Word: cranks
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Most of my popular slang phrases and sayings originated in San Francisco. The once over, ' 23,' run out powder, hire a hall, jitney, flivver, Larry turn the crank, get your goat, where d'ye get that stuff, and hundreds of others came from there...
...have seen the amateur wireless crank fussing with his queer coils and instruments and many of us have wondered what earthly interest was to be found in listening to the queer little buzzings that were heard. Suppose that these little buzzings did convey some kind of a message, what of it? If messages were wanted the newspapers were full of them. Why go to all the bother of studying a lot of scientific stuff and spend hours trying hopeless experiments, when anything of importance could so much more comfortably and easily be read in the morning paper? There...
...particularly nasty, he calls the object of his wrath a "socialist". "Bolshevik" and "communist" are other terms frequently used--all in a very vague but uniformly defamatory manner. Yet not so long ago, these words were in perfectly good repute; and though it might stamp one as a crank and impractical idealist, to be a socialist or communist was not held to be a stain on one's character. Just so the little word "liberal" has come to "cover a multitude of sins", this time as a camouflage for less respected designations. Properly speaking, a liberal...