For a hot summer day, the New York Times brings us the history of “cool”
Already by the time of “Beowulf,” a millennium ago, the original low-temperature meaning of cool had veered into the realm of human emotion — or rather the lack thereof. From Old English to the ages of Chaucer and Shakespeare all the way to the present, cool has been able to mean “dispassionate, calm, self-composed.” Some of our latter-day cool expressions — “stay cool,” “play it cool,” “cool as a cucumber,” “cool customer” — play off this ancient connotation of implacability.
By the early 18th century, emotional coolness had branched off in another direction: “assured and unabashed where diffidence and hesitation would be expected,” as the O.E.D. has it. This impudent style of cool — no longer in common usage — is the one that turns up in the examples from Abraham Lincoln and Wilkie Collins given by the T.L.S. readers. Lincoln’s line, “That is cool,” from his 1860 speech at Cooper Union, was a response to the audacity of secessionist demands. Collins, likewise, has a character in his 1868 novel, “The Moonstone,” say, “Cool!” when presented with an insolent request. In both cases, cool was used disapprovingly, quite distinct from later, more positive uses.
Those early instances of cool are easy enough to explain, but what of the intriguing contribution to the T.L.S. colloquy from Allan Peskin, a biographer of President James A. Garfield? Peskin found an 1881 letter by Garfield’s teenage daughter Mollie to a friend, telling of her crush on her father’s private secretary, Joseph Stanley-Brown. “Isn’t he cool!” Mollie gushed in the letter. The “audaciously impudent” sense of cool wouldn’t seem to work here, since, as Peskin points out, Mollie went on to marry Stanley-Brown when she came of age. Could Mollie have been ahead of her time, already using cool to mean “sophisticated, stylish” or “admirable, excellent”?
Though it would be indubitably cool to find a hidden connection between schoolgirl talk of the 1880s and later hipster slang, my best guess is that Mollie was describing her future husband with the older “cool, calm and collected” nuance. “As a private secretary,” Peskin told me when I asked about Mollie’s letter, “Stanley-Brown demonstrated the customary diffidence that was expected of someone in his position.” Still, Peskin said he finds it difficult to believe that a teenage girl would be infatuated with a man for being dispassionate. read more
June 3rd, 2010 | 1:29 pm
From thomas hughes Tom Brown’s schooldays, published abt 1860 but supposedly happening abt 30 yrs earlier downloadable at Gutenburg
Wiki:Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857) is a novel by Thomas Hughes. The story is set at Rugby School, a public school for boys, in the 1830s; Hughes attended Rugby School from 1834 to 1842.
BTW”This impudent style of cool — no longer in common usage” says who?
several good quotes with “cool”, I’m not the first to notice, NYT should research better or is it only english if it’s spoken stateside?
“I say, you fellow, is your name Brown?”
“Yes,” said Tom, in considerable astonishment; glad however to have
lighted on some one already who seemed to know him.
“Ah, I thought so; you know my old aunt, Miss East; she lives somewhere
down your way in Berkshire. She wrote to me that you were coming to-day,
and asked me to give you a lift.”
Tom was somewhat inclined to resent the patronizing air of his new
friend–a boy of just about his own height and age, but gifted with the
most transcendent COOLness and assurance, which Tom felt to be
aggravating and hard to bear, but couldn’t for the life of him help
admiring and envying–especially when young my lord begins hectoring two
or three long loafing fellows, half-porter, half stableman, with a
strong touch of the blackguard, and in the end arranges with one of
them, nicknamed Cooey, to carry Tom’s luggage up to the School-house for
sixpence.
“And heark’ee, Cooey, it must be up in ten minutes, or no more jobs from
me. Come along, Brown.” And away swaggers the young potentate, with his
hands in his pockets, and Tom at his side…./…
into the matron’s room, where East introduced Tom to that
dignitary; made him give up the key of his trunk that the matron might
unpack his linen, and told the story of the hat and of his own presence
of mind: upon the relation whereof the matron laughingly scolded him,
for the COOLest new boy in the house; and East, indignant at the
accusation of newness, marched Tom off…../…
Then the boys who are bending and watching on the outside, mark
them–they are most useful players, the dodgers; who seize on the ball
the moment it rolls out from amongst the chargers, and away with it
across to the opposite goal; they seldom go into the scrummage, but must
have more COOLness than the chargers: as endless as are boys’
characters, so are their ways of facing or not facing a scrummage at
football. …..//….
