Where did ‘gig ’em,’ ‘good bull’ and ‘Old Army’ come from?

The origin of many an Aggie term has faded into history, but as old records, books and newspapers are scanned and digitized, more information becomes available. 

In this way, new research may be able to shed light on Aggie slang such as “gig ’em,” “good bull” and “Old Army.” If you can add any facts or information, please email AggieNetwork@AggieNetwork.com.

Taking these three terms in reverse order … (These sections are long, so here are a few shortcuts: Click to jump to gig ’em, good bull and Old Army.)

‘Old Army’: Probably as old as armies

This is a broader term used in the military, not just at Texas A&M, but still with a similar meaning of “how things used to be.”

And it’s really quite old. 

Writing about the times of relative peace between U.S. wars from 1784 to 1898, military historian Edward M. Coffman defined it this way: “The Old Army is the army that existed before the last war.” Wars bring change – new technology, new personnel, other advances. If you were in the Army before the current or most recent war, then the Army you remember is the “Old Army.”

A Civil War general referred to his time in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) as the “old Army.” A World War II veteran writing about joining the Army in the 1930s titled his memoir “Soldiers of the Old Army.” In the Marine Corps, a parallel term is the “old Corps.”

A 2023 comment in Reddit.com’s U.S. Army forum asked, “When was the old Army and when did the new Army start?” One response: “The old Army was the one that you joined, but it died about a day or two before the youngest person in the conversation joined.”

At Texas A&M, some of the earliest citations currently known are from 1923 and 1934. 

But in a college context, it’s more about how things were during your days on campus.

Bill Leftwich ’45 wrote in his 1976 book The Corps at Aggieland that “Ol’ Army” was probably the fish year of whomever you are talking to, and that he believed, naturally, that his own fish year of 1941 was the last year of “Ol’ Army.”

A Houston Post writer in 1958 said that “an Old Army Aggie may be classed as one who wishes things at the college to remain the same as they were when he was in school — no matter when that was.”

And today’s Association of Former Students style guide defines “Old Army” as “Former students who were at A&M way back when. The exact time of this era is undefined and usually changes according to the age of the person speaking.”

‘Good bull’: Nonsense in the name of Aggie Spirit

The term “good bull” as Aggies know it today came into use before or around 1945, when some of the earliest usages recorded in The Battalion include a columnist lamenting that he doesn’t know why people don’t “do odd and amusing things any more,” wondering “where all the good ‘bull’ has escaped to.”

In the late ’40s and early ’50s, the Batt archives show that Aggies used “good bull” commonly to mean pranks and silliness, especially when done in the name of Aggie Spirit. 

That’s pretty close to today’s usage, except that we’ve added another meaning of Aggie approval (“That’s good bull!”). 

So where did it come from?

Aggies could — and do — speculate that it relates to the military officers who oversee the Corps (known on the Quad for decades as “bulls”); the generations-old Corps dining hall term “bull neck” for “meat”; or “bull ring” for Aggie cadets doing extra rounds of drilling to work off demerits.

Instead, looking at uses in the Batt over time, “good bull” seems to have come from Aggies’ enjoyment of sitting around and talking with each other.

“Bull session,” meaning an informal group discussion, first pops up in the United States in 1919. It’s frequently used this way at Texas A&M in the Batt from 1941 to 1951, often with Aggies talking about enjoying a “good bull session.” 

Here, “bull” carries a meaning that it’s had since at least the 1600s: “nonsense,” “silliness” or even outright “lies.” Believe it or not, this use of “bull” is three centuries older than the related eight-letter word that indicates your nonsense smells like cattle manure, which is first cited in 1910 by the Oxford English Dictionary.

This history is reflected by the usages seen in The Battalion.

A 1927 piece in the Batt talks about a fictional student drinking before he goes to a dance (“pre-gaming,” as it’s called now) because he "can't bull the girls too well." 

In 1934, a Batt staffer pokes fun at the Aggies working on the yearbook for re-using Battalion photos and gently mocks their “bull and jokes.”

Then, as you get into the 1940s, you start to see “good bull” becoming our modern term:

In 1942, a joke is described as “long, but good bull!” A 1949 letter to the editor defends Aggies burning down the UT bonfire as “good bull.” In a 1951 editorial, the Batt frowns upon pranks like stealing mascots “and a multitude of other things generally classed as ‘good bull.’”

