Category: Expression

[NOTE: This post was updated on July 3, 2016.]

Q: My wife went to a country schoolhouse that was being swallowed up as Omaha grew. Unlike the modern schools in town, hers had no facilities for a hot lunch. But once a month the school system would deliver a hot lunch (usually hot dogs) called a “jitney lunch.” What does “jitney” mean and where does it come from?

A: You’d be surprised at how much time and effort language scholars have spent trying to find out where the word “jitney” comes from.

In Studies in Etymology and Etiology (2009), for example, David L. Gold explores possible French, Russian, Spanish, British, Yiddish, and other sources. His conclusion: origin unknown.

All the other references we’ve checked, including the Oxford English Dictionary and the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, agree: origin unknown.

But in 2016, the language scholar Stephen Goranson of the Duke University Libraries managed to confirm what had previously been only conjecture: The source of “jitney” was jetnée, an African-American word, via the French or Creole spoken in Louisiana, for jeton, French for “token.”

Goranson cites a ditty described in a 1915 issue of the Literary Digest as “a little catch popular with the Louisianian French-Speaking Negro”:

“Mettons jetnée danz il trou / Et parcourons sur la rue—  / Mettons jetnée—si non vous / Vous promenez à pied nou! This may be freely translated: Put a jitney in the slot / And over the street you ride; / Put a jitney—for if not / You’ll foot it on your hide.”

The 1915 article suggests that jetnée/“jitney” was coined by Southern blacks to mean a nickel, and was influenced by French jeton or jetton.

Now for the news. As Goranson says, “The following newly reported discovery appears to confirm such an origin by giving—in an African-American newspaper in 1898—a transitional form.”

Here he cites an article, published in January 1898 in the Illinois Record, headlined “Spingfield South-End Happenings”:

“What little jetney coachman on S. 6th street has such a big head he cant put on the coachman’s hat he only wears the coat with brass buttons?”

Goranson adds: “Note association with coach as well as (presumably) coin (or token), of little worth.”

Once established, the term for a bus or coach token spread quickly. As linguists have previously reported, the word showed up the following year, spelled “jitney,” in the Dec. 16, 1899, issue of the Morning Herald in Lexington, KY:

“ ‘Can’t spare de change. Me granmaw died in Sout’ Afriky an’ I need dis to float me over ter de fun’ral.’  ‘Quit yer kiddin’ an’ let me have a jitney.’ ”

Slang dictionaries say that at the turn of the century, “jitney” (sometimes spelled “gitney”) meant either five cents or a nickel, the fare to ride minibuses at the time. 

But by the early 20th century, the term was being used adjectivally to refer to the minibuses themselves. The OED’s earliest example is in a Nov. 28, 1914, letter from Los Angeles published in the Jan. 14, 1915, issue of the Nation:

“This autumn automobiles, mostly of the Ford variety, have begun in competition with the street cars in this city. The newspapers call them ‘Jitney buses.’ ”

Soon the word was being used by itself as a noun for the minibuses. Here’s an OED example from the April 16, 1915, issue of the New York Evening Post: “The jitney wears out the streets and should contribute to their repair.”

You’ll be especially interested in the next step in the evolution of “jitney”—as a noun used attributively (that is, adjectivally) to mean cheap or shoddy or inferior. Here’s how Oxford explains the new usage:

“So, on account of the low fare or the poor quality of these buses, used attrib. to denote anything cheap, improvised, or ramshackle.”  

The earliest published reference in the OED for this new usage is from Somewhere in Red Gap (1916), Harry Leon Wilson’s sequel to his better-known novel Ruggles of Red Gap (1915):

“It would be an ideal position for him. Instead of which he runs this here music store, sells these jitney pianos and phonographs and truck like that.”

As for those hot dogs served at your wife’s country school once a month, we imagine the meal was referred to as a “jitney lunch” either because it was cheap or uninspiring or because it was delivered by a jitney.

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Q: Is there a term for a song that has the same title as the album it’s on? Is it called the “titular track”?

A: Although the phrase “titular track” is sometimes used for such a tune, the most common terms are “title song” and “title track.”

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) says that when the word “title” is used as an adjective it can mean “having the same title as or providing the title for the collection or production of which it forms a part.” It gives this example: “the title song.”

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “title song” as “the song or track giving its name to a long-playing record.”

The OED’s earliest example is from the Jan. 6, 1961, issue of the British weekly magazine New Musical Express: “Am I that easy to forget … is the title song of a soft-sung album by Debbie Reynolds.”

Oxford defines “title track” (it hyphenates the term) simply as “title song.” The first citation in the dictionary is from the Feb. 21, 1970, issue of Melody Maker, a British weekly that merged with New Musical Express in 2000:

“It’s hard to believe that the same man who could write and play the extraordinary title track could also be responsible for ‘Spirits’ and ‘Search.’ ”

We’ve written a couple of posts about a related term, “eponymous,” which has traditionally referred to the person something is named for, as in “Hamlet is the eponymous hero of Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.”

Modern dictionaries say the term can now refer to the named as well as the namer, as in “Hamlet is the eponymous title of Shakespeare’s play about Hamlet.”

Getting back to your question about a song with the same title as its album, here are the results of a few Google searches: “title song,” 14.1 million hits; “title track,” 10.3 million; “titular track,” 126,000; “titular song,” 22,400.

In case you’re wondering, the word “title” is quite old, dating back to Anglo-Saxon days. The OED says it was spelled titul in Old English and probably pronounced with a short “i” (as in “little”), similar to the short “i” in its Latin source, titulus (an inscription or a title).

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Q: Do you know the origin and precise meaning of “brought to brook”? I used it recently as a shorthand for “made to answer for one’s bad actions” or “brought to justice.” But I may be misusing it and couldn’t readily find it with a Google search.

