Learn English – The “old switcheroo”: Where did the “-eroo” suffix come from

Michael Quinion, Ologies and Isms: Word Beginnings and endings (2002) has this entry for the suffix -eroo:

-eroo Also -aroo, -aroonie, and -eroonie. An informal and often humorous intensifier of nouns {A fanciful formation of uncertain origin}

This ending is most common in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. It appeared in the U.S. in the 1930s, but its origin is not known. It may be that it was influenced by the older buckaroo, a cowboy, which derives from Spanish vaquero; its acceptance in Australia and New Zealand may have been helped by the model of kangaroo, wallaroo, and other words. It sometimes implies something sizeable, overwhelming, remarkable, or unexpected.

Among the words that Quinion cites as examples of -eroo/-aroo/-aroonie constructions are boozeroo, jackaroo, flopperoo, smackeroo, and smackeroonie.

A Google Books search for switcheroo finds it in two different publications from 1933. From Joel Sayre, Hizzoner the Mayor: A Novel (1933) [combined snippets]:

"Hello, sweetheart. What do you think of the way things went? All my condolences."

"Thanks. We didn't do as well as I'd hoped, but it's merely a matter of education, and education takes time. I'm glad that drunken windbag, Holtsapple, is out, anyway."

"Say, what the hell kind of a switcheroo did they pull on him up there, for God's sake?"

"I don't know, but the only votes cast on the whole island were by the Spanish and the Portuguese and they voted for Satchells. And speaking of Satchells, I certainly hope he's going to settle down now and attend to business."

"Oh he will, he will. Harrie'll make us a good mayor. I hope. He'll photograph better than Holtsapple, anyway. Well, it had to come some time. I guess this was still some of that last year's Hoover ground swell, switcheroo or no switcheroo."

And from H.T. Webster, "They Don't Speak Our Language," in The Forum and Century (December 1933) [combined snippets]:

I can cheer, too, for the Hollywood gag men in conference on a comedy which has been revealed as too subtle, when they determine they must dumb it down. That phrase saves time and wearying gestures. And "switcheroo" has value in the state department as well as in the mouth of gag men.

"We can have him drunk and eating all the cherries out of the cocktails," proposes one gag man.

"No," objects another. "Lloyd did that."

"Oke," says the chief gag man. "We'll pull a switcheroo. We'll use olives instead."

Which may be why it is my private opinion that the quick passing of technocracy as an idea for conducting human affairs as well as a publicity device was due largely to its esoteric vocabulary. In other words, it laid an erg. And I doubt if well ever get far with currency stabilization or other international economic adjustments until economists begin abandoning the argot of celestial mathematicians.

David Bordwell, Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling, which cites Webster's article, asserts that switcheroo specifically meant "a new and different gag based on an old one," but I am doubtful about that claim, and I haven't been able to find the source of the definition that Bordwell puts in quotes.

Incidentally, John Algeo, Fifty Years Among the New Words: A Dictionary of Neologisms 1941-1991 indicates that the passage from Webster's article quoted above is the earliest confirmed instance of "dumb it down."

However, switcheroo may not be the oldest sibling in of the -eroo family. John Ayto, 20th Century Words (2002) states that flopperoo may merit that distinction:

flopperoo n (1931) a flop, failure. US colloquial. The first recorded coinage based on the fanciful suffix -eroo. This was probably an arbitrary alteration (based on words like buckaroo and kangaroo) of the equally meaningless -erino, which had been popular in the first decade of the century. Its use was popularized by the influential US newspaper columnist Walter Winchell, and it survived to the end of the century (joined in the 1960s by the even more elaborate -eroonie)

1931 American Speech: Walter Winchell loves to ... [see] terpsichorines ... in revusicals which might even turn out floperoos.

The article in American Speech that Ayto cites is Harold Wentworth, "The Neo-pseudo-suffix '-eroo'," American Speech (February 1942). It begins with this paragraph:

In certain circles—notably radio, sports, advertising, and motion pictures—one often does not pay the check, take a dive, tell a joke, or listen to swing music. Instead, he pays the checkeroo, takes a diveroo, tells a jokeroo, and listens to swingeroo. Do such terms as these merely end with meaningless extra syllables? Sometimes they do, but not always. There is a perceptible semantic variation between the new forms with tails and the old acaudate ones. That is, it may not be quite so jarring to the playwright's sensibilities to read that his work is a flopperoo as to read that it is—tersely, bluntly, rudely—a flop. And the hapless sapperoo or bummaroo seems somehow less so than he used to be before the suffixion.

