Month: November 2019

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English English language Etymology Expression food Language Usage Word origin Writing

Why is a turkey leg a drumstick?

(We’re repeating this post for Thanksgiving. It originally ran on Nov. 21, 2012.)

Q: I have a Thanksgiving question: Why is a turkey leg called a “drumstick”? Why not a “club” or a “bat” or a “bowling pin”?

A: You’re right. The leg of a turkey isn’t as long and skinny as a real drumstick. Even the bone alone isn’t quite like a drumstick—it has big knobs at each end instead of a single knob or padded head.

So calling this part of the bird a  “drumstick” seems to be stretching a metaphor. But why use a metaphor at all?

Etymologists think that people started calling this part of a fowl the  “drumstick” because the word “leg” wasn’t polite table talk in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Neither were the words “thigh” and “breast,” so discreet (OK, prudish) diners referred to them as “dark meat” and “white meat.”

Sometimes the breast of the turkey was referred to as—ahem—the “bosom.” And occasionally the term “upper joint” was used instead of “thigh,” and “lower joint” or “limb” instead of “leg.”

Yes, really. There actually was a time when “leg,” “breast,” and “thigh” were considered too coarse for the ears of ladies and unfit for mixed company.

The word “drumstick,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was first used in the mid-18th century  to mean “the lower joint of the leg of a dressed fowl.”

The OED’s earliest citation is from Samuel Foote’s play The Mayor of Garret (1764): “She always helps me herself to the tough drumsticks of turkies.”

Our fellow word maven Hugh Rawson recently discussed
dinner-table euphemisms like these on the Cambridge Dictionaries Online blog.

As he writes, “By the end of the eighteenth century, drumstick was being used by the authors of cookbooks, and it eventually was lumped in with other dinner-table euphemisms.”

Rawson cites a lecture, “The Laws of Disorder,” by the Unitarian minister and speaker Thomas Starr King, who died in 1864: “There are so many that love white meat, so many that can eat nothing but dark meat, two that prefer a wing, two that lie in wait for drumsticks.”

Such terms, particularly in America, made table talk easier for everyone, Rawson explains: “Polite guests at American tables knew that asking a poultry-serving hostess for white meat instead of ‘breast meat,’ dark meat instead of a ‘thigh’ and a drumstick in place of a ‘leg’ saved embarrassment all around.”

The 19th-century British novelist and naval captain Frederick Marryat pokes fun at this kind of squeamishness in Peter Simple (1834). In one episode, Rawson points out, the novel’s hero describes a dinner party on the island of Barbados.

“It was my fate to sit opposite a fine turkey, and I asked my partner if I should have the pleasure of helping her to a piece of breast. She looked at me very indignantly, and said ‘Curse your impudence, sar, I wonder where you larn your manners. Sar, I take a lily turkey bosom, if you please. Talk of breast to a lady, sar! – really quite horrid.’ ”

The OED cites another example from Marryat’s works as an example of “limb” as a euphemism for “leg,” a usage it describes as “now only (esp. U.S.) in mock-modest or prudish use.”

In his book A Diary in America: With Remarks on Its Institutions (1839), Marryat says a young American woman told him that “leg” was not used before ladies; the polite term was “limb.” She added: “I am not so particular as some people are, for I know those who always say limb of a table, or limb of a piano-forte.”

That example, like several others from the OED, seems to have been used with humorous intent.

For example, Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his novel Elsie Venner (1861), has this bit of dinner-table conversation: “A bit of the wing, Roxy, or the—under limb?”

And John S. Farmer, in his Slang and Its Analogues, Past and Present (1885), uses this illustration: “Between you’n me, red stockings ain’t becomin’ to all—ahem—limbs.”

Euphemistic language has proven itself useful, not just at the dinner table. It comes in handy for swearing, too.

We’ve written before on Grammarphobia about euphemistic oaths like “doggone it,” and “gosh a’mighty,” milder substitutes for “God damn it” and “God almighty.”

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English language Etymology Expression Usage Word origin Writing

Why don’t we use ‘farthermore’?

Q: I know one can say “furthermore” but not “farthermore” (at least not in the UK). Is this in any way indicative? And if so, of what?

A: The word “farthermore” once existed, but it became obsolete several centuries ago and is no longer found in any variety of English. This is indicative of the fact that it wasn’t of much use.

The old word cropped up in the 1380s as a variant of the earlier “furthermore,” an adverb first recorded around 1200. During its brief history, “farthermore” was used in all the senses of “furthermore” then current, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary.

