guyed, razooed and hifalutin / as full as a boiled owl

WWI "dazzle-painted" ship (unidentified)

Since posting our previous entry—on the use of the term razzle dazzle in reference to dazzle camouflage—we have found that inventor Thomas Edison made a motion picture of the amusement park ride we documented called "Razzle-Dazzle." It was filmed by cameraman A.C. Abadie at Wilmington Springs DE on June 30, 1903 (FLA3490), and is described as follows—

 The entire film was photographed from a position that permitted the camera to encompass a peculiar amusement concession named "Razzle Dazzle." It consists of a large circle suspended from cables, giving it the effect of a maypole. Children sit on it and the circle is revolved and undulated in the air.

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From this and other turn-of-the-century sources, it is evident that the term razzle dazzle was commonly-used English slang far in advance of World War I, when dazzle schemes were first employed for ship camouflage. For example, the following is a lengthy article (sorry, but it does have its moments) titled RAZZLE-DAZZLE: A Reporters’ Still Hunt After the Mysterious Phrase; Popular Ideas As to Its Full Scope and Meaning; Shall the Phrase Enrich the Columns of the Unabridged? from The Evening World (New York), March 1, 1889, p. 1—

The razzle-dazzle.

You hear of it everywhere. 

It is indoors and out of doors.

It is a persistent mystery and follows us with a mysterious persistency.

Evening World reporters, fired by a zeal worthy of the cause, set out on its track, determined to chase it out of its word-shadow form and, if it has a common meaning and an inclination to stay in the language, to hunt it into its proper place in the vocabulary.

These were the questions with which the city philologists were confronted wherever they were met this morning—

What, in your best judgment, is the meaning of the phrase “Razzle-Dazzle”?

Do you favor its permanent incorporation into the United States language?

There seemed to be a preponderance of affirmative opinion in answer to the second question.

Here are some of the replies, showing great diversity as to the interpretation of this new-born phrase:

Major Grant—I really do not know. It is a weird combination. It razzle-dazzles me to give an interpretation.

Judge Martine—If a person does not know what he is about he is razzle-dazzled. Lawyers frequently razzle-dazzle witnesses.

County Clerk Reilly—As there is no razzle-dazzling done in this office we don’t recognize such a phrase here. However, it is an expressive combination. If a man gets so tangled up that he does not know what he is doing he is razzle-dazzled.

Alderman Divver—I suppose it’s when a man has been on a tear. I saw a picture in The World of a dilapidated chap being taken to the station house between two policemen. The tired-looking party had the razzle-dazzle. 

George Slosson, the wizard of the cue—If I could only get at Jake Schaefer in a match game of billiards I could give him the razzle-dazzle in the most approved fashion.

Broker Ed Murphy—Razzle-dazzle is a nineteenth-century slang expression that in the eighteenth used to mean full as a boiled owl. But the 400 don’t use it. They say “somewhat screwed,” which is English, you know.

Broker William F. Howe—When a fellow has got bottled lightning in his brain and can’t get it out I guess he is razzle-dazzled.

Alderman Barry—I see people are using the term instead of “boycott.” But I don’t think it means just that. 

Assistant District Attorney Lindsay—Razzle-dazzle means a good old-fashioned drunk.

Lawyer John Graham—I never heard the expression before, but suppose it means something like hocus pocus. I mean to look it up.

Clerk Sparks, of the Criminal Courts—I suppose when a man is on a lark he is razzle-dazzled.

Actor Murphy, who created the razzle-dazzle song—One night after the theatre, after I had sung my razzle-dazzle song, I imbibed a little too much razzle-dazzle juice, and went along Broadway singing the song. I was run in and fined $10. I was razzle-dazzled.

Lawyer Fred Swain—When a man is somewhat under the influence, he usually feels razzled. If he escapes being dazzled as well he is lucky.

Probate Clerk Tinney—It’s when forty men come in here and ask forty questions apiece when I am busy. Then I get razzle-dazzled, and refer them to the Surrogate, who razzle-dazzles them in turn in short order.