In addition to covering flopperoo and switcheroo, Wentworth's article has entries for antseroo (1941), bingeroo (1939), bounceroo (1941), brusheroo (1941), bummaroo (1940), driperoo (1940), drooperoo (1941), finkeroo (1941), foosheroo (1941), gaggeroo (1940), gazaroo (circa 1921, from Newfoundland), gauchoroo/gaucheroo (1941), gozaroo (undated), gutseroo (1940) hameroo (1941), jiggeroo (1927[?]), jitteroo (1941), kisseroo (1940), kyseroo (1940), pokeroo (1940), phraseroo (1941), sapperoo (1941), scooteroo (1941), screameroo (1940), slickaroo (1941), smackeroo (1940), snaperoo (1941), snoozemarooed (1940), socceroo (1941), sockeroo (1940), spoteroo (1941), stinkeroo (1939), stufferoo (1941), successeroo (1940), swingaroo (1939), vickeroo (1941), wackaroo (1941), whackeroo (1940), and ziparoo (1941). There are probably additional -eroo entries that I couldn't see in my piecemeal effort to assemble Wentworth's article.

Wentworth explains the descriptive term he uses for the -eroo suffix as follows:

In the title I have called -eroo a 'neo-pseudo-suffix'—'neo' because eighty-one of its uses recorded below occurred in the last two years, since August, 1939, and none before 1931 except random distant relatives (jiggeroo, gazeroo); and 'pseudo' because of its deceptive resemblance to bona-fide suffixes like -ness, -er, and -(o)logy. The suffixial element in question is multiform and unpredictable, largely because its almost exclusive use is now in that unpredictable lawless appendage to standard English—slang.

I haven't been able to find a full readable copy of Wentworth's article, but I'm sure that it's well worth reading.

Further notes on show-business use of 'flop[p]eroo'

Charles Samuels, "Three Unique Literary Personalities Have Influence on American Writing," in the San Bernardino [California] Sun (October 15, 1933) discusses three U.S. literary figures who had died earlier in 1933, within four days of one another: short-story writer and newspaperman Ring Lardner, book publisher Horace Liveright, and Variety founder and publisher Sime Silverman. Samuels describes Silverman's contribution to American popular culture as follows:

Silverman, founder and editor of Variety, the theatrical weekly magazine that is called by hoofers great and small "the bible of show business, was the first to go. He died in Los Angeles [on September 23, 1933] at 61, the idolized oracle of the entertainment profession.

When Sime started his paper in 1905 he threw away his dictionary and set up in type for the first time the vibrant, living language of backstage vaudeville and legit, the Midway, the burlesque wheel and the tent show, and later the esoteric chatter of Hollywood and the radio bazaars.

Hundreds of original expressions came from his typewriter and from those of his staff which he taught to write like him. These were incorporated in the talk of a thousand towns; became integral items in the American idiom.

Among these are: 'Floperoo lays an egg,' meaning a show has failed; 'palooka,' which also indicates a failure; 'grand,' a thousand dollars.

Don Wilmeth, The Language of American Popular Entertainment: A Glossary of Argot, Slang, and Terminology (1981) [combined snippets] suggests that Variety lifted some of its argot (including flopperoo) from show-biz slang:

Flopperoo or floperoo A slang term for a failure, applied to a person or thing, especially a spectacularly unsuccessful stage show or film. Typical of slang popularized by Variety."

Wilmeth's book, which is particularly strong in vaudeville-era nomenclature, doesn't list any other -eroo words, but it does have this interesting note on ballyhoo:

bally or ballyhoo: One of the most common terms in all of popular entertainment jargon. Used as part of pitchmen's slang in virtually all forms of outdoor and environmental entertainments, especially the medicine show, carnival and circus. A bally, ballyhoo, or sometimes bally act, is simply an attraction used to draw a crowd. ... It's origin is unclear. Ballantine in Wild Tiger suggests that it is an abbreviation of "Ballyhooly truth," an English music-hall tag from the early 1880s, which in turn possibly was derived from "whole bloody truth." H.L. Mencken in The American Language: Supplement II (p. 684) offers two conflicting theories. One notion is that it might have come from a sea term meaning a small West Indian craft or odd rig, apparently a loan from the Carib through the Spanish, although the connection here is not clear. The second theory is that in the 1840s and 1850s many traveling tent shows were conducted by roving Irishmen who spoke both Gaelic and English. Their job was to talk up the show and to pass the hat. The Gaelic word for collect is bailinghadh, pronounced ballyoo (dissyllable) by Muster speakers and bállyoo by Connacht speakers. At intervals in the show the cry of Bailinghadh anois (Collection now) would be heard.

