cool
Origin:1949
Isn't it cool to wait so long to bring up this word?After all,when we're cool,we're not in a hurry.
Referring to a comfortable temperature on the other side of hot,cool has been around as long as the English language.But in certain slang uses,cool is a much newer phenomenon.It was after World War II,in 1947,that the Charlie Parker Quartet recorded a number called "Cool Blues." In 1948,Life magazine introduced cool to a general audience in the title "Bebop:New Jazz School is Led by Trumpeter Who is Hot,Cool and Gone." For the benefit of general readers,The New Yorker in July 1948 explained,"The bebop people have a language of their own.Their expressions of approval include 'cool'!"
All this was leading,perhaps in 1949,to the sense of cool meaning "composure or self-control." We find written evidence of this use first among African Americans,as in the dialogue of a 1953 novel:"Dig yourself,creep,don't lose your cool." By the 1960s,everyone seemed to have cool to lose or to keep.
Over the years,many different meanings of cool have accumulated,all available to cool Americans in recent times.Cool has meant "daring" (1839),"clever" (1924),"exciting" (1933),"stylish" (1946),"cautious" or "under control" (1952),and "satisfactory" or "OK" (1953).To cool it has meant "to stop" (1952),"to die" (1960),and "to relax" (1986).In the 1990s,among young people,cool in the sense "approval or appreciation" has even taken on a distinctive pronunciation closer to that of cull.That's cool.