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It’s ‘along’ story

Q: In David Copperfield, Mrs. Gummidge uses an odd construction to blame herself for Daniel Peggotty’s readiness to visit the pub: “I am sorry it should be along of me that you’re so ready.” She’s apparently using “along of” to mean “because of,” a usage I’m unaware of. What’s going on?

A: English has had two different “along” words. The usual one today is a preposition or adverb with various lengthwise and accompanying senses. The other is an archaic adjective that survives in regional dialects and is the source of the usage in the 1850 novel by Charles Dickens.

Both words are very old, dating back to early Old English, but they’re not etymologically related, and weren’t originally spelled alike.

The Anglo-Saxon ancestor of the more common “along” was andlang, a preposition, adjective, or adverb with many of the term’s modern senses, including alongside, next to, over the length of, and parallel to.

The ancestor of the archaic or dialectal “along” was gelong, an adjective meaning belonging to, depending on, or as a result of (the usage in David Copperfield).

Originally andlang, according to John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins, referred to “extending a long way in the opposite direction.” It was “a compound formed from and-  ‘against, facing’ (whose original source was Greek anti-  ‘against’) and lang  ‘long.’ ”

“The meaning gradually changed,” Ayto writes, “via simply ‘extending a long way,’ through ‘continuous’ and ‘the whole length of something’ to ‘lengthwise.’ ”

At the same time, he says, “the and- prefix was gradually losing its identity: by the 10th century the forms anlong and onlong were becoming established, and the 14th century saw the beginnings of modern English along.”

As for the other word “along,” now archaic and dialectal, Ayto says its Old English ancestor, gelong, was formed from “the prefix ge-, suggesting suitability, and long, of which the notions of ‘pertaining’ and ‘appropriateness’ are preserved in modern English belong.”

In Middle English, the term was spelled ilongylongallang, and alonge. The “along” spelling showed up in the 1600s, perhaps influenced by the spelling of today’s more common “along.”

In later use, the Oxford English Dictionary notes, the less common “along” was “usually perceived as a special use of” the more common one.

Here are OED citations for early Old English appearances of andlang and gelong (we won’t include examples for all the senses of the two Old English words):

“Her for se here up þurh þa brycge æt Paris & þa up andlang Sigene oþ Mæterne oþ Cariei” (“A.D. 887. This year the army went up through the bridge at Paris and then up along the Seine to the Marne and then to Chézy”). From an entry for the year 887 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle A, Parker Library, Cambridge.

“Þæt wæs swiþost on ðæm gelong þæt Hasterbal swa late fleah for þon þe he elpendas mid him hæfde” (“That was mostly the result of the failure of Hasdrubal [brother of Hannibal] to flee with his elephants”). The Old English Orosius, an early Old English translation of Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII (History Against the Pagans in Seven Books), circa 400, by Paulus Orosius.

Getting back to your question, the now dialectal “along” (from gelong) has lost most of its original senses in modern English. As the OED explains, it appears “only in weakened use as a compound preposition, with of (also occasionally onwith, etc.)” and means “because of, on account of, owing to.”

The dictionary’s earliest “along of” citation is from an anti-Roman Catholic broadside, or flyer: “What a damn’d Journey have you made me take, Allong of you, and Mother-Churches sake, Been tost [tossed] at Sea.” (“The Catholick Gamesters or A Dubble Match of Bowleing,” 1680, by the printmaker and polemicist Stephen College.)

And this is Oxford’s earliest example with the modern spelling: “ ’Tis all along of you that I am thus haunted” (from The Fool of Quality; or, The History of Henry, Earl of Moreland, 1766, a novel by the Irish writer Henry Brooke).

Finally, here’s the most recent OED citation: “It was along of the din you were making that I came to see if he was hurting you” (from Missy, a 2008 novel by the Scottish author Chris Hannan).

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A moment of truthiness

Q: I think it’s truthy to say Stephen Colbert coined “truthiness.” How could he coin a word that’s been around since the 19th century?

A: We disagree. Colbert coined a new use for an old word that was never common and had pretty much died out by the time he rediscovered and redefined it.

And like the noun “truthiness,” the little-used adjective “truthy” was similarly rediscovered and redefined in the late 20th century.

