Private Dic-tion

I read a lot of old pulp fiction from the 30s and 40s, because I groove on that noir beat. One of the things that I enjoy about it, apart from the snappy patter and flawed heroes, is the difference in how certain words were used then as compared to now. For example, the word “okay” used to be spelled “okey”. Now, “okay” has a murky etymology, but I think it’s evident that the authors were using a shortened version of “okey-dokey”, which kind of kills that tough-guy vibe.

Another interesting usage (to language nerds, anyway) is the fact that editors struck out not only the heavier curse words, but any use of “God” as an oath. Here are stories all about greed, murder, and misogyny, and the readers had to be protected from the hero saying “I’ll kill him, by God!”.

Speaking of cursing, I’ve noticed that in many stories, the term “damn” has an apostrophe at the end. This reflects the fact that people were starting to use the root word as an adjective, but the writer wanted to make it clear the word should be “damned”. It’s a nice balance between accurately capturing the dialect and being precise as a writer.

I was kind of surprised that a lot of these authors use “till” to mean “until”. It’s one of my pet peeves, so it jumped out at me. I would have imagined that an author conscientious enough to put an apostrophe at the end of “damn’” would use “‘til” to denote the missing letters, rather than a word that means a cash drawer or turning soil over.

I’m glad Black Lizard has carved out a niche in making sure these stories stay around. Though many of them were adapted into movies around the same time period, it’s nice to be able to read the originals. I am kind of surprised that with all of the remakes Hollywood is cranking out, none of these great stories have been updated. I could probably tolerate a new version of The Thin Man if the right people were involved. And by “the right people,” I mean “not Will Smith or JJ Abrams.”

As long as they leave the Bogart stuff alone.