No Way, Jose!

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Steve from Milwaukee.

Hello, Steve.

Hi, Steve. Welcome to the program.

Hi there. Thanks.

I’ve got an interesting question for you.

A friend of mine is from Cuba and posted a question on Facebook that got a lot of attention.

Nobody really came up with a definitive answer.

So here’s the question.

The question is, where did the expression, no way Jose, come from?

And who in the world is Jose?

A lot of people thought that it came from the Village Voice back in the 1960s, but nobody was really sure.

So I thought, well, okay, I’m going to bring it to the ultimate and see if you can answer it.

Now the question is whether or not we can get our answer repeated as widely as the false answer about the Village Voice.

Well, I promise I’ll post it back on the Facebook site.

Because the thing is, if you Google this question, you do find everybody quoting everybody else on this kind of pass it along telephone game about the Village Voice and some date that may or may not be in the 1960s.

And it’s just a big mishmash.

It’s like a perfect example of why the Internet will lead you astray.

You know, here’s what we know for sure.

Noe Jose appeared at least as early as 1973.

I can find it in print in the newspaper from that year, guaranteed.

Now, instincts, as a slang lexicographer, tell me that it’s probably older than that, particularly because no way really only came into English as a thing.

That is something that people say, kind of a lexicalized pat expression in the 1960s.

And so no way and no way Jose are basically contemporaneous as far as I’m concerned.

That means the thing is no way kind of appears out of the blue.

It probably would have been understood before that, but it wasn’t a formal expression.

And then people immediately started reacting to No Way being heavily overused.

And some people going, oh, it’s on its way out.

I mean, even before the 1970s, people were going, No Way has had its day.

It’s finished. It’s through.

Nobody’s using that anymore.

And here we are in 2011, and people are still using No Way.

So that said, the Village Voice thing may or may not have appeared early in the Village Voice, but I would not be surprised if it’s much earlier than that anyway.

It’s just it’s so slangy.

It’s hard to find.

So you think it’s just an add-on?

Yeah, it’s just an add-on.

No way appears.

And then if you want to emphasize no way, what are you going to say?

Very no way?

No, no way?

I mean, it’s just kind of a way of being humorous and jocular, which is what slang is all about.

Well, it can be all about.

Yeah, and I think it has to do with rhythm, too.

I mean, you wouldn’t say no way, Sergei.

Well, Jose is a far more common name anyway.

Jose is the Joe of Spanish, right?

The Joe of Spanish, yeah.

Well, Jose, I mean, that’s another interesting thing, isn’t it?

That it’s not really Spanish, Jose.

No, it’s an Americanized…

So Jose, in this case, is like Betsy as in Heavens 2.

Yeah.

It’s just sort of…

Or as the Canadians say, Hokie Dinah.

It’s just a name to attach on the end of it because it rhymes with no way.

So 1960s, probably 1970s for certain.

Just leave the Village Voice out of it.

And don’t go around quoting online sources promiscuously.

So there really is no Jose.

It’s just…

Nope.

As far as we can tell.

Or Santa.

Now I can post it and I can say, No way Jose is the Village Voice, a credible source.

Well, the thing is that, here’s the thing about the Village Voice citation that everyone’s using is that they don’t have a date.

They don’t have a page number.

They don’t have an author name, right?

They just say the Village Voice, the 1960s, which is absolutely useless as a reference.

There’s no value to that.

It’s like saying, oh, well, you know, the UK plus or minus 100 years.

That’s not a source, right?

When were you born?

I was born sometime in the last century.

It’s just like, no, that’s not really a date.

When’s your birthday?

March, more or less.

That doesn’t really work.

You have to be, you know, when you’re tracking this stuff down, you have to be precise.

I want to know the column and the paragraph number.

So, Steve, how are you going to put all of that into 140 characters?

I think I’m simply going to put No Way Jose.

Perfect.

Perfect.

It works for me.

No evidence for No Way Jose from the Village Voice of the 1960s.

No evidence, Jose.

I like that.

However, there’s always the footnote, which is pending further data.

I like it.

I appreciate it.

Thanks, Steve.

Take care, Steve.

Bye-bye.

Language.

It’s fun and interesting.

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