A: You’ve mushed together two somewhat similar constructions that are often conflated: “bring someone to book” (that is, to bring him to justice or punish him) and “bring someone to brook something” (bring her to accept or tolerate it).

The two expressions are often seen in similar passive constructions: “We have to make sure he’s brought to book” … “I don’t think she’ll ever be brought to brook their bigotry.”

Both usages showed up in English in the early 1800s, though we could find only one (“bring to book”) in dictionaries.

However, we’ve found many versions of “bring to brook” in 19th-century  writing, and some writers have used “brook” in the sense of “book” (though lexicographers don’t acknowledge this usage).

As you can imagine, the noun “book” is quite old, first showing up in the writings of King Alfred in the late 800s. In Old English, the word referred to various kinds of written documents, including deeds, lists, treatises, and literary works.

At the end of the 1400s, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “book” (later “books”) came to mean the accounts of a business.

And by the 1500s, “book” was being used loosely in the sense of an official or personal set of standards.

The expression “bring to book” first showed up in the early 1800s in the sense of requiring someone to account for his actions.

The OED defines the expression as “to bring to account, cause to show authority (for statements, etc.); to examine the evidence for (a statement, etc.), investigate.” The earliest example in the dictionary is from an 1804 issue of Sporting Magazine:

“ ‘Tis not my business to examine your accounts, Sir—but should I bring you to book … there is something in that sly countenance that tells me you have sometimes staked your credit at too great a venture.”

The OED, like the other dictionaries we’ve checked, doesn’t have an entry for “bring to brook,” but it includes the verb “brook,” which meant to “make use of” or “profit by” when it showed up in Old English.

In the 1500s, according to Oxford’s citations, it took on the sense of to “put up with, bear with, endure, tolerate.”   

Here’s an example from Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost (1667): “Heav’n … Brooks not the works of violence and Warr.”

And here’s one from Northanger Abbey (1803), Jane Austen’s first novel: “The General … could ill brook the opposition of his son.”

All the OED citations for this sense of “brook” are in negative constructions, and the dictionary says that’s the only way the usage is seen now.

As for “bring to brook,” we’ve found many examples of the expression used in the 19th century in the sense of bringing someone to accept or tolerate something.

Here’s an entertaining equine example from Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae, an 1826 book of religious writing by Robert Southey:

“It was always a gentle beast, and for that reason had always been ridden by the nobleman’s wife. But after carrying the Pope, the horse could never again be brought to brook his mistress; showing by the most expressive snorting and neighing, and by his indignant motions, that, consecrated as his back had been, no woman must ever presume to take her seat there.”

We’ve also seen quite a few examples, especially in the 20th century, of “bring to brook” used in the sense of “bring to book”—that is, bring to justice or punish.

Here’s one from a 1906 report by the National Association of Training Schools, an organization representing institutions for young offenders:

“You cannot solve the juvenile question by merely punishing the child. You must reach the home—the guilty parent who in most instances is the cause of the child’s undoing. The parents should be brought to brook for delinquency of the child as well as truancy.”

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Q: I recently came across “stroke their egos” in the Globe and Mail in Toronto. I always thought one “stokes” (i.e., feeds) an ego, not “strokes” it. I’d appreciate your opinion.

A: The more popular—and, in our opinion, the more idiomatic—version of the usage is “stroke one’s ego.” It’s also the one that makes more sense etymologically.

However, this usage is relatively new and may still be evolving, perhaps even evolving into two similar expressions with somewhat different meanings.

Although we’ve found a few examples of both “stroke” and “stoke” versions from the 1950s, “stroke” was the clear favorite by the time the usage caught on in the ’70s and ’80s.

Our feeling is that “stroke one’s ego” showed up first and that the “stoke” version was initially the result of an eggcorn, the misinterpretation of a word or phrase as another plausible word or phrase.

But we haven’t yet found evidence in searchable newspaper and literary databases to support this belief. In fact, the earliest example of the expression we could find uses “stoke,” not “stroke.” Here’s the story.

When the verb “stroke” entered Old English in the ninth century, it generally meant to run a hand softly over the head, body, or hair of a person or an animal “by way of caress or as a method of healing,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from Pastoral Care, King Alfred’s translation (circa 897) of a Latin treatise by Pope Gregory I on the responsibilities of the clergy.

But in the early 1500s, the OED says, the verb “stroke” took on a new meaning—to soothe, flatter, or treat indulgently.

Here’s an example from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest (circa 1610): “When thou cam’st first / Thou stroakst me, & made much of me.”

In recent usage, Oxford says, “stroke” has added the sense of reassuring someone (say, a timid child) or manipulating somebody (perhaps a politician).

The OED doesn’t include the phrase “stroke one’s ego,” but its entry for the verb “stroke” cites this convoluted example from the March 1975 issue of the Atlantic Monthly:

“It’s Show Biz, man—a bunch a’ egomaniacal people using a captive audience to stroke themselves.”

We think that the expression “stroke one’s ego” is an extension of the soothing or flattering sense of the verb “stroke.”

Although the phrase “stoke one’s ego” also makes sense, it’s a somewhat different sense. Yes, we might “stoke” an ego to manipulate a politician or pep up an athlete, but we’d be more likely to “stroke” an ego to flatter a client or reassure a child.

The verb “stoke” (meaning to “feed, stir up, and poke the fire”) showed up in English in the 17th century, according to John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins.

Ayto describes “stoke” as a back-formation, a term given to new words formed by dropping prefixes or suffixes from older ones—in this case the noun “stoker” (the guy who feeds a furnace).

Ayto says English borrowed “stoker” from a similar term in Dutch, where the verb stoken meant to put fuel into a furnace.

