Getting Goats, Losing Goats,
Stable Goats and Navy Goats, a History and Etymology of “Get My Goat”
Ambition, A Journal of Inspirition to Self Help, Vol. 6, No. 4, p. 5. |
To “get one’s goat” is an idiom
that means, “to make one angry or annoyed.” Merriam-Webster.com. In the earliest examples of use, however, the
idiom had a different meaning, namely to take the fight, or will to go on, from
someone. The more familiar sense, of
angering, emerged within the first several years, and the two senses co-existed
for many years. The two senses can be
combined into a common definition, of making someone lose their composure; lose
their composure by becoming angry, or by giving up the fight.
Since at least 1912, the phrase
has been thought to be based on the use of goats as mascots in racehorse
stables:
The origin of this rather cumbrous jest
appears to lie in the fact that a goat was considered a mascot in racing
stables, so that to lose your goat was one of the most dreadful things that
could befall you.
Country Life, volume 31, March
16, 1912, page 48.
The suggestion is that the horse will not perform well if his goat is missing is more consistent with the early sense of “get one’s goat” (to sap the will to fight) than with the modern sense, of angering someone.
The suggestion is that the horse will not perform well if his goat is missing is more consistent with the early sense of “get one’s goat” (to sap the will to fight) than with the modern sense, of angering someone.
The theory is believable, as
Goats are known to have been used as mascots by some racehorse trainers:
I know of one trainer who lost his goat
and could not win a race of any sort until he got another one. He to this day, believes that the death of
the goat brought him a long run of bad luck.
Trainers and racing-men generally are highly charged with superstition.
The Sketch, Volume 31, number 396, August 29, 1900, page 252.
Puck, Volume 66, July 1909 - Political Stable Goat |
But goats were also kept as
mascots by livery stables, sailors, fraternal organizations, and sports teams;
so it is not clear that racing stable goats were foremost in the minds of the people
who coined the phrase.
More tellingly, perhaps, none
of the early appearances of the idiom, in print, relate directly or indirectly
to horse racing. Nearly all of the
examples found in print from the first year or so of the idiom (from its first
appearance in print, in late 1905, through early 1907) are found in reports of
boxing matches. The phrase was picked up
in baseball reporting as early as mid-1907.
Although one can imagine a common
bond between or among horse race and boxing promoters, gamblers and/or
sportswriters, that might lead an idiom from horse racing to cross over into
boxing, it seems odd (if that were the case) that none of the sportswriters who were early
adapters of “get one’s goat” applied the idiom to horse racing. Despite the fact that horse racing news was
featured prominently in the same sports pages, of the same papers that used
“get my goat” in boxing, and later baseball, news, not one of the early
examples of the idiom in use relate to horse racing. If the idiom had been coined in, and in
reference to, racehorses, I would have expected to find those stories; and I
haven’t. No one else has either.
A common element that crops up in
several of the early attestations of the phrase, however, suggests that the
phrase may not have come from horse racing, or any other sport, for that
matter. That common element also has
strong, traditional ties to both boxing and goats.
The common element? – the United
States Navy.
The Earliest Use of “Get My Goat”
[See my "Get My Goat" Update - and Jeff Otjen's comment, below - for an even earlier example of the idiom.]
The earliest use of “get my goat”
that I found is from the report of a boxing match between a British sailor and
an American sailor:
Bloomin’ Briton Won Hands Down. Yankee Sailor Had No Chance Whatever. American Couldn’t Fight and had Stage Fright
– Was Whipped from Very Start.
New York, Nov. 18. – John Bull took
another fall out of Uncle Sam last night.
W. E. Cockayne [(a “British tar” (sailor))], his middle-weight fighter,
made all kinds of monkey out of Jack Reine, of the battleship Iowa. . . .
Jack was a scrawny looking tar. He looked as though the beans did not agree
with him at all. Jack was at sea. Well, he was not exactly, either. I think the crowd got his goat, or the idea
of fighting – one or the other – because he did not say boo and sat down like a
mope. Tom Sharkey, the referee, was as
busy as a bird dog telling the sailors what to do and how to do it.
Washington (DC) Times, November 18,
1905, page 8.
The idiom also appeared about
three weeks earlier in a story about the United States Navy in Collier’s
magazine: [i]
“You were there, too, then? You were
ashore?”
“Ha! Ha!”
He slapped Patrick on the shoulder and lay back grinning at me. “If that don’t get my goat.”
Papeeyon, Stephen French Whitman[ii],
Collier’s, volume 36, October 28,
1905, page 24.
In 1908, a newspaper article
identified the phrase as Navy slang.
When a fleet of United States Navy ships pulled into port in San
Francisco, the sailors on liberty were surprisingly well-behaved. An article about the port-visit and their
good behavior included a look at the Navy’s colorful slang:
The Slang of the “Garbie”
A soldier is called a “doughbelly” and a
marine a “leather neck.” . . . . In his
own language Jack is not a bluejacket, but a “garbie,” or a “flatfoot,” and
newly enlisted men are called “rookies.” If Jack succeeds in “guying” his
neighbor he has “got his goat” – a white goat if it’s a friendly josh and a
black goat if the victim gets mad.
New York Tribune, June 7, 1908, page 3.
