Twitter pushes 2 tweets — from people I don't follow and not retweeted by anyone I follow — that have nothing in common — ostensibly — except the old-timey use of "shy." I felt inspired to make a screenshot of this juxtaposition:
Here's the Cure tweet.
Here's the WOW tweet.
Where did this use of "shy" come from?
The OED traces it back to Old English, with the meaning "Easily frightened or startled." The adjectival use of the word is much older than its use as a noun or verb. The most common use of the adjective, to mean "sensitively timid; retiring or reserved from diffidence; bashful" goes back to the 1600s. But what about this use that we're seeing in those 2 tweets, which I consider old-timey?
That use — which means short (of) or lacking — was originally betting slang. The oldest appearance in print is an 1895 dictionary definition: "Having a less amount of money at stake than is called for by the rules of the game; short; as, to be shy a dollar in the pool."
There's also:
a1904 A. Adams Log of Cowboy ix. 132 I ordered Joe to tie his [the ox's] mate behind the trail wagon and pull out one ox shy.
1975 [Rex] Stout Family Affair (1976) iv. 46 I merely thought some women were a little shy on brains, present company not excepted.
Now, of course, I'm old, so I have an old person's view of what seems old-timey. Maybe the kids today are using "shy" in that old-fashioned way and it seems fresh to them.
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Rex Stout. One of greatest characters in modern fiction. I told my wife that if I can be resurrected I would choose from 3 people; Sir Harry Flashman ( as discussed in an earlier thread), Rex Stout or his associate Archie Goodwin. All very unique.
Sorry for off topic comment but Rex Stout!
Correction. Of course the character I meant is Nero Wolfe Rex Stout is the author. Need coffee.
When you define 'shy' as averse to contact, the common element becomes clear.
Wonder if shy has its roots in shyster as in shorting a deal and being shy of the payoff.
Shy is part of my productive vocabulary. Alternatives include "short" and "under" -- not great implications there, and "less than" -- grammatically messier.
Perhaps this is a regional or subcultural variation rather than an older usage.
"Sorry for off topic comment but Rex Stout!"
That's absolutely *on* topic.
I want commenters to pick up the little things and run with them. More of that sort of thing please.
"Wonder if shy has its roots in shyster as in shorting a deal and being shy of the payoff."
The OED says it's "of obscure origin."
I realize I've always connected it to the character Shylock and therefore regarded the term as anti-Semitic. I believe I have NEVER used the word.
Because it never rains in California ...
I realize I've always connected it to the character Shylock and therefore regarded the term as anti-Semitic. I believe I have NEVER used the word.
A search of this blog suggests otherwise...
Ah another California myth is born. That “almost 100%” renewables bullshit is only counting sources in-state and only during daytime and completely ignores the 30% or so that we import from neighboring states. People unthinkingly repeating the lie that the Golden State is powered by all-green energy are the same knuckleheads that think driving a Tesla means their choice is emissions free. Nope. We just displace the carbon and let other states emit extra CO2.
When I hear Shylock my first thought is John Travolta’s character in the Get Shorty sequel Be Cool. Excellent movie!
This post’s title “Shy” reminds me of the best tweet from Musk last week responding to AOC.
I'd have to guess that guy's daughter and her friends are probably looking at old pictures and videos of Robert Smith, not pictures and videos of an old Robert Smith.
"A search of this blog suggests otherwise..."
"Suggests"... to those who don't take the trouble to read and to understand the use/mention distinction.
Helps to think about it in the same sense as the expression “shy away [from]”; the behavior of an animal to approach something but to stop or recoil at the last minute. By analogy, numbers seemingly accumulating toward an assumed total, but not quite there; e.g. the odometer on your car at 99,995, just shy of “rolling over”*
*I know that’s no longer a thing, but it used to be, and we used to spend a lot more time with animals, which may be why it sounds old-timey.
the Second tweet is a lie.
Sounds regional to me. Common usage throughout my whole life.
The examples given using short as a synonym, sound off to me. The examples should use short. Your are short or light in the pot, a specific amount. If you talk about how big the pot was the next day, you might say it was shy of $50. You are one ox short. The shy on brains is spot on.
Shy is kind of guesstimate work. "How did that corn yield at the house"? We just got into it...looks like shy of 200. But when hauled to town...turned out, shy of 210.
"Shy" is estimate against benchmark.
I use shy in the context of short (just shy of 10 miles)regularly. I hear it regularly as well.
