I’ve been watching a few of the old “mr. moto” movies from the 1930’s-Mr. moto was the japanese equivilent of charley chan. Anyway, mr. moto used some interesting expressions, one of which is a nicety for killing someone-"…he is LIQUIDATED"! Is this expression common in those days? Kinda neet’instead of "Killer Executed’-see “KILLER LIQUIDATED”!
Having seen a lot of old movies, I can’t say that ‘liquidated’ was used all that frequently, nor would I say that it would have seemed unusual to audiences of the time. Of course, I’m only now, because of your post, learning what The Ink Spots were referring to when they mention Mr. Moto in the song Java Jive, so maybe I’m not much of an authority.
Funny, I (who have seen more 1930s movies than you could shake a Little Orphan Annie Ovaltine Mug at) always associated liquidate with 1960s-type big-spy agency stuff.
Then again, liquidate really means to sell off a business’s assets for cash, and you don’t get much more 1930s than that.
Ever watch the Wizard of Oz?
Dorothy: We killed the witch by throwing water on her.
Wizard: Oh, you liquidated her, eh?
But the use was influenced by the Russian likvidírovat, which was used by the Bolsheviks to describe what happened to their enemies. The OED quotes its first use from 1924:
So the term was still a new and trendy usage in the 1930s.
Me too. Perhaps the villains (in particular, they seem to have liked this word), who seemed to be in their 50s and 60s, were using a word they’d heard often two or three decades before? I suspect that the screen villains of the time used ‘liquidated’ instead of ‘killed’ to separate themselves from ‘common criminals’.
Didn’t the CIA invent “terminate with extreme prejudice”? That doesn’t sound as cool as liquidate.
There was a bunch of gangster and mobster slang that made it into popular movies.
From Real Genius:
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to liberate George*. Too bad, he was a good man”
“Liberate? You mean liquidate?”
[sup]*not sure if that was his name[/sup]