etymology - When was "fo' sho'" first used in print, television, or music? Or, better yet, when was it standard southern slang?


I can only seem to find Urban Dictionary, et al. references, so I'm turning here for an answer. I know that "fo" ("for") and "sho" ("sure") are common southern dialect replacements, but a debate recently took hold in a social group of mine. When was it "a thing."


Having grown up in south Texas until the year 2000, and having heard people say it my entire youth, I'm fairly confident in it being before then. My friend, on the other hand, is adamant that the expression is dated 2000s and on.


Does anyone know where I might be able to go to get a reasonably reliable answer?



Answer



First Uses in Print


The first appearances in print of 'fo sho' that I could find represent a dialectal pronunciation of "for sure". For example, OED provides details for 'sho':



sho | sho', adv.
....
Etymology: Representing a pronunciation of sure....
U.S. (in African-American usage).



I found two, or four appearances of 'fo sho' in 1871, depending on how you count.



"Mighty quah hoss in de pastah?" —
Whah fo' he quah? — "You dunno?
"Kase o' de bah places on him? — "
Dem's whah de woun's wah, fo' sho.


Excerpt from the unattributed poem "Mahs' Lewis's Ride" in the 6 May 1871 issue of Appletons' Journal. Bold emphasis mine.



He was ten when Cousin John went dead — 
    Ten fo' sho — "
....
I was nowhah 'longside young Mas' Ran' — 
    Nowhah — no!
  An' I ain't a dwarf fo' sho.
....
"Hole fas', Cesah!" an' wid dat he leap' — 
    Nothin' mo' — 
  Den I loss all else fo' sho.


Excerpts from "Cæsar Rowan" by Thomas Dunn English, in the July 1871 issue of Scribner's Monthly. Bold emphasis mine.



On the surface, the appearances of 'fo sho' in 1871 were "just a cigar". The timing of the appearances, however, midway through the US post-Civil War Reconstruction Era, suggests that the orthographical contortions might have served the more insidious purpose of diminishing a newly empowered social, cultural and political force.


Standard Southern Pronunciation


Writing in the self-published 1893 Some Peculiarities of Speech in Mississippi, Hubert Anthony Shands makes some pertinent observations concerning class differences in the pronunciation of r:



b) R is so seldom pronounced in the middle or at the end of words, by any class of people, that its pronunciation in either of those positions forms an exception. It is quite a peculiar circumstance that a class of very illiterate whites pronounce r much more distinctly than any other people in Mississippi. This pronunciation of r forms, perhaps, the most distinguishing feature of the real "po white trash" dialect as contrasted with the negro dialect. But it is in order to say that no class pronounces r at all uniformly. ... According to Earle, r is frequently dropped from words in the south of England, and especially by the cockneys.



As a matter of speech, in contrast to print, then, Shands suggests that the pronunciation of "for sure" as 'fo sho' was a feature of the Mississippi dialect of English for all classes, with the possible sporadic exception of "po white trash" (illiterate white people).


Shands' observations were of the Mississippi dialect in the late 1800s. The non-rhoticity he observed, wherein r is only pronounced in a prevocalic position, and mentioned as a characteristic of the speech of "any class" became more strongly associated with the dialect of Southern blacks; one vehicle for the strengthening of that association was through the positioning of non-rhoticity in fictional orthographical representations of the putative dialect of Southern blacks. Such circumstances quite possibly precipitated the later and now contemporary thingness of 'fo sho'.


The Slang Thing


As suggested by Erik R. Thomas, in a paper titled "Rural white Southern accents" (2006),



The civil rights struggle seems to have caused both African Americans and Southern whites to stigmatize linguistic variables associated with the other group. It coincides with ... the reversal in which non-rhoticity changed from a prestigious to an unprestigious feature among whites.



The corollary of that reversal of prestigious non-rhoticity for Southern whites was reinforcement of prestigious non-rhoticity for Southern blacks...and, tangentially, supporters of the civil rights movement. That prestige found expression, in the later 1900s and early 2000s, in the gradual and somewhat tentative adoption of a slangish 'fo sho' among both blacks and whites outside of the Southern US, speakers who did not naturally share the dialect wherein non-rhoticity was a continuing affirmation of group identity and, perhaps, an expression of opposition to ongoing social and civil injustices.


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