snollygoster

This is one of those gloriously American coinages that sounds as if it ought to have fur, fangs, and a bad temper. In 1845, a Cincinnati paper used snolly goster for a sort of turbocharged, self-propelling monster of a thing, and only later did it settle into political mud-slinging. The tail end is the easier part: goster was already a noisy, bragging sort of word, like somebody who can’t stop gabbing at a tavern door. The front half may have been colored by snallygaster, the Maryland bogey-beast, or even by Pennsylvania German schnell, so speed and menace are lurking in the wallpaper. By the 1890s it had become a perfect label for a slick, unprincipled office-seeker — the kind of person who makes you think of a wolf in a silk hat. You can almost hear it slithering off the tongue like a creature that already knows where the votes are hiding.