Origin of Musical Verb “Belt”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, thank you so much for having me on the show.

Hi, who is this?

My name is Nancy Anderson-Wolfgang, and I am calling from Youngstown, Ohio.

What you got on your mind, Nancy?

Well, I am working on my dissertation,

And it focuses on the use of the musical theater vocal quality known as belt.

All right, so you’re doing a whole dissertation on belting out, like Ethel Merman, that kind of thing.

Exactly, right.

That’s fascinating.

Right, and my committee was reading through my paper,

And one of them asked me to identify the origin of the word belt.

And I thought that was a really good question,

So when I went back and started trying to do that on my own,

Every time I finally got to the end of the research strand,

It was identifying the piece of clothing that goes around your waist.

So I was hoping that you guys might be able to help me

In terms of how it relates to singing.

Okay.

Great question.

Yeah, that’s a really good question.

So this is something that you’ll be graded on later?

Yes.

And do you have to sing?

It’s just my career at stake.

It’s okay.

Okay, yeah.

So we’re doing your homework for you, right?

In a way, yeah.

Oh, okay.

But you will be sighted, so.

Oh, we’ll be sighted.

I’ll put on my best voice for you then.

There’s two R’s and two T’s in Barrett.

Well, since the 17th century, the word belt has meant to thrash with a belt.

You know, you might be afraid of your parent belting you back in the day.

So belt has been a verb meaning to hit or attack.

And it was used in boxing as well, right?

If you belt somebody out, you knock them out.

You’re belting them with your fist.

Yeah.

So that’s around the 1930s.

And then what we find that by the 1950s, it’s kind of moved from one kind of performance, boxing, to another kind of performance, the stage, where you get these loud, big singers who literally belt out a song.

So just think about the parallels with the slang expression to knock out.

You can knock somebody out by punching them or you can knock them out by giving them a boffo performance, right?

So there’s two different kinds of knockout, but also two different kinds of belting.

We often find this in the language where two words kind of track similarly in terms of having similar meaning.

So belt works and knockout work that way.

Yeah.

So it is related to the word belt meaning the thing going around your waist.

But a long way ago.

And we don’t want to say, oh, it originally meant belt because the key here is that moving from boxing to musical theater.

Sure.

Yeah.

But the verb itself was to hit with a belt.

If you want references that aren’t us to look into, we recommend the Historical Dictionary of American Slang published by Random House and also the Oxford English Dictionary.

Those are two authoritative sources.

Although in this case, the Historical Dictionary of American Slang has a better entry for this meaning of belt.

Okay.

So good luck with that.

We expect a copy of the paper and we want to be on your dissertation review board.

Absolutely.

I’d love to have you.

We’ll be kind.

I understand there’s cookies and coffee at those things.

Okay, will do.

Thanks, Nancy.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thanks. Bye.

She was madly scribbling notes as we were giving the answer.

I know.

I hope she was recording that call.

Wait, we were, right?

Oh, gosh, I hope so.

877-929-9673.