By the 18th century, according to the OED, the English verb “stoke” was being used figuratively in the sense of stoking or stirring up a controversy.

However, the OED has no examples of “stoke” used in the sense of flattering or treating indulgently.

As we’ve said, the expressions “stroke one’s ego” and “stoke one’s ego” both showed up in the 1950s.

The earliest example we could find of either one is this quote from an Oct. 22, 1952, editorial in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune about wage controls:

“But whom are they going to fight to get the 40 cents a day for that milk while you stoke your ego by encouraging them to stay away from work?”

The earliest example we’ve found of the “stroke” version is from a publication about the Kansas Veterinary Medical Association’s 1954 convention. In discussing how to deal with behavioral psychologists, this advice is given:

“Deal with them on an equal basis, and appeal to their pride; stroke their egos, recognize their importance. Recognition, to a behavioristic psychologist, is the most important word in the profession. People want to be recognized.”

By the 1970s and ’80s, as we’ve mentioned above, “stroke one’s ego” was the predominant version the expression.

Here’s a “stroke” example from Cat Astrology, a 1976 book by Mary Daniels: “It’s actually very easy to get along with a Leo cat. Stroke his ego as much as his fur, call him your ‘King of Beasts,’ or your ‘Little Princess’ or ‘Movie Star.’ ”

And here’s a “stoke” example from a Feb. 24, 1986, article in the Glasgow Herald about Wallace Mercer, the flamboyant chairman of the Scottish soccer club team Heart of Midlothian: “Hearts may have benefited from having him front but it has also helped stoke his ego.”

In googling various versions of the expression (with “his,” “her,” “your,” and “their” egos being stroked or stoked), we’ve found that “stroke” is now clearly more popular than “stoke.”

Although the “stoke” version may have begun life as an eggcorn, some people (you, for example) are deliberately choosing “stoke” (to feed) over “stroke” (to soothe).

Could we be seeing the evolution of two similar expressions with somewhat different meanings? Only time will tell.

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Q: My words for “flip-flops” are “zories” and “go-aheads.” My daughter cringes if I call them “thong sandals”—what could she be thinking of? I’ve lived in Iowa for 40 years now, but I grew up in the ’50s on Navy bases in California. Sailors brought the term “zories” back from Okinawa.

A: We’ve saved your question for the Labor Day weekend, summer’s last hurrah. We hope you and our other readers get in one last fling before putting away the flip-flops.

Pat used to call them simply “thongs” when she was growing up in Iowa in the ’50s and ’60s, but some sensitive folks (like you know who) may find the usage cringe-worthy today.

As for your terms for those floppy, usually rubber sandals, you may have picked up “go-aheads” as well as “zories” on those naval bases in California.

The Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary defines “go-aheads” this way: “Chiefly Hawaii and California. A sandal held on the foot by a strap between the big toe and the next toe.”

And an item entitled “Marine Corps Slang” in the December 1962 issue of the journal American Speech has this definition: “GO-AHEADS, n. Japanese zori, or the American adaptation, thong sandals.”

Doris E. Thompson, a University of Nebraska contributor who wrote the item, said she’d heard the “go-aheads” usage as a civilian employee at the Marine Corps schools at Quantico, VA.

You’ll be surprised to hear this, but the use of the term “zori” (or “sori”) for those sandals first showed up in English nearly two centuries ago.

The earliest example of the usage in the Oxford English Dictionary is from a book called Japan, an 1822 collection of writings edited by the English journalist Frederic Shoberl:

“The shoes of the Japanese consist of straw soles or slips of wood. Those in common use are called sori.”

The OED describes “zori” as a plural noun, and defines it as “Japanese thonged sandals with straw (or leather, wood, etc.) soles.” The word is derived from two Japanese terms: so (grass or straw) and ri (footwear or sole), according to Oxford.

(Geta, similar Japanese sandals, are on elevated wooden platforms and worn with kimonos and other traditional clothing.)

Although most of the OED examples cite the use of “zori” in Japan, the most recent is from a 1984 awards manual issued by the British Judo Association:

“Zori (flip-flops) are compulsory wear at BJA events and should be worn off the mat in Clubs, Schools, etc.”

All six Oxford citations for the usage have “zori,” not “zoris” or “zories,” as the plural.

However, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) list “zori” or “zoris” as the plural.

Our Google searches indicate that when an “s” plural is used, the spelling “zoris” is preferred over “zories” two to one.

The Dictionary of American Regional English has citations for “zori” going back to the late 1950s, and says the usage appears most often in the West and Hawaii. The DARE examples include “zori,” “zoris,” and “zories” as plurals.

The earliest DARE citation is from a Sept. 30, 1958, ad in the Idaho State Journal: “ ‘Zoris’ Thong Sandals—Ideal Shower Shoes … 77¢.” (The newspaper is in Pocatello.)

The most recent citation is from Our Lady of the Forest, a 2003 novel by David Guterson (author of the bestseller Snow Falling on Cedars):

“Was there really something called Florida Priest Week? A coterie of priests in bathing suits and zoris, discussing, say, the communion of saints?”

The term “flip-flop,” by the way, is quite old too, first showing up in English in the 1600s, when it referred to the sound of a footfall. However, the OED describes this appearance as a “nonce-use,” one coined for a specific occasion.

In the late 1800s, the term showed up in American political lingo to mean “a change of mind or position on something; a reversal,” according to Oxford.

The dictionary’s first citation for this usage is from the July 13,1890, issue of the Chicago Tribune: “Mr. Ericksen’s friends in the twenty-third executed a flip-flop, and … went over to Michael Francis in a body.”

The use of the word in reference to “a plastic or rubber sandal consisting of a flat sole and straps” showed up in the 1950s, according to OED citations.

