Censored

Chuck Lorre is a gifted comedy writer, director, producer, and even composer for TV sitcoms. He wrote for Roseanne, about which he said, “One of the benefits of working 70 hours a week in hell is that the mind covers itself so you can’t remember it.” He created Grace Under Fire for Brett Butler, then left to create Cybill for Cybill Shepherd; both those jobs left him similarly battered and embittered.

He then created Dharma & Greg, which was a happy time, then Two and a Half Men, and now The Big Bang Theory, both of which are funny and sharp and intelligent. With Dharma & Greg, he started creating “vanity cards” that display a whole lot of text for maybe three seconds on the screen; you have to record the show and pause it carefully in order to read it. He now has a website where all of his vanity cards are archived.

This week’s Big Bang Theory vanity card reads:

CENSORED Tonight’s vanity card is about censorship. It was censored. As always, you know where to look.

It’s not the first card that was censored by the Powers That Be. I think it happens at least once each season. At his website, you get to see the card in all its uncensored glory. Here’s this week’s:

words that confuse the CBS censor fecund, penal, taint, titmouse, cockamamie, cockatoo, cocksure, coccyx, ballcock, cockeye, prick, prickly, kumquat, titter, cunning linguist, prick, insertion, gobble, guzzle, swallow, manhole, rimshot, ramrod, come, fallacious, lugubrious, rectify, Uranus, angina, paradiddle, spotted dick, dictum, frock, cunctation, engorge, turgid, stiff, bush, uvula, crapulence, masticate, Dick Butkus, gherkin and, of course, the always bewildering lickety-split. As you can see, context is everything.

“Paradiddle” is a new one for me. I’m going to try to use it three times this week, though I can’t think when the topic of a snare drum’s tempo would come up naturally in conversation.

The Shibboleth

Okay, I think I must have been in one of those what-cha-ma-call-ems: a fugue state, or something. But in my drafts folder I found this decidedly peculiar unfinished post, written a month or so ago, called “The Shibboleth.” This was the entire text:

1. A girl named Frank

2. Mom praying with her phone

3. Trying to find the way out, through an empty church at a recreational park, a different entrance, something about a Twelve Step meeting

4. Listening to the mockingbird talk

I have no idea what any of this means. Well, I understand the mockingbird bit—the mockers hereabouts sing lustily and long, and once in a while I fancy I can understand what they’re saying. But I don’t know what that has to do with the other things.

At any rate, I’m guessing it was a dream I’d just had, and I wanted to jot down some notes that would later jog my memory. They didn’t. So I’m left with a few rather surreal images (especially when taken together) with no clue as to their import.

I can’t figure out why I’d call the post “The Shibboleth,” either. A shibboleth is something that betrays one as an outsider. It can be a particular word or pronunciation that isn’t used by the majority, perhaps a phrase that is identified with a particular group or cause—even a mode of dress that is distinctive. It comes from a story in the book of Judges where the army of Gilead used the word “shibboleth,” which means a stream, as a password; the Ephraimites, who were fleeing from them, couldn’t pronounce the “sh” sound and said “sibbolet” instead, which neatly revealed their identity.

So, any clues about these images? If this was all you could recall of your dream, what would it mean to you?

Everything’s Copasetic

I don’t think I’ve ever posted an entire Wikipedia article before, but this one was too full of delight for me to stop myself. One of my favorite words has always been “copasetic,” though I never knew exactly how to spell it before. I found myself wondering about its origins. The dictionary etymologies weren’t particularly helpful, but Wikipedia was a gold mine. This lovely, mysterious word may be Chicago gangster argot, Chinook Jargon, ancient Hebrew, or even Louisiana Creole. Who wouldn’t adore a word like that?

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Copasetic, also spelled copacetic, copesetic or — less commonly — kopasetic, means very satisfactory or acceptable.

