Separated by a Common Language

credit: twistynoodle

Fifteen years! That's how long this blog has been going. Happy anniversary to me! And thank you all coming along with me on this. 

I've just decided, since I really should be going to bed, that a 15th anniversary calls for a blog post, so I thought I'd share with you something I learned today while searching for 20th-century interjections in the Oxford English Dictionary (as one does).

My first surprise was to discover that the leave-taking expression Toodles! is the same age as me. (Which is to say, the OED's first example of its use is from 1965.) But my second surprise was to discover that it's an AmE expression—the first example was from an episode of Gidget, the all-American Sally-Field-on-a-surfboard sitcom.

This was a surprise to me for two reasons:

(1)  the expression it abbreviates, toodle-oo,  is British in origin. The first OED citation is from the magazine Punch in 1907, followed by lots of citations in British Literature (T. E. Lawrence, P. G. Wodehouse, Dorothy Sayers). There's more about it at phrases.co.uk.

(2) I think of abbreviations ending in -s as a much more British than American thing, as I wrote about almost FIFTEEN YEARS AGO.

But what's less surprising to me is that the OED marks it as "U.S. colloquial (frequently humorous)', because what's more amusing to Americans than words that sound British? And what's more British to Americans than words that sound a bit silly?

 

 

I tweeted about this yesterday and now I get to surprise all the people who replied to ask if toodles came from the BrE toodle-pip. On the contrary, the evidence of toodle-pip (actually tootle-pip at that point) only starts in 1977. It blends two older slangy goodbyes toodle-oo and pip-pip, both on evidence here in this Wodehouse quote (the first OED citation for pip-pip in the 'goodbye' sense).

1919   P. G. Wodehouse Damsel in Distress x. 125   ‘Well, it's worth trying,’ said Reggie. ‘I'll give it a whirl. Toodleoo!’ ‘Good-bye.’ ‘Pip-pip!’ Reggie withdrew.

Incidentally, a contemporary of toodle-oo and pip-pip is cheerio, whose first citation is from 1914 ("Cheeryo, as we say in the navy", in a letter from the poet Rupert Brooke.) In 2014, a flurry of media stories made a very big deal of the fact that cheerio is not said as much in the early 21st century, framing its downfall as a loss of "Britishness" that was most probably Americans' fault. Well, if the sense of national self is based on Edwardian-era linguistic fads, then why is no one up in arms about pip-pip and toodle-oo? (The cheerio media coverage is something I rant about in The Prodigal Tongue.)

This choice of topic might give the impression that I'm saying goodbye. As if fifteen years was enough? You've got to be kidding. I've got years of blogging in me yet. It's tricky to find time for it, especially since I've taken on even more work responsibilities this year. But just because I'm quiet sometimes doesn't mean I'm not here. Hasta la vista, amigos! Pip pip!