Jazz age slang is among the most fun of any iconic period language in America’s history. In fact, it is the most fun. The words that they used to describe things during the Roaring 20s makes today hip-hop slang seem almost as uncreative as rap music. (Tough slam, but I’ll stick with it for the most part, despite the occasional break-through by genuinely talented artists like Public Enemy.) In fact, there is more than a tenuous connection that exists between much of the contemporary slang of today and that from the wild and woolly days when F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were hopping drunkenly from fountain to fountain; jazz was stolen by white people from the blacks and dressed up in pretty clothing. No wonder so much slang of today can be traced back to its African-American origins.
Copacetic
Supposedly coined by Mr. Bojangles himself, Bill Robinson, it means everything is just hunky dory, all right, no problems on the horizon. Cool, man cool. Robinson claimed to have invented the word during his shoeshine days as a boy in the South, but others of the era counter it was used before Bojangles ever came along. Yet another theory of the word’s origin-and it’s a such a freaking great word to say, almost as good as drawing out Mr. Burn’s exxx-celllll-ent-suggests that it may have a Hebraic lineage to a similar sounding word with the exact same meaning.
Gams
Meaning a shapely pair of legs, of course; it derives from the French gambe. If the lady had a particularly nice set of gams she might be termed the cat’s meow. Or the cat’s pajamas. If the girl was a knockout she might be called a real beaut, and if she was unfortunate enough to have a fella with her you might have termed a jazzbo or a jellybean. If later on you caught this jazzbo with another beaut with great gams you would be perfectly within reason to call him a lounge lizard. Yes, it’s true, lounge lizard actually used to mean a real ladies’ man instead of some poor dope who hangs around in bars until the pickings get too slim even for him.
It’s the Bunk
Those flappers and lounge lizards had a really wonderful way of expressing utter incredulity. Doesn’t exclaiming “It’s the bunk” when someone tells you something that can’t possibly be believed so much more endearing than today’s typical counterpart of prefacing a synonym for feces with paradoxical negation? By the way, you might also know that this was the time period in which For Crying Out Loud came into general usage Don’t like that one, how about crying out “Banana oil!” the next time you hear something stupid stream forth from Bush’s mouth.
Sheik and Sheba
There was something indefinable about certain people, a mystique or aura that very special human beings had during the Jazz Age that separated them from the rabble. This special something was personified by the actress Clara Bow who earned one of the all-time great Hollywood nicknames: The It Girl. If you had It, you were something else. And if you had it and were a male, you were known as a sheik; if you had it and were a female, you were known as a sheba. If the sheik were also loaded with dough he would become his sheba’s sugar daddy. If the sheba had that indefinable It, but was also marked by occasional lapses in intelligence she would be known as a Dumb Dora. If Dumb Dora went exploring with another big cheese, she might eventually lose her ticket to the sweet life with her sugar daddy and find herself tossed out with all the other two-timers as they picked through the effluence of the holdovers at the party: the flat tires, those guys so interminably boring that she may well rue the day she ever told her college beau to go fly a kite.