When “truthiness” showed up in English in the 19th century, it was a colloquial term for truthfulness, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The dictionary’s earliest example, which we’ve expanded, is from Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, February 1832:

“You do not speak the truth well, North. I do not deny that you may possess very considerable natural powers of veracity—of truth-telling; but then, you have not cultivated them, having been too much occupied with the ordinary affairs of life. Truthiness is a habit, like every other virtue.” (From a contribution by the Scottish author John Wilson to Noctes Ambrosianae, a monthly column of imaginary conversations.)

The OED, an etymological dictionary based on historical evidence, describes the original “truthiness” as a noun formed from “truthy,” a colloquial and regional adjective meaning “characterized by truth; truthful, true.” The dictionary labels the truthful senses of the adjective and noun as “now rare.”

The first Oxford example for the adjective is from an opera: “You … are afraid, Theodore, your sweetheart shouldn’t prove truthy.” (Poems; and Theodore, an Opera, a collection of works by the English author John Henry Colls, published in 1804, two years after his death.)

In the early 21st century, according to the OED, the old noun took on a new meaning, chiefly in the US: “The quality of appearing to be true while not actually or necessarily being so; the fact or quality of accepting or presenting something which is not true as the truth.”

The dictionary notes that the new sense was “first used by United States humorist Stephen Colbert” and it cites the Oct. 17, 2005, premiere of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central: “The truthiness is anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you.” (We added the italics.)

On Jan. 6, 2006, the American Dialect Society named “truthiness” as its “word of the year” for 2005, saying it “refers to the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.”

The adjective “truthy” showed up the next day in an Associated Press article about the ADS decision: “Michael Adams, a professor at North Carolina State University who specializes in lexicology, said ‘truthiness’ means ‘truthy, not facty.’ ”

We’ll end with an expanded version of the remarks by Colbert’s on-air persona:

You’re looking at a straight shooter, America. I tell it like it is, I calls ’em like I sees ’em. I will speak to you in plain, simple English. And that brings us to tonight’s word: truthiness.

Now I’m sure some of the word police, the wordinistas over at Webster’s, are gonna say, ‘Hey, that’s not a word.’ Well, anybody who knows me knows that I’m no fan of dictionaries or reference books.

They’re elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn’t true, or what did or didn’t happen. Who’s Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I wanna say it happened in 1941, that’s my right. I don’t trust books. They’re all fact, no heart.

And that’s exactly what’s pulling our country apart today. Cuz face it, folks, we are a divided nation. Not between Democrats and Republicans, or conservatives and liberals, or tops and bottoms. No. We are divided between those who think with their head and those who know with their heart. …

The truthiness is anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you.

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From ‘agog’ to ‘go-go’

Q: I was recently reading a novel and “agog” jumped out at me. Where did this weird-sounding word come from? Does it have anything to do with being goggle-eyed? I’m all agog to know.

A: “Agog,” meaning excited, astonished, or expectantly eager, probably isn’t related to goggling or goggly eyes or, for that matter, to goggles.

But there’s an etymological trail leading from “agog” to “go-go” dancing and “go-go” boots—and if you don’t remember those, you’re not of our generation. Here’s how it all came about.

“Agog” entered written English in the early 1400s. Though the word’s source is uncertain, etymologists say it’s likely to have come from the Middle French phrase en gogues (amused, entertained), formed with the plural of the Old French noun gogue (fun, amusement).

When “agog” was first recorded in English, the Oxford English Dictionary says, it was an adverb meaning “in excited readiness, expectation, or desire; in or into a state of great eagerness, enthusiasm, excitement, suspense, or (in later use) astonishment.”

The dictionary’s oldest example uses the word to mean in expectation or suspense:

“He shal be hourled so in high courte and holde so agogge, That hym were bettre lose his lande þenne long so be toylid” (“He shall be so attacked in high court and held so agog [in such suspense], that it would be better for him to lose his land than to be so long in litigation”). From Mum and the Sothsegger, an anonymous poem dated circa 1405. The “Mum” in the title is one who’s silent; the “Sothsegger” (soothsayer) tells the truth.

In this later example, “agog” is used to show excited readiness or desire:

“I suppose you now sit all agog, / In hopes to hear a smutty Epilogue” (from Nicholas Amhurst’s Poems on Several Occasions, 1720).

