Stanley Bruce, a Presbyterian golfer from St Kilda, was our PM. In the identical 12 months, 1924, our cupboard convened in Canberra for the primary time, the ministers assembly (and lodging) at Yarralumla Home. In the meantime, painters David Boyd and Clifton Pugh have been born, whereas Might Gibbs printed Chucklebud and Wunkydoo.
Abroad, Mahatma Gandhi left jail to have his appendix eliminated. Paris hosted the Olympics, as Edwin Hubble uncovered a galaxy. In 1924, life nonetheless reeled from the shockwaves of World Warfare I – or the Nice Warfare, because it was identified earlier than the sequel lobbed. But a brittle optimism was surfacing, earlier than the Nice Melancholy at the least. Spoiler alert.
Empress of the blues: Singer Bessie Smith was releasing hit information within the Twenties.Credit score: Getty Photos
You see such buoyancy within the phrases coined 100 years in the past. Although carbon-dating language is a messy science. Exceptions, akin to rayon and Band-Assist, will be remoted to a launch, not like the guesswork surrounding hooey and pooch, shimmy and soup up – all of which sidled into life a century again.
Regardless of that, this time-travel sport is the bee’s knees, to borrow the jazz hype of the epoch, in tune with the cat’s whiskers. Fan mail, presumably directed to Jelly Roll Morton, or Bessie Smith, was an upbeat idea of 1924, a communication stream in sync with radio (1922), media (1923) and crystal set (1924).
Different innovations, akin to floodlights and photocopy (not but the Xerox-tech our buttocks would know in 1952), aerosol and Geiger counter, received dictionary berths. Intangible stuff too, like Freud’s id and superego, discovered their place within the international psyche, becoming a member of verbs like liquidate and emphathise.
Darker notions, the previous nonetheless steeped in trauma, additionally emerged, from bacterial warfare to Anschluss, solely a 12 months after goose-stepper. Hit-and-run, as automobiles outnumbered horses, turned against the law by identify, simply as scofflaw strode onstage.
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Amazingly, in actual fact, scofflaw has a exact birthdate. In 1923, an American fats cat (1928) known as Delcevare King provided a $200 prize in search of a neologism for any drinker breaching Prohibition. By probability, two entrants created the identical time period independently, seeing Kate Butler and Henry Dale cut up the pot, in addition to bestowing a phrase in perpetuity.
Nearer to residence, a diva named Nellie introduced her retirement in 1924, solely to return to the stage in 1926, at Covent Backyard, then later carry out a sequence of farewell concert events in Sydney, Melbourne and Geelong. The phrase “doing a Melba” would quickly prime our idiom charts, and fittingly hold returning.