Interestingly, the first citation for the usage in the dictionary is from a British customs form filled out in 1958 by the novelist P. D. James: “Maps, 1 pair of ‘flip-flops’, 1 shirt (white), 1 shirt (coloured) [etc.].”

As for “thong,” it’s not just quite old, it’s very, very old, with prehistoric roots in the days before writing.

“Etymologically, a thong is something that ‘binds’ up,” John Ayto writes in his Dictionary of Word Origins.

The word, according to Ayto, is derived from thwangg-, a term reconstructed from prehistoric Germanic term.

“In the Old English period,” he says, “it was thwong; it began to lose its w in the 13th century.”

When it first showed up in Old English sometime before 950, according to the OED, it meant a “narrow strip of hide or leather, for use as a lace, cord, band, strap, or the like.” In the early days, it generally referred to a shoe lace.

The earliest written examples in the OED of “thongs” or “thong sandals” used to mean footwear date from the mid-1960s.

However, we’ve found many examples of “thong sandals” from the 1940s and ’50s in searches of Google Books. Here’s one from A Charmed Life, a 1955 novel by Mary McCarthy:

“They seemed utterly different from the other New Leeds people—a thing Jane often pondered on, aloud, in a dreamy reverie, studying her bare toes in her Mexican thong sandals and half-wondering whether she was getting a callous.”

And we’ve found examples dating from the ’50s of  “thongs” used alone. Here’s one from a July 11, 1958, ad in the Los Angeles Tribune for a leather version of the familiar flip-flops:

“GENUINE ALL / LEATHER THONGS / Glove leather wrapped / Full Foam / cushion construction / $5.00 value … $1.”

Finally, we get to the “thong” your daughter has in mind. It’s described by American Heritage as a “garment for the lower body that exposes the buttocks, consisting of a narrow strip of fabric that passes between the thighs supported by a waistband.”

The earliest citation for what the OED calls a “skimpy garment (similar to a G-string)” is from the April 22, 1975, issue of the Times of London: “Rudi Gernreich[’s] … new bathing suit, also available as an item of lingerie … is called the Thong.”

The dictionary’s latest example is from a Feb. 17, 1988, article in the Chicago Tribune: “Cindy Crawford … wears a little lacey swimdress with golden Lycra thong in Sports Illustrated’s annual T-and-A swimsuit issue.”

Again, enjoy the Labor Day weekend, and thongs for the memories!

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Q: If I ask a friend to an art exhibit and she’s not sure when she’ll be in town, I respond, “OK, let’s play it by ear.” But can you suggest an alternative for “play it by ear”? The few I’ve found are also clichés or don’t have the meaning I’m looking for.

A: We can suggest a few alternatives—“wing it,” “ad-lib,” “improvise”—but what’s wrong with “play it by ear”? Yes, the expression is used a lot, but it probably says what you want to say better than any other.

Pat includes “play it by ear” in “Death Sentence,” the chapter on clichés in her grammar and usage book Woe Is I. But she says there’s nothing wrong with using a cliché once in a while, especially if nothing else will do the job as well.

“There’s no way to eliminate all clichés,” she writes. “It would take a roomful of Shakespeares to replace them with fresh figures of speech, and before long those would become clichés too.”

On the other hand, in a formal essay we might go to great lengths to avoid a cliché that we’d use without a thought in speech or casual writing.

The verb phrase “play it by ear” has its roots in the 16th-century use of the noun “ear” to mean the ability to recognize sounds and musical intervals, as in “have a good ear,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The earliest example in the OED of “ear” used this way is from Pylgrimage of Perfection, a 1526 treatise on English by the monk William Bonde: “In the psalmody … haue a good eare.”

A little over a century later, people began using “play by ear” (or a close facsimile) to mean play an instrument without the aid of written music.

The OED’s first citation for the newer usage is from A Breif Introduction to the Skill of Musick (1658), by John Playford: “To learn to play by rote or ear without book.”

Interestingly, an example from the July 1839 issue of the Edinburgh Review uses “play by ear” in the musical sense, while hinting at the figurative modern sense of dealing with something without a plan.

To add context, we’ll expand on the OED citation, which comes from a review of Harriet Martineau’s novel Deerbrook:

“Miss Austen is like one who plays by ear, while Miss Martineau understands the science. Miss Austen has the air of being led to right conclusions by an intuitive tact—Miss Martineau unfolds her knowledge of the principles on which her correct judgment is founded.”

We’d like to compare that comment with Mary Shelley’s remarks that same year about Deerbrook:

“Without Miss Austen’s humour she has all her vividness & correctness. To compensate for the absence of humour, she has higher philosophical views.”

We haven’t read Deerbrook, but we suspect that we’d prefer Jane Austen’s humor to Martineau’s philosophy.

But back to business. It wasn’t until the 1930s, according to a search of book and news databases, that the expression “play by ear” (or “play it by ear”) developed its modern sense of doing something without a definite plan in mind.

In an Oct. 24, 1935, sports story in the New York Times, for example, Mike Mikulak, a fullback with the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals), says his family came from Russia and he understands the language, but “I play it by ear only.”

And here’s an example from The Twisted Claw, a 1939 Hardy Boys mystery by Franklin W. Dixon (a k a John Button), in which Frank and Joe are locked in a dark storeroom and can’t get out:

“I guess we’ll just have to wait until someone comes down again, and then play it by ear,” Joe muttered.

Should you use the expression “play it by ear” the next time you want to meet your friend? It’s up to you. You’ll have to wing it.

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Q: Do you think that using the word “mayoress” is offensive nowadays? Should I use “mayor” whether the leader of the group who governs a town is male or female?

A: We’d describe the use of “mayoress” today for a female mayor as dated, but some people might describe it as offensive, sexist, or politically incorrect.

