Words of the Month - Corny as Kansas in September?

         This month’s collection of words are slang, which means their definitions can be a little looser than more formal words, and the precise connotations may seem different to different people.  For me these are all somewhere in a range of meanings that have to do with trite, clichéd, or excessive sentimentality.  Their origins shed an interesting light on what metaphors have seemed to us to express disparagement for hackneyed sentiment.

        corny - There’s a definite implication of cliché in this one, but its etymology, fairly obviously, is “full of corn, pertaining to corn, like corn.”  Why should corn be a metaphor for something old-fashioned and overly sentimental?  Its American slang meaning (from the 1930s) seems to stem from snobbery against the country folk, those who dwelt among the corn-fields and would be no doubt be simple, old-fashioned, and not sufficiently sophisticated to deprecate sentiment.

        schmalzy - Also from the 1930s (apparently a decade in which no one wanted to be too sentimental!) this derives from Yiddish for “melted fat.”  You can revisit a bit more about that derivation in prior post Don’t Lose the Fat, but the idea behind it seems to be that too much sentimentality is like too much grease in a meal.

        sappy - This one lands more firmly in foolish over-sentimentality, and of course it literally means “having lots of sap.”  Its application to mawkish people dates to the mid-17th century, but the extension in meaning could have come about through a few different metaphors that were also in usage: “containing sapwood,” which was weaker, lower-quality hardwood (mid-15th century); “soggy” (a usage in the late 15th century); or “immature” like a sapling (early 17th century).

        cheesy - This one is complicated, because while I think of cheesy as being on the “kitschy, tacky” end of that clichéd sentimentality range, it has actually had (and still has) a pretty wide range of connotations.  Perhaps because I love cheese, the metaphors here aren’t very clear to me.  Why should cheesy mean “garishly showy,” as it did in mid-19th century British slang, or “cheap, inferior; ignorant, stupid” as it did in late-19th century US slang?  Nowadays cheesy often refers to things that are simultaneously embarrassing and amusing: so bad they’re fun.

        twee - From around 1905, this slang is primarily British, and derives from baby talk.  Imagine describing a baby’s sweet, little round stomach as a twee wittle wound tummy.  Now you can see why twee, although it derives from “sweet, darling” should have such connotations of disgusting over-sentimentality!

        hokey - To me this one hits more on the dry clichéd end of the spectrum than the sappy sentimental end, but its origins are pure melodrama.  It derives from early 20th century theater slang hokum, meaning “melodramatic, exaggerated acting.”

        The fact that we have so many words for this general idea, each with their own fine shades of implication, certainly indicates people’s desire to express their judgement of things that are deemed too hackneyed and too sentimental.  Our judgements can range from scathing scorn to fond indulgence - and that’s not even taking into account that one man’s corn, schmaltz, or cheese is another man’s gold!

[Pictures: On the Cob, white line woodcut by Ame McGregor-Radin (Image from 13Forest);

Autumn Harvest with Corn and Apples, woodblock print by unidentified artist (Image from Village Antiques).]