Month: April 2025

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

Clawing back in the age of DOGE

Q: Where did the expression “claw back” (referring to money) come from? It seems to be a fairly recent usage.

A: The phrasal verb “claw back” is heard a lot now, especially as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency tries to get back money given out, but the usage isn’t quite as new as you think.

The term “claw back” has been used since the 1950s in the sense of to take back money, and the verb “claw” has been used by itself in a similar way since the mid-19th century.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines this meaning as “to regain gradually or with great effort; to take back (an allowance by additional taxation, etc.).”

The earliest citation in the OED for “claw back” used in the financial sense is from the Feb. 21, 1953, issue of the Economist. Here’s an expanded version:

“The Government would also make sure that, as in the case of Building Society dividends and interest payments, such tax relief was clawed back from surtax payers.”

The noun “clawback” (the retrieval of money already paid out) soon appeared. The first Oxford citation, which we’ve expanded, is from The Daily Telegraph (London), April 16, 1969:

“It is, however, necessary to adjust the claw-back for 1969–70 so as to reflect the fact that the 3s. extra on family allowances, which was paid for only half a year in 1968–69, will be paid for a full year in 1969–70.”

The first OED citation for “claw” used in reference to money is from Denis Duval, the unfinished last novel of William Makepeace Thackeray, published a few months after he died at the end of 1863.

Here’s an expanded version of the passage cited: “His hands were forever stretched out to claw other folks’ money towards himself” (originally published in The Cornhill Magazine, March-June, 1864).

When the verb “claw” first showed up in Old English in the late 10th century, it meant “to scratch or tear with claws,” according to the OED.

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from Aelfric’s Grammar, an introduction to Latin, written around 995 by the Benedictine abbot Ælfric of Eynsham: “Scalpo, ic clawe” (scalpo is Latin and ic clawe is Old English for “I scratch”).

In the mid-16th century, the OED says, the verb took on the sense of “to seize, grip, clutch, or pull with claws.”

The earliest citation is from “The Aged Louer Renounceth Loue,” an anonymous poem in Tottel’s Miscellany (1557), which is described in the Cambridge History of English Literature as the first printed anthology of English poetry:

“For age with stelyng [steely or implacable] steppes, Hath clawed [clutched] me with his cowche [crook].” The anthology, collected by the English publisher Richard Tottel, is also known as Songes and Sonettes Written by the Ryght Honorable Lord Henry Howard, late Earle of Surrey, Thomas Wyatt the Elder and Others.

The OED says the seize, grip, clutch, or pull sense of “claw” later came to be used figuratively—both by itself and in the phrase “claw back”—to mean regain funds slowly or with much effort, the sense you’re asking about.

We’ll end with a recent example of the phrase used figuratively in reference to Musk’s campaign to take back funds:

“From the start of the second Trump administration, Mr. Musk’s team has pushed agencies to claw back government funds for everything from teacher-training grants to H.I.V. prevention overseas” (The New York Times, April 5, 2025).

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Easter English English language Etymology Expression Language Linguistics Passover Religion Usage Word origin

On Passover and Easter

[Note: In recognition of the Passover and Easter holidays, we’re republishing  a post that originally ran on May 23, 2022.]

Q: Why do the words for Passover and Easter sound similar in different languages? They can’t have the same origin, can they?

A: Words for Passover and Easter are similar in many languages, especially European languages, because the lookalikes are derived from the Hebrew word for the Jewish holiday, פסח (Pesach).

So “Passover” is Pâque in French, Passah in German, Pasqua in Italian, Påske in Norwegian, Pascha in Polish, Pascua in Spanish, etc.

Similarly, “Easter” is Pâques in French, Pasqua in Italian, Påske in Norwegian, Pascua in Spanish, and so on.

Two notable exceptions are in English and German, where “Easter” and Ostern are believed to be derived from prehistoric words for “east” and “dawn,” and may have been influenced by an ancient Germanic goddess of the spring.

Among other European exceptions are those in some Slavic languages that refer to Easter with various terms meaning “Great Night” or “Great Day.”

The Hebrew word פסח was first recorded in the biblical account of the freeing of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt.

In the Book of Exodus, it’s a verb usually translated as to pass over and a noun for the ritual sacrifice of a lamb on the first Passover, the meal eaten from it, and God’s passing over the homes of the Israelites.