he School leaders come up furious, and administer toco to the wretched
fags nearest at hand: they may well be angry, for it is all
Lombard-street to a china orange that the School-house kick a goal with
the ball touched in such a good place. Old Brooke of course will kick
it out, but who shall catch and place it? Call Crab Jones. Here he
comes, sauntering along with a straw in his mouth, the queerest, COOLest
fish in Rugby: if he were tumbled into the moon this minute, he would
just pick himself up without taking his hands out of his pockets or
turning a hair. But it is a moment when the boldest charger’s heart
beats quick. …./…
Crab
Jones catches it for a moment; but before he can kick, the rush is upon
him and passes over him; and he picks himself up behind them with his
straw in his mouth, a little dirtier, but as cool as ever.
…/..
Tom was very near shouting to be set down,
when he found himself back in the blanket, but thought of East, and
didn’t; and so took his three tosses without a kick or a cry, and was
called a young trump for his pains.
He and East, having earned it, stood now looking on. No catastrophe
happened, as all the captives were COOL hands, and didn’t struggle. This
didn’t suit Flashman. What your real bully likes in tossing, is when the
boys kick and struggle, or hold on to one side of the blanket, and so
get pitched bodily on to the floor; it’s no fun to him when no one is
hurt or frightened.
…/..
I was in a towering rage. ‘I’ve got you now,’ thought I, and sent
for him, while I got out my cane. Up he came as COOL as you please, with
his hands in his pockets ‘Didn’t I tell you to shake my table-cloth
every morning?’ roared I. ‘Yes,’ says he. ‘Did you do it this morning?’
‘Yes.’ ‘You young liar! I put these pieces of paper on the table last
night, and if you’d taken the table-cloth off’ you’d have seen them, so
I’m going to give you a good licking.’ Then my youngster takes one hand
out of his pocket, and just stoops down and picks up two of the bits of
paper, and holds them out to me. There was written on each, in great
round text, ‘Harry East, his mark.’ The young rogue had found my trap
out, taken away my paper, and put some of his there, every bit
ear-marked. I’d a great mind to lick him for his impudence, but after
all one has no right to be laying traps, so I didn’t.
….////..
Then Tom sat himself down on the table, and waxed eloquent about all the
righteousnesses and advantages of the new plan, as was his wont whenever
he took up anything; going into it as if his life depended upon it, and
sparing no abuse which he could think of of the opposite method, which
he denounced as ungentlemanly, cowardly, mean, lying, and no one knows
what besides. “Very cool of Tom,” as East thought, but didn’t say,
“seeing as how he only came out of Egypt himself last night at
bed-time.”
June 3rd, 2010 | 10:13 pm
When I think of “cool,” I think of Miles Davis’s BIRTH OF THE COOL or of Maynard G. Krebs (aka Bob Denver of GILLIGAN’S ISLAND) the protohippie and beatnik send-up from the 50s sitcom THE MANY LOVES OF DOBIE GILLIS But I believe at the end of the first decade of the 21st century that “cool” is a word exhausted from overuse and something more — a cultural exhaustion of all that “cool” now stands for. That is, a kind of passive transgressiveness; moral numbness; sly judgemental non-judgementalness; and emotional detachment. Personally I consider myself living an post-cool, post-hip culture since “cool” is often an arbitrary and capricious Counter-Any Culture. Nihilism without the courage or wit to acknowledge it as such. Or to put it more bluntly, when you hear five year olds calling Dora the Explorer or Thomas the Tank Engine “cool,” well… time to move on.
June 3rd, 2010 | 11:41 pm
I tend to think of “cool” as unabashedly enthusiastic — as in “That’s really cool!” for something interesting.
Perhaps I’m influenced by the Yankee usage (circa the 1990s anyway) of prefacing it with “Wicked”.
To be wicked cool is the epitome of coolness… unless one can imagine a clash of East and West Coasts: “That’s wicked cool, dude.”
June 4th, 2010 | 2:28 pm
Mike, I think the use of “cool” in Tom Brown’s School Days—at least from your excerpts—would fall under “assured and unabashed where diffidence and hesitation would be expected” sense of “cool” which Zimmer claims was in use in the 18th century. It is Miles Davis sense of “cool” that Graham refers to and then the subsequent slide into the “unabashedly enthusiastic” sense of “cool” that Zimmer is claiming did not appear until the 20th century.
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