So for a couple of hundred years, the adverb “farthermore” had these meanings (to cite the OED definitions): 1. “to a more advanced point of progress”; 2. “to a greater extent”; 3. “moreover.”

This was a time—the 14th to 16th centuries—when “further” and “farther” themselves were in flux, and consequently so were “furthermore” and “farthermore.” In the end, “farthermore,” which served no useful purpose, died out in the 1500s, and those three senses were taken over by other words.

Today, we use the simpler adverbs “further” or “farther” for sense #1 above (whether the distance covered is literal or figurative). For sense #2, expressing a greater extent or degree, we use “further.” And for sense #3, the “moreover” usage, we use either “furthermore” or “further.”

We’ll have more to say later about the current uses of “further” and “farther,” but first a little etymology.

The English ancestor of all these words is the adverb “far,” a word that can be traced to a prehistoric Indo-European root that’s been reconstructed as per-. The initial p in Indo-European terms remained p in Greek and Latin, but became f in the Germanic languages.

This ancient root—or forms of it—is the source of many words that came into English through the Germanic languages. Besides “far,” these include “for,” “from,” “fore,” “before,” “forth,” “former,” “foremost,” and “first,” among others. In addition, the Indo-European root produced many words that came into English through Latin and Greek and begin with “pro-,” “per-,” and “para-.”

In the case of “far,” it was first recorded in the 8th or 9th century as feorr or feor. The word’s original meaning, the OED says, was “to a great distance” or “to a remote place.”

The dictionary’s earliest use is from the Vespasian Psalter, an illuminated manuscript from around 825 (some sources date it from 725). This Psalter, the oldest English translation of any part of the Bible, has the following line: “Tohwon dryhten gewite ðu feor” (“Why Lord has thou withdrawn so far”).

The comparative form of “far” in Old English was originally fierr (or fyrr), Oxford says. This developed into ferrer (or ferror), a 12th-century formation that survived into the 17th century, when it was spelled “farrer,” the dictionary says.

But meanwhile, competing forms of the comparative were also on the scene. The earliest was “further,” first recorded (as furðra) circa 1000, similar to the Old Saxon furthor. And “farther” (originally written as ferþer) came along as a variant of “further” around 1300.

By the 1600s, “further” and “farther” had displaced the old “farrer.” Both survived, and for most of their history they’ve been used interchangeably. Only in relatively recent times have people given them different meanings, as we wrote in a 2007 post (updated earlier this year) that cites the new fourth edition of Woe Is I, Pat’s grammar and usage book:

FARTHER/ FURTHER. Use either one for distance, whether actual or metaphorical. “I’m walking no farther [or further] than this bench,” said Lumpy. “Nothing is farther [or further] from my mind.” But use only further if there’s no notion of distance. He refused to discuss it any further. “I have nothing further to say,” he added. The upshot is that if you’re in doubt, choose further.

We also cite a usage note in Lexico (formerly Oxford Dictionaries Online):

Where the sense is “at, to, or by a greater distance,” there is no difference in meaning, and both [further and farther] are equally correct. Further is a much commoner word, though, and is in addition used in various abstract and metaphorical contexts, for example referring to time, in which farther is unusual, e.g. without further delay; have you anything further to say?; we intend to stay a further two weeks.

Why did “further” emerge before “farther” as the comparative form of “far”? Well, in Old and Middle English, “far” was spelled a great many ways—feorr, fier, furre, fyr, fur, fir, fer, fear, and for, to mention just a few—and undoubtedly the pronunciations varied too, with “fur” among them. The modern spelling “far” didn’t become firmly established until the 17th century.

What’s more, even before the comparative “further” came along, Old English had a verb, to “further” (fyrþrian, recorded in the late 800s).

As we’ve said, “furthermore” (c. 1200) appeared before the variant “farthermore” (c. 1380). However, the original Middle English spellings are barely recognizable today: “furthermore” was forrþerrmar and “farthermore” was fferþermor. Here are the OED’s earliest examples with modern spellings:

“Further~more, the forsaid Lord the Roos … schall forgevyn the forsaid Robert” (from the Rolls of Parliament, 1411). The flourish (called a “swung dash”) was sometimes used by medieval scribes to fill a space.

“Farthermore the prophetes were sory” (from a 1530 devotional treatise, The Myroure [Mirror] of Oure Ladye, by John Henry Blunt).

