U.S. [An invented word; it is not known what suggested the formation.
It has been conjectured that loco was taken from locomotive, wrongly imagined to mean ‘self-moving’; foco may be a jingling alteration of It. fuoco or Sp. fuego fire (the inventor would hardly think of L. focus hearth, which is the source of the mod. Rom. words for ‘fire’).]
† 1. ‘A self-igniting cigar or match’ (Bartlett). More fully loco-foco cigar, match. Obs.
1839. Jrnl. Franklin Inst., XXIV. 116. We were offered lately in the streets of Pittsburgh a kind of loco-foco matches which were new to us…. They ignite by friction and burn as if containing phosphorus.
1852. Brande, Dict. Sci., etc. (ed. 2), s.v., Lucifers (which in America are termed loco-focos).
1859. Bartlett, Dict. Amer., s.v., In 1834 John Marck opened a store in Park Row, New York, and drew public attention to two novelties. One was champagne wine drawn like soda water from a ‘fountain’; the other was a self-lighting cigar, with a match composition on the end. These he called ‘Loco-foco’ cigars.
1883. A. Gilman, Amer. People, xxi. 437. When the candles had been blown out … they were lighted with matches then [1835], called ‘locofocos.’
2. U.S. Polit. Hist. Used attrib. or quasi-adj. as the designation of the ‘Equal Rights’ or Radical section of the Democratic party (for the origin of the name see quot. 1842). Hence absol. a member of this party.
The name was given in 1835; the section originally so named soon became extinct, but the name long continued to be applied by opponents to the Democrats generally.
1837. P. Hone, Diary, 6 Sept. The President’s message … is locofoco to the very core.
1838. H. Clay, Lett., 28 Aug., in Private Corr. (1855), 428. The Locofocos have carried that [election] in Missouri.
1838. W. Irving, in Life & Lett. (1866), III. 120. Those loco foco luminaries who of late have been urging strong and sweeping measures.
1842. J. D. Hammond, Polit. Hist. N. Y., II. 491–2. A very tumultuous and confused scene ensued, during which the gas-lights … were extinguished. The Equal Rights party … had provided themselves with loco-foco matches and candles, and the room was re-lighted. Immediately after this outbreak at Tammany Hall, the Courier and Enquirer, a whig, and the Times, a democratic … newspaper, dubbed the anti-monopolists with the name of the Loco-Foco Party, a sort of nick-name which the whigs have since given to the whole democratic party.
1844. Dickens, Mart. Chuz., xvi. Here’s full particulars of the patriotic loco-foco movement yesterday, in which the Whigs was so chawed up.
1850. Hawthorne, Scarlet L., Introd. (1883), 23. But … you would inquire in vain for the Locofoco Surveyor.
1896. Howells, Impressions & Exp., 1. The Whig newspaper which my father edited to the confusion of the Locofocos.
Hence Locofocoism, the principles of the Locofoco party.
1837. Hawthorne, Amer. Note-bks., 27 Aug. (1883), 95. The most arrant democracy and locofocoism that I ever happened to hear.
1863. [Catherine C. Hopley], Life in the South, I. i. 5. ‘Platforms,’ ‘constitutions,’ ‘compromises,’ ‘locofocoisms,’… and ‘democrats,’ were given up in despair.
