Vent one’s spleen

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Operators are standing by, polishing their revolvers.

Dear Word Detective: I’m sitting in a “Communicating with tact and finesse” conference and our hyper-talkative instructor is regaling us with stories of her forty years of professional life. Several times during the two-day training, she described an emotional outpouring as “venting my spleen.” I’ve heard of someone “spilling their guts,” but never venting their spleen. I’m not sure if this helps, but in 1968 she worked as an operator for the very first 1-800 number in the United States, and she’s from Kansas. — Jeff.

spleen08.pngSo in 1968, while the rest of us were perfecting our tie-dyeing skills and forging new frontiers in backyard agriculture, this poor person was chained to a switchboard answering questions about hearing aids and the like? In Kansas? No wonder she has anger issues. I am, by the way, very proud that, in my many years of working in an office, I managed to avoid every single “motivational” training course my bosses came up with. Eventually management gave up on me (obviously indicating a lack of motivation on their part).

“To vent one’s spleen” means “to express one’s anger,” usually in forceful terms and/or at top volume. “Venting one’s spleen” differs from “spilling one’s guts,” which means simply “to divulge a secret, to tell the whole truth” or “to confess.”

The spleen is, of course, one of those brave little organs nestled in the human midsection (just east of the stomach, in this case), performing those thankless tasks we don’t notice until something goes wrong and our deductible becomes relevant. The spleen’s job is to act as a sort of filter for the blood, but in medieval times, when each bodily organ was thought to be the home of one emotion or another, the spleen was regarded as the seat of melancholy (a mood we now know to reside in the wallet). There was apparently a brief period later on when the spleen was suspected, improbably, of supplying humor and good cheer, but by the late 16th century it was decided that the spleen was the source of rage and ill-temper. Thus “spleen” has for several centuries been a metaphor for “anger,” “resentment” and general crankiness.

“Vent” comes ultimately from the Latin “ventus,” meaning “wind,” and as a verb means “to emit or discharge from a confined space,” as a fan “vents” cooking fumes from a kitchen. The “vent” in “vent one’s spleen” is a metaphorical use of the verb that arose in the 17th century meaning “to relieve or unburden one’s heart or soul,” a sense we still use today (”Don’t mind me, I’m just venting”).

 

 

Soup up

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Is that a new clipboard, Sir?

Dear Word Detective: I have always used the expression, “What are you souping me up?” or “I plan to soup him up.” In my neighborhood (Bronx, NY), this phrase meant to “butter someone up” (not necessarily lying to a person, but complimenting them, etc., so they would go along with you or do something you wanted them to do). Well, long story short, my son-in-law thinks I made this expression up and that it is not used by anyone but my family. I cannot find this expression anywhere for verification but know that I have heard this phrase used in movies, etc., and certainly by a large group of my friends and neighbors. I just need to prove this to my SIL and now my daughter who seems to believe her hubby on this matter. — Debra.

soup08.pngDa noive of some people. Obviously, people making up words and phrases (especially slang) is far from rare, which is why we have so many words and phrases. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in writing this column for the past gazillion years, it’s that strange words and phrases that the neighbors and in-laws have never heard are almost always “real,” well-established locutions, and frequently have histories going back hundreds of years.

On the other hand, it is true that your use of “soup up” to mean “to flatter, to curry favor with” is not recorded by any of the dictionaries or glossaries of slang I own. “Soup” has many other uses in slang, from “in the soup” meaning “in big trouble” (probably by allusion to “in hot water”) to “soup” meaning “nitroglycerin,” “fog” or “photographic developer.” In fact, one of the most popular 20th century uses of “soup” in slang was “to soup up,” meaning to increase the power of a car’s engine, a phrase which was rooted in “soup” as old racetrack slang for stimulants surreptitiously injected into horses to make them run faster.

After searching exhaustively for some mention of the “butter up” sense of “soup up” you asked about, I finally thought to search the archives of the American Dialect Society mailing list (www.americandialect.org). Bingo (maybe). Last year, linguist Benjamin Zimmer posted to the list an article he had found on college slang from The Boston Globe in 1902. One of the phrases apparently then current was “souping,” with the example “A student who endeavors to get a high stand mark by favoritism is said to be ’souping’ the professor….” That would certainly seem to fit with your “flatter” use of “soup up.”

Some participants on the ADS list wondered whether the 1902 reference might be akin to “wine and dine,” i.e., show a good time to someone in hopes of gaining favor. It was also suggested that “soup” in the quote might have just been a typographical error for “soap,” 19th century slang for “flatter” (as in “soft soap”).

But I think the 1902 citation is legit, and that the term “to soup up” meaning “to flatter” harks back to “soup” as slang for drugs given to race horses to make them perform better. After all, there’s no drug more powerful than flattery.

 

 

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