That article, standing alone,
might not be very persuasive of the idiom’s ultimate origin. By mid-1908, after all, the phrase “get my
goat” had already become a well-known and widely used idiom. And, just four days before the article
appeared, a music publisher filed for copyright protection for the song,
“Somebody’s Got My Goat”.[iii] When coupled with the two early examples of
the phrase, from 1905, which were both expressly Navy-related, the report that
it was part of Navy slang may carry more weight.
The Navy’s long-time, close
association with goats and boxing also lends credence to the supposition.
Navy Goats
Army and Navy Register, V. 42, N. 1441, July 27, 1907, p. 3. |
In 1907, the Army Navy Register
reported that:
The popularity of the goat as a shipmate
is unquestioned and of long standing.
While history is silent on the subject, it may reasonably be assumed
that from the time of the Roman galleys the goat was found as a mascot on board
ship with the same frequency that he is today.
Army and Navy Register (Washington DC), volume 42, number 1441,
July 27, 1907, page 3.
Although I cannot vouch for the
use of goats on Roman galleys, goats were kept on sailing vessels as mascots,
and as a source of milk (in the days before refrigeration), from at least as
early as the late 1700s:
I recognized the animal at once, for it
belonged to me, I having purchased it in Bombay for my voyage to China in the
Hormuzeer, and becoming fond of it, the beast being an excellent milker, had
kept it ever since.
A Master Mariner, the Life of Capt. R. W. Eastwick (Herbert
Compton, Editor), London, Fisher Unwin, 1891 (relating a story that took place in 1792).[iv]
More than one-hundred years
later, goats were still kept on ships.
For example, a goat survived the explosion of the Battleship, USS Maine,
in Havana Harbor in 1898:
The base ball team of the battleship Main
was made up of eleven men and a goat, the mascot. Of the number one man and the goat are
alive. The former is John Blumer of
Portland, who was the right fielder. He
was asleep in his hammock when the explosion occurred, was blown into the water
and was picked up by a boat. The only
injury he suffered was a burn on the arm.
Omaha Daily Bee, March 13, 1898, Part 3, page 22.
The use of goats as good-luck
charms, or mascots, in the Navy was known even outside the cloistered world of
the Navy. Navy goats were mentioned
prominently in a 1904 article about superstition in politics:
We laugh at this influence, and yet it
goes far. A single touch of superstition
makes the whole world kin. If you go on
board a warship you find the jackies cherishing a mascot – a dog, a pig, a
goat, a monkey, or something of the sort.
College boys are never at their best unless the ugliest of bulldogs or
the blackest of cats, or some other live agency of luck, is present to inspire
them in their base ball or foot ball contests.
Evening Star (Washington
DC), November 26, 1904, page 4.
And a goat has been the mascot for the United States
Naval Academy since at least 1893:
El Cid is at the Navy Yard, and is making
every preparation to sail for Rio Janeiro as soon as possible. Not El Cit that sailed for Brazil a few weeks
ago, but El Cid the “billy-goat mascot” of Uncle Sam’s big cruiser
New-York. When the football game between
the Army and Navy was played at Annapolis, November 2, the New-York forecastle
men cast about for a mascot. A
thoroughbred man-of-war’s man would not enter into a contest amid the snares
and perils of the land without the protecting influence of a mascot. Genuine seamen have been ashore once or twice
in their lives, and they know what a dangerous thing a land cruise is, and when
it comes to staking the honor of the Navy on a game of football “played on land”
nothing short of a mascot could induce them to do it. So a delegation of the New-York’s boys went
up to Harlem and purchased a good, substantial billy goat, a black one, one
that had a powerful mascotic gleam in his eye.
They named him El Cid, and took him to Annapolis to attend the football
game – and of course the Navy won.
New York Tribune, December 21, 1893, page 1.
In other words, goats and the
Navy share a long history together.
The Navy also has a strong
tradition of boxing.
Navy Boxing
In the early 1900s, the Navy was a
well-known for encouraging and fostering boxing talent. In the early 1910s, for example, when
shipboard “smokers” were first called “Happy
Hour” (the origin
of the expression as applied to after-work entertainment), boxing was one
of the main attractions.
In 1902, boxing was such an
integral part of Navy life that even the boxing death of a sailor drew no
punishment or reform:
Secretary Bonaparte, after a thorough
examination of the records in the case of Raphael Cohen . . . said today that
from an investigation of the records he saw nothing wrongful, although, of
course, it was extremely deplorable that Cohen should have lost his life. He added that boxing and athletics generally
are encouraged in the service because of their beneficial influence on the
health of the men.
The Salt Lake Tribune, August 16, 1905, page.
In 1903, Naval Apprentices at the
Newport (Rhode Island) Training Center learned boxing as part of their
training:
They are taught boxing, fencing, how to
tie sailor knots, how to make sails, to row and sail boats, to drill as
soldiers; and many other things.
Perrysburg (Ohio) Journal,
July 24, 1903, page 7.
Perrysburg Journal, July 24, 1903. |
The nickname, “Sailor,” was used
by a number of professional fighters in the early 1900s, presumably because of
a connection to the Navy. In 1906, for
example, “Sailor” Morch,[v]
“Sailor” Kelly[vi]
and “Sailor” Burke[vii]
were active professional fighters.
