"Tremendous Swell"
Ko-Ko says Pooh-Bah is a "tremendous swell." He's a very well-dressed gentleman, a fashion plate.
Tremendous is used as an intensifier here, the way "very" in the phrase "very difficult" intensifies the word "difficult" or "huge" intensifies the word "problem" in the phrase "huge problem."
The word swell was slang at the beginning of the 19th century and the name of an expensive, exclusive and somewhat disreputable club for young gentlemen.
In its ninth definition, the first edition of the OED identifies swell as colloquial and originally slang and defines it as "A fashionably or stylishly dressed person; hence, a person of good social position, a highly distinguished person."
An article in the May 1886 Harper's New Monthly Magazine, "The London Season," distinguishes the swells from the crowd, people whose socio-economic class is clearly less exalted. The article describes the opening of Ascot. My apologies for the offensive language and ideas:
Another feature of the Ascot is the arrival and departure of the "coaches" through the narrow gate that leads to the various enclosures assigned to them -- a proceeding greeted by much criticism and cheering on the part of the crowd. For a crowd there is, though to a modified extent compared with the more popular meetings, made up of the usual harpists, negroes, photographers, conjurers, fortune-tellers, bird-sellers, dog-stealers, and card-sharpers. Some of these are well-known characters, and may be seen exchanging civilities with the "swells" in the enclosure (832).
Partridge quotes John Camden Hotten, who distinguishes the "varieties" of Society slang: "Fashionable or upper-class slang is of several varieties. There is the Belgravian, military and naval, parliamentary, dandy, and the reunion and visiting slang. . . . 'In dandy or swell slang,' [Hotten] says, 'any celebrity, from the Poet Laureate to the Pope of Rome, is a "swell", -- "the old swell" now occupies the place once held by "guv'nor". Wrinkled-faced old professors,' another greatly changed class [like the military], by the way, [Partridge says,] 'who hold dress and fashionable tailors in abhorrence are called "awful swells", -- if they happen to be very learned or clever'" (qtd in Partridge 216).
In 1823 John Badcock's Dictionary of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, the Pit, the Bon-Ton, and the Varieties of Life situates swell this way:
Persons taking the good portions of their hours in sleep and pleasure, are of the Bon-ton, as stage-actors and frequenters of play-houses, visitors at watering-places, officers, etc., etc.
Terms which denote the ton ["ton or tone, the degree of tact and tension to be employed by modish people; frequently called the ton only"]: "The go, the mode, or pink of the mode; bang-up, the prime of life, or all prime; the thing, the dash, and a dasher; quite the Varment -- a four-in-hand, a whip, a very jarvy, a swell, a diamond of the first water . . . ." (Partridge 216).
Sometimes in late-nineteenth-century writing, it seems that a "swell" must be a gentleman or member of the aristocracy, but in other uses it seems that a "swell" is distinguished from a true gentleman or nobleman. So there is a sense in which if the word "swell" is used to describe someone's stylish dress, it's a compliment; but if the person is distinguished in other ways, especially intellectually distinguished, "swell" may suggest a tone of familiarity or even, possibly, disrespect. For example, according to the OED, in 1846 De Quincey called Immanuel Kant a "great swell," hardly what we think of when we think of Kant.
In 1885 the pseudonymous "Mrs. Alexander" uses "swell" to describe stylishly dressed women, though the word most commonly seems to be used to describe men, as in 1892 in the Law Times, "The plaintiff stated that the defendant was one of the greatest swells in the City" and readily paid high sums of money (XCIII, 459/2).
This discussion is based in part on the definition of the word swell in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which requires a little explanation.
To Act I or Act II of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.
To the homepage of this Mikado website.
Suggestions, contributions, criticisms, questions? Email Sharon Cogdill.
(c) Copyright 1998 Sharon Cogdill, dramaturg for this production and author of this website.
College of Fine Arts and Humanities
St. Cloud State University
This URL: http://web.stcloudstate.edu/scogdill/mikado/swell.html.
Last update: 19 May 1998.