Chrysti The Wordsmith: Goldrush - 3

Good day word lovers this is Christie the wordsmith. The discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848 drew hundreds of thousands of hopeful prospectors from around the globe to the mountains of California some of the verbal expressions generated in the California gold camps of the 1850s and 60s have moved from working jargon into Standard American English such as to pan out which originally referred to a good showing of gold in a prospector as Pan and now means to yield a result or to succeed another linguistic invention from the mining camps is the word bedrock. The earliest citation of this term is found in Nelson Kingsley's Diary The Memoirs of a young prospector who mined in California from eight hundred forty nine thousand eight hundred fifty one. Kingsley wrote We are in for seeing the bedrock. All along the bottom here of course Kingsley is referring to the solid rock underlying the soil where gold is found in quantity. This is now a standard geological term but it's also useful in a figurative sense. Bedrock can mean the foundation or

source as when a New York Times journalist called Johnny Cash is gravelly baritone. The vocal bedrock of American Country Music bedrock may also refer to an underlying principle as in honesty is the bedrock of his personal life. Born in California's mining camps and raised in our standard vocabulary the word bedrock is a truly American linguistic invention. I'm Christie the wordsmith and K.J. all TFM in Bozeman Montana. CHRISTIE The wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.