Out of curiosity I did a search on NY times and found 72m hits. Looking at the first 20 of so, all seem to be the timid use.
Searching "Shy of" I got 7m hits, most that I could see being the short of context "MacBook pro just shy of being perfect" was the top one.
John LGKTQ Henry
In the summer at peak, renewable use goes down to 50%. And CA Is 67% higher than the national average.
Another use, that I learned from reading old military novels and history is cowardly. It may be mainly a British naval usage though.(?)
As in "the fleet attacked the enemy but captain Smith was shy and hung back. Calling someone shy would result in an invitation to a duel.
John LGKTQ Henry
I can’t get to Shylock from’shy’ without some real creative stretching. 🤔
"the old-timey use of "shy.""
So old-timey it's used repeatedly, every week, during football season by Al Michaels.
During the 18th and early 19th centuries it meant cowardly. In Patrick O’ Brian’s ‘Master and Commander’ series if a character would call another ‘shy’ it was a personal insult, inviting a duel.
Ah another California myth is born. That “almost 100%” renewables bullshit is only counting sources in-state and only during daytime and completely ignores the 30% or so that we import from neighboring states. People unthinkingly repeating the lie that the Golden State is powered by all-green energy are the same knuckleheads that think driving a Tesla means their choice is emissions free. Nope. We just displace the carbon and let other states emit extra CO2.
Also, this percentage was not hit for the year, the month, the week, or even the day - it was for a brief second, mid-afternoon (sun highest in the sky) during early May, when the temperatures are pretty close to no heat/no AC needed.
I am glad that renewables are contributing, but let's not get carried away.
Ann Althouse said...I realize I've always connected it to the character Shylock and therefore regarded the term as anti-Semitic.
Never in a million years would I have made a connection between "shy" and "shylock." You may as well not use "ad" because of its connection to Adolf Hitler.
I always associate "Shy" with Western Movies. Cowboy talk. As in "He's shy one horse".
I love Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels. Too bad he was such a shit in real life.
Huge win for energy that is cheaper, cleaner, and safer.
What exactly causes CA to have power rates 50% higher than both the national average and its neighbors given it has all this cheap clean, and safe power?
inquiring minds :)
AH has connected "Shyster" to "Shylock" and so assumed "Shyster" was anti-Semitic.
Growing up in a town where the older generations, when children, had spoken German at home, I connected "Shyster" to the German "Scheisse" ("shit"), though perhaps "Shyster" came through Yiddish and could still have some connections to anti-Semitism that way.
I'm with tim maguire et al. A little DuckGo indicates that Shylock is only tenuously connected to any Jewish name, and certainly wasn't present in England in Shakespeare's time as a Jewish name though it was present as a non-Jewish family name.
My guess would be that 'shy' developed the meaning of 'approaching but not making contact' because that's exactly what a timid person, or especially animal, does.
"Wonder if shy has its roots in shyster as in shorting a deal and being shy of the payoff."
I always thought it was an easier spelling of a pseudo-Germanic "Scheiss-ter", as in, "shitster". Seemed always to comport with the way in which shyster is generally used, i.e., "a little shit".
Best scene ever, from best movie ever: https://youtu.be/LRAK0CTiOX0
"Did you bring a horse for me?"
"Looks like we're shy one horse."
"You brought two too many."
Cheaper? WOW. You've really got to be drinking the Kool-Aid to believe that.
Shyness prevents people from closing the deal. If your shy, you don't achieve the goal. Eg just shy of the line to gain.
The opposite is 'To boldly go...'
Except these days it would be 'To boldly go where no xer has gone before.'
The word proud is used as an antonym for shy in precisely this same sense. My Oxford English Dictionary is in town and I’m currently in the country, but you can see the definition here: “Slightly projecting from a surface.” And there’s a diagram of flush, shy, and proud here. Work with a decent carpenter on an old house and you'll hear shy and proud all the time.
Mike (MJB Wolf)'s comment at 6:48 AM reminds me of that time on The Simpsons where Otto is racing the school bus down the street and Milhouse says, "This is just like Speed 2, but on a bus!"
The second tweet is funny because he says just shy of 100% before giving the actual number of 99.87%. Could have save a few characters there, so I'll assume he really wanted to use the phrase "just shy of..."
I'm just shy of 70 and the number #1 band that my young guitar students want to learn is the Beatles. I try to imagine myself in the 1960's wanting to learn Bix Biederbeke tunes from the 1920's. And then I think again and realize that's exactly what Paul McCartney was doing on the White Album with the song "Honey Pie".