“Sailor” Bowers had a brief career from 1910 through 1911[viii],
and one of the biggest boxing stars of the day used the nickname, “Sailor.”
Tom ‘Sailor Tom’ Sharkey,
who served in the Navy in the early 1890s, is said to have had a career record
of 40-7-5, including a draw and win over “Gentleman Jim” Corbett
and two losses to champion James Jeffries. His second fight against Jeffries is
considered the first
indoor fight to be recorded on film (you can watch highlights of the fight HERE).
“Sailor” Tom Sharkey was the
referee at the Brits-versus-Yanks Navy boxing match in which the crowd
reportedly “got [Jack Reine’s] goat.”
Sharkey also has connections to several fighters mentioned in the
second-oldest “get your goat”/boxing reference that I found. The reference, published in late 1906,
recounts boxing advice that “Kid”
McCoy gave to Jack O’Brien
before his fight with Bob
Fitzsimmons on December 20, 1905:
When Fitzsimmons was matched the second
time with Jack O’Brien [(December 20, 1905)], Kid McCoy gives Jack a tip.
“Step on the old man’s feet,” said the
kid. “His feet are in the cornfield, and
you will get his goat more by keeping on top of them all the time than by
stabbing him in the food hopper.”
All through the session Jack crowded
Fitz’s hoofs, and had the bald-headed bruiser of Bensonhurst on the hop to keep
them in the clearing. After the fight
Fitz said, among other things:
“O’Brien had a funny way of trying to
step on my toes. I couldn’t make out
what he was after, but it bothered me more than anything else he did.”
McCoy was in Jim Corbett’s corner that
memorable night at Coney Island when Jim came so near, but just missed, beating
Jeffries and winning back the championship.
Los Angeles Herald, December 17, 1906, page 6.
In 1896, “Sailor Tom” Sharkey
fought Bob Fitzsimmons for the reputed Heavyweight Championship of the World
(Corbett was believed to have relinquished the title, but later resumed his
career – and reclaimed the title). Wyatt
Earp refereed the match, and awarded the fight to Sharkey after calling a
disputed rules violation against Fitzsimmons.
Sharkey knocked out “Kid” McCoy in January 1899.
Whether Sharkey is personally
responsible for introducing and spreading the expression, “to get one’s goat,”
in boxing circles or not, it seems plausible that a sailor, or sailors, could
have. There were certainly enough
sailors in the boxing game that Navy slang might be used among sailors, be heard
and repeated by others, and eventually become part of the language.
The early association of the
idiom with the Navy and sailors, the close association between and among the
Navy, goats, and boxing, and the close association of the phrase to a fight
refereed by “Sailor Tom” Sharkey, and Sharkey’s ties to other heavyweights
(real and metaphorical) of boxing, at least make it plausible that the Navy is
the source of the phrase. The complete
absence of similar evidence with respect to racehorses makes the Navy origin
seem even more likely.
For my money, boxing was the immediate source of the phrase when it entered the language. It also seems likely that the expression came into boxing through the Navy. Although the expression may be retroactively applicable to horse racing, and the existence of stable goats, generally, may have helped make the expression resonate with the public, the coining of and the introduction of the expression into the language appears to be wholly unrelated to horse racing.
[My notion that "Get My Goat" originated in the Navy, and among Navy boxers, is consistent with an even earlier example of the idiom (November 1900) - see my "Get My Goat" Update.]
The Idiom Spreads
By 1907, “get one’s goat” was
picked up by baseball writers, and made its first appearances in
non-Navy/non-sporting contexts. By 1908,
the expression had become commonplace. But
for the idiom to catch on outside the niche world of sailors and boxers, the
idiom must have resonated with ordinary people who might not be as familiar
with Navy goats or boxing-insider lingo.
“Get your goat” has a certain alliterative appeal - the staccato
repetition of G’s and T’s is catchy. On
a few occasions before the idiomatic expression became popular, the “get one’s
goat” construction was used in the case of stories or reports of actual goats
that were missing or stolen.
If the expression was coined in
the Navy, it was apparently a reference to the use of goats as mascots,
companions and/or good-luck charms on ships.
The goat-getting imagery bore at least a tangible relationship to the
intended, idiomatic meaning. The general
public, not steeped in Navy tradition, may not have related, specifically, to
the same Navy goat imagery. The use of
goats as mascots, however, was not limited to the Navy.
Goats as Mascots
Goats were kept in stables,
alongside horses and cattle, since at least the early 1800s. The perceived or purported benefits included health
of cattle and horses, and companionship to improve the mood of horses. In France, in the early 1800s:
A goat in the stable is esteemed, in
France, a sure protection from contagion to the cattle with which it
associates, and ranks most probably with the bracket-hen, which, in Ireland, holds so distinguished a place
among the lares and penates of the cottage hearth.
Lady Morgan, France, Philadelphia, M. Thomas, 1817.
In 1820s England:
. . . as an
antidote to loneliness, some persons keep a goat in the stable – in other
respects such a guest is unserviceable.
John Bell, Conversations on Conditioning. The Grooms’ Oracle, and Pocket
Stable-Directory, London, Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper, 1829, page 70.