We’ve checked five standard dictionaries and none of them find fault with the usage. However, we wouldn’t use it ourselves, and we wouldn’t recommend that you do either.

We discussed this issue briefly back in 2006 when we answered a question about whether a woman is an “actor” or an “actress.”

“We seem to be getting away from ‘ess’ and ‘ix’ endings to differentiate women from men,” we wrote then. “We no longer use ‘aviatrix,’ ‘executrix,’ ‘stewardess,’ and so on.”

We noted that this tendency may have something to do with linguistic simplification as well as gender sensitivity.

“Languages have a tendency to simplify and drop syllables or letters,” we wrote. “In this case, though, the advent of the women’s movement has certainly speeded up the process.”

When “mayoress” first showed up in English the mid-1400s, it referred to “a woman holding high office,” but that sense of the word died out, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

In the early 1500s, the word came to mean “the wife of a mayor” or “a woman nominated to fulfil the ceremonial duties of a mayor’s wife.”

The earliest example in the OED, from Robert Fabyan’s New Cronycles of Englande and of Fraunce  (1516), refers to a “Mayresse and her Susters Aldermennes wyfes.” (The citation itself is dated from sometime before 1513.)

The latest example—from Fairs, Feasts and Frolics, a 1989 book by Julia Smith about customs in Yorkshire—refers to “the dean and chapter, the mayor and mayoress and the city council.”

A similar term, “lady mayoress,” meaning “the spouse of a Lord Mayor” or “a person who accompanies a Lord Mayor on official occasions,” also showed up in the 1500s.

The dictionary’s first citation for this term is from a 1537 entry in the Privy Purse Expenses Princess Mary: “Bonetts bought of my Lady meyres of london for new yers gyfts.”

The most recent citation is from a July 26, 2002, issue of the Times of London: “Every Lady Mayoress of London does charity work.”

It wasn’t until the late 1800s, the OED says, that the term “mayoress” was used to mean “a woman holding mayoral office; a female mayor.”

Oxford says the new sense of the word originated in the US and is “not in official use in England and Wales and certain other countries.”

The first example of the new usage in the OED is from The Employments of Women: A Cyclopædia of Woman’s Work (1863), by Virginia Penny:

“Mrs. N. Smith was recently elected mayoress in Oskaloosa, Iowa, the first time that office was ever filled by a lady.”

As for “mayor,” English adopted it from Anglo-Norman and Old French, but the ultimate source is maior, Latin for greater, which also gave us “major.”

By the way, we live in a small town in New England and our “mayor” is a “first selectman,” a title she prefers to “first selectwoman.” If we had mayors in our neck of the woods, she’d undoubtedly be a “mayor,” not a “mayoress.”

[Update, Aug. 21, 2013: A reader of the blog, and a fellow admirer of E. F. Benson’s hilarious “Lucia” novels, writes to remind us that in Trouble for Lucia (1939), the heroine has been elected mayor of Tilling, and her archrival, Miss Mapp, gets herself appointed mayoress.  Tilling, by the way, was based on Rye, in East Sussex, where Benson lived and where he served as mayor in the 1930s.]

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Q: A journalist who writes “copy” would never call herself a “copywriter,” yet the journalist who edits her is a “copy editor.” Can you shed any light on the history of “copy” and its use in journalism and advertising?

A: “Copy” is an interesting noun that has, in the words of John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins, “a very devious semantic history.”

When the word entered English in the 1300s, it could mean either an abundance of something or a written account of something.

English got the word via Old French, Ayto says, but the ultimate source is copia, a Latin noun whose primary meaning is abundance. (Copia is also the source of the English word “copious.”)

How did a Latin word for abundance give English a word for a written account?

Ayto explains that the Latin word had a secondary meaning, right or power, and this sense “led to its application to ‘right of reproduction’ and ultimately to simply ‘reproduction.’ ”

The Oxford English Dictionary traces this sense to such Latin phrases as dare vel habere copiam legendi (to give, or have, the power of reading) and facere copiam describendi (to give the power of transcription, to allow a transcript to be made).

In the Middle Ages, the OED notes, such phrases apparently influenced the evolution of the Latin term copia, which came to mean “transcript” in medieval Latin.

By the 1500s, according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, the English word “copy” had evolved in turn to mean any example of writing, and figuratively any reproduction.

However, Chambers doesn’t indicate when the term “copy” began being used in the newspaper sense—that is, for a draft of a news story that hasn’t yet been edited.

The OED doesn’t have a listing for “copy” used in this sense, but the dictionary does include the word in the sense of grist, or material, for a news story.

The earliest example is from George Bernard Shaw’s Fabian Essays in Socialism (1889): “Those Socialist speeches which make what the newspapers call ‘good copy.’ ”

In a search of Google Books, the earliest example we’ve found of “copy” used to mean a draft of a news story dates from the mid-1800s.

In Saunterings In and About London (1853), Max Schlesinger describes an editor as he “hurries to the Times’ office to read, shorten, and edit the copy sent in by the reporters.”

The term wasn’t used in an advertising sense until the early 20th century, according to OED citations. The first example of this use is from The Art of Modern Advertising (1905), by Earnest Elmo Calkins and Ralph Holden:

“The design and ‘copy’ used in the four-inch advertisement may involve just as much time.” (The quotation marks around “copy” suggest that the usage was relatively new then.)

The earliest citation for “copywriter” (originally “copy-writer”) is from a 1911 work about advertising and publicity that describes copywriters as “professional writers of advertisements.” (All the OED’s examples use the word in the advertising sense.)

Here are some journalistic “copy” compounds and the dates of their first OED citations: “copy-boy” (1888), “copy-reader” (1892), “copy editor” (1899), “copy-paper” (1902), and “copy desk” (1929).