We could go on indefinitely about “furthest” (c. 1374) and “furthermost” (c. 1400), along with their variants “farthest” (1377) and “farthermost” (1619). But we suspect you’d prefer to read no further.

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English English language Etymology Expression Language Usage Word origin Writing

A hwale of a story

Q: My mom, a high-school English teacher, has given me a hard time all my life (I’m 42 now) about not pronouncing the “h” in “wh-” words like “why,” “what,” “which,” and “when.” Just the other day, she was nagging me about the “h” in “whale.” I think it sounds affected and unnatural to pronounce the “h” in these words.

A: In modern American usage, these “wh-” words can be pronounced with either a simple “w” sound at the beginning, or with a breathier “hw” sound. Online standard American dictionaries recognize both of those pronunciations, though the “h”-less one is much more common.

This wasn’t always the case. The “hw” pronunciation is preferred, for example, in our 1956 copy of Webster’s New International Dictionary (the unabridged second edition).

This trend away from the “hw” sound isn’t restricted to American English. The “h”-less pronunciation is the only one listed in most standard British dictionaries.

We discussed the pronunciations of “why,” “what,” “which,” and “when” in a 2011 post, so we’ll focus here on “whale,” which is now pronounced as either “wale” or “hwale” in American usage.

Online standard American dictionaries, like American Heritage, Merriam-Webster’s, and Dictonary.com (based on Random House Unabridged), recognize both pronunciations. Online British dictionaries, like Cambridge, Longman, and Lexico (the former Oxford Dictionaries Online), list only the “h”-less pronunciation.

For most English speakers, the words “whale,” “wail,” and “wale” are homophones—words that are pronounced alike but differ in spelling, meaning, or origin. As Merriam-Webster explains in a usage note, “in most dialects the words are pronounced identically, making them auditorily indistinguishable.”

The oldest of the three words, “whale,” referred to any large sea creature when it first appeared in Old English as hwæl. At that time, the hw was pronounced like a breathy “w” and the æ ligature sounded like the “a” of “pal.”

The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary refers to a horshwæl, or walrus, as a small hwæl:

“Se hwæl bið micle læssa þonne oðre hwalas” (“That whale is much smaller than other whales”). From a late ninth-century translation of Orosius’s Historiae Adversus Paganos, written in Latin in the early fifth century.

The usage is also found in an Old English poem that uses hwale for a mythical sea creature that’s a cross between a serpent and a turtle. The creature is so big that seafarers mistake it for an island and board it—to their regret. Here’s the beginning of the poem, from the Exeter Book, a 10th-century anthology of Anglo-Saxon poetry:

“Nu ic fitte gen ymb fisca cynn wille woðcræfte wordum cyþan þurh modgemynd bi þam miclan hwale. Se bið unwillum oft gemeted, frecne ond ferðgrim, fareðlacendum, niþþa gehwylcum; þam is noma cenned, fyrnstreama geflotan, Fastitocalon.”

(“Behold, from my wellspring of song and speech, I’ll craft a poem about a giant among the tribe of fish, the whale. Men who sail the sea oft encounter him unwillingly, that dread stalker of mankind. He’s named, as we know, the ocean swimmer, Fastitocalon.”) The name comes from the Greek άσπιδoχελώνη (aspidocheloni), or asp turtle.

The word was spelled various ways in Middle English (whal, wal, whall, wale, whalle, and so on) until whale showed up in the late 14th century. The first OED citation with the modern spelling is from “The Summoner’s Tale” in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1386):

“Me thynketh they been lyk Iovinyan / Fat as a whale and walkynge as a swan.” (Iovinyan, the whale-like character mentioned here, was Jovinian, a fourth-century monk who opposed ascetism.)

With the Old English and Middle English examples we’ve seen, it’s unclear exactly when the word evolved from its original sense of a large sea creature to its modern meaning of a very large marine mammal with a fishlike body, a horizontal tail fin, and a hole for breathing on top of its head.

The online Merriam-Webster Unabridged places the “first known use” of the modern sense at some time “before 12th century,” but it doesn’t give a citation.

In a 2016 post, we discuss some other “wh-” words that began with hw– in Old English, such as hwæt (“what”), hwanne (“when”), hwǽr, (“where”), hwæs (“whose”), hwā (“who”), hwí (“why”), hwelc (“which”), and hwæðer (“whether”).

The OED says the “normal Old English spelling hw was generally preserved in early Middle English,” and the “modern spelling wh is found first in regular use in the Ormulum,” a 12th-century religious work in which whillc is used for “which.”