In Exodus 12:23, the clause “ופסח יהוה” means “and the Lord will pass over”—that is, skip or omit—the homes of the Israelites during the last of the Ten Plagues, the killing of Egypt’s firstborn.

In other verses of Exodus 12, the noun פסח refers to the sacrifice, the meal, and God’s passing over:

“פסח הוא ליהוה” (“a passover [sacrifice] to the Lord,” Ex. 12:11) … “ושחטו הפסח” (“and slaughter the Passover [sacrifice],” Ex. 12:21) … “זבח־פסח הוא ליהוה” (“a sacrifice to the Lord’s passover [passing over],” Ex. 12:27) … “זאת חקת הפסח” (“this is the rule of the Passover [meal],” Ex. 12:43).

The “pass over” sense of the verb פסח was first recorded in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament from the third century BC. Although that’s the usual way the verb is translated in English versions of Exodus, the Hebrew term has been translated several other ways over the years, such as take pity or protect.

The term first appeared in English in William Tyndale’s 1530 translation of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible: “And ye shall eate it in haste, for it is the Lordes passeouer” (Exodus 12:11).

The English term showed up a few years later in the same passage from Myles Coverdale’s 1535 translation of the New and Old Testaments: “and ye shal eate it with haist: for it is ye LORDES Passeouer.”

Most European languages refer to Easter with variations on pascha, post-classical Latin for “Passover.” (The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus took place during the seven days of Passover, according to the Christian Gospels.) The Latin pascha is a transliteration of πάσχα in Hellenistic Greek, which is in turn a rendering of פסחא, the Aramaic version of the Hebrew פסח.

In Old English, pasca (“pasch” in Modern English) could refer to either Easter or Passover, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary. Both usages appear in Byrhtferð’s Enchiridion (1011), a wide-ranging compilation of information on astronomy, mathematics, logic, grammar, rhetoric, and more:

  • “Pasca ys Ebreisc nama, and he getacnað oferfæreld” (“Pasca is the Hebrew name, and it signifies Passover”).
  • “He abæd æt þam mihtigan Drihtne … þæt he him mildelice gecydde hwær hyt rihtlicost wære þæt man þa Easterlican tide mid Godes rihte, þæne Pascan, healdan sceolde” (“He prayed to the mighty Lord … that He kindly make known to him where under God’s law one should rightly observe the Pasch, the Easter season”).

However, an early version of “Easter” had appeared centuries before in Old English. The oldest recorded example in the OED is from an early eighth-century Latin manuscript in which the Northumbrian monk Bede discusses the origin of Old English names for the months.

In De Temporum Ratione (“The Reckoning of Time,” 725), Bede says the Old English Eostur-monath (“Easter-month”) is derived from Eostre, a goddess of the dawn celebrated by pagan Anglo-Saxons in Northumbria around the time of the vernal equinox or beginning of spring:

“Eostur-monath, qui nunc paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a dea illorum quae Eostre vocabatur, et cui in illo festa celebrabant, nomen habuit, a cujus nomine nunc paschale tempus cognominant, consueto antiquae observationis vocabulo gaudia novae solemnitatis vocantes” (“Easter-month, which is now taken to mean the Paschal month, was once named for a goddess called Eostre, who was celebrated with a festival that month and whose ancient name is now used for a joyful new rite”).

In its entry for “Easter,” the OED includes an extensive discussion of Bede’s etymology, but it notes that his “explanation is not confirmed by any other source, and the goddess has been suspected by some scholars to be an invention of Bede’s.” However, the dictionary adds that “it seems unlikely that Bede would have invented a fictitious pagan festival in order to account for a Christian one.”

The dictionary says the Old English term for the Christian holiday is probably derived from the same prehistoric Germanic source as “east,” which can be traced to an ancient Indo-European base with the probable meaning “to become light (in the morning).”

The first OED citation for an Old English version of “Easter” that refers to the holiday itself, not the month, is from a Latin-Old English glossary of the 10th century: “Phase, eastran” (Phase is a Latin term for “Easter”). From The Latin-Old English Glossary in MS Cotton Cleopatra AIII (1951), by William Garlington Stryker.

