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

‘Time to get up, you lot!’

Q: Do you think the British use of “you lot” as a second person plural pronoun has a link to the American use of “y’all”?

A: The Southern American regionalism “y’all” and the British colloquialism “you lot” are similar in that both can be used to mean “you all” in its traditional sense: “all of you.” However, the two usages differ in several ways.

As we say in a 2023 post, the uncontracted “you all” first appeared in Old English as eow ealle and referred to all of the people being addressed.

The “you all” spelling showed up in the 16th century and the contracted “y’all” in the 17th century with the same “all of you” sense, though the contraction was rarely used.

The regionalism “y’all” or “you-all” first appeared in the American South in the early 19th century and could refer to one or more people as well as others associated with the people addressed.

The British colloquialism “you lot” (often “all you lot”) appeared a century later, with the noun “lot” used to stress the plural sense of the pronoun “you.”

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, “lot” here is used “to indicate or emphasize plural reference (in contrast to simple you, which may have either singular or plural reference).” Here’s the dictionary’s earliest citation:

“When the guard came to the top to collect the fares the girls there tendered their pennies. The guard declined them, explaining, ‘Your mother has paid for all you lot’ ” (The Manchester Guardian, Feb. 9, 1907).

The OED doesn’t directly link “you lot” to “y’all,” but it suggests that readers compare the British usage with the regionalisms “you-all” and “yous.” We’ve discussed “yous” and “youse” in several posts, most recently in 2011.

As for the noun “lot,” it has referred to a group of people since at least the 12th century. Here’s an example we’ve found in the Ormulum (circa 1175), a collection of early Middle English homilies:

“Þe maste lott tatt heȝhesst iss Iss þatt lærede genge” (“The great lot that is highest is the legion of the learned”).

The OED says this use of “lot” now usually refers to “a number of people associated in some way by the speaker or writer. The dictionary says the usage is “now colloquial and often depreciative.”

Getting back to “you lot,” the phrase is often negative, as in the second Oxford citation, which we’ve expanded, from D. H. Lawrence’s novel Sons and Lovers (1913):

“ ‘An’ is it goin’ to be wasted?’ said Morel. ‘I’m not such a extravagant mortal as you lot, with your waste. If I drop a bit of bread at pit, in all the dust an’ dirt, I pick it up an’ eat it.’ ”

We’ll end with a recent example of the usage that we found in a novel about the life of a young schoolteacher in a poor area of Birmingham in the 1930s:

“ ‘Time to get up, you lot!’  Mr Belcher had swung open the barn door and dusty rays streamed in. Joey could see the man’s round face beneath the brim of his hat, pink in the warmth. ‘Come on–shake a leg!’ ” (Miss Purdy’s Class, 2011, by Annie Murray).

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English English language Etymology Expression Phrase origin Usage Word origin Writing

Why we rely on a ‘go-to’

Q: When did people start using the phrase “go-to” as a noun? I don’t recall having heard it when I lived in the States (1953-1975).

A: The use of the noun and earlier adjective “go-to” for a dependable or reliable person or thing showed up in the late 20th century as an American sports usage.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun as “a person who or thing which may be consulted or relied upon; a preferred or favoured option.”

Similarly, the OED says the adjective refers to someone or something “that may be consulted or relied upon; frequently chosen, utilized, or sought out in a particular situation.”

The adjective came first, in a description of reliable basketball players as “go-to guys.” In the earliest Oxford citation, Don Chaney, coach of the Los Angeles Clippers, refers to the NBA guard Derek Smith:

“Derek is one of my go-to guys—players who want the ball in crucial situations” (United Press International, April 4, 1985).

The dictionary’s earliest example of the noun is from another basketball article. The reporter quotes Dennis Rodman of the Chicago Bulls on the subject of Patrick Ewing’s teammates on the New York Knicks:

“ ‘Wannabe stars’ is how Dennis Rodman sized up Ewing’s supporting cast. Now those wannabes are going to make the quantum leap to ‘go-tos’?” (Daily News, New York, Dec. 23, 1997).

Interestingly, a now-archaic version of the noun “go-to” appeared in the mid-19th century, when it was used in the phrase “at one go-to,” meaning in one attempt or without stopping. (Today, one would say “at one go.”)

The OED has this example from a horsey travel memoir: “I am tired with writing it all at one go-to” (Las Alforjas, or, The Bridle-Roads of Spain, 1853, by George John Cayley). Alforjas are saddlebags.

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English English language Etymology Expression Language Phrase origin Religion Usage Writing

Not to mention Paul

Q: Thank you for your article on “not to mention,” a funny phrase since the writer goes on to mention it anyway. Are you aware that the phrase is in Paul’s letter to Philemon (verse 19) and evidently much older than the 1644 example from Milton you cite?