Copasetic is an unusual English language word in that it is one of the few words of seemingly unknown origin that is not considered slang in contemporary usage. It is used almost exclusively in North America, and is said to have been first widely publicized in communications between the astronauts and Mission Control of the Apollo Program in the 1960s.

Etymology

The earliest known usage given in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Irving Bacheller 1919 biography of Abraham Lincoln:

1919 I. BACHELLER Man for Ages iv. 69 ‘As to looks I’d call him, as ye might say, real copasetic.’ Mrs. Lukins expressed this opinion solemnly… Its last word stood for nothing more than an indefinite depth of meaning.

There are many theories to the origin of copasetic. It is widely accepted that it originated from some form of American slang. This conclusion stems from the slow introduction of the word into the written language mainly through use in periodicals and in character dialog in 20th century novels. Copasetic may have originated from African American slang in the late 19th century. It was used by African Americans in the American South (most notably by Bill “Bojangles” Robinson) and by jazz musicians in Harlem in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

One theory claims the origins are from the Creole French language of Louisiana, specifically from the French word coupersètique (meaning “able to be coped with”; from French couper, to cut).

David Mamet has written an article about its origins. He suggests that “copasetic” is a contraction of “All is well, for the Cop is on the settee.” The American Heritage Dictionary lists alternate spellings that include copasetty and kopasettee, lending some credence to Mamet’s theory. Mamet states:

Yes, I agree. The derivation sounds improbable in the extreme. But I fully credit it. Why? I came across it as a footnote in a book written forty years before the word became generally known. It was not, therefore, an attempt to describe the origins of a mysterious word (as this is) but a tasty tidbit in a book about crime. The rub, however, is that I can’t locate the book.

The book that Mamet references might be Gamblers Don’t Gamble by Michael MacDougall who, in 1939 (not quite the forty years previous to 1960 that Mamet remembers), provided the same etymology, also tracing its origins to Chicago criminal activity:

There’s a lot of gambler-conman-criminal atmosphere about that language. I don’t want to write a dictionary of gambler’s lingo. But copasetic for instance. That goes back to the old Palmer House in Chicago which, as a very plush hotel, was a fat field for chump-hunters to work. But they could work freely only when the house-detective wasn’t on the prowl. The house-dick’s favorite spot for resting his feet was a certain settee down in the lobby. The chump-hunters usually kept a sentry with an eye on the settee who would report when “the cop was on the settee.” As these words gradually ran together, they became copasetic and added a word to the language.

Copacetic may be a descendant of the Hebrew phrase hakol beseder (literally “all in order” הכל בסדר) meaning “everything is all right,” or hakol betzedek, meaning “everything is justified.”

Another theory is that copacetic may have originated from Chinook Jargon, a trade language used in the Pacific Northwest to communicate between tribes, and European traders. The preposition “kopa” is very common in the language, and “Kopasetty” may have been used to mean “doing just fine.” This theory was first put forth by Donald L. Martin who stated it derives from the Chinook Jargon word copasenee (“everything is satisfactory”).

Yet another theory, put forth by novelist John O’Hara in 1934, claims (without evidence) that the word entered the African American slang lexicon via the Italian of American mobsters. Quoting O’Hara, “I don’t know how to spell the Italian, but it’s something like copacetti.” There is no such word in the Italian language, however.

Alternate spellings

1. copacetic — preferred spelling listed in OED and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

2. copasetic — alternate spelling listed in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary; the correct spelling in Microsoft Word‘s spell checker feature.

3. kopasetic — alternate spelling listed in OED

4. copesetic — alternate spelling listed in OED and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

5. copissettic — historical spelling given in a 1933 quotation in the OED entry

6. kopasetee — historical spelling given in a 1926 quotation in the OED entry

7. copasthetic — historical spelling given in a 1930 quotation in the Random House Historical

8. koppithetic – historical spelling given in a 1960 quotation in the Farmers Almanac

Dictionary of American Slang entry:

1. kopasettee

2. copasetty

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