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Zac Z
Lv 7
Zac Z asked in Education & ReferenceWords & Wordplay · 4 years ago

Did "tool" already have the connotation of "fool", "jerk" in the early 1950s?

I'm reading "The Space Merchants" by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth which was written at the beginning of the 1950s.

There's a scene where the protagonist has a phone conversation with the operator of his insurance company. She informs him that his rates have gone up because he was promoted to a more dangerous position in his company.

The new rate is very high and he is not pleased by this.

Then this sentence follows:

"I didn't blow my top; she was just a tool."

I'm not a native speaker and I'm wondering whether the usage of the word "tool" is a pun.

But did "tool" already have its current meaning of "idiot", "jerk"?

Thanks in advance!

Update:

ETA: Just to make this clear. I am fully aware that the principal meaning is that of a person who's just doing her job of passing on the information of her company and is their tool in that sense.

I'm wondering about a possible second meaning that would make this a pun.

I am doubtful of this but who knows. That's why I ask if this current meaning already existed back when the story was written.

Maybe a someone who was around in these days of the Golden Age of SF reads this and can help out.

Update 2:

Well, the context of this passage doesn't really sound like a pun was intended but I wanted to check whether I'd miss out some nuance here.

Thanks for all answers. (I'd been hoping for some senior citizen to jump in but I guess these folks won't frequent a platform like this one that much... ;-)

6 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    4 years ago
    Favourite answer

    As others have said, I think that in this passage it means "somebody who's just following orders," etc. However, "tool" has been a euphemism for "penis" for centuries. Even the cognate word in Old Norse ("tol") also meant "penis," according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

    The OED doesn't have a separate entry for "tool" in the sense of "jerk/fool," but I suppose it's not unreasonable to think that if the Old Norse and Shakespeare-era English people used "tool" to mean "penis," it probably got applied to somebody as a "What-a-dick-he-is" sort of insult much earlier than the 1950s.

  • Anonymous
    4 years ago

    Not in my part of southern Britain. To me, as a youngster in the 1950s, a tool was simply an object for doing a job - spanner, screwdriver, drill, etc. In my teens (early 1960s) I got to know "tool" as one of the many slang words for penis.

    But using "tool" in the sentence which you have quoted means to me that she was just a "cog in the works", just somebody without power, just doing her job. Sort of: "Don't shoot the messenger" just because it is she who brings the bad news.

  • Donald B
    Lv 7
    4 years ago

    In this context it means a tool of the company. She was only doing what the company required i.e. a tool of the company.

  • BOSFLASH
    Lv 7
    4 years ago

    She just worked for the company and was doing the job she was paid to do.

    "It's only business," she concluded, taking on a heavy mobster accent.

    Source(s): TLM
  • Robt
    Lv 7
    4 years ago

    Nope obviously you need to read the passage in full, again.

  • Pedrobear
    Lv 6
    4 years ago

    Sounds like tool is being used in the "don't shoot the messenger" sense to me.

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