Zora Neale Hurston '28 Established Cool as in "How Cool is That?"
Zora Neale Hurston |
Professor Monica Miller, a specialist in African-American literature on the Barnard faculty, has helped Harlem Renaissance luminary Zora Neale Hurston '28 earn a new claim to fame: Hurston is now listed in the Oxford English Dictionary as the first writer to use the world "cool" as a hip way to say "excellent."
Hurston's spot in the venerable dictionary means she supplants New York bebop musicians of the late 1940s as the first to use the word to note someone or something of top rank.
Miller, assistant professor of English, weighed in on Hurston and her use of the word "cool" for the BBC television program about word origins, Balderdash and Piffle . The series seeks to update OED entries based on viewer input, literary sleuthing, and opinions from academics.
In a 10-minute segment devoted to "cool," Miller spoke about Hurston's work, and the meaning of her use of "cool" in a 1933 short story, The Gilded Six Bits .
Monica Miller |
The story refers to a gentleman named Joe. "And whut make it so cool, he got money 'cumulated. And womens give it all to 'im," Hurston wrote.
Miller's opinion that Hurston meant "excellent" helped convince OED editors to rewrite the dictionary's entry for "cool." Now Hurston's line from the story tops a list of citations, knocking to second place a 1948 quote in The New Yorker about jazz argot.
"She is an incredible user of the English language. Highly metaphorical," Miller says. "The idea that she makes it into the OED as an originator is really important. It is another notch in her belt."
Hurston, whose most famous book is Their Eyes Were Watching God , was Barnard's first African-American student. She grew up in Florida, and is known for her written use of dialect that recalls the oral tradition of story telling in the rural south. "In Florida, anything cool versus hot is a good thing," Miller tells the BBC interviewer.
The producers of the BBC series, which was broadcast in Britain early this year, contacted Miller as a result of her work as organizer of a two-day conference at Barnard in 2002 on Hurston's life and work. Miller was interviewed on campus.
Miller had not been aware of Hurston's importance when it comes to cool. The interviewer, a jazz musician who also explored the word's use among musicians, brought Hurston's early use of the phrase to Miller's attention. "They found it. I was surprised and really delighted," she says. The story is one of Hurston's earliest published pieces. It appears in Zora Neale Hurston: Novels and Stories (Library of America, 1995).
Miller, who joined the Barnard English faculty in 2000, often uses the word "cool" herself. "I am teaching a class on the Harlem Renaissance and that is very cool," she said. Click here to read Jumpin' at the Sun: Reassessing the Life and Work of Zora Neale Hurston, an issue of The Scholar & Feminist Online guest-edited by Miller.
-- Louise Kramer (Barnard Class of '79)
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