Three disappearing words popped up recently when I treated a couple of my oldest friends from Texas to a visit to the fabulous (as in Webster’s definition “resembling or suggesting a fable: of an incredible, astonishing, or exaggerated nature”) Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum last week.  Sheila, the receptionist, gave us an overview of the collection and in passing mentioned that the reputation of Duesenbergs, like their gorgeous 1932 Supercharged Murphy Convertible, was the source of the slang term “doozy,” a term seldom encountered nowadays.  According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, doozy (“an excellent or splendid thing or person”) was first recorded in 1916 and was “perhaps an alteration of daisy, or from popular Italian actress Eleonora Duse (1859-1924). In either case, reinforced by Duesenberg, the expensive, classy make of automobile from the 1920s-30s.”  Nancy DeWitt, the Museum’s historian, wrote that when it was first sold in 1929, the Duesenberg Model J was intended to compete with European cars like Rolls Royce.  “A technical marvel, it had the most powerful engine of its day and often carried the most elegant coachwork available.”  They were costly and still are; when you bought a Duesenberg, you purchased only a chassis and engine from the car company.  Paying a prestige coachbuilder to complete it was extra, so back then the final price for a 1929 Model J then ranged from $14,000-$20,000, and today the average price is $2,072,822, according to Classic.com.  It could reach speeds up to 104 mph in second gear and 130 in third, and a Duesenberg was the first American car to win the French Grand Prix in 1921 and won the 1922, 1924, 1925, and 1927 Indianapolis 500s.  Meanwhile, Rolls and the rest could only get up to 80 mph.  Sadly, the Model J was introduced right as the Great Depression hit, sales dropped, and the company folded in the 1930s.

            Gears weren’t included in another flashy Fountainhead car: the 1917 Owen Magnetic Model M-25, “The Car of a Thousand Speeds.”  Jeff, one of Fountainhead’s friendly and informed roaming museum staff, illuminated this marvelous auto’s inner secrets in satisfying detail, such as the car having no clutch or gears.  DeWitt wrote that the “Owen Magnetic was one of the most unusual and technologically advanced cars of its time …. It was most notable for its attempt to defeat the problem of shifting gears by means of an electromagnetic transmission designed by Justus B. Entz.  The Owen Magnetic’s drive mechanism had no direct connection between the internal-combustion engine and the rear wheels. Instead, the engine powered a generator attached to the rear of the engine’s crankshaft and caused a horseshoe-shaped magnet to spin. This imparted energy to a steel armature fitted into the air space inside the whirling magnet, causing it to spin via magnetic imbalance. This in turn induced current in the armature of a conventional electric motor, which provided the energy to turn the drive shaft and propel the engine’s rear wheels.  This continuously variable transmission produced an unlimited number of forward speeds.”  However, Hemmings.com pointed out that “it was extremely expensive and heavy, the system adding about 600 pounds and thousands of dollars to the car. No Owen Magnetic ever cost under $3,000,” and the company folded in 1921.  Interestingly, the Owen has a second brake pedal installed on the passenger’s side. 

            Another fascinating auto – around 85 absolute beauties are on exhibit – was the 1906 Compound Type 7 that possessed three cylinders but only two sparkplugs.  DeWitt wrote that the “Compound’s engine has three cylinders … The outer two, 4-cycle high-pressure cylinders ‘explode alternately’ and exhaust into the larger, 2-cycle low-pressure cylinder rather than into the atmosphere. Here the exhaust gas expands further and drives the piston down before exiting through a small muffler. This compounding of the exhaust gas allowed for more complete combustion that allegedly resulted in a cleaner, odorless and very quiet final exhaust. It also increased fuel economy.”  Among the Compound’s other marvels is its inclusion of air-assisted power brakes that were connected to a “deadman” switch that killed the engine and kicked in the brakes whenever the driver lifted his right hand off the deadman switch, which had to be continuously pressed down to not engage the deadman.

