G-Man (slang)
G-Man (short for Government Man) is a slang term for Special agents of the United States Government. It is specifically used as a term for a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, its first known use in America was in 1928. The earliest cite in OED for the American usage is 1930 from a book on Al Capone by FD Pasley.
The phrase may have been inspired by its use in Ireland by G Section of seven sections of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. G section was a plainclothes unit that specifically dealt with investigation of subversion and terrorism during the Irish Civil War.[1] [2]
In FBI mythology, the nickname is held to have originated during the arrest of gangster George "Machine Gun" Kelly by agents of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), a forerunner of the FBI, in September 1933. Finding himself unarmed, Kelly supposedly shouted "Don't shoot, G-Men! Don't shoot, G-Men!"[3] This event is dramatized in the 1959 film, The FBI Story. With the popularity of "Film Noir" and gangster films during the 1940s and 50s, 'G-Men' became a popular slang term for the FBI.
[edit] See also
- FBI portrayal in media
- Gang Busters radio program originally called "G-Men" and developed in part by J. Edgar Hoover.
- Junior G-Men
- fed
[edit] References
- ^ p.69 McFerran, Douglass IRA man: Talking with the Rebels Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997
- ^ p.65 Cottrell, Peter The Anglo-Irish War: The Troubles of 1913-1922 Osprey Publishing, 28/03/2006
- ^ "Timeline of FBI History". Federal Bureau of Investigation. Archived from the original on 2006-11-21. http://web.archive.org/web/20061121202924/http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/history/historicdates.htm. Retrieved 2006-11-23.
[edit] External links
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