Reading ‘Babbitt’ and I came across this:
”And oh, Georgie, I do wish you wouldn’t say ‘Tux.’ It’s ‘dinner-jacket.’”
What was her objection? She goes on to worry what would happen if a neighbor were to hear him say ‘tux’ –why would this be a problem in the 1920s?
A tuxedo refers to the full ensemble. A dinner-jacket is just the jacket portion. People went full tuxedo for major occasions like funerals, but if going out to dinner might merely wear the dinner-jacket with nice, but technically non-tuxedo clothes (i.e. non-black trousers or some such).
She’s just a prescriptivist.
thanks. As someone who really doesn’t wear either, it seemed to me I was missing something much more significant here. Especially when she worried what the neighbors would say.
The OED’s first reference to the word “tux” is in 1922 (although “tuxedo” dates from several decades earlier). It was new / modern slang, in an era that valued formal speech and saw slang as lower-class.
I kind of think that worrying about what the neighbors would say was the whole point. After this book came out, “Babbitt” became shorthand for being ultra-conventional and culturally empty. There’s a dance routine between Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in Ziegfeld Follies (1945) called “The Babbitt and the Bromide” that illustrates the character type pretty well .
Because people who wore tuxedos or dinner jackets should know the difference between a tuxedo and a dinner jacket. Babbit’s wife was afraid he would expose his ignorance of such high society details (and embarrass her.)
It is “Non-U.”
Specific cite for “tuxedo”:
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/368436984/
Of course this sort of rule is not only snobbish, quite self-consciously so, but also the specifics rapidly become out of date. For all I know, the truly posh now all say “tuxedo” and think “dinner jacket” makes someone sound lower-class.
This place always amazes me with way more than I was expecting.
Rath—arrrr. (In posh speak)
My Daddy was a guy who was a stickler for mens wear being called what it was, A sport coat and dress jacket were not the same. Never to be confused. A Tuxedo was for fancy dress wear. A sport jacket, next dressiest. A coat coat was for warmth. (Which could be dressy or not so much)
He had a bunch of rules about these things.
Yes, it’s a class distinction in Babbitt.
Of course a tuxedo is merely semi-formal wear.
I don’t care what word he used; that’s no excuse to cut someone’s dick off.
I had thought her objection was that “tux” was dreadfully informal, and that “dinner jacket” was the high class term used in society.
I may reread the the book for potential new insights.
“Arrowsmith” was my favorite Sinclair Lewis book. Though the hero should never have fooled around on Leora.
I haven’t read this since high school, and I’d pretty much forgotten all of it. Enjoying it much more this time around, though I find myself wondering about a lot of the language now than I did back then. Like his several references to the ‘sleeping porch.’ Had to look up that one, as I was unfamiliar with the concept.
Regarding this, in one episode of Downton Abbey, Lord Grantham’s evening tailcoat wasn’t in suitable condition to be worn one evening for family dinner. (The family normally ate dinner together dressed formally.) so he decided to break out his new tuxedo, something he heard about from the Prince of Wales. When he sat down at the table, his mother, the Dowager Countess, said something about him coming to dinner in his pajamas. Remember that a tuxedo was considered only semi formal dress.