copacetic

[eberntson]

copacetic

1919, but it may have origins in 19c. Amer.Eng. Southern black speech. Origin unknown, suspects include Latin, Yiddish (cf. Heb. kol b'seder), Italian, Louisiana French (coupe-sétique), and Native American. None is considered convincing by linguists.

I'm sure this won't make it in to the good word but it is a fun word. I picked it up from my dad someplace, or an old B&W movie. Figured you could have a ball tracking this aby down.

I used it with a Russian co-worked and he asked about what it meant. You gotta love [i]American slang[/i].

[sluggo]

Actually already been done, suggested August last year by PW and followed up by the good Doc in September

[Perry]

What a memory. Like a steel trap our Sluggo is.

[eberntson]

[sluggo]

What a memory. Like a steel trap our Sluggo is.

Nah, I just remembered (dis)cussing the variant spelling (I go copasetic) and used "Search".

Sorry Eb

[Perry]

I would happily go with the Hebrew origin theory. But that's only because I really do say "hakol beseder" several times a day. (Usually it is when my wife calls me at work and asks how my day is progressing. The rest of the conversation is in Hebrew also, BTW.)

[Stargzer]

What a memory. Like a steel trap our Sluggo is.

Nah, I just remembered (dis)cussing the variant spelling (I go copasetic) and used "Search".

Sorry Eb

I usually use that metaphor thusly:

"He had a mind like a steel trap: closed and hard to open."

Doesn't sound like our Sluggo!

I seem to recall first hearing "copacetic" used back in the late 60s and early 70s. It was popular with some of the African-American students in college.

[sluggo]

In a musical discussion thread (Mudcat Café) this was posted unattributed:

We know very little about the origin of the word copacetic, meaning "excellent, first-rate." Is its origin to be found in Italian, in the speech of southern Black people, in the Creole French dialect of Louisiana, or in Hebrew? John O'Hara, who used the word in Appointment in Samarra, later wrote that copacetic was "a Harlem and gangster corruption of an Italian word." O'Hara went on to say, "I don't know how to spell the Italian, but it's something like copacetti."


His uncertainty about how to spell the Italian is paralleled by uncertainty about how to spell copacetic itself. Copacetic has been recorded with the spellings copasetic, copasetty, copesetic, copisettic, and kopasettee. The spelling is now more or less fixed, however, as copacetic or copasetic, even though the origin of the word has not been determined.


The Harlem connection mentioned by O'Hara would seem more likely than the Italian, since copacetic was used by Black jazz musicians and is said to have been Southern slang in the late 19th century. If copacetic is Creole French in origin, it would also Southern homeland. According to this explanation, copacetic came from the Creole French word coupersètique, which meant "able to be coped with," "able to cope with anything and everything," "in good form," and also "having a healthy appetite or passion for life or love." Those who support the Hebrew or Yiddish origin copacetic do not necessarily deny the Southern connections of the word. One explanation has it that storekeepers used the Hebrew phrase 'kol bes seddeq', "all with justice," when asked if things were O.K. Black children who were in the store as customers or employees heard this phrase as copacetic.

(original thread unspools here)