What does the G in G-string stand for?
Dear Cecil:
What does the G in G-string stand for? Is it related to the G in G-men (the FBI), or should that be gee!-string? The origin of this name isn't the local common knowledge I expected.
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Dear Suzanne:
Modern lexicography, believe it or not, is at a loss to account for the origin of the term G-string (which actually is often spelled geestring). One writer offers the thesis that a G-string resembles a capital G in shape. Makes perfect sense to me. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a burlesque show and thought, goodness, the apparatus keeping this young lady from getting arrested resembles a capital G when viewed from above. I must notify the Smithsonian.
The earliest known reference to G-string is in J.H. Beadles's Western Wilds, written circa 1878: "Around each boy's waist is the tight 'geestring,' from which a single strip of cloth runs between the limbs from front to back." From this we see that G-string originally referred only to the thong around the waist, which is precisely what a "girdle" was in its earliest form. Thus G-string may be an abbreviation of "girdlestring," the only difficulty being that no such word has ever come to light, that I am aware of, anyway. Alternatively, we may note that "string" was a common 19th-century synonym for "whip," which was of the same rawhide construction as the aforementioned prairie G-string, and that "gee" is an expletive frequently employed to accelerate one's horse. A "geestring" may thus have been a pioneer horsewhip later discovered to be useful in holding up one's pants, or the equivalent thereof. Finally, and rather unimaginatively, we may observe that a G-string (the string part, that is) bears a superficial likeness to the fiddle string of similar designation. However, this explanation does not appeal to me, and I trust the discriminating reader will say it pretty much eats as well.