The dictionary’s next example is from De Temporibus Anni (“On the Seasons of the Year”), a 10th-century handbook by Ælfric of Eynsham: “On sumon geare bið se mona twelf siðon geniwod, fram ðære halgan eastertide oð eft eastron” (“In some years, the moon becomes new twelve times, from the holy Eastertide to Easter again”).

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

Sex, gender, and sociology

Q: What explains the increasing use of “gender” in place of “sex” in sexual terminology? For me, prudishness doesn’t explain it.

A: The nouns “sex” and “gender” have been used interchangeably since the Middle Ages for either of the two primary biological forms of a species.

Although the two terms are still often used like that, they began to go their separate ways in the 20th century. Here’s the story.

English borrowed “sex” in the late 14th century from Middle French, but the ultimate source is classical Latin, where sexus referred to the “state of being male or female,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

When “sex” first appeared in English, the dictionary says, it meant “either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and many other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions.”

The earliest citation in the OED is from Genesis 6:19 in the Wycliffe Bible of the early 1380s. In this passage, the term is used for the sex of the animals in Noah’s ark:

“Of all þingez hauyng soule of eny flesch: two þou schalt brynge in to þe ark, þat male sex & female: lyuen with þe” (“Of all things living of any flesh, two thou shall bring into the ark, that of the male sex & female, to live with thee”).

When “gender” appeared in the mid-14th century, it was a term for a grammatical subclass of nouns and pronouns distinguished by their different inflections.

The earliest OED citation, which we’ve expanded here, is from the gender-bending legend of St. Theodora of Alexandria, who is said to have betrayed her husband and then done penance by dressing as a man and entering a monastery:

“Hire name, þat was femynyn / Of gendre, heo turned in to masculyn. / Theodora hire name was, parde, / But Theodorus heo hiht, seide heo” (“Her name, which was feminine of gender, she turned into masculine. Theoroda, her name was, by God, but Theodorus she was called, she said”).

From “De S. Theododra,” circa 1350, in Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden (Collected Old English Legends), 1878, edited by Carl Horstmann.

In the 15th century, the OED says, “gender” came to mean “males or females viewed as a group,” which the dictionary describes as the same sense as the original meaning of “sex.”

The earliest Oxford example is from the 1474 will of Thomas Stonor: “His heyres of the masculine gender of his body lawfully begoten” (from The Stonor Letters and Papers, 1919, edited by Charles Lethbridge Kingsford).

At the end of the 19th century, the noun “sex” took on an additional meaning—the sexual act—a sense the OED defines as “physical contact between individuals involving sexual stimulation; sexual activity or behaviour, spec. sexual intercourse, copulation.”

The dictionary suggests that the association of the noun “sex” with sexual relations ultimately altered the old senses of “sex” and “gender” for the principal biological forms of humans and other creatures.

In the 20th century, Oxford says, “sex came increasingly to mean sexual intercourse” and “gender began to replace it (in early use euphemistically) as the usual word for the biological grouping of males and females.”

The dictionary adds that the noun “gender” “is now often merged with or coloured by” a sense that developed in the mid-20th century in psychology and sociology:

“The state of being male or female as expressed by social or cultural distinctions and differences, rather than biological ones; the collective attributes or traits associated with a particular sex, or determined as a result of one’s sex. Also: a (male or female) group characterized in this way.”

The first Oxford citation for this new sense of “gender” is from “Sanity and Hazard in Childhood,” an article by Madison Bentley in The American Journal of Psychology, April 1945:

“In the grade-school years, too, gender (which is the socialized obverse of sex) is a fixed line of demarkation, the qualifying terms being ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine.’ ”

Despite the evolving meaning of “gender,” the entries for the term in some standard dictionaries include both the old biological and the new social senses.

Merriam-Webster, for example, has two definitions for “gender” used in the ways we’re discussing:

(1) “either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures.”

(2) “the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex.”

And a search with Google’s Ngram viewer, which compares terms in digitized books, suggests that “sex” and “gender” are still both being used in the old biological sense.

Merriam-Webster says in a usage guide that “among those who study gender and sexuality, a clear delineation between sex and gender is typically prescribed, with sex as the preferred term for biological forms, and gender limited to its meanings involving behavioral, cultural, and psychological traits.”

However, the dictionary adds, and we agree, that the “usage of sex and gender is by no means settled.”

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