Out on the stoop

 

     Words are funny things. As you well know. I began re-reading Philip Roth's "Goodbye, Columbus" Wednesday and was struck by the magnificent economy of a certain phrase. The hero, Neil Klugman, is driving from his home in Newark, New Jersey to visit a young woman living in its leafy suburbs, noting as he did the "houses where no one sat on stoops." A lot of social history packed into seven words.
     He doesn't say whether that is good or bad. I suppose the answer depends where you happen to be living. Suburbanites might envy the cohesion of those nosy neighbors, gossiping on the steps, while city dwellers were keen to escape the crowded city, with its prying stoop perchers monitoring your movements, another hassle to be escaped, along with smells in the hallways and crashing garbage cans. 
     In the chapter on noise in my "Alphabet of Modern Annoyances," I studied New York's 1929 survey of city noise complaints, finding much to be nostalgic about:

     Despite the familiarity of most noise annoyances listed in the survey ("roistering whoopee parties" was my favorite) other irritants have ceased to be considered problems, from "the noises from milk wagons and pie trucks to "newsboys' cries" to "youths and maidens group on front stoops sing[ing] in close harmony at unreasonable hours of the night," an image that makes one positively pine for the past.

     A "stoop," of course, is the stairs leading from a front door to the street. I wondered about its etymology — the word sounds Dutch, though that might be because of eating too many stroopwafels on airplanes. I imagine some core meaning about downward motion, as the verbal form, such as "She Stoops to Conquer." 

     But which sense came first? The stairs or the descent?

     The Oxford English Dictionary gives "Stoop" a full page, plus, starting by tying the word to Late Middle English and batting away my cookie-stoked theory. "It is doubtful whether the word has any connection with MLG. and early mod. Du. stolpe." "MLG" being middle low German, and you can figure out the rest.

     The bending usage is the oldest, back to 1571, while the architectural meaning shows up two centuries later, to describe "An uncovered platform before the entrance of a house, raised, and approached by means of steps. Sometimes incorrectly used for porch or veranda." The OED considers the word an American and Canadian coinage.

     The OED bringing up such synonyms as porch and veranda sent me scurrying to one of my least-used dictionaries, Webster's 1942 Dictionary of Synonyms, which goes into the weeds regarding the fine distinctions between similar words. It disputes the OED's doubts about the word origin, suggesting it comes, not from Holland, but from Dutch New Amsterdam: "Stoop, which is of Dutch origin, was originally used in and around New York City and is now used elsewhere to designate a small porch, flanked by seats of benches at the entrance to a house; it is now also applied to any platform at the entrance to a house, which one ascends by a step or two."

     While writing the above, a line from Shakespeare floated into mind. "Fetch me a stoup of wine," Sir Tony Belch commands in "Twelfth Night." (Actually, he says, "Marian, I say! A stoup of wine!" I had it mixed up with Richard III's "Give me a bowl of wine. I have not that alacrity of spirit Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have." Who does nowadays?)

     Where does "stoup," with a U, fit in? Back to the OED...

     Ah, here is the Dutch — specifically, Middle Dutch — I detected, older than them all, back to the 14th century to describe "a pail or bucket" now limited to the Scots and, of course, Shakespeare, quoting that and John Galt's 1822 satiric novel, "The Provost" — "Even lasses were fleeing to and fro, like water nymphs with urns, having stoups and pails in their hands."

    That seemed a lovely image to leave you with — it makes sense that a guy like Sir Belch would ask for a pail of wine — but thoroughness demanded I press on, finding a second OED definition, narrowing our pail into "a drinking-vessel, of varying dimensions; a cup, flagon, tankard."

     That's what Belch wanted: a cup of wine. No wonder people spurn the fact-based world. It does have a way of spilling the wind from the billowing sails of our fancy.