We like to think that we threw off all vestiges of the monarchy in the US. But actually two words still in use in the United States have a surprising royal connection.
County means a parcel of territory that is ruled by a Count. They’d call it an earldom today in the UK. Buy still that’s interesting.
And coroner literally means officer of the crown. It is ultimately derived from the Latin corona, meaning crown.
I wonder if anyone has ever objected to the use of these two words in the US, for the reasons I just gave.
Ever heard of King Davids? They’re my favorite apple, and there’s only one orchard in central Indiana I know of where I can get them. King David apples taste like the apple Granny Smiths weakly aspire to be.
And of course in Louisiana they aren’t counties, they’re parishes due to the state’s French heritage.
Actually, I wonder how most states legally establish the county boundaries they do. West of the Mississippi a lot of rural land is divided up into square townships due to 19th century land partition.
From an interesting “Am I the Asshole entry on Reddit, where a diabetic passenger was barred from necessary snacks by parent seatmates protecting their Prader Willi child from food.
A state legislature can establish any county boundaries it wants. Once they’re set, the leg can merge them, enlarge them, shrink them, create independent cities that officially fall into no county, or pretty much anything it wants. I’m sure that at some point, some court ruled that the federal government had to power to overturn something about county creation, but I’ve never read of such a case.
Mandatory trivia. Louisiana is not the only state to call counties by a different name. Alaska uses boroughs. But the majority of land in the state falls into an unique Unorganized Borough, which basically contradicts everything you’re taught about how state governments work.
The Rev Dr Marton Luther King is strongly associated the South - he was born in Georgia, became well known for his civil rights work in Alabama, and was assassinated in Tennessee.
But he earned his doctorate at Boston University, where he lived for several years in the early 1950s.
Virtually no words until fairly recently came from acronyms. They are almost universally backronyms, or phrases people made up later that sound good but have no historical evidence.
The term rap sheet , meaning a police record of a person’s criminal arrests and charges dates to at least 1949. Some incorrectly believe this use is from an acronym for record of arrests and prosecutions , but while you can find this etymology in police manuals and forms, it is a backronym and not the origin of rap .
People who create webpages for reputable universities can succumb to popular false beliefs: they cite no source. See: tip, posh, sos, etc.
The OED, on the other hand, takes it back to the word meaning “loud noise,” like a rap on the door, found in Middle English, to American criminal slang (from 1870) meaning “prison sentence.” It’s not hard to get from that meaning of “rap sheet,” first attested in 1949. I can’t find any attestation of the phrase “Record of Arrest and Prosecution” before 1953, and that’s via google books snippet view, so I can’t verify that 1953 is the actual date of publication.
Well, sorry to take the discussion in a new direction (you agree you have exhausted the RAP/acronym subject ).
But here’s an obscure but interesting reference. In the late 90’s, just before what was the age of the internet, Straightdope had a trivia show on cable, I remember.
Anyway, one topic was mortuary science. Did you know morticians have two solutions they put in the corpse. One slims them down. And one plumps them up. Because you know, when someone dies, that’s the biggest complaint. Either they’ve lost too much weight while terminally ill. Or maybe they’ve absorbed fluid. Interesting, no?
(Now if you wish, you can go back to your former topic .)
A newspapers.com search found “rap sheet” first emerging in 1933 in the Waterloo, IA, Courier, Aug. 22, 1933. The article is titled “Chain-Gang” Man Given Jail Term.
Joe’s rap sheet shows that in his 30 short years he has been an inmate of 15 jails, usually for comparatively minor offenses.
The Courier used it again on June 3, 1934, Feb. 11, 1935, and June 19, 1935.
It was used satirically as “rapp sheet” in the October 1935 Oklahoma City Federalist, a monthly labor newspaper, when a feature writer named to the executive board wrote a joking autobiography.
Then the Springfield, MO, Leader and Press used it on Feb. 23, 1939.
I stopped on May 11, 1939, when the Visalia, CA, Times-Delta, mentions “The ‘rap’ sheet sent out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
The Courier’s omission of quotes around its first use of rap sheet implies that the term was already familiar, although some later papers did indeed use quotes. None of the 30’s stories gave any indication that the term was an acronym. The earlier uses were all for local crimes and the FBI was not involved.
Record of Arrest and Prosecution has a much longer history that can be seen evolving.
The first hit I found was from the Nebraska State Journal, April 11, 1882, in a report from the Lincoln Chief of Police.
Yet I believe that the record of arrests, prosecutions and successful convictions of the criminal classes who prey continually upon society … will compare exceeding favorally with former reports of this department…
A long phrase pops up again the next year in the Topeka Daily Commonwealth, June 2, 1883.
a pretended record of arrests, prosecutions, plea and fine, of each of the persons keeping and maintaining said places…
I found the short form for the first time in the Philadelphia Times for Oct. 29, 1887.
The Democratic nominee for the Board of Public Works, Ed. W. Clark, has been forced to resign on account of a record of arrest and prosecution for burglary, forgery and counterfeiting away back in 1851, unearthed upon him since he became a candidate.
A record of arrests and prosecutions appears to be lawyer talk, standard legal language that newspapers could use to call someone a criminal without incurring libel charges. The St. Joseph, MO, Herald, April 11, 1893, printed General Ordinance No. 406.
Sec. 5 It shall be the duty of the city attorney to keep a record of every arrest and prosecution under the provisions of this ordinance and the result thereof; and he shall semi-annually report the same to the common council.
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