In 1830s England:
Many persons keep Goats in their stables,
from an idea that they contribute to the health of the Horses; - a fancy not
perhaps so far-fetched or absurd as at first sight it may appear; for I believe
that all animals are kept in better temper and greater cheerfulness by the
presence of a companion than in solitude, and the active and good-humoured Goat
may in this way really perform the benefit which has been attributed to it upon
mistaken grounds; - indeed, instances of close attachment between the Horse and
the stable Goat are not unfrequent.
Thomas Bell, A History of British Quadrupeds, including the Cetacea, London, J.
Van Voorst, 1837, page 435.
A History of British Quadrupeds (1837). |
Some people loved their stable
goats:
Goats Are His Vanity.
Other Folks May Like What They Like –
Give Me Goats, Says Dreyfus.
Dreyfus has lost his goats. He would rather have lost two barrels of
vinegar than those goats.
“What are you stuck on goats for,
Dreyfus?” somebody asked him.
“Well, you see,” said he, “it is just
this way. Some people like one
thing. Some people like another. I like goats.
I didn’t care so much for the white one, outside of her milk – a quart a
day just now. But the black one was a
dandy, She was nice.”
“Why, Dreyfus?”
“Oh, I don’t know. There’s no accounting for likes and
dislikes.”
There were two of these goats living in
Dreyfus’s stable, which is in the rear of 125 Allen street. One was white and had horns. The other was black and had no horns, but
could buck with great force and effect.
Every morning when Dreyfus ran his wagons out the two goats ran out and
roamed the streets, making friends, eating what they could find to eat,
fighting when necessity called, looking always solemn and dignified with their
beautiful whiskers, as responsive as the tremulous aspen.
Wednesday morning they ran out as
usual. They had their regular morning
scrap with the baker’s dog across the way, then they walked solemnly up Allen
street and around into Rivington. Since
then they have not been seen. Dreyfus
will pay a reward to the person who brings them back.
The Sun (New York), September 19, 1891, page 2, column 2.
Horse stables, and their goats,
would have been a familiar sight to people in the early 1900s. The United States was still largely agrarian,
and mechanized tractors had not yet supplanted horse-power (actual horses, not
the unit of measuring power). Stables
and stable goats, or livery goats, were very ubiquitous, and received periodic
mention in print.
Horse stables and goats were not
only found in rural areas. They were
also a familiar sight in the big cities.
Remember, up until the end of the 1800s, and into the early 1900s,
horses were everywhere. Horses pulled
delivery trucks, fire
trucks, omnibuses, trolleys, carts, carriages, water
wagons, and cabs; and some people rode in the saddle. Although trolley lines were switched from horse-power
to electric power, beginning in the early 1890s[ix],
and the automobile age started in earnest in the late-1890s, horses and
motorized vehicles competed for space on city streets for for many years. This video,
from 1906, shows horses, cars, and electric trolleys and cable cars all
competing, rather haphazardly, for space on Market Street in San Francisco,
California.
The advent of the automobile age,
and the disappearance of goats from city streets, caused at least one writer to
wax nostalgic about the disappearance of goats (although the writer’s main
concern, and focus of the article, was the disappearance of seasonal “Bock
beer” and the goat-signage that accompanied it):
“I’d hate to join a secret society,” said
a man, leaning comfortably against the bar and drinking light beer because he
couldn’t get dark. “If I really became a
member of any of those things that have Most Worthy Grands and Senior Worshipfuls
and wear gorgeous uniforms I’d be afraid of discovering that the goat ridden at
initiations was only a myth.
“I don’t want to be undeceived, for the
lodge goat of mystery and secrecy is about the last species that is left to us,
here in town at any rate. The Harlem
goat has passed into history and The Bronx.
There are no squatters left, no frisking kids and solemn rams browsing
on what is now Riverside Drive. And now,
this spring, we are losing an old friend, the bock beer goat, the whiskered goat
rampant, which, carved life size out of wood or lithographed in colors, used to
decorate the front of every saloon on the first of April.
The Sun (New York), April 15, 1906, third section, page 4.
The reference to “secret societies” and “lodge goats,”
at the beginning of that article, serves as an introduction to a third type of
goat mascot, and a once common initiation rite, “riding the goat.”
Riding the Goat
Secret societies and fraternal
orders, like the Benign, Protective, Order of Elks, International Order of Odd Fellows,
Knights of Pythias, and, perhaps most famously, the Masons, all had, or still
may have (shhh, it’s a secret), secret initiation rites. One “secret” rite that was common to all of
those lodges in the late-19th Century and into the early-20th
Century was “riding the goat.”
Last Friday night they had a grand
pow-wow, initiated ten new members, and eight of them rode the goat through the
mazes of all three of the degrees, which proves what a sturdy animal
Vanderbilt’s goat is. He had to lay up
for repairs before carrying the eighth and ninth candidates through, the only
instance on record where the goat succumbed to the candidates.
Public Ledger (Memphis, Tennessee), March 5, 1883, page 2.
Walter Arnold was made an Odd Fellows
Monday night by initiation. Will
Keisling, George Newberry, George Patrick and Rev. J. W. Stockton, will ride
the goat next Monday night.
The Butler Weekly Times, September 4, 1889, page 4.