I grew up in West Virginia, where the word “shy” could mean “throw,” as in “shy a stone at that crow.”
"Suggests"... to those who don't take the trouble to read and to understand the use/mention distinction.
What a remarkably petulant response! I suppose you're suggesting that you've only ever said "few" in the context of discussing the term itself (otherwise, I have no idea what your purported distinction accomplishes). Are these "uses" or "mentions"?
"Either she's a shy person who got thrust or she's a capable executive."
"Now, Lee Dewyze has also had a shy style, but somehow they've decided he's the one they want to win — or at least he's the one they want to provide competition for Crystal, who has long seemed like the predestined winner."
"Congratulations to the shy, unassuming teenager who didn't particularly ask to be thrust into the spotlight 2 years ago, who went through an accidental pregnancy in front of millions of people (many of whom didn't mind insulting her in any manner they found amusing), who didn't hide herself away in shame, and who tried, again, in front of all of us, to dance. How many of the people who snipe at her, are too big of a pussy to dance anywhere, including on crowded dance floor at a local club?"
This was elons jibe to ocasio cortez
“ So old-timey it's used repeatedly, every week, during football season by Al Michaels”
Who is 77.
“ Never in a million years would I have made a connection between "shy" and "shylock."”
But the connection I made was between Shylock and shyster.
I'll go with these regarding the scatological origin of "shyster."
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/on-the-origin-of-shyster
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/shyster-etymology
I'm back, y'all, and I ain't shy. (Conquered that in high school.)
I use the word all the time, and have encountered every usage cited so far in my vast reading.
One of my standard observations about international affairs is to remark on the irony that 'Gun-shy Germans' are considered a problem.
Shy- Shylock - anti-Semitism? Didn't occur to me, either.
EP nails it. Bonus points because Jebus was a Carpenter. Don't be shy, death be not proud.
In Sopranos they call loan sharking the shy bidness.
"Shy" has a folksy or colloquial or quaint quality, something that gives it more color than "short of" or "under." It's a monosyllable, so it's simpler than "bordering" or "approaching." "Just shy of 50" seems to imply closer to 50 than "just short of 50" or "just under 50" as well as making readers feel that the writer is closer and more intimate. Now do "nigh on" or "well nigh."
Re Shylock I've seen this abbreviate to shy, as both a noun and a verb.
"Moe is a shy and works out of Manny's autoparts store."
"Moe has been known to shy to Jack's customers when they needed a new set of tires and didn't have the ready."
John LGKTQ Henry
California is doing so well with wind and solar power that Gavin Newsome just agreed to let the Diablo Cañon nuclear plant stay open after 20 years of trying to shut it down.
Jane Fonda even made a movie about it 33 years ago. She tried to make an anti-nuke propaganda piece and it boomeranged.
Best pro-nuke propaganda film EVAH! Somone should send a DVD of it to every senator and rep.
John LGKTQ Henry
Are shylock and shyster at all related? They don't seem to be.
I've always thought of a shylock as a loan shark.
Since Shakespeare's time, the character's name [Shylock, from the play-JRH] has become a synonym for loan shark, and as a verb to shylock means to lend money at exorbitant rates. In addition, the phrase "pound of flesh" has also entered the lexicon as slang for a particularly onerous or unpleasant obligation.
The "pound of flesh" is a plot point in the Guy Ritchie movie "The Gentlemen" which I watched the other night. One gangster locks another in a freezer with a knife. The choice is to freeze or remove a pound of flesh from any part of his body.
It was also a plot point in the book Logan's Run.
A shyster has always been a lawyer. Generally, an incompetent, crooked or unethical lawyer.
Shyster is a slang word for someone who acts in a disreputable, unethical, or unscrupulous way, especially in the practice of law, sometimes also politics or business.
The etymology of the word is not generally agreed upon. The Oxford English Dictionary describes it as "of obscure origin", possibly deriving from a historical sense of "shy" meaning disreputable.[1]
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary deemed it probably based on the German Scheißer (literally "shitter", i.e. "defecator"[2]).
John LGKTQ Henry
Quotes above were from Wikipedia
Shylock, in "The Merchant of Venice" was Jewish and there was a general prohibition at the time on money lending by Christians that lasted into the 20th century.
Moneylending was looked on as a necessary evil, like prostitution, and I can see that "shylock" would be an antisemitic term in the past. I don't know that it is today.
