Key" (department head) and often have abilities even the Key doesn't have (a Best Boy Grip might be an master fabricator or machinist) it is FAR from a term of subservience. The "Hammers" often take direction from the Best Boy while the Key is getting the next job set up. If you can't stand teasing and harsh language you've got no place on a film set, they require a level of competence under stress that is second only to the military and the rough sense of humor to go with it. Movie crews also have a pretty flexible power structure which has a lot to do with everyone's competence, few need a traditional "boss." The Key on one show would have no trouble going to work for one of his Hammers should the Hammer get a Key position on the next one.

 

[MikeKardec]

One wonders if the Railroad term "High Ball" had anything to do with the beverage! "Main Lining" certainly made it in to drug lingo. Anybody know?

 

[ChiTownScion]

One wonders if the Railroad term "High Ball" had anything to do with the beverage! "Main Lining" certainly made it in to drug lingo. Anybody know?

"Highball" has its origins in early railroad signaling. A red metal ball hoisted to the top of a mast via pulley told the engineer that the road ahead is clear. Hence, the call "Highball!" for "Let's get rolling." As to how it became the name for a cocktail.. I have no idea.

 

[ChiTownScion]

A locomotive fireman was sometimes referred to as a "tallow pot." Goes back to the days when tallow was used to lubricate the moving parts of a locomotive. The fireman would often have to crawl out on the running board of a moving and lubricate. And hopefully after a decade or so of that, have a shot at qualifying for "the throne," the engineer's seat.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Relatively more recent but I've also heard the term "Top Boy," which refers to the leader of a soccer hooligan gang.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Deadheading" is another old railroad term, originally meaning railroad employees traveling for free thru the use of their employee credentials. It's still used in the same way in commercial aviation.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Highball" has its origins in early railroad signaling. A red metal ball hoisted to the top of a mast via pulley told the engineer that the road ahead is clear. Hence, the call "Highball!" for "Let's get rolling." As to how it became the name for a cocktail.. I have no idea.

A friend of my Dad's told me that a "Highball" drink was a drink served in a tall glass where the alcohol was mixed with a greater amount of a non-alcoholic mix (soda, water, etc.) and that the ice cubes - since they float at the top - gave the drink glass and the drink itself its name as the ice cubes resembled balls (or perhaps "balls" were slang for ice cubes - I don't remember that specific detail) and they were "high up" because the glass was tall. Hence, a "Highball" was both a cocktail served in a tall glass (with ice) and the tall glass (as in a Highball glass) itself.

I do remember older men ordering a drink this way, "Let me have a Jack and Ginger Highball," or perhaps they said, "Let me have a Jack and Ginger in a Highball," I don't remember now if there was an "in a" spoken or not. But the drink was Jack Daniels liquor, Ginger ale served in a tall glass with ice.

I also just realized that this post fits the cheeky names we are given as forum members.

 

[F. J.]

The Butcher Boy . . .

[...]
Let's not forget hall-boy, boot-boy, spit-boy, baker's boy, butcher's boy, link-boy, paper-boy, house-boy*, and countless others.
[...]

How 'bout a song about a butcher-boy, a baker-boy, and a fisher-boy . . .
[video=youtube;XN7rcjkiTLE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN7rcjkiTLE[/video]
"Oh! Ma-Ma! (The Butcher Boy)",
by Rudy Vallée and his Connecticut Yankees,
with Red Stanley and The Gentlemen Songsters, 1938.

 

[Shangas]

Lizzie I should state, I'm well aware of the awkward history of 'boy' in the United States, I was referring more to the fact that in this day and age, I thought we'd be over the more touchy side of it. I'm surprised if it's still such a tinderbox of a word.

It would be interesting if someone would weigh in from Europe or the UK, Malaysia, Indonesia or India. I have a suspicion Boy was colonial-speak for subject peoples in other parts of the world too.

My grandmother was born during the heyday of the British Empire. She was a young woman in the 1920s and 30s, living in what was then, British Singapore. And yes, 'boy' was used like that. You had stuff like house-boys and such. Typially, young Asian (usually Chinese) men/teenage boys who were house-servants of the wealthy European/British expats living in Singapore/straits settlements at the time.

That said, there was a far more varied list of 'low-level' jobs, which might also have been used as insults or demeaning/put-downing terms. Stuff like 'coolie' or 'night-soil man'. One which my grandmother was particularly fond of, was 'rubber-tapper'.