Saturday night at Bayard the M W of A was
organized with twenty-two members. There
were several who said their prayers and then rode the goat. Several members from other lodges were there
and they had their fun seeing the others ride the goat.
The Iola Register, September 28, 1900, page 11.
In 1902, the introduction to the
book, The Lodge Goat, Goat. Goat Rides, Butts and Goat hairs (a collection of
hundreds of anecdotes of lodge life and riding the goat) explains the origins
of the practice:
The old Greeks and Romans portrayed their
mystical god Pan in horns and hoofs and shaggy hide, and called him
‘goat-footed.’ When the demonology of
the classics was adopted and modified by the early Christians, Pan gave way to
Satan, who naturally inherited his attributes; so that to the common mind the
devil was represented by a he-goat . . . .
Then came the witch stories of the Middle Ages, and the belief in witch
orgies, where, as it was said, the devil appeared riding on a goat. . . . Dr.
Oliver says, ‘It was in England a common belief that the Freemasons were
accustomed in their Lodges “to raise the devil.”’ So the ‘riding of the goat,’
which was believed to be practiced by the witches, was transferred to the
Freemasons, and the saying remains to this day.
James Pettibone, The Lodge Goat. Goat Rides, Butts and Goat
Hairs.Cincinnati, Ohio, 1902.
But whether “riding the goat” had
its roots in Roman mythology or merely in the desire to see your fraternity
brothers look silly before letting them into your club, lodge goats were one
more example of goat mascots from the early 20th Century when the idiom,
“get my goat,” emerged. Navy goats,
lodge goats, and stable goats were all fixtures of turn-of-the-century
pop-culture.
But, just as the stable goats’
days were numbered, the lodge goats’ days were numbered:
Elks’
Lodge Goat Remains in Exclusion.
The
committee on ritual in its report recommended that no action be taken in the
matter of the “lodge goat.” A year ago at the instigation of the big city
lodges the “goat” was abolished as part of the initiation ceremony, on the
ground that it lacked dignity.
Arizona Republican (Phoenix), July 11, 1912, page 4.
The goats that made “get my goat”
so meaningful, interesting, clever and memorable to people of the early 20th
Century, have all disappeared, leaving subsequent generations to puzzle about
the meaning of having one’s goat got.
The cryptic (to modern sensibilities) “goat” may not have been so
cryptic in 1906. “Getting one’s goat”
may well have resonated with people who were familiar with the tradition of
goats as mascots and companions on ships, in stables, and for sports teams.
The idiom took root in fertile
ground when it went mainstream in about 1907.
Early Use of “Get One’s Goat”
“Get one’s goat” appeared in
print in a Navy story in late October, 1905, followed weeks later in a report
of a Navy boxing match in mid-November, 1905.
In December, 1905, “Kid” McCoy told Jack O’Brien how to get Fitzsimmons’
goat. Members of the American Dialect
Society recently identified several additional, early attestations for “get my
goat,” all of them from boxing:
“No, none of them can punch like
Corbett. He got my goat that day and
got it good”
Kansas City Star, November 22,
1905, page 21 (ADS-L, October 3, 2014).
[Battling Nelson’s manager] arranged to
keep Terry in the ring a long time before the bell in order to get his goat and
shatter his nerves . . . .
Cincinnati Enquirer, March 25,
1906, page 33 (ADS-L, October 3, 2014).
But it may have been a brief news
item about the colorful expressions used by boxing journalists that may have
introduced the expression to a wider audience.
That news item was an excerpt from an in-depth human interest story
about a match for the Lightweight Championship of the world, fought between Joe
Gans and “Kid” Herman, in Tonopah, Nevada on January 1, 1907.
On January 1, 1907, lightweight
champion, Joe Gans, defended his title against “Kid” Herman in Tonopah,
Nevada. Tonopah, Nevada is about as
remote as it sounds – located about half-way between Las Vegas and Reno,
Nevada. Boxing had been outlawed in many
parts of the country, but was still legal in Nevada, so many prizefights were
fought there. Joe Gans, for example, had
recently battled “Battling Nelson” in Goldfield, Nevada, in September,
1906. Gans, the first black
American to hold a world boxing title, had first won the title in 1902, and
retained the title continuously through 1908.
He lost the title in his rematch with “Battling Nelson.”
Popular he-man author, Rex Beach,
wrote an extensive feature about the match, the location, the fighters, the crowd,
and the press-coverage surrounding the event for Everybody Magazine. The editors explained Beach’s motivation for
the article:
“I wish to go,” he wrote, “and do what
has never been done before: - report the psychology of this affair; tell of the
strange crowd that will gather there, and diagnose that strange kink in the
human brain which leads men from all sections of this land into the most
inaccessible part of it, to see two naked boys fight with padded fists, though
public opinion is so against the sport that it is tabooed in all but one or two
corners of the United States.”
Editor’s note, The Fight at Tonopah, Rex Beach,
Everybody’s Magazine, volume 16, number 4, April 1907, page 464.
