"By the way, I have come upon a new piece of slang within the past two months and it has puzzled me. I just heard it from a big newsboy who had a ‘stand’ on a corner. A small boy with several papers under his arm had edged up until he was trespassing on the territory of the other. When the big boy saw the small one he went at him in a threatening manner and said: ‘Here! Here! Twenty-three! Twenty-three!’ The small boy scowled and talked under his breath, but he moved away. A few days after that I saw a street beggar approach a well-dressed man, who might have been a bookmaker or horseman, and try for the usual ‘touch’. The man looked at the beggar in cold disgust and said: ‘Aw, twenty-three!’ I could see that the beggar didn’t understand it any better than I did. I happened to meet a man who tries to ‘keep up’ on slang and I asked [about] the meaning of ‘Twenty-three!’ He said it was a signal to clear out, run, get away."
Wrote George Ade, in 1899, quoted in the Wikipedia article "23 skidoo (phrase)."
But why did 23 come to mean get out?
Some people think it originated with Dickens's novel "A Tale of Two Cities"! It has to do with the numbers given to the doomed prisoners going to the guillotine:
It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a young Devil, and was put together again when the occasion wanted it. It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and good. Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes....
[A woman] goes next before him—is gone.... Twenty-Two....
The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three.
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43 comments:
I suspect that I will not be the only one to post this information. On 23 St in Manhattan, there were were wind gusts possibly from the wind shear of a newly erected Metropolitan Life skyscraper (1909). In that simpler era, pervs got off on the flash of a well turned ankle. The police would send oglers on their way. This was known as the twenty three skidoo....Does anyone still have an ankle fetish?.....The last big New Year's that I remember was when we moved into the new millennium. I felt very old at that time, and, whoa, that was twenty three years ago. It will be interesting to see what landmark figures do their own twenty three skidoo this year. The people who shaped my life and times are disappearing at a fast and accelerating clip.
Ann, your delightful occasional flitting about the obscure origins of words suggests both the etymology of "flit" and your own compulsion for sunrise photos...your brain awakes "fucking-lit". It's an Althouse portmanteau.
Oh, thanks. So I have to spend New Year's morning reading the end of Tale of Two Cities and weeping like a fool. Too many decades ago, as a young man, I taught HS English, and walked us all through the book. First time I'd read it, along with the class. Reading the last chapter aloud, I was somewhat embarrassed to get choked up, and the class, I figured, was a bit embarrassed for me. A few years later one of them told me everyone was trying not to cry. I still think it's a wonderful book, Victorian sentimentalism and all.
Such a bright and shiny thought with which to welcome the New Year!
Are we slashing away the obsolete, the hateful, the extraneous, in pursuit of the eschaton?
Or is our number up?
If you refer to the Illuminatus trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, you will learn all you need to about the importance of 23 (and self-destructing Myna Birds, too.)
"I suspect that I will not be the only one to post this information."
It's in the Wikipedia article I linked to. It says "Some consider the Flatiron Building origin claim dubious because the slang expressions "23" and "skidoo" were already in use before 1902, the year in which the Flatiron Building was built."
Ian Nemo- wish you had taught me HS English as that book was required reading and I somehow did not do it. I never liked school.
I'll suggest it's a punchline, to say you're going to count to three, and then saying "two-three" real fast and carrying out the threat.
86 the 23 skidoo speculation. I love my wife, but oh! you kid!
Corny slang, like the poor, will be with us always.
@Ian Nemo,
I couldn't agree more, although I was only a reader and not a teacher like yourself. I read "A Tale of Two Cities" in high school. It was assigned, but then I read it again because I was so blown away by it. And it's one of the very few books from high school English classes that I read yet again as an adult.