The rubber-tappers were the (usually Malay) labourers who toiled in the boiling tropical heat, slicing open and leeching out ("tapping") the rubber trees, to extract the white rubber-sap. There used to be huge rubber-plantations in the Peninsula (similar to like, the cotton plantations in the Old South). It was extremely labour-intensive, very unpleasant, and took ages to do (the rubber-sap just drips out, so it takes hours just to gather one tiny cup of sap). Work fit only for the lowest of people.

"Coolies" were the labourers who unloaded and loaded boats at the docks. Kinda like longshoremen or something like that. It was real grunt-work. Lifting out barrels and sacks and crates and boxes. In 35-degree heat with 80% humidity. Suggesting that a person WAS a coolie would've been a pretty big insult, since it meant that all you were fit for was gruelling manual labour.

Then there was "opium addict". My grandmother used to use this one on me all the time, if I slept in or if I was lounging around being lazy. Since opium addicts would just lie around, smoke, doze off and go into a drug-stupor.

Another common one was just "ah-boy", or "ah-heng" or similar terms. More or less used when you didn't know what else to call someone. I suppose a similar English term would be something like: "kid" or "guy/dude/fellah".

When I was a child, it's what my grandmother called me, all the time. I remember VERY FEW times when she EVER actually used my name. At least 75% of the time, it was always: "Ah-boy!"

And grandmother spoke near-fluent English.

But it never changed. Since I was born, until she died, it was the same. A typical one went something like: "Ah boy, ah boy, a-mah saiyang, saiyang..."

 

[LizzieMaine]

Lizzie I should state, I'm well aware of the awkward history of 'boy' in the United States, I was referring more to the fact that in this day and age, I thought we'd be over the more touchy side of it. I'm surprised if it's still such a tinderbox of a word.

America's a long way from being over its racial history, and I don't expect in my lifetime to ever see it so. Touchiness over words is only the tip of that particular iceberg.

"Coolie" is a term that was still being used as slang in the US thru the Era and beyond usually to refer to someone performing hard, thankless labor for insignificant wages. It didn't have to have a specifically racial connotation -- anyone could be "worked like a coolie" regardless of race -- but it's still got a racial edge to it.

It was also used well into the seventies to refer to those cone-shaped woven straw hats. They were frequently sold to spectators at baseball games, parades, and other outdoor summer events by vendors advertising "coolie hats."

 

[2jakes]

My first job when I was in high school was at a grocery store.
It paid $1.29 an hour as a "package boy". I loved the fact that now I had $$ in my jeans

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

I expect that "coolie" came to the U.S. with the importation of large numbers of single (or separated from their families) Chinese men to work laying rails from California east. When the "golden spike" was driven in Utah on May 10, 1869, the Irish and black laborers moving from the east to the west met the Chinese "coolies". Another, you should pardon the expression, "tie" to the railroad lingo which crept into common American English. The term originated in the British empire, originally used to refer to Indian laborers, but gradually expanding in use to encompass anyone doing hard labor in places where "the sun never set".

 

[Stearmen]

My first job when I was in high school was at a grocery store.
It paid $1.29 an hour as a "package boy". I loved the fact that now I had $$ in my jeans

Out here, you would be a "bag boy!" Not to be confused with a "bag lady!"

 

[2jakes]

Out here, you would be a "bag boy!" Not to be confused with a "bag lady!"

Also, over in my neck of the woods would be "stock boy" being the next step up.
But I never related to these terms as derogatory. I was aware of the "colors only" signs at the fountain counter at Woolworth store
The main movie theater having the "colors entrance" at the rear of the building.
Too young to understand, I was happy when my mom would buy me a live
"colored" baby chick, turtle or rabbit around Easter time from the store.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Every society, everywhere, at all times, had/has social superiors and social inferiors. One of the ways this is expressed and enforced is with language. Each particular society has it's own concept of who is socially superior and who is socially inferior, which changes from time to time.

 

[dh66]

Yes, unfortunately human history has had more than it's fair share of high falutin, uppity, bumptious, cocksure, overweening, snooty and impertinent (feel free to kick in if I've left any out) folks who thought that there were those who were created less than themselves.
Whether you believe we were raised up from the clay or climbed down from the trees, it has been the shortfalling of humanity since the get-go.