Shaddup your face.

Dear Word Detective: My gym teacher always says “No comments from the peanut gallery” to this one group of kids in my PE class, then when I got home my step-dad said the same thing.  I was wondering, what does that mean? — Jessica.

Well, just for starters, it may mean you have the world’s oldest gym teacher.  Just kidding, of course.  But I’m mildly amazed that this phrase is still floating around out there and I’d be surprised if either your teacher or your step-dad knows what a real “peanut gallery” was.  I actually explained “no comments from the peanut gallery” back in the 1990s, but that was, after all, in the last century, so we’ll give it another go.

“Peanut gallery” goes back to the 19th century, which (for those of you whose schools dropped History class in favor of Media Studies) was before TV, the internet or even movies.  Entertainment back then was live and delivered for the most part in theaters that bore little resemblance to today’s mall multiplex.  The seating sections were steeply canted, and the higher and further from the stage a tier of seats was, the cheaper the tickets.  Thus the cheapest section in a large theater was all the way back and up, so close to the ceiling that they are today  sardonically called the “nosebleed seats” (referring to the fact that truly high altitudes cause nosebleeds in many people).  To the extent that opera houses and concert halls still exist in large cities in the US, the cheap seats are still up near the ceiling.

The folks who filled this upmost tier, or gallery, of seats tended to be less “refined” than the swanky lot in the seats down front, and they were known for their willingness to point out any perceived shortcomings of the actors on stage with boos, catcalls, and, occasionally, small projectiles.  Since peanuts were one of the favorite snacks of these rowdy folks (and made dandy missiles when the mood struck), this seating section became known as “the peanut gallery.”  Almost immediately, “peanut gallery” was pressed into service as a synonym for “the rabble” or “the hoi polloi.”  Interestingly, the first example of “peanut gallery” in print listed in the Oxford English Dictionary is of the phrase being used in this metaphorical sense (“As a bid for applause from the political pit and peanut gallery it was a masterpiece,” 1876).  So “No comments from the peanut galley” is another way of saying, “Be quiet, you little hooligans.”

But the fact that “peanut gallery” is still part of our common vocabulary is almost certainly due to the Howdy Doody Show, an immensely popular children’s TV show in the 1950s.  Howdy Doody (a marionette), Buffalo Bob (who provided Howdy’s voice), Clarabell the Clown, Princess Summerfall Winterspring and the rest of the cast performed with a studio audience of children seated in bleachers known as “the Peanut Gallery.”

Incidentally, so popular was “Howdy Doody” and his “Peanut Gallery” among a generation of children that in 1950, when United Features decided to syndicate Charles Schulz’s comic strip, then known as “Li’l Folk,” they insisted, over Schulz’s vigorous objections, on changing its name to “Peanuts.”

The wee small hours of Where am I?

Dear Word Detective:  Please give me a definition of the term  “dog shift.”  It refers to working hours.  I have searched with no luck. — Pam.

Dear Word Detective: When I first started working at newspapers, in the mid-70s, the midnight to 8 am shift was called, not the “graveyard shift,” but the “lobster shift” or “lobster trick.” It was suggested that the name started because many of the staff would go drinking before work and come in “boiled,” but that seems like a stretch. — William Fisher.

This sudden flurry of questions having to do with work shifts is interesting.  Is there something I should know about going on with the economy?  Speaking of the terminology of employment (or the lack thereof), I heard an interview last week on NPR with someone who had been recently laid off, who noted that the equivalent to “laid off” in Britain is “made redundant,” a term which the interviewee said would make him feel less than “personally unique.”  (I did mention this was NPR, didn’t I?)   I’d actually go a bit further and say that “made redundant” has always reminded me of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”  Just don’t fall asleep and you’ll be OK.

Sleeping normal hours is out of the question, of course, if you work a “graveyard,” “lobster” or “dog” shift, all three of which are slang terms for a late night shift, usually from  midnight to 8 a.m.  I’ve never worked a graveyard shift, but I did, for several years, work a “swing” (evening) shift, so-called because such shifts often overlap both the day and night shifts and mark a metaphorical pivot point between the two.

I had never heard the term “dog shift” before, and it doesn’t seem to be very common, although it does turn up fairly frequently in the context of police work.  I was puzzled as to its derivation until I realized that it is almost certainly a modified form of “dog watch.”  This was originally (in the 18th century) a nautical term for a short period of duty “on watch” (two hours instead of the standard four).  Such “dog watches” were, however, very unpopular because they  made the sailor miss his normal dinner time.  The “dog” in “dog watch” is yet another case, one of many, of man’s best friend being used as a symbol of misfortune (e.g., “a dog’s life,” one of misery).   “Dog watch” has, since the early 20th century, been used to mean the late night shift, especially in newspaper offices (“The building shakes with the rumble of the presses; the ‘dog watch,’ detailed to duty in the event of news demanding an extra, opens its game of poker,” 1901).

“Graveyard shift,” a term that dates to the early 20th century, comes from the presumed quiet of the workplace at that hour, although many are just as noisy then as at noon.  The origin of “lobster shift” (originally “lobster trick,” “trick” being an old nautical term for duty at the helm) has been disputed almost since it first appeared in the 1940s.  The story about newspapermen arriving for their shift as florid as lobsters is certainly possible, as is the less plausible explanation that there was so little to do on the night shift that the staff dined out on   lobster and champagne in the wee hours.  But the truth, sad to say, is that “lobster” was, beginning in the 19th century, popular slang in New York City for “a fool or dupe,” probably because lobsters were considered very stupid creatures.  So “lobster shift” probably reflects the sentiment that only a fool (or an incompetent worker) would wind up working the midnight shift.