“In Old English the pronunciation symbolized by hw was probably in the earliest periods a voiced bilabial consonant preceded by a breath,” according to the dictionary. (A voiced bilabial consonant is one in which the vocal cords vibrate and the air flow is restricted by the lips.)

Interestingly, the words that began with hw in Old English have given us two types of “wh” words today: those in which the “w” sound predominates (“why,” “where,” “when,” etc.) and those in which the “h” sound predominates (“who,” “whole,” “whose”).

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English English language Etymology Expression Language Usage Word origin Writing

When a nudge is a noodge

Q: A recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times referred to journalists as “impertinent nudges.” Did the writer confuse “nudges” with the Yiddish “noodges”? Or has the former become an acceptable way to spell the latter?

A: The Times usually spells the word “noodge,” but “nudge” does show up every once in a while, according to our searches of the newspaper’s online archive. Some standard dictionaries include both spellings of the word, which is a noun for a nag or whiner and a verb meaning to pester or complain.

The example you noticed was in an Oct. 21, 2019, Op-Ed column by Michelle Cottle about the questioning of Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff: “Journalists being the impertinent nudges they are, Mr. Mulvaney soon found himself fielding questions about impeachment.”

The paper’s use of the “nudge” spelling for the word of Yiddish origin dates back to the early 1970s: “He’s not a writer, he’s a nudge. On the phone twice a day asking how’s it going!” (“The Literary Cocktail Party,” an essay by William Cole, New York Times Book Review, Dec. 3, 1972).

A quarter-century later, the language writer William Safire criticized the use of the “nudge” spelling in another Times article, arguing that the English term is derived from “a Yiddish word more closely represented as noodge” (On Language, New York Times Magazine, Nov. 9, 1997).

We see no reason why an English word derived from a foreign language has to be spelled or pronounced like its foreign source. However, we’d use the “noodge” spelling to avoid confusion with the much older and more common English word “nudge,” a noun for a light touch or a verb meaning to touch or push.

(The two are pronounced differently. The vowel sound in the Yiddish-derived word, no matter how it’s spelled, is like the one in “foot.” The older English word rhymes with “fudge.”)

Seven of the ten online standard dictionaries we regularly consult have entries for the Yiddish-derived term, with three spellings given: “noodge,” “nudge,” and the less common “nudz.”

Lexico (the former Oxford Dictionaries Online), Collins, and Merriam-Webster give “noodge” as the only spelling. Webster’s New World lists “noodge” as the primary spelling and “nudge” as a slang variant. American Heritage, Dictionary.com (based on Random House Unabridged), and the subscription-only Merriam-Webster Unabridged list “noodge” and “nudge” as equally common variants, with M-W Unabridged adding “nudz” as a less popular variant.

The earliest examples that we’ve found for the noun as well as the verb are from “The Wife Game” (1963), a short story by Lenore Turovlin. As far as we can tell, the story first appeared in the August 1963 issue of McCall’s magazine. This is from a reprint in the Australian Women’s Weekly, Dec. 4, 1963:

“What’s a noodge, Daddy?” Vicky asked.
“A noodge,” Walt instructed her solemnly, “is one who noodges.”
“If you mean nudge,” I began.
“No. There’s a difference,” Walt said. “A nudge is like a gentle prod, but a noodge keeps it up, on and on and on.”
“A nag,” Bruce supplied.
“Well, sort of,” Walt said, “but with your best interests at heart—and never lets you forget it.”

Those examples for the noun and verb are earlier than the ones in the Oxford English Dictionary, but the OED says the verb is “implied” by the gerund “noodging” in this citation:

“Most of Malamud’s stories turn about a relationship drawn from Jewish tradition—an ‘unwelcome pairing,’ full of quarrelling, rejection, disputation, pursuit, persistence, and noodging (a sort of dogged wheedling).” From the May 1960 issue of Encounter.

The OED, an etymological dictionary based on historical evidence, defines the noun “noodge” as “a person who persistently complains or nags; a pest, a bore,” and the verb as “to pester, to nag at,” or “to whine, to complain persistently.” It describes both as “slang (chiefly U.S.).”

Oxford spells the verb and noun “noodge,” and notes that the “nudge” spelling is “remodelled after” the older English verb “nudge.” It says “noodge” is derived from nudyen, Yiddish for to bore or pester, which in turn comes from similar terms in Polish or Russian.

