From 'Dollar Princess' to 'The Four Hundred,' Decoding the Gilded Age's High-Society Slang

Written and created by Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes, The Gilded Age is the acclaimed HBO drama series that chronicles the lives and experiences of two late 19th-century New York families: the elite and moneyed van Rhijn dynasty, and the nouveau riche Russell dynasty, led by robber baron George and his wife Bertha.

Although the show itself is entirely fictional, just as with Downton Abbey before it, Fellowes ingeniously incorporates a number of real-life people and events into its storylines, ultimately creating a world that, although dramatized, remains as true to the era in which it’s set as possible. And that’s even true of the impeccably researched turn-of-the-last-century vernacular that many of the characters drop into their everyday speech.

The Alum

In late 1800s-speak, “the alum” was a slangy word for the best possible outcome or situation, or precisely what you wanted to do. It’s thought to be a jokey shortening of the French phrase à la mode, literally meaning “in fashion.”

Beeswax

Because bees used beeswax to make honeycomb, in 19th-century slang it became a jokey name for poor-quality cheese, which is similarly so full of holes that it has barely any substance. Based along similar lines, however, in late 19th century America beeswax—or more often than not, “old beeswax”—was reinvented as a witty term of address for the kind of hoary old character who might be best known for telling long and boring stories at social occasions. The connection between the two is probably a punning joke on the word “bore,” meaning to make a hole.

Coming In

If something was described as “coming in” in the society slang of the day, then it was just starting to become fashionable again.

Distinctly

Distinctly means clearly or visibly, of course, but in late 19th-century slang it came to be used in a more figurative sense as a general intensifier, equivalent to thoroughly or entirely. A gentleman full of old stories, for instance, might be “distinct bore,” or someone might be “distinctly in the wrong.”

Dollar Princess

The rapid industrialization of the United States in the 1800s made many of its leading families suddenly immensely wealthy. But these nouveau riche dynasties had little high-society standing, and thanks to their background (and the stubborn stoicism of existing society families), little opportunity to climb the social ladder. At the same time, however, many aristocrats across the United Kingdom were struggling through a cash crisis—inheriting often enormous estates and acres of land passed down through their families for centuries, but finding themselves with little hard cash to run, staff, and maintain them.

The solution was simple: the eligible debutante daughters of America’s newly wealthy industrialist families—known as “dollar princesses”—were promptly married off to the equally eligible young aristocrats of late Victorian England. The arrangements solved the aristocrats’ cash crises, while simultaneously giving the daughters’ families the cachet they needed to climb the Gilded Age’s social ladder.

Forty Rod Lightning

A jokey term for whiskey dating from the 1880s, so-called because it’s so strong that it could kill you at a distance of 40 rods (a rod being 1/320th of a mile).  

The Four Hundred

In Gilded Age New York, the “Four Hundred” was Mrs. Caroline Astor’s much sought-after list of the 400 most important high-society figures of the day. At a time of considerable change in the city, Mrs. Astor emerged as the self-styled guardian of old-money New York, and used her list as a means of separating the hoi polloi nouveau riche from the city’s more established elite.

According to legend, the term was coined because 400 was the maximum capacity of Mrs. Astor’s ballroom at her home on Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. But another version of the tale credits this phrase to Mrs. Astor’s long-time friend and fellow socialite Ward McAllister, who told the New York Tribune in 1888 that, “There are only about four hundred people in fashionable New York Society. If you go outside that number, you strike people who are either not at ease in a ballroom or else make other people not at ease.”

To Give Aces and Spades

To hold aces, or to hold a full ace, is to have absolute control over a situation. In 19th and early 20th century parlance, however, to give aces and spades was essentially the opposite, and meant to surrender or lose an advantage to an opponent.

Maddist

“Society maddists” were the nouveau riche, as viewed from the perspective of the old money of the day—that is, the term was used to describe people who weren’t born in high society, but were madly desperate to become part of it.

Professional Beauty

A courting young woman wishing to catch the eye of a suitable beau might, in the late 1800s, decide to sit for a portrait photograph that they could circulate and hand out as visiting cards when they dropped in on their friends and suitors. These cards became known as “cabinet cards”—while the young women who sat more than their fair share of photographs became jokingly known as “professional beauties.”  

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