I also doubt that The Times would have used it then in the middle and even at the end of the 19 th century it was customary in England to pity the coarseness of “our American cousins” and resent Americanisms. The parents of those whom Jack London met and described in his 1902 book The People of the Abyss (it is about the slums of the East End) would hardly have known and appropriated this piece of American political slang. I cannot imagine that by the middle of the 19 th century an Americanism mainly used at home in reference to the inanity and shallowness of official orations (this is the impression the earliest quotations make) reached Liverpool and even the East End of London. Unfortunately, Hotten’s derivation has been repeated in several popular books in which verloten was upgraded to an adjective meaning “high-flown, stilted.” But two other features of Hotten’s comment have hardly been discussed at all. The ghost of a Dutch etymon was raised once again in 1902, when a contributor to Notes and Queries traced -faluting to verluchting “an airing” ( luchtig “airy, thin, light unsubstantial, etc.”)-thus, “flighty talk,” another dead-end proposal. Dutch verlooten (now spelled verloten) is a verb (the infinitive) meaning “to dispose of a thing by lottery, raffle.” There is also Dutch loot “shoot offspring.” No connection can be established between either of them and highfalutin. We notice three things in Hotten’s entry: the spelling ( highfalut en), the use of the word in Liverpool and London, and the proposed etymology. Used recently by The Times in the sense of fustian, highsounding unmeaning eloquence, bombast.” (Note how often the names of cloths end up meaning ‘pompous speech’: here fustian and bombast, both reflecting the idea of padding.) Hotten’s dictionary appeared in 1859, but I was quoting from the third edition (1864).
But before sharing my small treasure with the world, I would like to quote the explanation given in John Hotten’s Slang Dictionary (the spelling and punctuation of the original have been retained): “ Highfaluten, showy, affected, tinselled, affecting certain pompous or fashionable airs, stuck-up-‘Come, none of your highfaluten games:’ American Slang, now common in Liverpool and the East End of London, from the Dutch Verlooten. As will be seen, I have only one feeble idea and am offering it in the hope that, despite the lack of a persuasive solution, it may redirect the search for the source of this enigmatic adjective. My thoughts on highfalutin are low-key for an obvious reason. I was neither the first nor the second to discover it, but I put some polish (“kibosh,” as sculptors said 150 years ago) on it. Many years ago, while investigating the history of skedaddle, I think I found a reasonable source of this verb. There's another theory that the word comes from "lammas," which was also spelled "nammou" and was related to "vamoose," which is another slang word for "get the heck outta here." Given how slippery pronunciations may be, it's possible that these words are all connected.īut think about it: "lam" means "beat," and American slang also uses "beat it!" to mean "run away!" So it might make more sense for that Old English "lam" to be used in the same sense: to "beat a retreat," as we also sometimes say.Allegedly a nineteenth-century Americanism, highfalutin is now known everywhere in the English speaking world, but, as could be expected, its etymology has not been discovered-“as could be expected,” because the origin of such words is almost impossible to trace. We can see where "lam" started and where it went, but where did it come from? It seems to have originated with the Old English word "lam," which meant "a beating." It's related to the beginning of the word " lambaste," which itself combines two words meaning "to beat or thrash," "lam" + "baste." This word means business.
It even made appearances in Appleton's Popular Science Monthly in 1897 and Damon Runyon's " Guys and Dolls" in 1931. We also know that it was used in the phrase "do a lam" in 1897, meaning an escape or a getaway, according to " A Dictionary of the Underworld." From there, it evolved by 1904 to mean being a "lamster" or fugitive, and by 1932 it meant escaping from prison. So while the coppers may not have been on their tails yet, pickpockets were using the word "lam" as a signal to run away from potential trouble. After he has secured the wallet he will chirp like a bird, or will utter the word "lam!" This means to let the man go, and to get out of the way as soon as possible.
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