RARA-AVIS: Mencken on the world "hard-boiled"

From: William Denton ( buff@pobox.com)
Date: 20 Aug 2002

I picked up H.L. Mencken's THE MAERICAN LANGUAGE (4e) (1937) and in chapter XI, "American Slang," section 1, "The Nature of Slang," he lists cartoonist T.A. (Tad) Dorgan as a leading slang-maker. In a footnote, Mencken says:

| See Tad Dorgan is Dead, by W.L. Werner, AMERICAN SPEECH, Aug., 1929.
| "The flea's eyebrows," "the bee's knees," "the snake's hips" and "the
| canary's tusks" will be recalled. A writer in LIBERTY, quoted in
| AMERICAN SPEECH, Feb., 1927, p. 258, says that Dorgan also
| popularized "hard-boiled," the invention of Jack Doyle, keeper of
| a billiard academy in New York.

Bill

-- 
William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.


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