Friday, August 05, 2011
Knuckle-Head
Among compounds of knuckle, the Oxford English Dictionary includes knuckle-head, which it defines as "a slow-witted or stupid person." The OED's earliest citation is dated 1944, relying on Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner, Dictionary of American Slang (New York: Thomas B. Crowell, 1960), p. 310, col. 2: "You knuckle-heads." The quotation in Wentworth and Flexner comes from a 1944 movie, Marine Raiders. Wentworth and Flexner remark, "Common, but most popular in Marine Corps and USN."
My memory might be playing tricks on me, but I seem to remember my father, a United States Navy veteran, calling someone a knuckle-head. Come to think of it, maybe he called me a knuckle-head. I certainly gave him reason enough.
There is a knuckle-head entry in the Dictionary of American Regional English, but that book is unavailable to me. Thanks to Google Books, however, it is possible to find an example of knuckle-head that antedates the Marine Raiders quotation by more than fifty years, viz. Charles Howard Shinn, "The Quicksands of Toro," Belford's Magazine Vol. V, No. 29 (October 1890) 735-739 (at 736):
Knuckle-head also appears in another sense, as a mechanical or engineering term, meaning a metal part shaped like the rounded portion of a bent knuckle, perhaps for the first time in United States patent 75,282, granted on March 10, 1868 to James B. Lobdell of Centre Lisle, New York, for an "Improvement in Horse Hay-Forks." Here is part of the description:
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My memory might be playing tricks on me, but I seem to remember my father, a United States Navy veteran, calling someone a knuckle-head. Come to think of it, maybe he called me a knuckle-head. I certainly gave him reason enough.
There is a knuckle-head entry in the Dictionary of American Regional English, but that book is unavailable to me. Thanks to Google Books, however, it is possible to find an example of knuckle-head that antedates the Marine Raiders quotation by more than fifty years, viz. Charles Howard Shinn, "The Quicksands of Toro," Belford's Magazine Vol. V, No. 29 (October 1890) 735-739 (at 736):
"That infernal knuckle-head at the camp ought to have reported before now," he thought as he smoked.Charles Howard Shinn (1852-1924) was a forest ranger and writer.
Knuckle-head also appears in another sense, as a mechanical or engineering term, meaning a metal part shaped like the rounded portion of a bent knuckle, perhaps for the first time in United States patent 75,282, granted on March 10, 1868 to James B. Lobdell of Centre Lisle, New York, for an "Improvement in Horse Hay-Forks." Here is part of the description:
B is the slide-bar, having the slots e e and knuckle-head f, which operates the cutters d d....The hooks or cutters d d are pivoted to the blade a so as to fit the knucle-head [sic] f, and are so formed as to serve as knives or shears to cut the hay....The lower edge of the knuckle-head f is also bevelled on the outside.Here is an illustration of part of Lobdell's hay-fork, showing the knuckle-head, labelled f and located between the cutters d d:
Labels: lexicography