I realize it's not considered as great as other Dickens novels, at least by scholars. But it's my personal favorite among his works. I like that it's less autobiographical, and has an epic scope. His description of the guillotine scenes are visceral and haunting. Madame DeFarge is one of the greatest literary villains ever created, and yet Dickens makes you understand how she became that way. The redemption and self-sacrifice of Sidney Carton may be my favorite ending of any book I've ever read. Thanks for sharing your experience. I envy you, that you brought students into such a love of literature.
farmgirl - Regrettably, school I think is the main reason people hate poetry and other literature. Were it forbidden, they might like it better. But it's not too late to give Tale of Two Cities a crack, though it takes a change of pace, and a willingness to immerse oneself in a different culture.
Urbane dictionary.
When I was drinking in NYC bars and dives, they had a slang for getting kicked out called ‘eighty-six’.
The first time I got eighty-sixed I had told somebody who at the bar was selling. It was a huge blunder.
Yes. I cried, too. And I still remember, these many decades later, Sydney speaking his own, quite marvelous, epitaph:
"Tis a far, far better thing that I do that I have ever done; tis a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known."
On the other hand, I still tear up when I read a mention of Rick Rescorla, so maybe noble actions, be they fictional or real, are just my "crying thing."
Could also refer to the Jim Carrey movie "23"
The French also gave numbers to abandoned children as last names. There was a French bishop or cardinal a few years back whose last name was a (cardinal) number
Andrew, - Well said. It's a deeply Christian take on redemption, even to its title, and maybe the community of critics isn't disposed to look at that as a positive.
As to bringing students into a love of literature: yes, somewhat. I loved literature and communicated that. But school is a lot of things beside at which I was not very good. Several of that same class went on to teach literature themselves. One of them said a few years after that he wasn't sure whether I deserved a kick in the ass or an award. Well. I went on to other things.
"If you refer to the Illuminatus trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, you will learn all you need to about the importance of 23 (and self-destructing Myna Birds, too.)"
I love those books! I read the trilogy about 40 years ago, and I've been thinking it's time to jump into it again. That book and others by R.A. Wilson inspired me to try LSD when I had the opportunity. (I was a non-drug user in my late 20s at the time.)
Ian Nemo @ 9:22: "...not too late to give Tale of Two Cities a crack..." Agree. I slogged through Great Expectations in HS, avoided Dickens pretty successfully in college, but several decades later quite enjoyed Bleak House. Then recently, trying to reduce the clutter from several relatives' estates, I stumbled on David Copperfield and found it to be a great window into Dickens' world: a lot of psychology in his depiction of "types" and their motivations, ambitions, interactions; and a kind of time-travel back to England in the 1820's and 1830's. A great fat thing (nearly 900 pages of small print) but I was in no hurry to finish.
I've only read a few of Dickens' works: A CHRISTMAS CAROL in high school, and GREAT EXPECTATIONS and HARD TIMES on my own. I enjoyed the CAROL, of course, but my expectations of GE were not met: it was fine, but it did not, for me, stand up to its reputation.
HARD TIMES, however, was great!
Maybe I'll try A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
We still have seven years to make the slang of the 1920s the argot of the 2020s.
Thank you for doing your part in this great national endeavor.
As a high school senior in 1969, we were aware that "69" was a dirty word. So as a humor concept we decided to make "23", the number of male chromosomes, and one third of 69, into our own utterly meaningless obscenity. When a teacher would tell us to turn to page 23, we would act ás though he had done something shocking. Oh, those golden days so long ago.
23 flavors in Dr. Pepper.
If "23" means "go away," and "skidoo" or "skedaddle" means "go away," why put the two of them together?
Did people not know what "23" meant and had to be told "skidoo" and eventually the two expressions were fused together?
I suspect 23-skidoo will be used a lot on 31 December 2023.
Check out "The Number 23," a 2007 thriller starring Jim Carrey (partly based on William S. Burroughs' obsession with the number). It got a 7 out of 100 on Rotten Tomatoes, and I believe it's the main reason Carrey stopped trying to be a serious actor.
I've only heard it in Hollywood films set in the 1920s where people wear Raccoon coats and run around shouting "23 Skiddoo" and saying "The bees knees".
I didn't realize it came from the 1890s.
A tale of two cities is one of Dickens best and its always made for a good movie. I think the one with Ronald Coleman is best.