One section of Beach’s report,
about the curious slang used by boxing journalists, caught the attention of
newspaper editors, and was reprinted in numerous papers across the entire
United States and in England. The
article generally appeared under headlines like, “New Journalese” or “High
Class Reporting”:
In a quiet interval between rounds I
heard a reporter dictating high class pugilistic literature: “’Herman’s work in
the fifth was classy and he fought all over the place. He stabbed the Dinge in the food hopper three
times and all but got his goat, then missed a right swing to the butler’s
pantry by an inch. If he had coupled it
would have been the sunset glow for Dahomey, but Gans didn’t fall for the gag,
not hardly. He ripped an upper through
the Yiddish lad and put him on the hop with a right cross.’”
Everybody’s Magazine, page 274.
This excerpt was reprinted at least in New York[x],
Hawaii[xi],
Ohio[xii],
Missouri[xiii],
Nebraska[xiv],
Kentucky[xv],
and London, England[xvi],
and presumably dozens of other publications that are not yet available
online.
When Gans, who is thought to have
been a reluctant fighter, finally felled Herman:
Even as he struck and before his man had
fallen, Gans dropped his hands, the tension died from his muscles, and he
turned his back. His work was done. Of all the yelling thousands, the calmest man
as this gaunt, unsmiling negro who stood with his back to the ropes, the
plaintive wrinkle puckering his brow suggesting that this was work for which he
had no fondness.
His wife had sat unmoved throughout the
contest, but as the white lad groped blindly for support before his collapse,
she wrung her hands and cried:
“My God!”
It was the only note of pity I heard
throughout that day.
Everybody’s Magazine, page 274.
Through the miracle of Youtube,
you can watch the fight HERE.
Baseball writers picked up on the
expression by mid-1907:
Don’t crawl into the grandstand to put
your imprint on a knocker’s slats, or the gang will get your goat so that your
playing will be on the blink.
The Washington Times, June 2, 1907, Sports-Real Estate, page 5.
Frisco tied the score in the sixth spasm
by getting to Bergeman for a pair of safe ones which called for a like number
of runs. Before this time Bergeman had
been pitching the swellest kind of ball, and had allowed but one measly single,
but when the Boodlers once got his goat it was all off.
Los Angeles Herald, July 1, 1907, page 8.
Owen relieved Smith in the seventh and
held the Nationals safe, but they got his goat in the eighth and put the game
on ice.
The Washington Times, July 15, 1907, Last Edition, page 10.
The Day Book (Chicago, Illinois), March 4, 1914, last edition, page 24. |
The expression came into more
general use in 1907:
I hadn’t done any exercising except a
little walking – blamed little – for fourteen years, so that Muldoon’s
treadmill more than got my goat. There
wasn’t a square inch of me that didn’t ache.
Evening Star (Washington DC), September 28, 1907, page 22.
Another of the pictures in that
illustrated article shows the same mighty nimrod standing self-consciously
alongside of a young zebra that he had just shot. Well, that got my goat quite some, too. Why a young zebra? I didn’t know that zebras were predatory
animals.
Evening Star (Washington DC), September 28, 1907, page 22.
I’m not experienced, but I’ve got a lot
of earfuls from lonesome wifies that would get your goat.
The Evening World (New York), February 7, 1908, page 17.
“It was the
sneaking way he done the job that got my goat.” Said Epps to the Magistrate.
The Sun (New York), March 23, 1908, page 4.
By June of 1908, the expression
was popular enough to be used in song:
Somebody’s Got My Goat; words by Edward
Madden, music by Theodore Morse. [15640] F. B. Haviland pub. Co., New York, N.
Y. C 182830, June 3, 1908.
Catalogue of Copyright Entries, New Series, Volume 3: Part 3:
Musical Compositions Index, Washington DC, 1908.
“Get my goat” was here to stay.
“Get My Goat’s” Dual Meaning
In 1909, Jim Corbett explained
the meaning of the phrase to an Australian writer unfamiliar with the
expression:
Famous
Fights of the Past.
How
Corbett Beat ‘Kid’ McCoy.
In the sixth round M’Coy started
hitting. He came at me full of fight,
and then I knew I had ‘got his goat.’
Pardon the expression. It is an
Americanism which means that I had so worried M’Coy that he had lost his
temper, and was disposed to exchanged boxing for slogging, science for brute
force.
Sunday Times (Perth, Australia), October 17, 1909, page 14.
A slightly different sense of the
word was offered by another writer in 1909:
Now no prize fighter ever lived who could
keep his nerve through a fight if he knew that his seconds in the corner behind
him were not with him heart and soul.
Jim Jeffries in his best condition could not have licked a string of
forty cab drivers in forty days, if his seconds had gone at him between every
fight and every round and called him down as a dub and a coward. Jeffries might lick the first twenty men, but
the ceaseless criticism and negative suggestion of his seconds would take all
the fight out of him and “get his goat” in the end.
Business Philosopher, volume 5, number 1, page 21.
To lose one’s temper and to lose
one’s will to fight are seemingly polar opposites. One is aggressive, the other passive. But they both result in the inability to
perform properly. Taken together,
however, perhaps they are merely two sides of the same coin.
Losing one’s temper and losing
one’s fight can be viewed as two forms of losing one’s composure. The original meaning of, “get one’s goat,” may
therefore have been to cause someone to lose their composure; either due to
anger and aggravation, or to a loss of motivation.