The dictionary notes an earlier colloquial term for a pest or boor, “nudnik,” which English borrowed from Yiddish in the early 20th century: “He’s a great nudnik (bore), Zili the tailor” (Sholem Aleichem, Fort Wayne [IN] Journal-Gazette, Jan. 16, 1916).

The citation is from “Off for America,” which appeared in various newspapers and magazines a few months before the author died. It’s an authorized English translation by Marion Weinstein of a Yiddish section of Sholem Aleichem’s unfinished last novel, The Adventures of Mottel the Cantor’s Son.

As for the older English word “nudge,” both the verb and noun showed up in writing in the 17th century. The OED says the term is of uncertain origin, but it points readers to nugge, Norwegian for to push or nudge, as a possibility.

The verb came first, and originally meant “to push or prod (a person) gently, esp. with the elbow, for the purpose of attracting attention, etc. Also: to give (a thing, etc.) a slight shove or series of shoves,” Oxford says.

The dictionary’s first citation is from Homer’s Odysses, a 1675 translation of the Odyssey by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes: “When a third part of the night was gone, I nudg’d Ulysses (who did next me lie).”

When the noun “nudge” appeared two decades later, the OED says, it meant “a gentle push or prod, esp. with the elbow, usually intended as a prompt or hint to someone; (also) a slight shove given to an object, esp. to dislodge or free it.”

The dictionary’s first citation is from The Adventures of Covent-Garden, a 1699 novella by the Irish dramatist and actor George Farquhar: “Peregrine would have answered, but a pluck by the Sleeve obliged him to turn from Selinda to entertain a Lady Mask’d who had given him the Nudg.”

Finally, here’s a more recent example from the Harvard Business Review that uses both “nudges” (prods) and “noodges” (pests):

“Nudges aren’t always perceived as helpful. Regardless of the creator’s intentions, nudges can feel patronizing or subtly manipulative and could backfire if recipients perceive them as noodges, a Yiddish term that means ‘nuisance or pest.’ ” (“How to Overcome Clinicians’ Resistance to Nudges,” May 3, 2019, by Amol S. Navathe, Vivian S. Lee, and Joshua M. Liao.)

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English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Language Punctuation Usage Writing

How possessive are you?

Q: I am curious why some of us were taught to use an apostrophe plus “s” to make a possessive of a singular proper noun ending in “s,” “x,” or “z,” while others were taught to use just an apostrophe.

A: Many people don’t realize that the conventions of punctuation are largely matters of style, and they’re much more fluid than the conventions of grammar. As we noted in a 2011 post, the customs of punctuation sometimes shift.

We wrote that an apostrophe plus the letter “s” has generally been used to mark the possessive case of singular nouns for at least three centuries, and that this has been true whether or not the nouns ended in a sibilant like “s,” “x,” or “z.”

Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (4th ed., edited by Jeremy Butterfield) has this to say:

“The apostrophe before s became regulated as an indication of the singular possessive case towards the end of the 17c., and the apostrophe after s was first recorded as an indication of the plural possessive case towards the end of the 18c.”

Fowler’s says these “basic patterns” apply to proper names ending in “s.” So add an apostrophe plus “s” to a  singular name, Butterfield writes, “whenever you would tend to pronounce the possessive form of the name with an extra iz sound, e.g. Charles’s brother, St James’s Square, Thomas’s niece, Zacharias’s car.”

However, he notes that “gross disturbances of these basic patterns have occurred in written and printed work” since then, and “further disturbances may be expected in the 21c.”

In the mid-20th century, it was not uncommon to be taught to drop the possessive “s” and use only an apostrophe after words ending in a sibilant (as in “Charles’ brother”). Although this isn’t a common practice today, it’s still sometimes seen in published writing.

The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.) says some writers and publishers still prefer a system “of simply omitting the possessive s on all words ending in s.” However, the manual says that this system is “not recommended” because it “disregards pronunciation.”

This is what the Chicago Manual advocates: “The possessive of most singular nouns is formed by adding an apostrophe and an s. … The general rule stated at [that paragraph] extends to the possessives of proper nouns, including names ending in s, x, or z.”

The examples given in the Chicago Manual include “Kansas’s legislature,” “Marx’s theories,” “Berlioz’s works,” “Borges’s library,” and “Dickens’s novels.”

To show just how changeable these customs can be, we wrote a post in 2018 on shifts in possessive forms of ancient classical or biblical names that already end in “s,” like “Moses” and “Euripedes.”

