Get out of Dodge or Get out of dodge?

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eric11210

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Hi all,

Quick question:

When using the phrase "get out of dodge" (as in "I'm going to get the hell out of dodge"), is it capitalized? I know Dodge was a real place and the phrase comes from the old west, referring to Dodge City, Kansas, but when it's used colloquially to refer to getting out of a dangerous situation right away, do you still capitalize?

In a short story I'm working on, I had it lower case at first. Then I capitalized it, then when someone was reading it for me, I was told it should be lower case. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Eric
 
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poetinahat

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Hi, Eric -- I'd say yes. The phrase still refers to the place, even if it's only metaphorically. The same would apply, for example, to the British phrase "sent to Coventry".

But my primary purpose in the Grammar forum is to give an intuitive opinion, thereby flushing out responses from people who really know. Wait for them!
 

Jamesaritchie

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eric11210 said:
Hi all,

Quick question:

When using the phrase "get out of dodge" (as in "I'm going to the hell out of dodge"), is it capitalized? I know Dodge was a real place and the phrase comes from the old west, referring to Dodge City, Kansas, but when it's used colloquially to refer to getting out of a dangerous situation right away, do you still capitalize?

In a short story I'm working on, I had it lower case at first. Then I capitalized it, then when someone was reading it for me, I was told it should be lower case. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Eric
Click to expand...

Dodge remains a place, so it's always upper case. Lower case wouldn't even make sense, since lower case dodge means something totally different.
 
pink lily

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Yep, place names are capitalized.
 
Maryn

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Am I the only one who wonders why it's Dodge and not some other western town?

Maryn, curious type
 
Higgins

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Something dodgy about Dodge?

eric11210 said:
Hi all,

Quick question:

When using the phrase "get out of dodge" (as in "I'm going to get the hell out of dodge"), is it capitalized? I know Dodge was a real place and the phrase comes from the old west, referring to Dodge City, Kansas,...


Eric
Click to expand...


Things get dodgy. Time to get the Hell out of Dodge. Surely they didn't say that on Gunsmoke...which was just a sadistic family show.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Sokal said:
Things get dodgy. Time to get the Hell out of Dodge. Surely they didn't say that on Gunsmoke...which was just a sadistic family show.
Click to expand...

Actually, I do remember hearing that on Gunsmoke. What else could Marshal Dillion say?

Sadistic? I thought it was a wonderful family show. The best western ever on TV. I still watch it every morning.
 

eric11210

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Thanks guys. I thought it was supposed to be capitalized. I'll change it back.

Eric
 

blacbird

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Jamesaritchie said:
Well, it didn't come from Gunsmoke because the term was used long, long before Gunsmoke became a series. I think Gunsmoke just popularized it, made it part of the common lexicon.
Click to expand...

I always thought it came from Gunsmoke. I'd like to see some documentation that places it earlier. But Dodge City is a real place, still is, in fact, and I've been through there. It was a real frontierish Western town, back in the late 1800s, too, thus the setting of the fabled radio and TV series there.

But I was always amused, on the TV series, when Matt Dillon and Chester or Festus would ride out of Dodge up into the mountains to capture the bad guys. Dodge City, Kansas isn't within five hundred miles of a mountain.

caw
 

Jamesaritchie

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blacbird said:
I always thought it came from Gunsmoke. I'd like to see some documentation that places it earlier. But Dodge City is a real place, still is, in fact, and I've been through there. It was a real frontierish Western town, back in the late 1800s, too, thus the setting of the fabled radio and TV series there.

But I was always amused, on the TV series, when Matt Dillon and Chester or Festus would ride out of Dodge up into the mountains to capture the bad guys. Dodge City, Kansas isn't within five hundred miles of a mountain.

caw
Click to expand...

I'll have to look for some documentation. I've seen the phrase in books much older than Gunsmoke. But think about this. Dodge City was around a hundred years before Gunsmoke. It's absolutely impossible that people did not say "Get out of Dodge" at least a few times during that hundred year period, especially since ordering people out of any town was one of the main tools used by law enforcement during the period.