The two senses coexisted from the
early days of the idiom. The article on
Navy slang in 1908, for example, mentioned the less onerous, getting “white
goats” (teasing) and more serious, getting “black goats” (angering). Most of the early boxing and baseball
examples seem to fall within the sense of losing one’s competitive fire. But the sense of causing anger was also used
as early as 1907. The “sneaking way he
done the job” got Epps’s goat, for example, and zebra hunting got a writer’s
goat.
“Losing One’s Goat”
An interesting aspect of, “get
one’s goat,” is that there is an implied action by someone else in getting the
goat away from the original owner.[xvii] But if having your goat got by someone causes
a loss of composure, what happens if you just lose your own goat?
As a matter of fact, starting in
about 1910, the expression, “to lose one’s goat,” became increasingly
common.
Baseball executives could lose
their goat:
Tom Loftus lost his goat
somewhere along the line in one short year[xviii],
and no one incumbent could ever have stood the gaff here as long as Harry Pulliam
stood it at the head of the National.
Rock Island Argus, January 7, 1910, page 3.
Baseball umpires could lose their
goat:
Goyheneix has Lost His Goat; A New
Umpire.
Cananea, Son., Mex., June 6. – Umpire
Jack Goyheneix has been released by Vic Walling, captain of the umpires. . . .
The reason is not that he is unqualified to officiate at a game ball, but that
he hasn’t the makeup of a man who can command respect of the players.
El Paso Herald, June 6, 1910, page 12.
Boxers could lose their goats:
He
was a bit afraid in the first round – yes, even in the second – but in the
third, when he knew away down deep in his heart that Jeffries’ goat had hurdled
the fence, he waded right in. He knew
that he had the white man’s number, he knew that he could win any time he
pleased.
The San Francisco Call, July 14, 1910, page 10.
And pitchers could lose their
goats:
Then to the surprise of everybody,
including the entire Los Angeles team, Bodie stole home and Tennant stole
third. Criger lost his goat and issued a
pass to Berry.
The San Francisco Call, October 10, 1910, page 8.
In a game between the San
Francisco Seals and the Oakland Oaks (coincidentally, just weeks after San
Francisco sportswriters first
used the word “jazz” at the Seals’ spring training camp[xix]),
the pitcher lost more than a common stable goat:
From then on until the eighth it was
pretty much of an even break. In this
frame Standridge’s Rocky mountain crag jumper began to show restlessness and
finally broke away from him entirely. In
other words, he lost his goat and lost it good.
San Francisco Call, April 20, 1913, page 49.
The expression was still in use
into the 1920s:
A man that will acknowledge that he is a
tramp or laboring man, and dyed-in-the-wool in either of these professions, has
lost his goat, thrown up the sponge, and admitted defeat maybe to a weaker, but
gamer fellow – in fact has a streak of yellow on his back worse than a college
athlete’s sweater.
The Morning Tulsa Daily World, September 8, 1922.
Somewhere along the line, perhaps
because goat mascots faded from our collective memory, or because the absence, or lack, of
alliteration made it more forgettable, the language seems to have abandoned, “lose one’s goat.”
Boy, that really “gets my goat”!
[i]
Stephen Goranson, ADS-L, October 3, 2014, “If that don’t get my goat!”; Papeeyon, Stephen French Whitman, Collier’s, Volume 36, October 28, 1905,
page 24 (a story that takes place in the United States Navy).
[ii] Stephen
French Whitman is the grandson of Stephen F. Whitman, founder of Whitman’s
Chocolates. Imdb.com.
[iii]
Somebody’s Got My Goat; words by Edward Madden, music by Theodore Morse.
[15640] F. B. Haviland pub. Co., New York, N. Y. C 182830, June 3, 1908.
[iv]
According to the Introduction of Master
Mariner, written by Eastwick’s granddaughter, the book was based on the “story
of my grandfather’s life, dictated by himself about the year 1836.” The shipwreck described in the anecdote of
the goat, is independently said to have happened in 1792. See, W. H. Coates, The Old Country Trade of the East Indies,
London, Imray, Laurie, Norie & Wilson, Ltd., 1911, page 108.
[v] Pacific Commercial Advertiser, August 4,
1906, page 6 (Tonight will decide whether Jack McFadden or Sailor Morch is the
better ring artist under that set of boxing rules known as Queensberry.).
[vi] Pullman Herald (Washington), March 3,
1906, page 3 (The 20 round boxing contest between Sailor Kelly and “Kid”
Fredericks, scheduled to take place in Wardner February 24, has . . . been
postponed until March 3.).
[vii] The Washington Times (DC), February 21,
1906, last edition, page 10 (Sailor Burke, of Brooklyn, at last knows how it
feels to be knocked out.).
[viii]
Bert “Sailor” Bowers fight record, at boxrec.com.
[ix] The
new trolleys caused numerous electrocutions, collisions, public backlash and
the introduction of the first speed limits and traffic codes. In Brooklyn, New York, the trolley
controversy and new electric-trolley system led the baseball team to adopt the
name, “Trolley Dodgers” – now the Los Angeles Dodgers. See my post, The
Grim Reality of the Trolley Dodgers.
[x] New York Tribune, May 26, 1907, Part 4
(Music, Drama and Fashion), page 3.
[xi] The Pacific Commercial Advertiser
(Honolulu, Hawaii), June 16, 1907, page 13.
