We hear it in lots of 1930s gangster movies: “He got bumped
off.”
I don’t know for sure the origin of the term “to bump
(someone) off” (as in to kill)/ “bumped off” (as in killed), but I have a
pretty darn good theory: Shakespeare.
Yeah, I know, Shakespeare and gangster slang don’t exacitaly
(<misspelling intended) jive, but I still think it’s so. Here’s my evidence:
In Hamlet, a play
I’m sure all gangsters and their molls went to see every day (okay, maybe not,
but it’s Shakespeare’s most famous play; and in the days before TV, that really meant something!), there’s a little-known speech about “To be or
not to be…” during which Hamlet longwindedly says lots of ponderous stuff,
among which includes the phrase: “When we have shuffled off this mortal coil…”
Well, all jokes aside, the issue of a premature death was
likely no joke to gangsters and such, and so I’m guessing they knew this little
Hamlet speech. And you know how slang
happens: one thing becomes another through a joke or an inference, and my guess
is that someone took the idea of shuffling off this mortal coil and decided to
make it up to someone else, and so shuffling off (as in a natural death) became
bumping off (as in a death helped along by others), and the bumping off
referred to this mortal coil (as in: “let’s bump him off this mortal coil”).
I have no real proof, but I think it’s likely I’m correct in
this analysis of the possible etymology of “to bump (someone) off”. After all,
if it’s not this mortal coil they’re being bumped off of, then what is
it they’re being bumped off of? It’s
the only thing that makes sense. And with everyone throwing Shakespeare phrases
around like they did back then, it’s pretty darned likely, I figure. (After
all, every single horror movie in the
1930s mentioned: “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are
dreamt of in your philosophy.” And that’s
from Hamlet, too. {Some even say
something more like: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, you know, and
all that…” So it was obviously something everyone was supposed to know, or else
it was an in-joke amongst horror movie writers about how overused it was.} So I
think even lowbrow horror fans were expected to be up on their Shakespeare quotes
back then.)
(And I know this is a satirical blog, but I think this theory
is likely accurate.)