The traditional custom had been to add just an apostrophe, but in current practice the additional “s” is optional, depending on whether or not it’s pronounced: “Euripides’ plays” or “Euripides’s plays,” “Moses’ staff” or “Moses’s staff,” “Jesus’ teachings” or “Jesus’s teachings.”

As Pat writes in the new fourth edition of Woe Is I, “Let your pronunciation choose for you. If you add an extra syllable when pronouncing one of these possessive names (MO‑zus‑uz), then add the final s (Moses’s). If you don’t pronounce that s (and many people don’t, especially if the name ends in an EEZ sound, like Euripides), then don’t write it.”

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Veterans Day

For veterans, an old war story

[Note: We’re marking Veterans Day with an abbreviated version of an article that Stewart wrote more than 48 years ago when he was a war correspondent for United Press International in Vietnam.]

Colorado flyer recalls escape

By STEWART KELLERMAN

QUANG TRI, South Vietnam, Aug. 22, 1971 (UPl) — Joe Lester won the lifelong gratitude of three GIs the other day. He saved their lives.

Stewart Kellerman in Vietnam

The episode began Friday morning when .51-caliber antiaircraft rounds thumped into the engine of a tiny observation helicopter whirring at treetop level below the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Vietnam.

“I just didn’t want to believe it,” said the pilot, Warrant Officer Bill Halevy, 21, of Tuckerton, N.J. “I didn’t want to believe we were hit. I didn’t want to have to go down there, right in the middle of all those Communists.”

But down went the OH6 helicopter, hitting the rocky ground and crumbling into a ball of plastic, metal and wire. Halevy and his crew members—Specialist Fourth Class William Hillegas, 26, of Allentown, Pa., and Spec. 4 Joel Gibson, 19, of Cypress, Calif.—lived through three of the most hair-raising hours of their lives.

It all might have ended in tragedy for them if not for the quick action of their platoon leader, Capt. Joseph M. Lester, 26, of Aurora, Colo.

All the American troops involved, however, considered this just another day’s work for U.S. helicopter crews scouting the ridges and valleys below the DMZ in support of South Vietnamese troops fighting Communists in the area.

Halevy and his men were flying over a ridgeline about four miles north of Artillery Base Fuller, searching for a North Vietnamese battalion believed in the area. Their helicopter went down near a stream at the bottom of the ridge.

“As soon as we were hit I decided I wouldn’t be captured,” Halevy said. “I’d have shot myself instead. I’d save the last bullet for myself. I don’t want to be a prisoner of war. Your family worries and nobody knows what’s going on.”

After they pulled themselves from the wreckage of the helicopter, the downed crewmen could hear Communist soldiers messaging each other by whistling. As the whistling got louder the three Americans began moving up the ridge in hopes of signaling rescue helicopters.

“I never crashed before and I expected the worst,” Hillegas said. “Crashing was the hardest part for me. After that, when I realized I was still alive, I just wanted to get up that hill and away from the Communists as soon as I could.”

It took them about one hour to climb through the thick underbrush on the ridgeline and reach the top. All the time they kept low, trying to avoid the troops searching for them. The incessant whistling got louder and louder, never letting them forget the danger that was there.

At the top, they found a clearing. For two hours they waited and waved their fatigue jackets to get the attention of U.S. helicopters trying to find them.

Lester was in another OH6, one of a half dozen helicopters looking for the downed crew. As soon as he spotted them, he flew to nearby Camp Carroll, dropped off his other two crew members and returned empty to pick up the three downed men.

Lester received a Silver Star for going down and getting the three airmen. The three downed men were recommended for Bronze Stars.

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English English language Etymology Expression Language Phrase origin Usage Word origin Writing

Shadows on the wall

Q: I’m stumped by the use of “due” in this sentence by Bertrand Russell about Plato’s cave allegory: “Inevitably they regard these shadows as real, and have no notion of the objects to which they are due.”

A: In the cave allegory, as you know, a group of people have lived chained to the wall of a cave since childhood, and shadows cast on the wall by a fire behind them become the prisoners’ reality.

In History of Western Civilization (1946), Bertrand Russell discusses the allegory, a Socratic dialogue in Plato’s Republic, written in the fourth-century BC. Here’s an expanded excerpt that puts Russell’s sentence into context:

“Between them and the wall there is nothing; all that they see are shadows of themselves, and of objects behind them, cast on the wall by the light of the fire. Inevitably they regard these shadows as real, and have no notion of the objects to which they are due.”

In that last sentence, “the objects to which they are due” means “the objects to which they are attributable” or “the objects that they are due to” or simply “the objects that caused them.”

