GANDY DANCER

[Q] From Peter Piecuch: Help settle a family argument about gandy dancer. Most dictionaries define it as a railroad worker, but state that the origin is unknown. Most encyclopaedias don’t list it at all. I seem to have once read that the origin relates to the first automated track-laying machine manufactured by the Gandy Corporation of Chicago.

[A] There’s much doubt and confusion about this wonderful expression for a member of a track-laying or maintenance crew. It is first recorded in 1918. Since then it has had various slang meanings, including a petty crook or tramp, an Italian, a jitterbug, or a womaniser or active socialite. But the original sense referred to a worker who tamped down the ballast between the ties using a special tool. This involved vigorous stamping on the tool while turning in a circle, an action which might be taken to resemble dancing.

The tool was seemingly called a gandy, but where the name came from is a mystery. It would seem it was based on some bit of railway slang now lost to us. The idea that it referred to a Chicago business named the Gandy Manufacturing Company — which supposedly supplied a variety of tools to railway workers — seems to rest on a reference in a book called Railroad Avenue by Freeman H Hubbard, published in 1945. Several people have searched for this business, but have failed to find any trace of it in railway trade journals or Chicago city directories of the period. However, a number of otherwise reputable works continue to give this as the source.

Some writers have suggested that gandy may be a corrupted form of gander, from the nodding heads of the workers using the tool, implying that the tool was actually named after the gandy dancer who used it. But this is no more than guesswork, I’m afraid.

World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–2009. All rights reserved. Contact me if you want to reproduce this piece, but first see my advice page, which also has notes about linking. Your comments and corrections are welcome.