More than a century ago, the Springfield Republican newspaper in Massachusetts proposed a new word for that twitterpated time in an adolescent’s life when one discovers the joys of flirtation: being all girled up. The Republican is also the publication containing the first known instance of someone suggesting the term Ms. as an honorific. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “All Girled Up”
A little over a century ago, a little editorial in the Springfield Republican newspaper in Springfield, Massachusetts, suggested a new colloquial expression for the next edition of Webster’s Dictionary.
Their origin story was that there was a father who went to see the headmaster at the local school because his son was struggling in school. He had been doing great, but all of a sudden his grades started dropping. And the other thing that emerged in this discussion between the father and
The headmaster was that the son had in the meantime become, quote, conspicuous as a ladies’ man.
And the father said, yes, yes, I know. He’s got all girled up. And the editors at the Republican
And love that term, all girled up, and they described it this way.
It’s a remarkably happy and pregnant phrase.
If there’s anything that plays the mischief with the girls and boys
During that budding, downy, and velvety period of their teens,
When they ought to be laying solid and permanent educational foundations.
It is this premature efflorescence of the sexual period which moves boys and girls who ought to be kept down to study to perk and prim and sidle and play with each other’s eyes and write silly and badly spelled notes to each other and eat slate pencils in private.
But then it rarely lasts long.
It is less harmful than tobacco or whiskey, and there is no law against youth of that age making fools of themselves.
All that for a verbed noun.
Gurled up. He’s all gurled up.
When you first said it, I’m thinking like, wow, he’s wearing dresses? What’s he doing?
Right? I’m thinking drag went back that far? Is he going to do a lip sync?
Oh, yeah. I thought that was so funny.
And, you know, that particular newspaper is also supposedly the first citation of somebody suggesting the title Ms.
Oh, interesting.
For women.
Interesting.
Springfield Republican 100 years ago.
100 years ago.
Boy, they really wrote purple prose back then, didn’t they?
They did.
They had no end of printer’s ink, apparently.
I know. I know.
And I just love that they were so excited about this neologism.
And eating slate pencils, too.
I assume that means using up a lot of pencils.
By that, I think they mean eating chalk.
If you Google eating slate pencils, there are all these videos and all these articles about people who eat chalk.
Why?
A lot of them have a calcium deficiency.
Oh, I see.
What is that called?
Picarism?
Pica.
Pica, right?
Yeah.
Here we go again.
We veered off course.
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