The word began appearing predicatively as an adjective in the 1600s. The OED’s earliest example is from John Wilson’s tragedy Andronicus Comnenius (1664): “They are all agog, / And may do mischief.”

The OED defines the adjective as “excited, eagerly expectant, enthusiastic; (in later use) astonished. Also: on the move, busily astir.”

But most often the adjective seems to express eager expectation, as in this poetic example: “And she too fires my Heart, and she too charms, / And I’m agog to have her in my arms” (John Oldham’s Poems, and Translations, 1683).

As we mentioned earlier, etymologists trace “agog” to the Middle French phrase en gogues, formed with the plural of the Old French noun gogue (amusement, fun).

And gogue, the OED says, is probably the source of the Middle French phrase à gogo, which originally meant “joyfully, uninhibitedly, extravagantly,” and later came to mean “galore, aplenty.” It was this latter sense of à gogoOxford says, that gave English the swinging-’60s term “a-go-go.”

This all began, the dictionary says, when a nightclub and discotheque opened in Paris in 1952 with the name Whisky à Gogo (literally, “Whisky Galore,” apparently after a 1949 British film by that name).

The club “quickly became a favourite with the young and fashionable set,” and in a few years “many clubs and discotheques bearing the same name and playing the latest music on disc had sprung up in France and elsewhere in Europe,” the OED says.

“The first club of this name in the United States (Whisky a Go Go) opened in Chicago in 1958,” the dictionary notes, though the most famous one opened in 1964 on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. It became “a leading venue for popular music in the 1960s and popularizer of go-go dancing.”

Meanwhile, Oxford says, “a-go-go” came to mean “fashionable, modish, up to date, ‘with it,’ ” as well as “lively, ‘swinging.’ ”

Finally, about those “goggle” words. As we said, etymologists see no connection between them and “agog.” However, both “goggle” and “agog”are probably imitative in origin—that is, they imitate a sound, a motion, a feeling, etc.

The probable source of “agog,” the French gogue (fun and merriment), comes from “a Romance base of imitative origin,” the OED says. Which means that to the French, gogue sounded like fun.

As John Ayto puts it in his Dictionary of Word Origins, “it may perhaps be imitative of noisy merry-making.”

But the verb “goggle,” first recorded as “gogelen” (circa 1380), is thought to be from an onomatopoeic element “expressive of oscillating movement” of the eyes, the OED says.

The dictionary defines the verb this way: “To turn the eyes to one side or other, to look obliquely, to squint.” Later it meant “to look with widely-opened, unsteady eyes; to roll the eyes about,” the OED adds. The other “goggle”-type words are derived from the verb.

The adjective phrase “goggle-eyed” was first recorded (as “gogil yȝed”) around 1384. However, the adjective “goggle” by itself, as in “goggle eyes,” didn’t appear in writing until 1540; “goggly” followed in the late 1600s. And “goggles,” the noun for the eyewear, made its appearance in 1715.

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Why an app is called a widget

Q: How did an app come to be referred to as a widget?

A: The story begins in the early 20th century, when an unnamed gadget was called a “widget” for the first time, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The usage appeared in Beggar on Horseback, a 1924 play by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly about a struggling classical composer who plans to marry the daughter of a rich industrialist.

In a dream sequence, the composer imagines giving up music to work for the industrialist: “What business are we in?” he asks. “Widgets,” his father-in-law says. “We’re in the widget business.” On waking up, the composer decides to marry the girl next door instead.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “widget” in this sense as “an indefinite term for a small gadget or mechanical contrivance.” The dictionary labels it “origin uncertain,” but adds that it’s “perhaps an arbitrary alteration of gadget.”

In the 1990s, according to the OED, “widget” took on the computing sense of “an application designed to perform a relatively simple task, esp. one which displays a simple piece of information (such as a weather report or the date and time) on the screen of a computer, smartphone, etc.”

The first Oxford citation is from a June 19, 1991, comment on a Usenet newsgroup (comp.windows.x): “A customer wants to have a row of clocks showing different timezones. Unfortunately the clock widget doesn’t handle that case very well.”

