Execution trials set:

Trials now scheduled for July and September could shape how Arizona conducts executions, which have been on hold in the state since July 2014. The trials concern the drugs used in lethal injections and a demand for transparency in execution policies.

Today’s question: Is it true that the phrase “ham actor” came from the fact that actors used to take their makeup off with a slice of ham? No, of course that isn’t true. Taking makeup off with a slice of ham? That would be gross, not to mention a waste of a perfectly good piece of ham.

I just worry so about where you people get such ideas. I’m afraid some of you might be hanging out with the wrong sort of people.

A ham in the sense of a bad performer who overacts is a piece of American slang that dates back to around 1882.

It comes from “ham fatter,” which as I am sure you know comes from a song named “Ham-fat Man.”

That tune was a popular standard for black-face minstrel shows.

Ham doesn’t refer to the song, rather to the quality of the acting in such shows, which didn’t exactly have high thespian standards.

The 1942 edition of “American Thesaurus of Slang” defines a “ham” as an “unconvincing blackface dialectician.”

And it was its most used in the chorus of a once-popular song: “Hooch, couches, couches, says the ham fat man.”

That must have been a real toetapper and I sincerely hope none of you knows it and if you do you won’t tell me about it.

I, of course, do not own a copy of the 1942 edition of “American Thesaurus of Slang,” but I learned all this at etymologyonline.com.

That same site is where I also learned that “ham’ also can refer to a bad boxer, especially a bad amateur fighter. That’s where we get the word “ham-fisted.”