William E. “Pussyfoot” Johnson in 1925. A bald man with moustache and tweed suit sitting at a desk.
25 January 2021
Pussyfoot, along with its inflections like pussyfooting and pussyfooter, generally refers to caution, hesitancy, and delicacy. It can also convey evasiveness or even deception. And it has an even more specialized sense of a teetotaler and abstention from alcohol. It can be a noun, verb, or adjective.
Its origin is quite straightforward and obvious. It is a metaphor for a cat-like tread, but the connection to the anti-saloon movement and prohibition is less than obvious.
The adjective pussy-footed is in place by 1893 when it is used in Scribner’s Magazine to describe the Republican Convention of 1860 which nominated Abraham Lincoln as its presidential candidate:
The brief speech of Curtis’s was, next to the nominations themselves, the feature of the proceedings around which most interest centered; it was high-water mark. As to the effect of it, I suppose it was simply to shake up and put courage into men who were beginning to walk pussy-footed and shy at shadows.
To walk pussy-footed is pretty much a direct metaphor of a cat’s movement, but by 1899 the term had become more allusive, although with the reference to cushions (the pads on a cat’s paw) there is still a connection to cats. From the Colorado Citizen of 27 July 1899:
Ex-Senator Pugh of Alabama, now in Washington, doesn’t wear any cushions on his political views, nor does he believe in trying to win by pussy-foot methods.
By 1905, pussy-footing was being used in a completely figurative sense, with no allusions to cats. Here is an article from the Atlanta Constitution of 20 March 1905, that describes the campaigning-for-president-without-actually-announcing-one’s-candidacy that is so familiar to us today. In this case the candidate, Vice President Charles Fairbanks, had only been inaugurated three weeks before (again, campaigning for the next election as soon as the last one is over is nothing new):
Vice President Charles Warren Fairbanks is pussy-footing it around Washington accompanied everywhere by a presidential lightning rod reaching even above his scanty covered heard. His glad handing is as pronounced and prolific as it was out at Chicago where it was his joyous practice to shake hands with every man he saw and every time he saw him, utterly regardless of the personal comfort of the victim. In every movement, every gesture, every suggestion he is now as much a candidate for the presidential nomination as will be in the springtime of 1908—and perhaps a good deal more.
The connection to teetotals and prohibition arises from the nickname of the noted prohibitionist William E. “Pussyfoot” Johnson, something of a proto-Eliot Ness. He earned the nickname due to his reputation for stealth in combatting bootleggers in the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) c. 1906. A 1920 biography gives the following story as to how Johnson acquired his nickname:
The pool hall keeper studied him, and concluding that he was a genuine customer, opened a trap door, took out a bottle of spirits and handed it over. Johnson poured out the drink and then demanded some tobacco. The saloon keeper had a .44 revolver sticking out of each hip pocket and was the kind of man who would shoot at the first suspicion. Johnson wanted to get him in such a position that he could not readily reach his gun. The man turned round to take his tobacco jar down out of a cupboard. Instantly Johnson had whipped the revolvers out of his pockets and placed their cold barrels on the ears of the bravo. He had his man disarmed and led out a prisoner in no time. 'The West then named him " Pussyfoot."
Pussyfoot was being applied to prohibitionists generally within only a few years. From the Nebraska State Journal of 9 March 1910:
Five weeks at the most will see the end of the license campaign. Thus far such campaigning as the men are doing who want to put the saloons back has been a pussyfoot performance of prodigious perfection. It is impossible to extort so much as an echo from the pro-saloon side. The union veterans republican club endorses the dry policy, but nobody stands up to be counted with the wets.
Pussyfoot is commonly associated with Theodore Roosevelt, and he is known to have used the term on many occasions, but he is not the coiner. Although we can credit Roosevelt as one who helped popularize it. And it should be noted that Charles Fairbanks was his vice president, and the Atlanta Constitution article cited above may have used pussy-footing in that particular article because it was associated with his boss.
Sources:
Bromley, Isaac H. “Historic Moments: The Nomination of Lincoln.” Scribner’s Magazine, 14.5, November 1893, 653. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
McKenzie, Frederick Arthur. “Pussyfoot” Johnson, Crusader—Reformer—a Man Among Men. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1920, 88. Internet Archive.
Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln), 9 March 1910, 6/1. NewspaperArchive.com.
Ohl, Joseph. “Pussy-Footing by Fairbanks.” Atlanta Constitution, 20 March 1905, 3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. [The OED gives the date of this citation as 1903, but that’s an error probably due to either a simple typo or to ProQuest’s scanned copy having an unreadable date. The context of the article places it, without question, from 1905.]
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2007, s.v. pussyfoot, adj. and n., pussyfoot, v., pussy-footed, adj., pussyfooter, n., pussyfooting, n., pussyfooting, adj.
“Washington Letter.” Colorado Citizen, 27 July 1899, 1. NewspaperArchive.com.
Photo credit: Unknown photographer, 24 April 1920. Library of Congress, public domain image.