If ballyhoo was indeed practically ubiquitous in fields of American entertainment from the middle of the nineteenth century onward, it might have influenced the emergence of the kindred sounding suffix -eroo as an attachment to other show-business slang words. I have found no support for this idea in any of the sources I checked, however.

Sime Silverman grew up and lived most of his life in New York. The weekly Variety was published in New Cork City, but Daily Variety, which Silverman launched earlier in 1933, was published in Hollywood. For geographical reasons, the influences on his vocabulary were far more likely to have been vaudeville, Broadway, and the lower elements of the city's entertainment scene than cowboy lingo from out West. But even if Sime Silverman deserves credit for popularizing the suffix -eroo, buckaroo may have influenced mainstream acceptance of the suffix.

A note on 'buckaroo'

As D Krueger notes in a comment below, instances of buckaroo appear in the Chronicling America database of U.S. newspapers from as early as 1881 (in Oregon) and 1882 (in Idaho). From "Crooked River News," in the Albany [Oregon] State Rights Democrat (June 24, 1881):

Rumor has it that, a certain young "buckaroo" will stop "batching" [that is, being a bachelor] and take unto himself a cook,—will most probably bring her from near the Dalles, and if "Doctor" dont soon put in appearance H— will get away with his Bear creek daisy.

And from "That Canvass," in the Ketchum [Idaho] Keystone (December 1, 1882), responding to an insinuation in the Ha[i]ley [Idaho] News Miner that the editors of the Keystone and other Wood River newspapers were "bucking like California cayuses" in opposition to a decision made by the county board of canvassers:

Now, we can assure our big, eight-column brother that we have no occasion to exercise our bucking proclivities, as no buckaroo has set foot in our stirrups.

Searches instances of buckaroo, buccaroo, and bucaroo in newspaper databases yield a flurry of matches from the period 1888–1892, with instances from the Western states of California (1888, 1889, 1892), Oregon (1890, 1891, 1892), Idaho (1887, 1889, 1891), Montana (1891), Nevada (1888)

One noteworthy instance explicitly connects buckarooing with vaquero. From "All Sorts" in The Dalles [Oregon] Daily Chronicle (December 4, 1891):

Oregon girls take the "cake" when it comes to "buckarooing." Last week a band of cattle and an emigrant wagon from Oregon, bound for—God only knows where, passed through Wheatland [Wyoming] with two good-looking web-footed girls driving cattle, riding straddle and sitting in th[e] saddle with as much ease and grace as the most accomplished vaquero.—[Denver, Colorado] Field and Farm.

"Webfoot," by the way, is a longstanding nickname for Oregonians, supposedly coined by Californians as a comment on how rainy and muddy western Oregon tends to be. The Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania] Dispatch, which reprinted this item in 1891, is the only Eastern newspaper I've been able to find that mentions the word buckaroo in any form before 1897. The first mention of buckaroo in a New York newspaper that an Elephind search produces is in the New York Sun (September 1, 1906), where it appears as a specimen of the outlandish speech patterns and vocabulary of a bunch of Nebraskans who were visiting New York City.

Conclusion

Although I am quite suspicious of David Bordwell's assertion that switcheroo originated with the specific meaning "a new and different gag based on an old one," it seems very likely that switcheroo (and flopperoo and many of the similarly suffixed neologisms of the 1939–1941 great waveroo) originated in show business or in the show business press. Whether they owe anything to buckaroo or (for that matter) to the odd Newfoundland outlier gazaroo is open to conjecture. Wentworth seems to take the buckaroo connection seriously; Michael Quinion concedes that buckaroo may have exerted an influence; and John Ayto argues that, even if -aroo was affected by buckaroo, it derives more directly from "the equally meaningless -erino" of the nineteen-aughts.

Buckaroo (or buccaroo, or bucaroo) was certainly in use in the American West early enough to have influenced the popular emergence of the suffix -eroo. It was slow to make its way eastward across the United States, however, and floperoo may already have been in use in Eastern show-biz circles by the 1910s, when buckaroo truly caught on in the U.S. East. A wildcard here is Ayto's assertion about the influence of the suffix -erino on -eroo. I have not been able to find any information on that suffix or its popularity in the decade after 1900.