Administration Clerk O’Brien—When a man is made to believe something that is not so he is razzle-dazzled.

Assistant Administration Clerk Scannell—When a man gets doubled he is razzle-dazzled.

Counsellor Joe Steiner—When you are introduced to a man and he steals your watch he razzle-dazzles you. 

Deputy Coroner Conway—When I was a young man I knew what razzle-dazzle meant, but for the last few years I have been out of practice. Possibly, however, during convention time I might still experience the razzle-dazzles.

Clerk Edward Reynolds—When a man has been having too good a time he is often razzle-dazzled.

Secretary Burns, of the Park Department—I have often heard the term, but really am at a loss to give you a definition. When a person does not know what he is about, I presume it may be claimed he is razzle-dazzled.

C.H. Smith, of the Park Department—It is like a razoo. People get the razoo or razzle-dazzle when they have been having too good a time.

J.J. Odell, of the Park Department—I am a Quaker, and not a New Yorker; so of course I have never experienced a razzle-dazzle. You had better ask some of the natives.

Deputy Mortgage Clerk Loper—When a man is too full for utterance, he is razzle-dazzled. 

Delivery Clerk Pyne—Wine looked on when it is red is apt to produce the razzle-dazzles.

Grantee Clerk Lynch—When a man is drunk as a lord he has no regard for anything and will do all sorts of razzle-dazzle things.

Broker P.G Weaver—When one has been out all night, painting the town red, so to speak, he is apt to feel “rocky” when he gets home—in other words he is razzle-dazzled.

Broker S.O. Caldwell—The conditions of the stock market in Wall Street is a razzle-dazzle.

Broker Louis Marks—When a man gets mixed he may be said to be razzle-dazzled.

Broker Walter Smith—Ask [US President] Cleveland what a razzle-dazzle is. He knows. He got one last fall [in losing his bid for re-election].

J.D and Mr. D., Wall Street brokers, said to razzle-dazzle a person was to entangle him.

Mr. E., also a Wall Street man, who said he had lived at the Windsor Hotel ten years and wanted this fact duly chronicled, claimed that razzle-dazzle meant hifalutin.

Broker M. said it meant hither and thither.

Broker H. defined it as follows: “When a gentleman does not know whether he wants a pancake or a gin cocktail he is razzle-dazzled.”

Broker C. Spencer Boyd—Under the surroundings and impressions of a lurid evening, and when the luridness is continued till the sun rises, a man is likely to feel razzled. When he cools off after a good sleep he is more likely to feel dazzled to think what a fool he made of himself.

Broker Robert Van Hueson—What do you ask me for? The didoes cut out by Ed Murphy after 12 o’clock at night are razzle-dazzlers.

Broker John Helyer—When a man gets off his base he is razzled and dazzled, too.

Broker Wood Gibson—When a man can’t tell the difference between a billiard ball and a [high]ball taken over the bar he is decidely razzle-dazzled.

Up to this point there had been the voice of one person to adopt the phrase into the language. Webster’s great work was declared to be seriously abridged while lacking this expressive form.

Billy Edwards, ex-champion lightweight pugilists—If I plank a man between the eyes or on the jaw I rather think he would be razzle-dazzled for a time, or if a man drinks too much of the sparkling water he is very liable to become slightly under the influence of the razzle-dazzle.

W.E. Harding, of the Police Gazette—We gave the detectives in Toronto the grand razzle-dazzle when we made the match for Jake Kilrain to fight John L. Sullivan right under their noses.

Arthur T. Lumley of the Illustrated News—I’d just like to razzle-dazzle John L. Sullivan for writing such an infernally long letter this week. Here are four columns which have got to be chopped down to less than two.

Frank Stevenson, the sporting man at 157 Bleeker Street—Do I know what razzle-dazzle means? Well, now, if I don't you can have my hat.

Billy Ottman, of the St. James Hotel—It’s to be skinned. I can’t think of anymore expressive explanation.

