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A section for all you budding etymologists where each week the origin of a word or phrase is investigated.
This week it is..... Slush fund
Money put aside to be used to bribe or influence,
especially in a political context.
The word ‘slush’ was coined in 17th century England as
the name for half-melted snow and is first referred to in
print with that meaning in Henry Best’s Rural Economy
in Yorkshire, 1641. Of course, that’s where the name
Slushies, the part-frozen flavoured drinks, came from.
A century later, there was an alternative meaning of
‘slush’, or ‘slosh’, which was the fat or grease obtained
from meat boiled on board ship. That invaluable guide
The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1756, referred to it like this:
He used much slush (the rancid fat of pork) among
his victuals.
William Thompson made it sound even less appetising
in The Royal Navy-men’s Advocate, 1757:
Tars whose Stomachs are not very squeamish, can bear
to paddle their Fingers in stinking Slush.
Despite it not being the apex of culinary delight it was
considered a perk for ships’ cooks and crew and they sold
the fat that they gathered from cooking meat whenever
they reached port. This perquisite became known as a
‘slush fund’ and the term joins the numerous English
phrases that first saw the light of day at sea.
The author William McNally didn’t think much of the
practice and included a description of it in Evils &
Abuses in Naval & Merchant Service, 1839:
The sailors in the navy are allowed salt beef. From this
provision, when cooked nearly all the fat boils off; this
is carefully skimmed and put into empty beef or pork
barrels, and sold, and the money so received is called
the slush fund.
In the same year, The Army and Navy Chronicle
suggested that a ship’s slush fund would be a suitable
source of money to buy books for the crew:
To give men the use of such books as would best suit
their taste, would be to appropriate what is their own,
(viz.) the slush fund for the purchase of such works.
This is the beginning of the meaning we now have for
‘slush fund’, that is, money put aside to make use of
when required. The use of such savings for improper
uses like bribes or the purchase of influence began in
the USA not long afterwards. The Congressional Record
for January 1894 printed this:
[Cleveland] was not elected in 1888 because of pious
John Wanamaker and his $400,000 of campaign slush
funds.
Into the 20th century and we head straight for one of
The Simpsons’ many cultural references and back to
the original meaning of ‘slush fund’. In the 1998 episode
Lard of the Dance, Homer and Bart instigate a scheme
to make money by collecting and selling grease. They try
to siphon Groundskeeper Willie’s stashed vat of rancid
fat from the school kitchen. A fight breaks out over what
is clearly Willie’s slush fund or, in 20th century cartoon
parlance, his ‘retirement grease’.
Is there an English phrase or saying that you would
like to know more about?
Email it to us on [email protected]
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