33. blue jay, 1709. Colors often appear in our descriptive names: we also
have the bluefish, 1622; blue heron, 1781; and blue gill, 1881. Blue
point oysters get their name because they are found off Blue Point,
Great South Bay, Long Island, New York.
34. bobcat, 1711, because of its stubby or "bobbed" tail (originally this name was given to the bay lynx).
35. bullfrog, 1698, because it makes a roaring noise like a bull. canvas back, 1782, from the color of its back.
36. catbird, 1709, because its call resembles the mewing of a cat. Like many words on this list it was originally spelled with a hyphen, cat-bird.
37. catfish, 1612, the name first recorded by John Smith in Virginia, because of the fish's facial resemblance to a cat, especially its whiskers.
38. copperhead, 1775, because of its coppery brown color, on which are dark markings.
39. cottontail, 1869, because the underside of its tail has a white tuft, like a ball of cotton.
40. card, meaning a person who likes to joke, an American use since 1835.
41. currency, 1699 as money in England, because it is the current, generally accepted medium of exchange (from Latin currential currere, to run).
42. clever, meaning sharp witted, an East Anglia dialect use common to all Americans.
43. crank, 1883; self-starter, 1894.
44. California, 1850, 3 lsr state— Spanish name for "an earthly paradise," an imaginary island in Spanish lore. Previously called Alta California (Upper California, in opposition to Baja California); also called the Golden State.
45. Colorado, 1876, 38th state—Spanish word for "red," literally "red land, red earth." Previously Colorado Territory; also called the Centennial State, because of the year it entered the Union.
46. Connecticut, 1788, 5th state— from Mohican quinnitukqut, "at the long tidal river," referring to the Connecticut River. Also called the Nutmeg State, the Constitution State.
47. dog, an unsuccessful, ugly, or disliked person or thing, early 1930s. dogcatcher, 1835, also euphemistically called a humane officer, 1939,
and bureaucratically called a canine control officer, 1942. dog eat dog, everyone for himself, 1834. dog it, to shirk, 1920.
48. dog my cats!, an exclamation of surprise, 1839. dognapper, 1940.
49. dog paddle, as a way to stay afloat or swim, 1904. dog pound, 1875. Many pounds are now under the auspices of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), founded by Henry Bergh in 1866, when horses were often underfed, overworked, and cruelly treated.
50. look like the cat after it had eaten the canary, look guilty, 1871;
51. look like something the cat brought/dragged/drug in, look bedraggled, late 1920s.
52. drive-in, 1931 (referring to a filling station), first popularly applied to movies and restaurants in the mid 1940s.
53. dinero, late 19th century, the Spanish word for money. We have also taken many other foreign words for money or monetary units to use as slang words for money, as gelt (see below), ruble, yen, etc.
54. dough, 1840, almost certainly from considering bread dough as the necessary, basic staff of life. Do-re-mi, as a pun on dough and the musical do, 1925; oday, Pig Latin for dough, 1926.
55. easy money, easily obtained money, 1836; easy dollars, 1890s. For my money, as far as I'm concerned, 1840. To pay one's money and take one's choice, 1864. Money talks, money has influence, 1910. Money from home, easily obtained money, 1913.
56. fall, obsolete in England where "autumn" was now the preferred word.
57. fork, which the British ate with but which we also drove or paddled on, using it since 1645 to mean the branch of a road or river.
58. fender, 1883; hood, 1906; running board, 1923; rumble seat, 1931.
59. flivver, 1914 (the word originally meant a failure in the 1900s); heap, 1915; tin lizzie, 1915, originally meant only the Model T (Lizzie is from the common name for a Black maid who, like the car, worked hard all week and prettied up on Sundays); crate, 1920, following the World War I use for an airplane; jalopy, 1924; gas buggy, 1925; rattletrap, 1929.
60. filling station, 1915; service station, 1922.
61. French boot, a lightweight dress shoe, 1850.
62. French church, a French Protestant or Huguenot church, 1694.
63. French (salad) dressing, 1884. Incidentally, thousand island dressing dates from the 1920s.
64. Frencher, a Frenchman, 1826; Frenchy, a Frenchman, 1883, and used after 1904 to mean capricious.
65. French flat, a sublet floor in a private townhouse, one of our first terms for an apartment, 1879.
66. French fried potatoes, 1902; French frieds, 1920s; French fries, 1930s.
67. French harp, a harmonica, 1883. French monte, a popular form of the gambling card game, 1851. French toast, 1870s.
68. Frog, a Frenchman, was common in England by 1870 but became well known in the U.S. only during World War I. It is probably from the French relishing frogs as a delicacy, reinforced by the toads on the coat of arms of the city of Paris.
69. gas, 1905, from the 1865 word gasoline, which was originally considered merely a dangerous by-product in the making of kerosene.
70. garage, for housing an automobile, 1902.
71. give her the gas, 1912; step on the gas, tramp on the gas, 1916; step on it, 1922; give it the gas, 1942. These replaced the older "don't spare the horses."
72. gotten, obsolete in England where "got" was being used as the past participle of get.
73. gringo (American Spanish for "gibberish," from Spanish griego, Greek, literally one whose language is "all Greek to me"), first used by Mexicans during The Mexican War, now common throughout Latin America.
74. help, meaning servants, an American use since 1630.