Why, you wonder, isn’t someone who writes copy for a newspaper called a “copywriter”?

Well, it’s possible that newspaper writers simply don’t want to be identified by a word associated with advertising. But a more likely explanation is that the writers don’t need another word to identify them.

Terms like “newsman” (1650), “news writer” (1692), “correspondent” (1771), and “reporter” (1776) were well established long before “copywriter” showed up. (The OED’s first citation for “newswoman” in this sense is from 1953.)

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Q: Why do we “fall” in love, “fall” into sin, “fall” apart, “fall” asleep, “fall” ill, “fall” in or out with someone? In other words, what’s with all the falling?

A: “Fall” is an ancient verb that’s been used figuratively for many centuries, often with the sense of sinking into some condition or state. And if we didn’t have these less literal uses of the word, English would be a poorer language.

The original and literal meaning of the verb, which has been recorded in writing since the 800s, is to “descend freely” or “drop from a high or relatively high position,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

One of the OED’s earliest examples is from Crist III, the third part of an anonymous Old English religious poem about the Second Coming. The reference here is to the Last Judgment: “Sceolon rathe feallan on grimne grund” (“They shall fall rapidly into the grim abyss”). 

But later, people began using “fall” in more inventive ways. Often these new meanings involved wrongdoing—that is, descending into evil.

In the 1100s, to “fall” could mean to sin or yield to temptation. This sense of the word was also used in phrases, like “fall into sin,” which was soon followed by “fall into error,” “fall into idolatry,” “fall into mistakes,” and “fall among thieves.”

In the 1200s and 1300s, writers began using “fall” to describe the destruction of walls, buildings, and cities, as in “is falle Babilon” (Babylon is fallen).

The later expression “fall to pieces” (1600s) came to mean “break into fragments” or disintegrate. And a couple of centuries after that, an overthrown empire or government was said to “fall.” 

You’ve probably noticed that negative senses of the word outnumber positive ones.

Since the 1300s, to “fall on” an enemy has meant to attack. Fear, death, disease, vengeance, and misfortune have been “falling” on people since the Middle Ages.

Not surprisingly, disappointment or sadness makes a person’s face “fall,” a usage traceable to the 1300s and one that the OED says was “originally a Hebraism.”

And it was around the 1600s that English speakers adopted the notion that a duty, a burden, an expense, a responsibility, or a loss (less frequently, a gain) could “fall on” or “fall to” a person. 

But other figurative meanings aren’t quite as grim—they’re either positive or neutral. And there are so many that we won’t even try to mention them all.

Since around 1000, meteorological events like rain, hail, lightning, and thunder have been said to “fall” from the heavens. A bit later, people began speaking of evening, night, seasons, and shadows as “falling.”

Sometimes to “fall” means merely to lessen or subside, as with the volume of music (1500s), the price of something (1500s), or the temperature (1800s). 

Some figurative uses of “fall” have to do with the senses. Sounds “fall” upon the ear, just as sights “fall” upon the eye (both 1800s). And when people speak, we say that words “fall” from their lips or tongues (1700s).

All kinds of figurative usages have to do with passing, perhaps suddenly or accidentally, into a certain state or condition.

This is how we got “fall to sleep” (1200s) and “fall asleep” (1300s); “fall sick” (1400s); “fall into favor,” “fall in love,” and “fall into trouble,” meaning to get pregnant (all 1500s); “fall lame,” “fall ill,” and “fall back,” meaning to retreat (all 1600s); “fall vacant,” “fall silent,” and “fall flat,” meaning to prove uninteresting or ineffective (all 1800s).

To “fall out” (also “fall out with”) has meant to quarrel or disagree since the 1500s. And a century or so later, people began using “fall in with” to mean agree, concur, or share the views of.

To “fall short of” has meant to fail in some objective since the 1500s, the OED says. And “fall in,” meaning to get into line in a military sense, came into use in the 18th century.

More recently, “to fall for” has meant to be taken in or carried away by, a usage the OED dates from 1903.

“Fall apart” has been used since the 1600s in the sense of “to separate” or “to go separate ways,” the OED says.

But the use of “fall apart” to mean “break up” or “collapse” was first recorded in the mid-1700s, and a still newer meaning—to have a nervous breakdown, more or less—is from the 1930s.

And we’ll stop here, before we “fall behind” (1500s) in our other work! But if you want to read more, we had a post some time ago about why Americans have two words for “autumn” while the British have only one.

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Q: What is the origin of the unfortunate phrase “to kill two birds with one stone”? I do use it by habit, but I catch myself every time I say it.

A: We think you’re being overly sensitive about this. The expression is rarely used literally. In fact, the phrase was used figuratively when it first showed up in writing in the 1600s and it has generally been used that way ever since.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes the usage as a proverbial phrase meaning “to accomplish two different purposes by the same act or proceeding.”

The earliest citation in the OED is from a 1655-56 exchange of views about free will between the philosopher Thomas Hobbes and the Anglican Bishop John Bramhall: “T. H. thinks to kill two birds with one stone, and satisfy two arguments with one answer.”

However, we’ve found an earlier example in A Complete History of the Present Seat of War in Africa Between the Spaniards and Algerines, a 1632 book by an author identified on the title page as “J. Morgan Gent.”

The gentleman writes that a Berber military chief “came resolved to kill two Birds with one Stone, return the Spaniards their Compliments, and conduct his insolent Turks, where he was certain at least some of them would be knocked on the head.”

We’ve seen quite a bit of speculation online that the expression originated in other languages—Latin, Greek, Chinese, and so on—but we’ve seen no evidence that English borrowed the usage.

A typical theory is that the expression originated with Ovid, but the closest example we’ve found in the Roman poet’s writing is the scene from Metamorphoses where Tiresias strikes two copulating snakes with a stick and is transformed into a woman.