And, what, did you actually want the TV show to take you along every step of a five hundred mile trip? You're supposed to understand the trip took a long time, but you aren't seeing the boring parts.
 
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blacbird

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Jamesaritchie said:
I'll have to look for some documentation. I've seen the phrase in books much older than Gunsmoke. But think about this. Dodge City was around a hundred years before Gunsmoke. It's absolutely impossible that people did not say "Get out of Dodge" at least a few times during that hundred year period, especially since ordering people out of any town was one of the main tools used by law enforcement during the period.

And, what, did you actually want the TV show to take you along every step of a five hundred mile trip? You're supposed to understand the trip took a long time, but you aren't seeing the boring parts.
Click to expand...

It's been a while, but I seem to remember them kind of doing this in an overnight campout, or an afternoon. I seriously doubt any local lawman in the 1880s rode a horse 500 miles in search of anybody. But TV can be fun. There was a short-lived "modern" western series called "Houston" in the 1980s in which the opening scene had a couple of guys on horses riding over a mountain ridge which revealed, right on the other side, the modern city of Houston, Texas. I gotta visit me them Houston mountains sometime.

And, though you're probably right about somebody sometime having said "Get out of Dodge" before Gunsmoke came along, I'd bet the phrase became an enduring piece of modern slang as a direct result of that series.

caw
 
Cav Guy

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Dodge City grew up around Fort Dodge (founded 1865), and first hit its hey-day as a jumping off point for buffalo hunters in the early 1870s. It wasn't until about 1875 that the railroad reached Dodge, turning it into a cattle shipment point and thus "cattle town." By the late 1870s the place was known for turbulent local politics and a number of gunslinging lawmen (the Masterson brothers, David Mather, the Earps, and other frontier notables). There were a number of "clean up Dodge" initiatives launched during this time, often by one faction aiming at allies of another faction. Though I don't know the exact origin of the phrase, I'd say there's a good chance that it might have been coined by a Dodge City (or other Kansas) newspaper during one of those "clean up" efforts.
 

Jamesaritchie

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blacbird said:
And, though you're probably right about somebody sometime having said "Get out of Dodge" before Gunsmoke came along, I'd bet the phrase became an enduring piece of modern slang as a direct result of that series.

caw
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Absolutely, and this is how Gunsmoke is usually credited. It gets the credit, or blame, for making the phrase a part of an almost daily lexicon.
 

Jamesaritchie

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blacbird said:
It's been a while, but I seem to remember them kind of doing this in an overnight campout, or an afternoon. I seriously doubt any local lawman in the 1880s rode a horse 500 miles in search of anybody. But TV can be fun. There was a short-lived "modern" western series called "Houston" in the 1980s in which the opening scene had a couple of guys on horses riding over a mountain ridge which revealed, right on the other side, the modern city of Houston, Texas. I gotta visit me them Houston mountains sometime.

And, though you're probably right about somebody sometime having said "Get out of Dodge" before Gunsmoke came along, I'd bet the phrase became an enduring piece of modern slang as a direct result of that series.

caw
Click to expand...

Matt Dillion was not a local lawman. He was a U.S. Marshal. United States Marshals had to oversee a huge amount of territory, and there were darned few of them to do the job. They sometimes pursued criminals many hundreds of miles. What you seldom saw was a U. S. Marshal spending so much time sitting around town drinking in a saloon.

They made money by making arrests, not by drawing a paycheck each week.
 

Lance_in_Shanghai

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Cav Guy, thanks for the details of history. The short answer, yes, upper case D for formal name, Dodge City, KS. The phrase "Get out of Dodge" was a paraphrase for all those gunslingers in western movies who warned their friend or foe, "Mister, you'd better be out of this town by sundown or you'll be in a heap of trouble." Then, if the other dude was, well, a dude, a.k.a. dweeb, he might say to his lady friend, "Clementine, I think we ought to get out of Dodge since I'm no match for Doc Holiday with my gun."
 
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