75. how?, which only Americans used as an interrogation, since 1815.
76. Hugers, our \"Jth century term for the French Huguenots, who also gave us the place name Huguenot on Staten Island and New Rochelle in West-chester County, N.Y., and such names as New Yorker John Jay, the famous Virginia Dabney (d'Aubigny) family, Boston's Peter Faneuil and Faneuil Hall, and Charles Gui-teau, who assassinated President Garfield.
77. license plate, 1901, when they were first issued by New York State.
78. loan, which only Americans used as a verb meaning "to lend."
79. mail box, 1872, two years after it was patented. Since the late 1850s people had been calling primitive types letter boxes, street letter boxes, and street boxes, but these were usually the brightly painted receiving boxes for independent carriers and express agencies. The patented U.S. mailbox did a lot to give the U.S. Post Office Department control of the business. They were also often called letter drops in the 1890s.
80. mailman soon became a common word after 1863, when he was employed and paid by the post office for free delivery. By the 1880s mailmen delivered as many as five times a day in commercial areas of New York and other major cities.
81. menhaden (Algonquian munnoquohcttean, "that which enriches the soil"), the fish Massachusetts Indians used to fertilize their corn crops and which they taught the Pilgrims to use, spelled mun-nawhatteang by the colonists in 1643.
82. moose (Passamaquoddy moosu, "he trims smoothly," referring to the bark moose strip and eat from trees), spelled mus, 1613, present spelling by 1673. The Loyal Order of the Moose, a charitable secret fraternal order, was founded in Louisville, Kentucky in 1888, its members called Moose since then.
83. muskellunge (Ojibwa mashkinoje), a variety of Great Lakes pike, 1789.
84. motor court, 1936; motor hotel, mid 1940s; motel (from motor + hotel), late 1940s.
85. pecan (Algonquian pakan, pagan, nut, the word may have come directly to us from the Indians or via earlier Spanish explorers and settlers), spelled paccan, 1773.
86. persimmon (Cree pasiminan, "dried fruit"), as putchamin, 1612, as persimon, 1635, present spelling by 1709. In the 1850s and 60s Americans used such expressions as bringing down the persimmons, and walking off with the persimmons, meaning to succeed or win the prize.
87. poke means several different plants to us because it is our final pronunciation of several different Indian words. Poke originally was a name for the tobacco plant (from Algonquian uppoivoc) which we spelled apooke in 1618. Other poke plants get their name from a Virginian Indian word puccoon, a plant they used for dyeing. Thus we have pokeroot by 1687; pokeweed, 1751; pokeberry, \11\. By 1778 poke also meant the skunk cabbage. Poke greens was first recorded in 1848 and poke salad in 1880.
88. raccoon (Algonquian arakunen, scraper, scratcher) was first recorded in 1608, in Virginia, though early spellings included arocoun and raugrougheun. Raccoon coat, 1649. Raccoon was shortened to coon as early as 1742, though most "coon" words and meanings appeared in the 1830s and 40s, when coon hunts became popular and coon was first used to mean a rustic frontiersman (1832) and then a Black (1837). In the presidential election year of 1840 the Whig party used a raccoon as its symbol and coon came to mean a Whig, including the presidential candidate William Henry Harrison and such men as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Calhoun; a coon song then meant not a Black minstrel song but a Whig political song (for more on the racial use of coon see The Blacks).
89. parking, parking space, parking lot, 1924; parking meter, 1935, the first ones installed in Oklahoma City.
90. runabout, 1891; touring car, 1903; station wagon, 1 904; roadster, 1908; coupe, 1918; sedan, 1920; sports car, 1925.
91. road hog, early 1900s, had been applied first to bicyclists in the 1890s.
92. seaboard, an American coinage for "shore," used since 1788.
93. spell, which we have used to mean a period of time, a while, since 1705.
94. scuppernong (Algonquian askuponong, "place of the magnolias," the Scuppernong River valley in North Carolina, where this variety of grape grows), 1811.
95. Sequoia is named after the Cherokee Indian Sikwayi (1770-1843) who invented an 85-syllable "alphabet" for recording the Cherokee language, which was adopted by the Cherokee council in 1821. Born in Tennessee, Sikwayi (sometimes spelled Sequoya) took the name George Guess when he grew up, from an American trader he believed to be his father. Sequoia was first used as a genus name of a tree, which includes the giant California redwoods, by Hungarian botanist Stephen Endlicher in 1847.
96. skunk (Algonquian skekakwa, squnck, "mammal who urinates" or sprays), 1588 by explorers, 1634 by colonists. It has also been called a polecat in America since the 1600s, after a related European animal. Skunk cabbage, 1751. Skunk was used to mean a contemptible person by 1840. To skunk, to defeat completely, keep an opponent from scoring, appeared in 1843.
97. squash (Narragansett asquatasquash, "eaten raw"), 1642. Winter squash, summer squash, 1750s; crook-neck squash, 1818, from its shape; Hubbard squash, late 1860s, from Mrs. Elizabeth Hub-bard of Massachusetts, who first cultivated it; zucchini squashy
98. spark plug, 1908, used to mean an energetic leader by the 1930s.
99. tourist camp, tourist court, 1916;
100. streamlining, 1934, with the disappearance or covering of the square radiator.