Many online “experts” believe the usage originated in the story of Daedalus and Icarus, who escaped from the Labyrinth on Crete by making wings and flying out, according to Greek mythology.

Daedalus supposedly got the feathers to make the wings by killing two birds with one stone. However, neither Ovid nor Appolodorus, the principal sources of the myth, say anything about how Daedalus got the feathers.

In the 1600s, when the expression arrived in English, one sense of the word “bird” was a game bird, especially a partridge, according to the OED. And one sense of the term “stone” (or “gunstone”) at that time was a bullet.

A more likely explanation is that the expression was influenced by one that appeared nearly a century earlier: “to stop two gaps with one bush.”

The OED defines the earlier usage as “to accomplish two ends at once” or (you guessed it) “to kill two birds with one stone.”

The first citation for this usage is from John Heywood’s 1546 collection of proverbs: “I will learne, to stop two gaps with one bushe.”

And, with that, we’ll stop.

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Q: It can be difficult putting up with a bee in one’s bonnet—and where did THAT one come from?

A: Persistent (and perhaps crazy) ideas have reminded people of bees buzzing about the head for 500 years.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that “to have bees in the head or the brains,” or “a bee in one’s bonnet,” means to have “a fantasy, an eccentric whim, a craze on some point, a ‘screw loose.’ ”

However, standard dictionaries generally say you don’t have to be nutty to have a bee in your bonnet. The expression can refer to having an idea, a notion, or a fancy as well as an obsession.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.), for example, defines “a bee in one’s bonnet” as an impulse, a notion, or an obsession. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) defines it as an eccentric notion or a fancy.

The earliest recorded example in the OED is from Virgil’s Eneados, Gavin Douglas’s Middle Scots version of the Aeneid:

“Quhat berne be thou in bed, with hede full of beis?” (“What, man, rot thou in bed with thy head full of bees?”)

The OED dates this citation from 1553, but scholars say Douglas finished his translation in 1513.

In a comic play written around the early 1550s, Nicholas Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister, we find the same image: “Who so hath suche bees as your maister in hys head.”

A century later, bees began invading brains. Here’s a line from Samuel Colville’s Mock Poem (1751): “Which comes from brains which have a bee.”

Bonnets entered the picture in the mid-19th century. The OED cites an essay Thomas De Quincey wrote for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (1845):

“John Hunter, notwithstanding he had a bee in his bonnet, was really a great man.”

Here’s a 1935 example, from Oliver Wendell Holmes, cited in the online Merriam-Webster Unabridged: “He has the presidential bee in his bonnet.”

And in case you’re inspired to ask, we’ve written blog posts before on the phrases “bee’s knees” and “spelling bee.”

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Q: I am an HR manager. Am I a Human Resources Manager or a Human Resource Manager?  I’ve heard that one or the other is correct. I’ve also heard that both are correct. Which is it?

A: The usual term is “human resources manager,” though “human resource manager” is often seen. Both are correct.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the usual term is “human resources,” whether the phrase is used as a noun (“She’s in charge of human resources”) or as an adjective (She’s our human resources manager”).

The OED describes the adjectival use of “human resource” as occasional, but we think the dictionary may be underestimating the usage.

Here’s the Google scorecard: “human resources manager,” 10.3 million hits; “human resource manager,” 3.6 million.

The use of “human resources” to refer to people isn’t as modern as you might think.

The OED says it was first recorded in Britain in World War I, when it meant “people (esp. personnel or workers) regarded as an asset of a business or other organization (as contrasted with material or financial resources).”

Oxford’s earliest published example is from a 1915 issue of the Times of London:

“Side by side with the committees that have been set up to deal with the production of material there should be an organization to take stock of the human resources still at the disposal of the nation.”

The usage soon spread to the US. The OED has this 1920 example from the American Journal of Sociology, which was (and still is) published in Chicago:

“Federalism would have saved the Balkans from devastation and appalling waste of human resources.”

The phrase added a new meaning in corporate America in the mid-1960s, the OED says.

In American usage, “human resources” came to mean “the department in an organization dealing with the administration, management, training, etc., of staff; the personnel department.”

This additional, and more specialized, sense of the term was first recorded in an advertisement that ran in The New York Times in 1965: “Forward complete resume of education, experience, history and salary requirement to: Director Human Resources.”

The OED has an example of the specific usage you ask about. It’s from Business Week (1975): “Results of the experiment, which ended in mid-1974, are still being analyzed, says human resources manager Charles J. Sherrard.”

This corporate meaning of the phrase is now current in Britain too, according to OED citations.

An example of the adjectival usage in the less common singular form appeared in the British magazine Accountancy (1994): “Part of the background to all of this is the growing tendency for the human resource function itself to shrink in size.”

And this example of the noun phrase comes from Turning Thirty (2000), by the young British novelist Mike Gayle: “I would be free to leave as soon as I told Human Resources where I wanted to go.”

The two of us are old enough to remember when companies had “personnel managers” and “personnel departments.” And for a time we regarded “human resources” as jargon. But we’re human and resourceful, so we’ve come to terms with it.

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Q: I was eating a half-sour the other day, which inspired this question: Where does the expression “in a pickle,” meaning in trouble, come from?

A: We’ll be in an etymological pickle if we try to explain the origin of “in a pickle” without first discussing the history of “pickle” itself. Here’s the story.

When it first showed up in English in the 1300s or 1400s, the noun “pickle” referred to a spicy sauce served with meat or fowl.

The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology says English probably borrowed the word “pickle” from Middle Dutch, where pekel referred to brine.

The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that the ultimate source of pekel may have been the Germanic base of another Middle Dutch word, peken, meaning to prick or pierce.