A: You’re right that this use of “not to mention” appeared in English before the Oxford English Dictionary citation that we mention in our 2007 post, which we’ve now updated. But it didn’t show up quite as early as your biblical example suggests.

We’ve found several earlier 17th-century uses, including this one from a treatise on the Anglican liturgy that criticizes the servants of “Don Beel-zebub” for encouraging equivocation and deception:

“Not to mention here their vnsufferable correcting, yea corrupting of all Authors” (An Exposition of the Dominicall Epistles and Gospels Used in Our English Liturgie, 1622, by John Boys, Dean of Canterbury).

As far as we can tell, the use of “not to mention” in the Epistle to Philemon appears in only modern translations of the New Testament, not in older ones.

Here, for example, is Philemon 19 in the New King James Version (1982): “I, Paul, am writing with my own hand. I will repay—not to mention to you that you owe me even your own self besides.”

But this is the passage in the original King James Version (1611): “I Paul haue written it with mine own hand, I will repay it: albeit I doe not say to thee how thou owest vnto me euen thine owne selfe besides.”

And here is Filemon 19 in the Wycliffe Bible, written in Middle English in the early 1380s:

“Y Poul wroot with myn hoond, Y schal yelde; that Y seie not to thee, that also thou owist to me thi silf” (“I, Paul, wrote this with my hand, I shall repay it; that I say not to thee, that also thou owest me thy self”).

That Middle English translation is in keeping with early Greek versions of Paul’s epistle. Here’s the relevant Greek passage: “ἵνα μὴ λέγω σοι” (“that not I say [or “may say’] to you”).

Although “Y seie not to thee” in the Wycliffe version has the same meaning as “not to mention” in modern translations of Philemon 19, the two usages are not etymologically related.

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

The laundry list, itemized

Q: What’s a “laundry list” anyway? Do people itemize their dirty socks? Even when I go to a laundry, they give me a receipt with a per-pound price, not any kind of list. “Grocery list,” yes. “Laundry list,” wha…?

A: The term “laundry list” has been used literally since the 1860s and figuratively since the 1930s. Here’s a literal example from the old Hotel Astor at Times Square:

As Merriam-Webster explains in an etymological note, the expression first appeared in the 19th century with the rise of commercial laundry services.

“When you took your laundry to a commercial laundry establishment,” the dictionary says, “you had to make a record of what you’d sent; this ensured both that you got back what you’d sent, and that you paid for what got washed. And that is where the laundry list comes in.”

By the 1860s, the dictionary says, “some enterprising souls had seen fit to create laundry lists that itemized all the varieties of potentially dirty articles with a place for the user to enter the tally for each item.”

The dictionary cites this description from the March 4, 1871, issue of The Pacific Commercial Advertiser (Honolulu):

“Mr. W. M. Wallace has got up a very neat and convenient card for laundry lists, which on examination will at once strike one as useful as well as novel. The different articles of clothing sent to the wash are by an ingenious arrangement numbered each under its separate head, without the bother of writing or making figures. There are separate lists for ladies, gentlemen, and families, and every ordinary article of clothing that requires washing has its separate place, from one piece up to twelve. We are confident that on trial it will be found of indispensable use in every household, and a valuable source of economy.”

The earliest example we’ve found for the term “laundry list” used literally is from “The Art of Travel in Europe,” a review of tourist guides in the July 1863 issue of The National Review, a short-lived British quarterly.

In discussing the organization of foreign words and phrases in various categories, the authors say “the chief articles of dress occur in two, the toilette and the laundry list.”

As for the figurative sense of the expression that’s often seen now, Merriam-Webster says “a laundry list is ‘a usually long list of items,’ and it’s used to refer to lists of varying kinds.”

The dictionary’s earliest example is a headline in The Illinois State Journal, Springfield, May 9, 1938: “Girl Should Make Laundry List of Marriage Factors, Then Proceed to Pick Man.”

Finally, we should mention that a predecessor of the literal “laundry list” was a “washing bill,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “a statement of laundry-charges.”

The first OED citation for the earlier usage, which we’ve expanded, is from Jane Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey, completed in 1803 but published posthumously in 1817.

Catherine Morland, the young protagonist, discovers a roll of paper in a  cabinet in the bedroom where she’s staying on a visit to the Abbey. She imagines that she’s found a precious manuscript but then learns otherwise:

“Her greedy eye glanced rapidly over a page. She started at its import. Could it be possible, or did not her senses play her false? An inventory of linen, in coarse and modern characters, seemed all that was before her! If the evidence of sight might be trusted, she held a washing-bill in her hand.”

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