John LGKTQ Henry
From the 1920s on, Rex Stout was a highly active member of the ACLU (appointed by founder Roger Baldwin himself to its National Council on Censorship). In 1965, he published a Nero Wolfe novel that lacerated and mocked the FBI and was rewarded with an extensive dossier at the Bureau.
"About one hundred pages in Stout's file are devoted to the novel, the FBI's panicky response to it and the attempt to retaliate against the author for writing it. The FBI's internal memorandum for its special agents told them that "the bureau desires to contribute in no manner to the sales of this book by helping to make it the topic of publicity." Orders came from headquarters in Washington that any questions concerning the book should be forwarded to the Crime Records Division, thereby putting book and author in a criminal category."
I've often wondered how those suggested tweets get into my feed. They are usually so far from anything I'm interested in, that I have to assume that someone is paying to publish them. I've tried deleting those tweets from my feed in the vain hope of teaching the algorithm, but that only seems to encourage it.
Blogger Heartless Aztec said...
I try to imagine myself in the 1960's wanting to learn Bix Biederbeke tunes from the 1920's. And then I think again and realize that's exactly what Paul McCartney was doing on the White Album with the song "Honey Pie".
I like Bix.
One of the reasons I am liking the History of Rock and Roll in 500 Songs so much, enough even to pay $5/month, is that it is full of interesting history like this.
For example, on the latest, Light my Fire, I learned that Jim Morrison's father was a Navy officer, which I think I might have known. What I didn't know was that his father was an admiral in charge of naval forces during the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
More musically, I am learning a lot about how music is put together, and not just rock and roll. One of the most intereting podcasts I listen to.
The number of trigger warnings in the podcast was a bit offputting at first but he has either toned it down or I've gotten useed to them.
John LGKTY Henry
Rex Stout claimed he wrote his Nero Wolfe novels in two weeks and never did a second draft. I'd probably want to be reincarnated as him. Though someone said he wasn't a nice man. I never heard that before but I'm a look at the art not the artist sort of reader.
But the connection I made was between Shylock and shyster.
But there does not seem to be any.
One's a loanshark, from an English play by an Englishman.
The other is (usually) a lawyer of questionable ethics from the German word for shit.
John LGKTQ Henry
Ann Althouse said...
“ Never in a million years would I have made a connection between "shy" and "shylock."”
But the connection I made was between Shylock and shyster."
I really don't understand most of the comments on this thread. Shy is well known for referring to loan sharks, shy for short of shyster in reference to lawyers. It also has the anti semitic connotation from Shakespeare. Shy is also used like tad as a guesstimate. These are all common usages.
You're too shy, shy. Hush, Hush. Eye to eye.
"I realize I've always connected it to the character Shylock and therefore regarded the term as anti-Semitic. I believe I have NEVER used the word."
Do you think this bizarre mental aberration says anything important about the way your mind works, and how that came about? I don't think you were born with a tendency to develop absurd etymological phobias. Who programmed you? When?
Shy is the name of one of the characters in the Mrs. Maisel show. There he is not shy, except regarding…one thing.
This is from Wikipedia, but cites some reputable sources.
Etymology
The etymology of the word is not generally agreed upon. The Oxford English Dictionary describes it as "of obscure origin", possibly deriving from a historical sense of "shy" meaning disreputable.[1]
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary deemed it probably based on the German Scheißer (literally "shitter", i.e. "defecator"[2]). A book published in 2013 traces the first use back to 1843, when scammers in New York City would exploit prisoners by pretending to be lawyers. These scammers were disparagingly referred to as "shisers", meaning "worthless people" in British slang, which in turn was originally derived from the German "Scheißer".[3]
Various false etymologies have suggested an antisemitic origin, possibly associated with the character of Shylock from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, but there is no clear evidence for this.[4] One source asserts that the term originated in Philadelphia in 1843 from a disreputable attorney named "Schuster."[5]
"shy for short of shyster"
If it's anti-sematic then wouldn't shy be short for Shylock?
I grew up in West Virginia, where the word “shy” could mean “throw,” as in “shy a stone at that crow.”
Every 'cozy' English mystery novel or television serial includes one or more of the characters behaving suspiciously at the parish fête, which festivals always feature a coconut shy.
Shy has always been part of my everyday use vocabulary. I seem to remember it being use a LOT in novels through the 60s and 70s. And of course Veni had it right with Bronson using in in one of the best Westerns ever. I never thought twice about it, thought it was common.
I've always been SHY . . .
A link to the original, Carol Burnett version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouL9ZMzEZ4k
--gpm
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