Pulpits and Poohbahs

While today we would say something's "great" ("GameStop is great!") Ragtime-era folks would say it's "bully" ("GameStop is bully!").

So in 1904, when Rev. Lyman Abbott was invited by then-President Teddy Roosevelt to preview an important speech, Roosevelt confided, "I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit!"

In a chronicle of the meeting, Abbott recalled Roosevelt's words and described his bully pulpit as a license to build Americans' support for reform, while tearing down opposition to it.

Abbott's pubic mention of Roosevelt's words made the term famous overnight.

But today "bully" is a pejorative; and behind today's bully pulpit stands an actual bully—a corrupt conman who's using his platform to promote treason and panic timid supplicants.

However, access to the bully pulpit doesn't in itself turn a bully into a poobah.

The bully must do that to himself.

Poohbah—meaning a "pompous big shot"—was coined in 1895 by Gilbert and Sullivan when they composed The Mikado. 

The two songsters liked the flatulent sound of the word, later claiming it derived from every tin-pot dictator's way of dismissing a new idea by saying "Pooh!" or "Bah!"

Poohbah leapt overnight from the stage into British parlance, but didn't catch on in the US for another 31 years, when A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh first appeared.