[xii] The Marion (Ohio) Daily Mirror, July 4, 1907, page 3.
[xiii]
The Holt County Sentinel (Oregon,
Missouri), July 12, 1907, page 3.
[xiv] The Falls City (Nebraska) Tribune, July 26, 1907, page 3.
[xv] The Mt. Sterling(Kentucky) Advocate, August 14, 1907, page 4; The Paducah (Kentucky) Evening Sun, August 26, 1907, page 8.
[xvi]
Several of the newspaper articles credit the “Tatler” or the “London Tatler”
as the source of the article. Beach’s Everybody’s Magazine article may have
been reprinted there.
[xvii]
This is why I disregard a reference from 1904 that other commentators consider
the earliest attestation of “get my goat.”
The book, Life in Sing Sing, by
Number 1500 (Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1904, page 248),
lists the word “goat” in a glossary of prison-slang. It defines “goat as meaning, “[anger; to
exasperate.” But that description
strikes me as being more like a variation of the word, “goat,” or a suggestion
of head-butting or provoking (as a goat might), not the taking of a goat
away. I view this reference as separate,
or at a minimum, not clearly related to the idiom, “get one’s goat.” You be the judge.
[xviii]
Tom Loftus was a former baseball player and manager. This reference may refer to his relationship
with baseball’s Western League, which he helped organize. See Arizona Republican, August 21, 1911,
page 2.
[xix]
See my post, Is
Jasbo Jazz? – or Just Hokum and Gravy?
Slightly earlier:
ReplyDeletePublic Opinion [New York] vol. 39 no. 17 "Experience of a Shop Girl. II In the Working Girl's Home" by Elizabeth Howard Westwood p. 517 col. 2.
"Well, that gets my goat," gasped Alice when we recovered speech. "The nerve of her You'd think no one else had ever seen a college girl!"
Stephen Goranson
http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/
http://books.google.com/books?id=EtcaAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA517&dq=%22that+gets+my%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gk45VLHVHfTbsAS98oEw&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%22that%20gets%20my%22&f=false
Language Hat alerted me to your ongoing search for the origins of "get one's goat". I used to be the etymologist of the American Heritage Dictionary until most of the editors were laid off by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2011. When I was the AHD etymologist, I used to wonder about this expression too... so I am passing on something that I have noticed that may be relevant to your search.
ReplyDeleteFrench has an expression similar to "get your goat" that dates at least from 1675. Here is the relevant section from the Trésor de la langue française informatisé (online at http://atilf.atilf.fr/ ), under the word chèvre ("goat").
Prendre la chèvre (vieilli, fam.). Se mettre en colère. Faire devenir chèvre. Faire enrager. Quand on n'a pas d'enfants, on est jaloux de ceux qui en ont et quand on en a, ils vous font devenir chèvre! (PAGNOL, Fanny, 1932, I, 7, p. 107)
And under the etymology section:
ca 1220 tenir por chievre « tenir pour fou » (G. DE COINCY, éd. Koenig, I Mir, 18, 614); 1675 devenir chèvre (J.-H. WIDERHOLD, Nouv. dict. fr.-all. et all.-fr., Bâle);
I am not sure what the significance of these facts are in relation to the English expression, and I have never ventured to look in any other languages besides French. But you can add these data to your hopper.
All the best,
Patrick Taylor
Eğitim Görevlisi
Mardin Artuklu Üniversitesi
Thank you Patrick.
DeleteI should have mentioned the French idiom earlier. But your comment got me to looking once more - and I discovered an interesting detail about American boxers in Paris - including Kid McCoy - in the years leading up to 1905.
I hope this makes up for my earlier lapse of judgement:
http://esnpc.blogspot.com/2014/11/an-american-boxer-in-paris-did-prendre.html
I'm not sure what it all means, but it is still interesting.
I found a usage dating from Nov. 28, 1900, from the Topeka State Journal, page 2. The article in question out of Atchison, Kansas, is about a local baseball player named Roy Krebs who has joined the Navy and is stationed on the battleship Kentucky. The final sentence in the short article is a quote from the player:
ReplyDelete"My enlistment expires June 15, 1904," writes Krebs, "when I will return to Atchison, unless some Navy boxer gets my goat."
I have a pdf of the page in question I can send. This use suggests it was probably in common use before 1900 - at least common enough to need no explanation.
Thank you Jeff, for pointing out an early reference that I (and others) missed. The reference to the Navy and Navy boxers corroborates the suggestion that the expression originated in the Navy, and was used among Navy boxers.
DeleteSee my "Get My Goat" Update: http://esnpc.blogspot.com/2016/06/get-my-goat-update-navy-boxers-in.html
DeleteA variant on "to lose one's goat", from Out West magazine, October 1911 (Google Books):
ReplyDeleteWhy is slang? Did you ever back yourself up in to a fence corner, figuratively speaking, and ask yourself this succinct question? If you have, you found it to be a poser; and the more you thought of it the farther from a solution you seemed to be. Presently your "goat absconded," which, being translated, means you got "mad," In this state you vehemently protested that it didn't matter anyhow—we have it and that's all there is to it.
(But I'm dubious that "one's goat absconded" was really in use; it sounds more like the writer being clever.)