            Every Fairbanksan who’s visited the Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum leaves with the sort of cultural uplift that comes from experiencing the Louvre or any other great collection of human creativity and tells those who haven’t been there that they really should see it, and to that I add my fervent “ditto,” another disappearing word.  Webster’s tells us that ditto means “as before or aforesaid,” and noted that “the history of the word ditto starts with Italian: some early 17th century English speakers noticed that in Italian, ditto or detto was used to refer to a thing mentioned previously …. So great was the obvious utility of ditto, in fact, that English speakers put the word to use in ways the Italians had not thought to do. Adjectival use quickly followed the adoption of the noun use, and by the second decade of the 18th century, ditto was also functioning in English as an adverb and as a verb …. Ditto marks — typically inverted commas or apostrophes — appear to date to the late 19th century.”  Use of ditto as verbs and nouns has declined but still hangs on as an adverb, like when Margaret Atwood described a character going through kitchen cupboards in her novel, “Oryx and Crake” and saying, “Chocolate in squares, real chocolate. A jar of instant coffee, ditto coffee whitener, ditto sugar.”  A friend recently recalled the intoxicating smell of paper copies from the ditto machines of our youthful schooling.  Those devices were technically spirit duplicators that used alcohols as solvents to print.  They required two “master sheets,” one that was typed or written upon, and another behind it coated with ink-saturated wax.  Pressure from writing or typing transferred colored wax in reverse images onto the back of the first page which acted as a printing plate, and the alcohol slightly dissolved the wax onto fresh pages and enlivened students’ olfactory sense. 

            Neither doozy nor ditto made it into my new 534-page copy of “Partridge’s Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English,” that came highly recommended by UAF English Professor Emeritus Joe DuPras.  I have little doubt that both terms are in Eric Honeywood’s acclaimed and unabridged two-volume, 4,000-page “Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English.  NYTimes critic Edmund Wilson, who didn’t toss arounds words of praise lightly, said that it “ought to be acquired by every reader who wants his library to have a sound lexicographical foundation.”   And the equally grumpy H.L. Mencken, our national lexicographer, said Partridge’s dictionary “represents a really sickening amount of labor.  It is a serious contribution to a difficult subject, and greatly surpasses all its predecessors.”  Partridge’s extensive papers are held by numerous university libraries, for he wrote over 40 books, mostly on slang.  The concise version contains jargon enough for me, but it’s weak on the third disappearing word, spud.  Green’s Dictionary of Slang calls itself “the largest historical dictionary of English slang.”   It took compiler Jonathon Green 17 years of research before his three-volume set was published in 2010, and he focused on slang from 1500 CE on, and, according to their website, the print version “contains about 100,000 entries and 400,000 citations from 1000 CE to the present day,” and the free online version includes an additional 5,000 new senses in 2,500 new entries and sub-entries, of which around half are new slang terms from the last five years.”  The print version of the dictionary is an American Library Association Dartmouth Medal winner “for outstanding works of reference.”

When it comes to “spud,” Partridge only said it’s “a friend, pal, chum,” a “potato,” and large hole in the sock’s heel.”  Mr. Green goes a lot further citing spud’s slang meanings of counterfeit money, baby’s hand, revolver, a Maori prison guard who treats white inmates better than Maori prisoners, knocking fists as a gesture of greeting, and, among many others, a potato.  The Online Etymology Dictionary includes the 1680s meaning of spud as “a short and thick person.” That describes a central character named Spud in my new favorite comic strip: Wallace the Brave, “a whimsical comic strip that centers around a bold and curious little boy named Wallace, his best friend Spud and the new girl in town, Amelia.”  It really grows on you, is laugh out loud hilarious, like a gentler Calvin & Hobbes with nicer parents, and it can be viewed freely at GoComics.  Another Wallace, surnamed Reid, was an extremely handsome leading silent movie star in over 160 movies and was known as “the screen’s most perfect lover.”  D.W. Griffith called Reid “a 180-pound diamond”; he was a muscular all-round athlete but loved fast cars and doing his own automotive stunts.  He died a bad death, and he’s featured at the Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum, where, as Peter Gabriel said, “All of those cars were once just a dream in somebody’s head.”