Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 17:14:48 -0400
From: Ted White <tedwhite at compusnet.com>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Gunsel & Gooseberry Lay
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Michael Walsh wrote:

> > tedwhite at compusnet.com 05/20/02 04:31PM
>
>  [Snippage occurs]
> >they are not entirely analogous.  "Punk" has very specific meanings in
> several
> >social subsets. ("Punk" entered the vocabulary in the 20th century as a
> prison
> >term for a boy used for sex; "gunsel" meant the same thing before mystery
> >writers mistakenly used it to mean a gunman.)
>
>  [more snippage]
>
> 'twas Dashiell Hammet, late of Maryland, who used gunsel purposely in such a
> manner.
> See: http://www.miskatonic.org/gooseberry.html

Yes, Hammett knew exactly what he was doing with the word, which he used in its
correct meaning, but ambiguously enough that someone could *interpret* "gunsel"
to mean gunman.  And many did -- including his editor, around whom he'd made an
end-run.

As the piece you referenced notes, "All of the writers of the hard-boiled school
of realism started talking about a gunsel as the equivalent of a gunman. The
usage has persisted. Recently [in 1965], a magazine of national circulation,
featuring the death of a gunman, described it on the cover as 'The Short, Bitter
Life of a Gunsel.'"

The author of the piece, Erle Stanley Gardner, refuses to define "gunsel,"
saying only, "Actually, 'gunsel,' or 'gonzel,' is a very naughty word with no
relation whatever to a bodyguard, a gunman, or a torpedo."  That shows you how
far the media have come since 1965....

--Ted White