Clerk Simpson, of the St. James—Were you ever guyed? Well, then, you have been razzle-dazzled.

W.H. Robertson, of 296 Broadway—If you should go to a ball and have your overcoat and hat stolen and your pockets picked, I should say you have been razzle-dazzled in great shape.

“Yes,” chimed in L. Lavein, the well-known athelete, “and how about the umbrella? You are beaten out of anything nowadays, and you have to console yourself by the charming thought that you are razzle-dazzled.”

Harry Chapman, the veteran theatrical manager, who is on the other side of sixty—I first heard “razzle-dazzle” about thirty years ago as a gag by Billy O’Neill, an Irish comedian, who was then performing at the old Bowery Theatre. It was used in a farce where O’Neill played the lover and fooled “the ould man,” whom he said he had “razzle-dazzled.” If my memory serves me rightly, I also heard Tom Riggs, another Irish comedian, use the same term. It wouldn’t do to incorporate it in the language. Like every other slang word, it will die out in a little while.

Mike Kelly, the $10,000 prize beauty and pet of the baseball community—I first heard “razzle-dazzle” from George Floyd, Nat Goodwin’s manager, in Boston, last August or September. The song was originated in California by a social club, who gave it to Charlie Hoyt. Noah Webster’s spirit would rebel if we should put it in his dictionary.

Miss Ella Rodriguez, soprano singer on the vaudeville stage—I heard it as a gag before the song appeared, but never used it myself. I know the song well and have often sung it. I don’t think it sounds good enough for the dictionary.

Will Collins, comedian—I never heard it used on the stage in traveling companies I have appeared with, and it was not until the song came out that the word became commonly used. Being slang, we should not incorporate in our dictionaries.

Gus Heckler, presiding genius at the Bohemia—I first discovered it at the last election, when I ran for Alderman in the Eleventh Assembly District and got gloriously defeated. Lexicographers will scarely adopt the term.

Eugene Wellington, business manager of “The Dark Side of a Great City”—I first heard it seven or eight years ago in the Buckingham, at Louisville, where J.J. Quinlan, of the “Horseshow Four,” used it as a gag. I also heard him use it in this city. It will hardly do for Webster’s dictionary.

Harry Cottrell, comedian and singer—Jim Quinlan, of the “Horseshoe Four,” used “razzle-dazzle” in a variety performance in this city several years ago, giving it as a gag. There are good enough English words without giving the dictionary the “razzle-dazzle.”

seasickness / a merry-go-round with the jim-jams

American ship camoufleurs, c1918 (AI colorized)

Camouflage was originally a French slang term and did not migrate into English until 1915, as a result of the establishment of the first section de camouflage in military history. To large extent, that seems the case. 

But the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) points out that as early as 1885, in a French to English translation of Fortuné Du Boisgobey’s Old Age of Lecoq (in his Sensational Novels), the following line appears: “He was also master of the art of camoufflage or disguise, his face being without age and readily changed to any style of physiognomy.” Note two f’s in camoufflage. Aha!

No less puzzling is the origin of razzle-dazzle, which today is used willy-nilly as a more engaging name for disruptively-patterned World War I camouflage. We know that the term dazzle was adopted by the British Admiralty in 1917, when they approved a proposal by the artist Norman Wilkinson. But the word was dazzle, not razzle-dazzle. Yet, these days, the latter is almost inevitably used. There are books, films, and exhibitions about ship camouflage that are (for marketing purposes) called “razzle dazzle” (even, regrettably, some of my own).

It turns out that razzle-dazzle was in common use as English slang far in advance of WWI, and that, initially, it had nothing to do with ship camouflage. In general it referred to confusion and bewilderment (as from drunkenness or deceit). Here is how it was used by Juvenal, the author of An Englishman in New York (London: Stephen Swift, 1917, p. 7), “…if the man in the moon were to take it into his head to visit mother earth in search of what Americans used to call ‘razzle-dazzle,’ he would turn his airplane towards the lights of Broadway sometime after midnight.”

