May 15, 1998

deadpan

A recent review of a performance-art piece by Beck (yes, that Beck) noted that the musicians performing the strange, dada-esque piece were "totally deadpan," as in surprisingly serious considering the strange subject matter. Where does the word "deadpan" come from? Does it always mean "surprisingly serious amid trivial circumstances?"

The word deadpan rarely has any denotation about the subject matter or circumstances. Its usual meaning, as an adjective or adverb, is 'displaying no humor or emotion; impassive', and insofar as the word comments on the circumstances, it's only connotative, in that the circumstances might be expected to require some humor or emotion.

Deadpan is of theatrical origin. It derives from dead and the slang term pan 'the face', a Variety-ism of the 1920s that became very common during that decade. (Pan also had some earlier, somewhat similar senses, including 'the skull', found in Chaucer, and shut pan! was an early Americanism for stop talking.)

A dead pan was thus 'a face or facial expression displaying no emotion, animation, or humor'. This noun is first recorded in Vanity Fair in 1927; a theatrical glossary published the next year in the New York Times defines the modifier Dead-Pan as "Playing a rôle with expressionless face as, for instance, the work of Buster Keaton." Finally, the verb deadpan 'to speak, act, or utter in a deadpan manner; to maintain a dead pan' arose by the early 1940s, apparently as a journalistic coinage (rather than a theatrical one).