We wonder if Russell’s awkward wording may have been due to his unwillingness to end the sentence with “due to.” However, the so-called rule against ending a sentence with a preposition is a common misconception that we’ve written about on our language myths page.

As for “due to,” the usage showed up in the 17th century as an adjectival phrase meaning “caused by” or “resulting from.” But over the last century and a half, it has also been used adverbially as a compound preposition meaning “because of” or “on account of.”

The newer usage is now accepted by all 10 online standard dictionaries that we regularly consult. Lexico, the former Oxford Dictionaries Online, cites this example of “due to” used to modify a verb: “he had to withdraw due to a knee injury.”

Despite the acceptance by dictionaries, some traditionalists still object to the usage. The critics insist that “due to” should introduce an adjectival phrase that modifies a particular noun.

When “due to” first showed up in writing, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary, it was used adjectivally in the predicate to mean “attributable to a particular cause or origin; derived or arising from; caused by, consequent on; as a result of.”

The OED’s earliest example is from a scientific treatise: “The motion of the Oyly drops may be in part due to some partial solution made of them by the vivous spirit” (The History of Fluidity and Firmnesse, 1669, by Robert Boyle).

However, the OED says the usage was rare before the 19th century, when it widened to include the use of “due to” as a compound preposition meaning “as a result of, on account of, because of.”

The dictionary’s first example for “due to” used adverbially as a compound preposition is from another scientific treatise: “electric currents produced by periodical variations of temperature at its [the earth’s] surface, due to the sun’s position above the horizon” (1840, Royal Society report on a British expedition to Antarctica; we’ve expanded the citation to include the verb).

“This use became well established during the 19th century, and is now usually regarded as acceptable standard English, but began to be criticized in usage guides in the early 20th century, apparently beginning with H. W. Fowler,” the OED says.

In the 1926 first edition of his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Fowler says “due to is often used by the illiterate” as “a mere compound preposition.” But in the 2015 fourth edition, Jeremy Butterfield says “it looks as if this use of due to is now part of the natural language of the 21c.”

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Categories
English English language Etymology Expression Language Phrase origin Usage Word origin Writing

Lock, stock, and barrel

Q: Can you explain the expression “lock, stock, and barrel”? I know that it means all of something, but does it refer to the actual parts of a firearm?

A: Yes, the individual words refer to parts of a gun, but the phrase itself has almost always been used figuratively.

The “barrel” here is a gun barrel, the “stock” is the handle, and the “lock” is the firing mechanism where loose powder is exploded in old-style firearms (hence terms like “flintlock,” “matchlock,” and so on).

The phrase was inspired by an old joke about a rural Scotsman who takes his worn-out gun to be repaired. But it’s virtually beyond repair, and the gunsmith suggests he should simply buy a new one. The Scotsman replies that he’ll settle for a new stock, a new lock, and a new barrel—in other words, a whole new gun.

We’ve seen dozens of versions of the story, dating from the late 1700s onward. Usually the weapon is called a “gun,” but sometimes it’s a “pistol,” a “musket,” or a “fowling-piece” (a light shotgun). This is the earliest reference we’ve found to the story:

“When we think of the other improvements which this work would need, before it could be rendered useful, we cannot help recollecting the story of a gun which, in order to be repaired, required a new stock, a new lock, and a new barrel.” (From a review of a book on agriculture in the Monthly Review, London, March 1790.)

And the Scottish poet Robert Burns referred to it in a letter written in April 1793: “Let him mend the song, as the Highlander mended his gun; he gave it a new stock, a new lock, and a new barrel.”

The resulting figurative phrase—originally “stock, lock, and barrel”—means “as a whole; entirely,” or “the totality or entirety of something,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and its earliest examples are from Scottish authors.

The OED’s first confirmed figurative usage is from a letter written by Sir Walter Scott on Oct. 29, 1817, in reference to an old fountain on his estate: “Like the High-landman’s gun, she wants stock, lock, and barrel, to put her into repair.”

We found this 1819 example in the writings of another Scotsman: “I am afraid that if the Americans continue to cherish a fondness for such repairs, the highlandman’s pistol, with its new stock, lock, and barrel, will bear a close resemblance to what is ultimately produced.”

(From a letter written on Feb. 10, 1819, by John Duncan, commenting on Americans’ readiness to overhaul their state constitutions. His letters were published in Glasgow in 1823 as Travels Through Part of the United States and Canada.)