With the -el suffix added, the OED says, the original sense of pekel was “something that pricks or is piquant.”

The English “pickle,” according to the OED and Chambers, was first recorded in the alliterative Morte Arthure, an anonymous Middle English poem that appeared in writing around 1440 but is thought by many scholars to date from the 1300s.

(The alliterative Morte Arthure, the stanzaic Morte Arthure, and several other Arthurian sources influenced the better-known Le Morte d’Arthure, 1470-85, attributed to Sir Thomas Mallory.)

The word “pickle” (pekill in Middle English) appears in the alliterative Morte Arthure in this gruesome description of a giant’s diet:

“He sowppes all this seson with seuen knaue childre, / Choppid in a chargour of chalke-whytt syluer, / With pekill and powdyre of precious spycez.” (He sups all this season on seven knavish children, chopped in a bowl of chalk-white silver, with pickle and powder of precious spices.)

Here “pickle” refers to a sauce, but by the early 1500s the word had taken on a new meaning: the brine, vinegar, or other solution in which food is preserved.

The earliest citation in the OED for this new sense is from an entry, written around 1503, in a chronicle of the London merchant Richard Arnold: “To make a pigell to kepe freshe sturgen in.”

By the late 1500s, “pickle” was being used in an extended figurative sense to mean a disagreeable or troubling condition—the sense found in the expression “in a pickle.”

The first two OED citations for this new usage are somewhat ambiguous, but here’s a clear 1585 example from the writings of the Protestant clergyman and historian John Foxe:

“In this pickle lyeth man by nature, that is, all wee that be Adams children.”

And here’s an example of the usage from Shakespeare’s The Tempest (circa 1610-11).

Alonso: “How cam’st thou in this pickle?”
Trinculo: “I haue bin in such a pickle since I saw you last.”

Why is someone in a disagreeable predicament described as “in a pickle”? The OED and Chambers don’t explain, but it seems clear to us that the usage alludes to the sour state of being in a pickling solution.

And where does the expression come from? “The usage is common and natural enough to English to be formed therein,” Chambers says, “but may have been reinforced by Dutch.”

The dictionary cites two Dutch phrases: in de pekel zijn (to be in a pickle) and iemand in de pekel zijn laten, or zitten (to get someone in a pickle).

Chambers says both Dutch phrases were common in the 1500s when the troublesome sense of “pickle” was first recorded in English.

It wasn’t until the late 1600s that the word “pickle” was used to refer to “a whole vegetable, or a piece of one, that has been preserved in vinegar, brine, etc.,” according to citations in the OED.

Oxford describes the use of the term “pickle” for a pickled cucumber as chiefly North American.

In Britain, the usual term is a dill cucumber or a pickled cucumber, according to Lynne Murphy, an American linguist at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England.

In a post on her blog Separated by a Common Language, Murphy says the British use “pickle” or “sweet pickle” for a condiment of chopped vegetables or fruit preserved in vinegar and a sweetener. Americans would refer to such a condiment as relish.

We’ll end with a half-sour comment from the Aug. 29, 2004, issue of the Montreal Gazette: “Today’s studs would sooner immerse themselves in a vat of pickles than spray themselves with Aqua Velva or Old Spice.”

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Q: What does “if I had my druthers” mean and from where did the phrase originate?

A: The expression “if I had my druthers” means “if I had a choice” or “if I had a preference.”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) describes “druthers” here as an informal plural noun meaning a choice or a preference.

American Heritage gives this example from the columnist George Will: “Given their druthers, these hell-for-leather free marketeers might sell the post office.”

The noun “druthers” actually began life as a verb in 19th-century America. The Oxford English Dictionary describes it as a US dialectal alteration of the verb phrase “would rather.”

The OED’s only two examples of the verb are in the writings of Mark Twain. Here’s the earliest, from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876): “I’d druther they was devils a dern sight.”

The noun “druthers” showed up a couple of decades later. Oxford has this example from an 1895 issue of the American Dialect Society’s journal Dialect Notes:

“Bein’s I caint have my druthers an’ set still, I cal’late I’d better pearten up an’ go ‘long.”

The OED says the usage is also seen as “druther,” “ruther,” and “ruthers.” Here’s an example with “ruthers,” from William Alexander Percy’s 1941 autobiography, Lanterns on the Levee:

“ ‘Your ruthers is my ruthers’ (what you would rather is what I would rather). Certainly the most amiable and appeasing phrase in any language, the language used being not English but deep Southern.”

If we had our druther, ruther, druthers, or ruthers, we’d take a break now. And so we will. See you tomorrow.

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Q: I am gradually becoming obsessed with the phrase “a case in point.” Does anyone know its origin? It looks like a clumsy translation from another language (French, perhaps) but is it?

A: You’re onto something. The phrase at the heart of your obsession, “in point,” does indeed come from French—or, rather, Anglo-Norman, a dialect of Old French used by England’s Norman conquerors.

In the Anglo-Norman phrase en point, the word point refers to a state or condition, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED says the word “point” showed up in English in the early 1200s with the sense of a condition, state, situation, or plight, though that meaning is now considered historic.

In the early 1600s, according to Oxford, “point” took on another sense—appropriate or pertinent—a sense that’s now chiefly seen in the expression “case in point,” meaning an example that illustrates the point.

The dictionary’s earliest citation for the expression is from Money and the Mechanism of Exchange (1875) by William Stanley Jevons:

“The wampumpeag of the North American Indians is a case in point, as it certainly served as jewellery.”

The most recent citation is from the January 1996 issue of Scientific American:

“Much of the ecological evidence about sex is open to sharply differing interpretations. A case in point concerns the ‘haplodipoid’ sex-determining system of ants, bees and wasps.”

And with that, we’ll buzz off.

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