As for “application,” it showed up as a computer term in the 1950s, according to the earliest OED citation:

“This approach to a file maintenance application implies that a number, or ‘batch’ of transactions is collected and sorted into the order of the master file” (Programming for Digital Computers, 1959, by Joachim Jeenel).

The shortened version, “app,” showed up a few decades later in an advertisement (originally with a period at the end to indicate an abbreviation): “Strong IBM customer … will hire a tech support person to … interface with app. development and comp. operations people” (Computerworld, April 20, 1981).

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Regarding ‘in terms of’

Q: Have you ever discussed the awful overuse of “in terms of” in current everyday parlance?

A: You’re right that the phrase “in terms of” is getting quite a workout these days.

The expression was little used in the 19th century, as a search with Google’s Ngram viewer shows. But it began rising steadily around 1910 and arrived at a sharp peak in 1980. Since then it has fallen slightly and leveled off, but it remains at a relatively high frequency of usage.

A comparison chart shows that “in terms of” is now clearly more popular than its usual synonyms, listed here in order of frequency: “regarding,” “concerning,” “in relation to,” “with respect to,” “as far as,” and “with regard to.”

The chart shows that “in terms of” was the least popular a century ago, but now it’s the favorite. Why? We can’t say. Perhaps it strikes people as more scholarly or scientific than the alternatives.

In fact, “in terms of” had scholarly beginnings. It was first recorded in the early 18th century as a mathematical expression meaning “by means of or with reference to specified variables or quantities,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED’s earliest written use is from a technical dictionary, John Harris’s Lexicon Technicum (1704): “Square number A mix’d Number … whose Fractional Part is exprest in Terms of a Vulgar Fraction.”

These examples from the next three centuries more clearly illustrate the expression’s technical meaning:

“The nearest distance of the orbits of Venus and the earth was concluded in terms of the earth’s diameter” (Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects, 1866, by John Frederick William Herschel).

“Solve the given equation for y in terms of x” (College Mathematics, 2nd ed., 1951, by William Whitfield Elliott and Edward Roy Cecil Miles).

“Write down an expression, in terms of x, for the amount Dan received” (Cambridge O Level Mathematics, 2012, by Audrey Simpson).

The nontechnical meaning of “in terms of” emerged in the early 19th century. It’s defined in the OED as “by means of or in reference to (a particular concept); in the mode of expression or thought belonging to (a subject or category); (loosely) on the basis of; in relation to; as regards.”

The dictionary’s earliest example of the phrase used in this sense is from a work by the philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham: “Contradictoriness … manifested, in terms of a certain degree of strength, towards some proposition or propositions, that have been advanced by some one else” (The Elements of the Art of Packing, as Applied to Special Juries, 1821).

These later examples show how the usage has evolved:

“Most persons, on being asked in what sort of terms they imagine words, will say ‘in terms of hearing’ ” (The Principles of Psychology, 1890, by William James).

“System design is discussed here in terms of fact finding, developing specifications, meeting specifications, and matching equipment with the system” (Automatic Data-Processing Systems, 1960, by Robert Henry Gregory and Richard L. Van Horn).

“We need to recognise metropolitan and CBD business remain the major engine of growth in terms of new employment” (Australian Financial Review, May 25, 2000).

The phrase as we know it today, the dictionary says, is sometimes influenced by a use of the plural “terms” in a sense that dates from the late 14th century: “words or expressions collectively (usually of a specified kind); manner of expression, way of speaking; language. Chiefly preceded by in.”

Familiar expressions using this sense of “terms” include “in general terms,” “in layman’s terms,” “in the strongest terms,” and “in no uncertain terms.”

So “in terms of,” the OED says, sometimes comes close to meaning “in the language or terminology of.”

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A lion, a flower, and a king

Q: Is Leonotis, the plant genus, related etymologically to Leonidas, the Spartan king?

A: The botanical Latin name of Leonotis, a genus of flowering tropical plants native to Africa and India, ultimately comes from the classical Greek terms for “lion” and “ear.” Not surprisingly, a common name for it is “lion’s ear.”

As far as we can tell, the German botanist Christiaan Hendrik Persoon was the first person to use the term. In Synopsis Plantarum, Book 2 (1807), he lists Leonotis as a subgenus of Phlomis, a genus of shrubby and herbaceous plants native to the Mediterranean.