One of the first phrases I remember recognizing as outdated slang was "Cheese it! The cops!"
"Whyyyy you!" A ubiquitous threat, especially in Stooges shorts.
"Why I oughta ..." See whyyyy you.
Another origin story says that 23 means you’re finished and skidoo means git, claiming that the actress with the line “23” at the end of a theatrical adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities that travelled the U.S. adopted “23 skidoo” as her catchphrase to dismiss a paramour at the end of an assignation.
Faked my way through Great Expectorations and Sale of Two Titties, and I've never been able to watch any movie or TV adaptation for long (I leave that to my wife). OTOH, I never let school affect my love of good literature.
My friends and I weren't clever enough to have much in the way of coded language about sex, but there was the legendary '77' experience to look forward to.
Narr, is that the position where you get ate more?
JSM
Only in monogamous marriage do the sexes learn to respect and value each other. Casual sex breeds resentment and hatred on both sides. From men because they can’t often get it with the women they desire and from women because they are discarded by the high status men they have unfulfilling sex with for status chasing.
If both sexes evaluate their marital status correctly they can pursue someone who will value them for life instead of being used one way or another. We need to get rid of No Fault Divorce so that both partners can feel secure in marriage and let the bed hoppers do their empty, pathetic thing.
A lot of this sort of thing has very opaque origins; ones we're never going to winkle out with any real certainty.
In the Army, call signs are given to every position in the chain of command. Traditionally, anything ending in -6 is the commander; -5 his deputy or executive officer. The -7 is the senior enlisted person in that command structure.
Now, go looking for an explanation for that. Good 'effing luck. I never heard one that was convincingly accompanied by any real documentation. About the best I did was that some old-timer told me that the -6 was because the commander was always to be found at the back of the formation, at the 6 o'clock position, with his XO on his right at the 5 o'clock, and his left-hand man there at the 7 o'clock in the form of the First Sergeant or Sergeant Major, depending on the size of the unit.
That makes a certain amount of sense, but... Zero real documentation in terms of provenance that I've ever seen. The structure has been in use since at least WWII, and likely goes even further back. I'd be unsurprised that it went even further back, but I've no idea how far.
You got it, jsm. Funny then, funny now.
Or the 34.5 if you're lonely and double-jointed.
Takirks--maybe it is related to pay grade. An O-6 is a full Colonel=commander, O-5 is a lt. Col= deputy, E-7 and above = senior enlisted. E-7 was the highest enlisted rank, before warrant officer at one time. E-8 and E-9 was supposed to replace Warrant ranks but the Army never did it. The Air Force did.
Takirks--maybe it is related to pay grade. An O-6 is a full Colonel=commander, O-5 is a lt. Col= deputy, E-7 and above = senior enlisted. E-7 was the highest enlisted rank, before warrant officer at one time. E-8 and E-9 was supposed to replace Warrant ranks but the Army never did it. The Air Force did.
Takirks--maybe it is related to pay grade. An O-6 is a full Colonel=commander, O-5 is a lt. Col= deputy, E-7 and above = senior enlisted. E-7 was the highest enlisted rank, before warrant officer at one time. E-8 and E-9 was supposed to replace Warrant ranks but the Army never did it. The Air Force did.
27 Skidoo was a rock star thing, wasn’t it?
27 Skidoo was a rock star thing, wasn’t it?
Twenty-three is far smaller than "in the year twenty-twenty-three when man continues to be, we can bop in for a look see."
ken in tx said...
--maybe it is related to pay grade. An O-6 is a full Colonel=commander, O-5 is a lt. Col= deputy, E-7 and above = senior enlisted. E-7 was the highest enlisted rank, before warrant officer at one time. E-8 and E-9 was supposed to replace Warrant ranks but the Army never did it. The Air Force did.
Army E-8 is a First Sergeant and E-9 is Sergeant Major, the highest Army Enlisted rank. Warrants are Officer Ranks O-1 through O-5 but do not get salutes.
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