Sam

   Normally a transferred name, occurring in ‘Play it again, Sam,’ said to someone as a suggestion that he repeat an action. These words, as everyone now knows, were not actually spoken by Humphrey Bogart in the film Casablanca, though that is where the quotation is supposed to come from. One may compare ‘Elementary, my dear Watson,’ another famous ‘quotation’ which does not actually occur in any of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

   Kingsley Amis makes a joke of ‘you sam’ in Lucky Jim. Amis explains: ‘Sam’ is a version of ‘see’, Bertrand’s own coinage. It arose as follows: the vowel sound became distorted into a short ‘a’, as if he were going to say ‘sat’ This brought the lips some way apart, and the effect of their rapid closure was to end the syllable with a light but audible ‘m.

   There comes a time in the novel when Bertrand says to Dixon: ‘I don’t happen to be that type, you sam.’ Dixon chooses to interpret ‘you sam’ as a vocative: ‘“I’m not Sam, you fool,” Dixon shrieked; this was the worst taunt of all.’