Thomas Jefferson was furious.
He had given some money over the years to a scurrilous Scottish journalist, James Thomson Callender, out of the goodness of his heart. Now Callender was hinting that Jefferson had passed him the funds to keep him quiet about his earlier support of Jefferson's anti-Federalist cause, which had encouraged the journalist to attack Alexander Hamilton and even to cast aspersions on President Washington.
''He $(Callender$) intimated that he received $(the money$) not as a charity,'' the newly elected President Jefferson wrote his friend and anti-Federalist colleague James Monroe on May 29, 1801, ''but as due, in fact hush money.'' Not another nickel would be forthcoming, vowed Jefferson, who considered himself unfairly maligned by an ingrate: ''Such a misconstruction of my charities put an end to them forever.''
The author of the Declaration of Independence once observed: ''I am a friend to neology. It is the only way to give a language copiousness and euphony.'' He was the coiner of such useful verbs as electioneer, belittle and reticulate; even his noun breadstuffs remains in occasional use. But in the case of hush money, Jefferson was calling up a figure of speech long familiar to everyone in the new American Government.
It was first recorded in 1709 in England. ''I expect Hush-Money to be regularly sent,'' wrote Sir Richard Steele in The Tatler, ''for every Folly or Vice any one commits in this whole Town.'' Jonathan Swift put it in a 1731 poem to John Gay: ''A dext'rous Steward, when his Tricks are found,/Hush-money sends to all the Neighbours round.''
Following its steady course through the language over three centuries, the Oxford English Dictionary defined the term as ''Money paid to prevent disclosure or exposure, or to hush up a crime. . . .'' (A century before, Shakespeare used the echoic hush as a noun in ''Hamlet'' to mean ''silent'' -- ''as hush as death'' -- and as a verb in ''Twelfth Night,'' ''My dutie hushes me.'')Continue reading the main story
The hardy phrase of accusation was central to coverage of the 1972 break-in at Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington. After an interview with Charles Colson, who had been President Nixon's special counsel, a New York Times reporter, Christopher Lydon, wrote on June 9, 1973: ''Payments by Nixon associates to the Watergate defendants could be construed as criminal 'hush money', he $(Colson$) remembers telling Haldeman.'' The subsequent euphemism for payments requested by the conspirator Howard Hunt to the jailed Watergate burglars to encourage their silence was ''humanitarian relief.''
Here we are a generation later and the term is once again in the headlines. The Washington Times put the phrase in quotations: ''Subpoenas focus Starr's probe on 'hush money.' '' The Memphis Commercial Appeal headlined a column by William Rusher ''Hush Money for Hubbell?'' In a piece about fees in excess of $400,000 paid to former Associate Attorney General Webster L. Hubbell after he was forced to leave the Justice Department, Jeff Gerth and Stephen Labaton of The New York Times delicately avoided the accusatory term as they wrote of money ''intended to discourage him from helping investigators who were looking into the Clintons' finances.''
The term is always strongly pejorative, which is why it is put in the form of a question or described as an allegation. Payments so described are always defended, as in Jefferson's letter, as charity, relief or other instances of simple generosity to one in need that are given a sinister motive by the uncharitable.
A related term, hush puppies, refers to deep-fried balls of cornmeal dough. They gained the name when used to quiet yapping dogs hanging around the kitchens of Southern homes but are not recommended by modern veterinarians.
In the midst of suspicions of hush money and revelations of fund-raising excesses, some political activists were dismayed by a spelling mistake rich in irony included in papers released by the White House from the trove taken home by former Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes.
An anonymous White House aide sent a memo in 1994 to Martha Phipps, then working at the Democratic National Committee. It began ''In order to reach our very aggressive goal of $40 million this year'' and then listed 10 Presidential uses, from ''Two seats on Air Force One'' to ''White House residence visits and overnight stays,'' concluding with ''Photo opportunities with principles.''
A Democratic partisan in New York circled the misspelled last word and sent it to me with the sad notation, ''not too many of these.''
E Pluribus Pluribus
Olbom -- On Language's Board of Octogenarian Mentors -- strikes again.
Ever on guard against voguist pomposity , Alistair Cooke has just landed on multiple. ''Madeleine Albright used it the other day,'' he writes. '' 'We have made multiple protests.' And a cop reported 'he called the station house multiple times.' What's next -- 'In my father's house are multiple mansions'? The word many is vanishing from American.''
For years, the snooty aversion to the plain English many (which appeared in 725 in ''Beowulf'' as monig) resulted in the rise of the august numerous.
Here's a corrective: when in need of a noun to denote the price-earnings ratio of a stock, feel free to use multiple. But when reaching for an adjective to mean ''a large number of,'' eschew multiple and choose many. Tired of many and want an informal synonym to relate to a younger generation? Try lotsa.Continue reading the main story