By 1985, a Battalion writer says good bull “means something positive, something fun.”

And so it has been ever since.

‘Gig ’em’: Maybe not all about TCU?

You’ve probably heard versions of a story that an Old Ag invented “gig ’em” at a yell practice in 1930 — which could be true for the hand signal, but not the phrase. You also might have heard that it’s related to “gigs,” meaning demerits, or the “gig line” on a military uniform.

Let’s take a look!

First, the 1930 story: The lore says that P.L. “Pinky” Downs, Class of 1906, got up at a yell practice before a game against TCU and said words equivalent to “What are we going to do to those Horned Frogs?” His answer reportedly was “Gig ’em!” with a thumbs-up gesture, related to the practice of “frog gigging,” or hunting frogs with a spear. 

The problem is, there’s little to no evidence for this story. 

News stories about Downs in the 1950s credit him with having invented the gesture, the phrase, or both, but they don’t describe how it was done. A 1955 Battalion story that quotes Downs on other topics merely says he is “said to have invented” it, and claims it is “a throwback to the old days here, when demerits, now called ‘rams,’ were called ‘gigs.’”

By the 1960s, some news stories add an indirect claim that Downs first made the gesture at a football game against TCU, but don’t mention a yell practice or give a year.

At the very least, then, multiple reporters who interviewed Downs for stories about his contributions to Texas A&M don’t quote him confirming that he invented the “gig ‘em” thumbs-up or telling the story in his own words.

Nevertheless, it’s widely agreed that it was the first school hand gesture in the Southwest Conference, and it was familiar to other Texans by at least 1951, based on news stories.

Before that, Aggies had been using the phrase “gig ’em” since at least the 1910s. It’s in 1915 and 1917 yell books; the 1917, 1920 and 1922 yearbooks; and a 1922 campus newspaper. In those cases, it’s not aimed specifically at TCU, but a 1919 campus news story does mention the Aggie team “gigging” the Horned Frogs.

The practice of gigging frogs and fish was widely known across Texas and elsewhere in the U.S. from the late 1800s onwards, documented in newspapers.

But this wasn’t the only use for “gig ’em” or “gigging” that Aggie students were familiar with. 

News stories about campus rodeos in The Battalion in 1922 and 1926 mention “gigging” a bull and “steer-gigging.” James E. Hudson III ’93 shared a 1927 use: The Houston Post-Dispatch put a caption of “Gig ‘em!” on an illustration by his grandfather, J. Elmore Hudson ’30, that showed a cowboy wearing an A&M hat riding a bucking longhorn labeled “TU.”

And there’s more evidence that Westerners and Texans of the time sometimes used “gig” metaphorically, not just for frogs.

Old-time cowboy jargon, according to a dictionary published in 1944, included “to use the spurs” as one meaning for “gig.” Others were “to cheat” and “to swindle.” News stories from the era show uses for “gig” that are similar to being “stuck” or jabbed in several meanings: water companies “gigging” their customers (El Paso, 1902); the discomfort of pins “gigging” a man who forgets to remove them from clothes (Fort Worth, 1912); one politician “gigging” another in every speech (Dallas, 1922); waiters, taxi drivers and other in France constantly “gigging” a traveler for tips (El Paso, 1930). 

These are greatly outnumbered by contemporary references to frog-gigging or fish-gigging, though — and they are quite likely linked metaphorically to that concept.

So — particularly from evidence on the Texas A&M campus — “gig ’em” wasn’t just used for TCU, and might have carried a secondary meaning similar to “stick it to ’em” or “spur”/“jab.”

What about “gigs” as demerits and “gig lines” on your uniform? These seem to have come into use later at Texas A&M. 

In a 1946 linguistic paper, “An Aggie Vocabulary of Slang,” visiting scholar Fred Eikel defines “gig” as “a demerit that is not counted against an Aggie on his permanent record,” and notes that it appears in two glossaries of general military slang. 

“Gig line” was in use at Texas A&M in the 1960s; it also appears in a 1968 dictionary of American slang, defined as “the front line made by the uniform shirt button line, the tip of the belt buckle, and the front seam of the trousers”; if this line isn’t straight, the service member might get a demerit. 

Given the timing and the fact that they’re cited in wider military use, these two uses of “gig” could very well have come to Texas A&M via World War II and the Vietnam War, in which many Aggies served.

If you can add any facts or information, please email AggieNetwork@AggieNetwork.com.

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