Doge. Responding to this Internet verbal fashion I wrote about last week, James Kahn, Pat Spaeth, Mark Hyman and John Lyon all recalled the same dialogue from the 1942 film Casablanca:

Mr. Leuchtag: Mareichtag and I are speaking nothing but English now.

Mrs. Leuchtag: So we should feel at home when we get to America.

Carl: Very nice idea, mm-hmm.

Mr. Leuchtag: [toasting] To America!

Mrs. Leuchtag: To America!

Carl: To America!

Mr. Leuchtag: Liebchen — sweetness, what watch?

Mrs. Leuchtag: Ten watch.

Mr. Leuchtag: Such much?

Carl: Hm. You will get along beautiful in America, mm-hmm.

Several readers asked whether doge is connected with doggerel. There are dogs in both, though in doggerel it is an unfavourable reference, as are so many formations in which dog appears. Doggerel was created in the fifteenth century by adding the -(e)rel suffix, which creates diminutives, often with derogatory force.

Update. I’ve significantly revised the piece on mash note and included more information about the origins of masher, a late-nineteenth-century dandy in the US and UK.