Razzle-Dazzle at Coney Island

As early as 1890, it was the name for a popular ride at amusement parks. In the following news article, which describes it in some detail, it is said to be equivalent to a “merry-go-round with the jim-jams,” one consequence of which may be seasickness on dry land.

UP, DOWN AND ALL AROUND, Have You Tried the Merry-Go-Round with the Jim-Jams? in The Scranton Republican (Scranton PA), December 18, 1890, p. 7—

“Whoopee!"

“Yah!”

“Let me off!”

"Wow!”

That's the way it goes every time, and the men at the ropes keep on jerking them and pulling away with unabated energy as it swings around and bobs up and down and makes eccentric circles.

What does?

Why, the “razzle dazzle," to be sure.

Don’t know what a razzle dazzle is, eh?

A razzle-dazzle is a—well, one man describes it as a merry-go-round with the jim-jams. That’s it, precisely, but as perhaps every one does not know how a merry-go-round acts when it has an an attack of mania-a-potu, here is a description of the razzle dazzle.

To begin with there is a heavy upright center pole about 25 feet high, set firmly in the ground and strongly braced. At the top of this pole is a spindle, and attached to the spindle are a number of wire ropes. The lower ends of these are fastened to a strong circular seat, which is suspended about five feet from the ground.

To better understand the arrangement, take a pencil and stand it upright on a table. Lay a bracelet or a napkin ring on the table so that it will encircle the pencil. Now, imagine a number of threads attached to the top of the pencil and tied to the napkin ring so that the ring is suspended from them. See?

That would be a miniature razzle-dazzle, except that instead of a napkin ring the circle should be made of thick boards so as to make a comfortable seat. Now are you beginning to catch the idea? If that is so, perhaps you would like to know how it works.

In the first place you pay five cents to the man who runs the thing. That is absolutely necessary. Then you walk up a stepladder and sit down on the razzle-dazzle circular seat. If there is no one else on it, your weight will bring it down close to the ground on your side, while the opposite side will naturally be high in the air.

The man who assisted you to your seat now turns the circle around and another victim gets on. In this way, if business is good, perhaps thirty or forty persons will be seated. When all are seated the stepladder is taken away out of danger.

Thus far you have only seen the razzle. Now comes the dazzle.

Two or three men grab hold of stout ropes which hang from the circular seat. They begin to walk around in a circle, like the ringmaster at the circus, and they pull the ropes with them. This sets the passengers swinging around and around.

After sufficient momentum has been attained a new motion is introduced. One side of the circular seat is yanked down to the round and the other side flies up in the air. This is continued until the delightful sensations of the whirlgig and the flying trapeze are experienced.

A trip on the cowcatcher of a locomotive in convulsions wouldn’t be a marker to the razzle-dazzle in full swing.

A combination of the motion of a ship in a cyclone and a wounded whale in a whirlpool comes a little nearer to it.

This keeps up for five minutes. At the end of that time you have had enough for your money. Maybe you’ve had more than enough. You either get off or fall off.

Then you go off to one side and experience what may be termed a paradoxical disease. You suffer from mal de mer [sea-sickness] on dry land. Try it.

Razzle-Dazzle at Steeplechase, Coney Island

Thirty-five years later, “razzle-dazzle” was apparently still a popular ride at amusement parks, as reported in an article titled RAZZLE-DAZZLE: Collapses at Glebe: Twelve People Injured in the Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney AU), February 28, 1925—

Twelve persons were injured when a razzle-dazzle collapsed in Derby Place, Glebe, shortly after 10 o’clock last night.

All those injured, with some others, were riding on the razzle-dazzle, when the part on which they were seated suddenly broke away from its pole. Many were thrown heavily to the ground, and some received severe injuries…

The police were informed that whilst the razzle-dazzle was in motion a number of youths, who were riding on it, jumped off. This affected the balance of the razzle-dazzle, which tilted, and, the cup on which it swung, becoming dislodged from its pivot, crashed with its passengers heavily to the earth.