A few years later, the Scottish botanist Robert Brown listed Leonotis as a genus in Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen (Introduction to the Flora of New Holland and Van Diemen’s Island), an 1810 treatise on the plants of mainland Australia and Tasmania.

Leonotis and Phlomis are each now considered a genus of the family Lamiaceae.

Neither Persoon nor Brown explain why they named the plant Leonotis, but the term probably refers to the shape of the corolla, or petals.

In this image of the species Leonotis leonurus, the corolla also looks a bit like the tip of a lion’s tail—and “lion’s tail” is another common name for the genus.

The botanical Latin name ultimately comes from the classical Greek terms for “lion” (λέων, leon) and “ear” (ὠτός, otos, the genitive form of οὖς, ous).

We’ve seen no evidence that it’s derived from Leonidas, the fifth century BC king of Sparta. However, the king as well as the plant had leonine names. The king’s name in ancient Greek, λέωνῐ́δᾱς, means “son of a lion.”

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Wild swimming

Q: When did the term “wild swimming” become common? I first I heard it a few years ago in an episode of the BBC mystery series Vera. Since then I’ve noticed it more and more. When I was a kid, we swam where there was enough water: a pond, a river, a lake, a pool. We called it all swimming.

A: The phrase “wild swimming”— swimming outdoors in natural waters—has been around since the late 1990s. It originated as a British usage, which is why you first noticed it while watching that BBC mystery series.

The Vera episode you mention first aired in the UK in 2012. In the script, Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope briefs colleagues about a murder victim whose body was found on a riverbank:

“Jenny Lister. Forty-one years old. Social worker. Wild swimming enthusiast. Now according to Billy, she was stunned by a blow to the head, probably with a rock, and then held under the water until she drowned.”

The Oxford English Dictionary describes the phrase “wild swimming” as “chiefly British” and defines it as “the practice or activity of swimming for pleasure in natural waters, typically rivers and lakes.”

The dictionary’s earliest known use is from Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain (1999), by Roger Deakin: “With so much twenty-four-carat water everywhere, there’s a tradition of wild swimming in all the towns and villages.”

In the book, Deakin, an environmentalist and documentary maker who died in 2006, describes a swimming tour he made in 1997 through Britain’s waterways, starting at the Isles of Scilly and ending at the North Sea.

When it was published in 2000 in the US, the trade magazine Kirkus Reviews called Deakin’s book “the foundational text for the international ‘wild swimming’ movement.” Since the book appeared, it has inspired a documentary and dozens of books on the appeal of swimming in open waters.

Deakin can probably be credited with inventing the term “wild swimming” as it’s popularly used. We’ve found only one earlier example, but it’s probably an outlier, since it appears to use “wild” in the sense of unauthorized or in an undesignated area:

“Tourist traffic at dams and banks, wild swimming and wild camping, sports fishermen and pedestrians cause damages in forests, at embankments and at structures.” (From Developments in River Basin Management, 1987, edited by Kokei Uehara et. al., a collection of papers presented at a conference in Brazil in August 1986.)

The OED’s 21st-century examples include two from British newspapers: “Wild swimming is much more fun, it is a sort of communion with nature” (The Bath Chronicle, Aug. 3, 2004) … “It’s an old quarry that is now an oasis that empties and fills with the tides, and it’s a wonderful place for wild swimming” (The Times, May 17, 2015).

Not everyone is fond of the term. In a column in The Guardian last year, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett wrote: “I’ve never been a fan of the phrase ‘wild swimming’; in Snowdonia [Wales], where I grew up, we always just called it swimming. To call it ‘wild,’ I feel, is to centre the urban, the municipal and the populated, and to place the rural and the natural at the margins.”

We can see her point. The use of the modifier (“wild”) implies that the default mode of swimming is in an artificial pool built for the purpose. This is analogous to the phrase “woman doctor,” which implies that the default doctor is a man.

As for the adjective “wild,” it’s been in written English since the early eighth century in its general sense—existing in a state of nature. It was inherited from the Germanic languages; the OED points to the Old Saxon wildflêsc (“wild meat”) and the Middle Swedish wilskin (“wild leather”).

When first recorded in English, “wild” was used to describe plants and animals. It meant “living in a state of nature; not tame, not domesticated” (as applied to an animal), and “growing in a state of nature; not cultivated” (as applied to a plant or flower).

