of World War II were so-called because the Germans struck at historical sites featured in Baedeker’s Great Britain .
Status: faint pulse
give a bell
Alexander Graham Bell was literally an eponym machine, bequeathing Ma Bell, the Baby Bells, decibel, and this term, for calling someone on the phone.
Status: under revival
bogart
Humphrey Bogart has the distinction of two English verbs springing from his surname. The first means to act like a tough guy or intimidate, as in, “Don’t bogart your little brother.”
Status: died out a generation ago
The second verb, meaning to steal something in small increments, went mainstream in the sixties time-capsule movie Easy Rider . “Don’t bogart that joint, my friend . . . ” begins the chorus of the song playing while Jack Nicholson rides on the back of Peter Fonda’s chopper. Its extended sense of “to be greedily protective of something” has lately been moving the verb out of its cannabis pigeonhole, which speaks well for its prospects for long-term survival (as does the fact that most people using it have never seen the Humphrey Bogart smokefest known as Casablanca ).
Status: burgeoning
pull a brodie
To commit suicide, usually figuratively, coined in 1886 after Steve Brodie jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge to win a bet and survived. Although his feat was considered by many a hoax, Brodie parlayed his fame into a touristy saloon on the Bowery and acting gigs in a couple of vaudeville shows. He was later portrayed in the movies by George Raft and served as Bugs Bunny’s foil in “Bowery Bugs.” (Out of sheer exasperation with the rabbit, he jumps off the bridge again at the end.)
Status: jumped the shark long ago
burke
When an old man died owing back rent at his Edinburgh boarding house, landlord William Hare hit upon a unique way of getting the money out of him: selling the deadbeat’s corpse. With his friend William Burke, Hare stole the body out of its coffin and brought it to the local anatomy school. Seeing how well it paid, the duo entered into the dissection-supply business. Turning the lodging house into an operation Procrustes would have admired, Hare and Burke murdered at least fifteen transients before getting caught Halloween night, 1828. The evidence was circumstantial, but in turn for immunity Hare confessed, which is why he walked free and his pal got hanged, and the verb meaning “to smother to death or hush up” is to burke and not to hare .
Status: worth reviving
not to be grahamed
Giuseppe Mazzini was the intellectual father of the Risorgimento, the Italian unification movement. A philosopher and agitator with a death sentence hanging over his head, in 1837 Mazzini settled in London, a city that prided itself for its fair treatment of political exiles. When the British government was discovered to be opening Mazzini’s mail, the scandal was blamed on Home Secretary James Graham, and Britons began writing not to be grahamed on their envelopes in elegant protest.
Status: extinct
lindbergh it
To go solo, as in out to dinner, or wherever.
Status: my mother still uses it
lucy stoner
A slur targeting a woman who doesn’t take her husband’s name, coined after the marriage of suffragette Lucy Stoner in 1855. The surname Ms. Stoner chose not to take: Blackwell.
Status: historical use only
mae west
An inflatable life preserver. Get it?
Status: deckside humor on senior cruises
mickey
As in, to be slipped a mickey, or—to use the full expression—a Mickey Finn, meaning a drink that’s been laced with a knockout drug or hallucinogen; by extension, a real strong drink. The original Mickey Finn owned the Lone Star Saloon in turn-of-the-century Chicago; he would rather ungraciously sedate his customers in the aforementioned manner, rob them, and dump their unconscious bodies in an alley (but hey, at least he didn’t burke them). The saloon was shut down and Finn convicted in 1903, done in by the testimony of his
Status: faint pulse
give a bell
Alexander Graham Bell was literally an eponym machine, bequeathing Ma Bell, the Baby Bells, decibel, and this term, for calling someone on the phone.
Status: under revival
bogart
Humphrey Bogart has the distinction of two English verbs springing from his surname. The first means to act like a tough guy or intimidate, as in, “Don’t bogart your little brother.”
Status: died out a generation ago
The second verb, meaning to steal something in small increments, went mainstream in the sixties time-capsule movie Easy Rider . “Don’t bogart that joint, my friend . . . ” begins the chorus of the song playing while Jack Nicholson rides on the back of Peter Fonda’s chopper. Its extended sense of “to be greedily protective of something” has lately been moving the verb out of its cannabis pigeonhole, which speaks well for its prospects for long-term survival (as does the fact that most people using it have never seen the Humphrey Bogart smokefest known as Casablanca ).
Status: burgeoning
pull a brodie
To commit suicide, usually figuratively, coined in 1886 after Steve Brodie jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge to win a bet and survived. Although his feat was considered by many a hoax, Brodie parlayed his fame into a touristy saloon on the Bowery and acting gigs in a couple of vaudeville shows. He was later portrayed in the movies by George Raft and served as Bugs Bunny’s foil in “Bowery Bugs.” (Out of sheer exasperation with the rabbit, he jumps off the bridge again at the end.)
Status: jumped the shark long ago
burke
When an old man died owing back rent at his Edinburgh boarding house, landlord William Hare hit upon a unique way of getting the money out of him: selling the deadbeat’s corpse. With his friend William Burke, Hare stole the body out of its coffin and brought it to the local anatomy school. Seeing how well it paid, the duo entered into the dissection-supply business. Turning the lodging house into an operation Procrustes would have admired, Hare and Burke murdered at least fifteen transients before getting caught Halloween night, 1828. The evidence was circumstantial, but in turn for immunity Hare confessed, which is why he walked free and his pal got hanged, and the verb meaning “to smother to death or hush up” is to burke and not to hare .
Status: worth reviving
not to be grahamed
Giuseppe Mazzini was the intellectual father of the Risorgimento, the Italian unification movement. A philosopher and agitator with a death sentence hanging over his head, in 1837 Mazzini settled in London, a city that prided itself for its fair treatment of political exiles. When the British government was discovered to be opening Mazzini’s mail, the scandal was blamed on Home Secretary James Graham, and Britons began writing not to be grahamed on their envelopes in elegant protest.
Status: extinct
lindbergh it
To go solo, as in out to dinner, or wherever.
Status: my mother still uses it
lucy stoner
A slur targeting a woman who doesn’t take her husband’s name, coined after the marriage of suffragette Lucy Stoner in 1855. The surname Ms. Stoner chose not to take: Blackwell.
Status: historical use only
mae west
An inflatable life preserver. Get it?
Status: deckside humor on senior cruises
mickey
As in, to be slipped a mickey, or—to use the full expression—a Mickey Finn, meaning a drink that’s been laced with a knockout drug or hallucinogen; by extension, a real strong drink. The original Mickey Finn owned the Lone Star Saloon in turn-of-the-century Chicago; he would rather ungraciously sedate his customers in the aforementioned manner, rob them, and dump their unconscious bodies in an alley (but hey, at least he didn’t burke them). The saloon was shut down and Finn convicted in 1903, done in by the testimony of his
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