And this Oxford example refers to a financial disaster: “Even the capital likewise—stock, lock, and barrel, all went.” (From Lawrie Todd, an 1830 novel by John Galt about a Scotsman who emigrates to North America.)

In our searches of old newspaper databases, we found that the phrase persisted in that order (“stock, lock, and barrel”) well into the 20th century, though it fell off sharply in the 1930s.

Meanwhile, a version with the first two nouns reversed—“lock, stock, and barrel”—had started appearing in figurative use as early as the 1820s (we’ve seen reports of an 1803 American example, but we can’t confirm it). By the mid-19th century the newer phrase was quite common in both Britain and the United States.

The OED’s earliest confirmed example in which the reversed phrase appears figuratively is from a Pennsylvania newspaper:

“Congress are in possession of the flint, powder, gun, lock, stock and barrel, and still we exclaim with the old lady, take away the musket” (the Adams Centinel, Gettysburg, April 7, 1824).

And we found this example in a work of Irish fiction published two years later: “Maybe you might have the heart to say another word;—one—jist one—that ’ud save poor Peery Conolly sowl an’ body, lock, stock, an’ barrel, an’ ould Matthew along wid him, that’s goin’ to ruination an’ smithereens” (Tales by the O’Hara Family, by the brothers John and Michael Banim, London, 1826).

Why was “stock, lock” reversed to “lock, stock”? We can only suggest that perhaps the resulting phrase came easier to the tongue. Today, as the OED notes, it’s the usual form, and the original “stock, lock” version is “rarely” used.

As for the individual words in the phrase, “lock” in the weaponry sense is defined this way in the OED: “In a gun or firearm which uses loose gunpowder: a mechanism by means of which the charge is exploded.”

The term appeared originally as part of a compound, “firelock.” Oxford’s earliest example is from a 1544 document in the state papers of King Henry VIII: “Some of them shute with maches not having the fyre lockes.”

Other “lock” compounds refer to various firing mechanisms or weapons using them: “matchlock” (first recorded in writing in 1638), “gunlock” (1651), “wheel-lock” (1670), and “flintlock” (1683).

By the time those later compounds were recorded, “lock” was also being used by itself to mean a firing mechanism. Here’s the OED’s earliest example:

“Others carrie … some Peeces, with the Match readie lighted … and haue the best lockes that possible may bee found in all Europe.” (From Discours of Voyages into ye Easte and West Indies, a 1598 translation of a work by Jan Huygen van Linschoten.)

The use of “lock” for part of a gun evolved from the familiar noun for a fastener with a sliding bolt and often operated with a key. That earlier “lock” has been around since early Old English and was “inherited from Germanic,” Oxford says.

As for “stock,” it too has an ancient history and was derived from Germanic. The original Old English noun, now archaic, first meant a tree stump and later a block of wood.

The earliest use of “stock” in weaponry emerged in the late 15th century, when it meant a gun carriage for mounting a cannon or artillery piece. The term in this sense was first recorded as “gunstok” in 1496 and as “stokke” in 1497, according to OED citations.

A “stock” later came to mean “the wooden portion of a musket or fowling-piece” or “the handle of a pistol,” the OED says.

Oxford’s earliest example is from a law enacted in 1541 during the reign of Henry VIII: “Any handgun … shalbe in the stock and gonne of the lenghe of one hole Yarde.” (Note: In early use, a “handgun” meant a firearm carried by hand, as opposed to a cannon.)

Finally, “barrel” in the weapons sense, a use first recorded in the 17th century, comes from the familiar noun for a large roundish wooden cask.

That earlier noun came into English in the early 14th century from French (baril), the OED says, but the ultimate source is medieval Latin (barile). Oxford adds: “The Celtic words (Welsh baril, Gaelic baraill, Irish bairile, Manx barrel) sometimes cited as the source, are all from English.”

It was only natural that the hollow cylindrical metal tube of a firearm should come to be called a “barrel.”

The earliest use in the OED is from Two Treatises (1644) by Sir Kenelm Digby. Here Digby describes an experiment for demonstrating the power of suction, and we’ve expanded the citation to get in the rather alarming context:

“Take the barrel of a long gun perfectly bored and set it upright with the breech upon the ground, and take a bullet that is exactly fit for it … and then if you suck at the mouth of the barrel (though ever so gently) the bullet will come up so forcibly that it will hazard the striking out of your teeth.”

He adds later, “I remember to have seen a man that was uncautious and sucked strongly that had his fore-teeth beaten out by the blow of the bullet ascending.”

Do not try this at home!

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