The earliest known uses in writing are from a Latin-Old English glossary dated around 725: “Indomitus, wilde” and “Agre[s]tis, wilde” (the first used for animals, the second for plants). The citations are from the Corpus Glossary, so named because the manuscript is held at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University.

Beginning in the 800s, the adjective was used more broadly—at first to describe uncultivated or uninhabited places, and later it was applied to people in senses both good and bad. It could mean free or unrestricted on the one hand, but uncivilized, unruly, or immoral on the other.

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Mixing and matching

Q: I hear “mix and match” where merely “mix” is meant, as in a Bloomberg article about Covid-19 that quotes a doctor as saying “there is evidence that mixing and matching different vaccines may actually boost the immune response.” How long has “mix” been needlessly expanded? I’m ready to hear you say this has been going on for approximately 1,000 years. Well, at least 300.

A: No, not quite 1,000 years. Nor even 300. “Mix and match” apparently showed up about 60 years ago.

We agree that “mix and match” can often be replaced by “mix” alone, but the full expression suggests something more than merely mixing, especially when it’s used as retailese to promote things like a summer wardrobe, a sound system, or a cable TV package.

Standard dictionaries generally define the verb phrase “mix and match” as to combine different but complementary things—compatible items that complete or improve one another. So you can “mix” two clashing pieces of clothing, but “mix and match” only compatible ones.

The doctor quoted by Bloomberg seems to be using the expression in the dictionary sense. She uses it to mean combining compatible Covid vaccinations to improve their effectiveness.

It seems odd that a doctor would use a retailing expression to promote a Covid treatment, but people fighting the pandemic, and the news media covering them, have apparently adopted this usage. Here are some recent headlines:

“ ‘Mix and match’ UK Covid vaccine trial expanded” (BBC News, April 14, 2021).

“Can you mix and match Covid vaccines? Here’s what we know so far” (CNBC, April 9, 2021).

“Can We Mix and Match COVID-19 Vaccines? Experts Say Not Yet” (Healthline, March 27, 2021).

“Getting One Vaccine Is Good. How About Mix-and-Match?” (The New York Times, March 30, 2021).

“Scientists get serious about mixing and matching COVID-19 vaccines” (Medical Press, March 1, 2021).

As for the etymology, the expression emerged in the 1960s as both a verb and an adjective, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary, though similar phrases in the 1940s and ’50s anticipated the usage.

The OED, an etymological dictionary, says the verb phrase means “to select and combine different but complementary items (originally of clothing) to form a coordinated set.” It has a similar definition for the adjective.

The dictionary cites this forerunner of the verb: “Tropical separates … Of crisp tropical rayon suiting nicely tailored … You can either ‘mix ’em or match ’em’ ” (from an ad in The Baltimore Sun, April 3, 1948).

And here’s a precursor of the adjective: “Mix-match styles, casual jackets and skirts which match or contrast, but are sold separately” (The Fashion Dictionary, 1957, by Mary Brooks Picken).

Interestingly, the first Oxford example for the actual verb phrase refers to mixing and matching laboratory glassware, not clothing. It comes from an ad that we’ve found in an earlier publication and expanded here: “Mix and match! Order anything in the complete Kimble line … mix Kimax rod, tubing and pipe with lime glass or Kimax volumetric ware” (Analytical Chemistry, Jan. 1, 1960).

The earliest OED citation for the adjective, which we’ve also expanded, is from an article about various terms for leotards and tights: “The leotard look in tights also appeared under the names of color-cued tights, Glamour Gams, streamlined stretch tights, full-fashioned tights, casual tights, Gotham-tites, mix-n-match Tights” (“Leotards and ‘Tightsomania,’ ” by Kelsie B. Harder, American Speech, May 1960).

From what we’ve seen, the phrase “mix and match” usually appears in the sense of combining and complementing things, not just combining them. And the items combined are compatible, not clashing. However, we don’t find the expression used much in general writing or conversation.

[Note, Feb. 26, 2024: An earlier use of “mix and match” appeared in the late 19th century and meant to mix various colors (as of paint or ink) to match an existing color. We’ve seen no evidence that the earlier sense influenced the later one.]

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