RE: RARA-AVIS: Origin of "Hard-boiled"

From: Mario Taboada ( matrxtech@yahoo.com)
Date: 21 Aug 2002

Captain Shaw, in his introduction to The Hardboiled Omnibus, says that, in his opinion, the adjective applies to characters and does not describe a type of story or fiction. This definition is flexible enough. Think things got tangled up when the "hardboiled detective" became an archetype. It was a small step from hardboiled PI to hardboiled mystery to hardboiled novel.

On the origin of the term, I would trust Mencken and his team; they were the first to study certain kinds of popular language.. Probably the Webster's guys took it from Mencken

Regards,

mrt

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"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." Mark Twain

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