Re: kol b'seder= copacetic

From: Pieter Z. (zazaza_at_xs4all.nl)
Date: 10/07/04 

Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 06:56:31 +0200

"howard richler" <hrichler@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:feb755de.0410060744.173425be@posting.google.com
> A colleague of mine tried to convince me that "copacetic" derives
> from the Hebrew "kol b'seder." I was surprised to find that many
> etymologists believe this is the likeliest source of the word. I find
> this ridiculous for several reasons, We know that the word first
> surfaces in Black English in the Southern USA in the early 1920s.
> Accordong to legend, sometime before this some Black customer would
> have asked some Jewish mercahnt "How things were going" and he would
> have responded "kol b'seder" (everything is in order) to the query.
> Is it not highly unlikely that a Jewish merchant at the turn of the
> 20th century would be responding in Hebrew, given that the language
> was not used as a vernacular at the time? Also, although "kol
> b'seder" is used as a catchphrase nowadays in modern Hebrew would it
> be likely to be used more than 100 years ago when the term supposedly
> morphed into "copacetic"? I would think that if any Hebrew expression
> was used a century ago, it was more likely "ha kol b'seder" not
> just "b'seder."
>
> Any thoughts?

[In response or addition to many of the other replies, too. It seems to
touch on a little bit of everything that's been brought up so far.
Cheers, P]:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cop1.htm

"COPACETIC
Fine, excellent, going just right.
It's possible that this word has created more column inches of
speculation in the USA than any other apart from OK. It's rare to the
point of invisibility outside North America. People mostly become aware
of it in the sixties as a result of the US space program-it's very much
a Right Stuff kind of word. But even in the USA it doesn't have the
circulation it did thirty years ago. Dictionaries are cautious about
attributing a source for it, reasonably so, as there are at least five
competing explanations, with no conclusive evidence for any of them.
One suggestion that's commonly put forward is that it was originally a
word of the African-American community in the USA. The name of Bill
"Bojangles" Robinson, a famous black tap-dancer, singer and actor of the
period round the turn of the twentieth century is commonly linked to
this belief about its origin. Indeed, he claimed to have invented it as
a shoeshine boy in Richmond. But other blacks, especially Southerners,
said later that they had heard it earlier than Mr Robinson's day. But he
certainly did a lot to popularise the word.
A second explanation that's given credence is that it derives from one
of two Hebrew expressiona, hakol b'seder, "all is in order", or kol b'
tzedek, "all with justice", which it is suggested were introduced into
the USA by Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants. Other accounts say it
derives from a Chinook word copasenee, "everything is satisfactory",
once used on the waterways of Washington State, or from the French
coupersetique, from couper, "to strike", or, in a hugely strained
derivation, from the cop is on the settee, supposedly a hoodlum term
used to describe a policeman who was not actively watching out for
crime, and so one who was OK."
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