Category: Phrase origin

Q: My wife asked me about the expression “happy as a clam,” and I had to admit I knew nothing about it. But I am sure you do.

A: English speakers have been using the “as happy as” formula for nearly four centuries to express exceptional happiness by comparing it to the feelings of various people and creatures perceived to be very happy.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes these expressions as “similative phrases, indicating a high level of happiness,” and has examples dating back to the early 17th century.

The OED’s examples include similes comparing happiness to that of a “king” (1633), a “god” (before 1766), a “lark” (1770), a “prince” (1776), a “pig in muck” (1828), a “clam” (1834), a “cherub” (1868), and a “bee” (1959).

One can understand the thinking behind nearly all of these expressions. The one exception is “as happy as a clam,” which the dictionary describes as “U.S. colloquial.”

The OED doesn’t discuss the history of the expression, but language sleuths have spent quite a bit of time trying to track down the origin of the usage.

The two most common theories are that “as happy as a clam” refers to the clam supposedly feeling safe when underwater during high tide or secure because of the protection of its snug shell.

John Russell Bartlett, in the first edition of his Dictionary of Americanisms (1848), includes only a longer version of the expression: “ ‘As happy as a clam at high water,’ is a very common expression in those parts of the coast of New England where clams are found.”

However, Bartlett suggests in his second edition (1859) that the shorter version may have come first: “Happy as a Clam is a common simile in New England, sometimes enlarged as ‘happy as a clam at high water.’ ’’

As far as we can tell, the shorter version did indeed appear first in writing, though a longer one may have existed earlier in speech.

The earliest example we’ve seen is from this description of a colonial planter in Harpe’s Head, a Legend of Kentucky (1833), a novel by the American writer James Hall:

“He was as happy as a clam. His horses thrived, and his corn yielded famously; and when his neighbors indignantly repeated their long catalogue of grievances, he quietly responded that King George had never done him any harm.”

The OED’s earliest citation, which we’ve expanded, appeared in the December 1834 issue of the short-lived undergraduate literary journal Harvardiana: “He could not even enjoy that peculiar degree of satisfaction, usually denoted by the phrase ‘as happy as a clam.’ ”

The “high water” version first showed up in “The Oakwood Letters,” a humor series published in several different newspapers in 1836. The earliest example we’ve seen is from the Boston Courier (Jan. 7, 1836):

“Dear Mrs. Butternut, I must leave off, for I can’t say any more, only that if I was once more safe at home, I should be happy as a clam at high water, as the sailors say.” (We’ve seen no indication that the expression was a nautical usage.)

The idea that the expression comes from a belief that the clam is happy because it feels secure in its shell appeared in the March 1838 issue of The Knickerbocker, a literary monthly in New York:

“ ‘Happy as a clam,’ is an old adage. It is not without meaning. Your clam enjoys the true otium cum dignitate [leisure with dignity]. Ensconced in his mail of proof [chain mail armor]—for defence purely, his disposition being no ways bellicose—he snugly nestleth in his mucid bed, revels in quiescent luxury, in the unctuous loam that surroundeth him.”

We’ll end with a sonnet by the 19th-century American poet John Godrey Saxe, who writes that a clam’s life is as hard as its shell:

“A Sonnet to a Clam”

Dum tacent clamant [Though silent they shout]
Inglorious friend! most confident I am
Thy life is one of very little ease;
Albeit men mock thee with their similes
And prate of being “happy as a clam!”
What though thy shell protects thy fragile head
From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea?
Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee,
While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed,
And bear thee off,—as foemen take their spoil,—
Far from thy friends and family to roam;
Forced, like a Hessian, from thy native home,
To meet destruction in a foreign broil!
Though thou art tender, yet thy humble bard
Declares, O clam! thy case is shocking hard!

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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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Q: I almost never hear anybody say “heartrending” anymore. It appears to have been overthrown by “heart-wrenching,” which, I assume, is a conflation or hybridization with “gut-wrenching.” As is often the case, it seems that the incorrect usage is heard much more frequently than the correct one.

A: You’re right that the use of “heart-wrenching” has increased sharply in recent years, but the usage isn’t new. It’s been around for almost two centuries.

Here are the earliest examples we’ve found:

“The sluices of his tears were opened, and he burst out into sorrow, loud, vehement, and heart-wrenching.” From “The Brothers,” a story in Tales of Ireland (1834), by the Irish writer William Carleton.

“Loosen’d from guilt by a heart-wrenching shock, I hastened home.” From “Arthur: A Dramatic Fable, in Three Acts,” by Thomas Aird, published in July 1835 in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.

(The Oxford English Dictionary cites a later printing of Aird’s fable in The Knickerbocker; or, New-York Monthly Magazine, July 1838.)

The term “heart-wrenching” is now recognized as standard by most of the online dictionaries we regularly consult. Merriam-Webster, for example, defines it as “very sad,” and has this example: “a heart-wrenching story.”

Cambridge and Collins include both the adjective “heart-wrenching” and adverb “heart-wrenchingly.” In defining the adjective, Dictionary.com defines “heart-wrenching” with a similar adjective, “heartbreaking.”

As for “heartrending” (sometimes hyphenated), it’s much older than “heart-wrenching,” but not necessarily more correct. And “heartbreaking” is even older and much more popular than either, according to a search with Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks terms in digitized books.

The earliest OED citation for “heartbreaking” is from “The Teares of the Muses,” a work in Complaints (1591), a poetry collection by Edmund Spenser: “Making your musick of hart-breaking mone [moan].”

The dictionary’s first “heartrending” example, which we’ve expanded, is from Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (1621), a prose romance by the English writer Lady Mary Wroth:

“At last he cry’d out these words: Pardon great Prince this sad interruption in my story, which I am forst to do, heart-rending sorrow making me euer doe so.”

Finally, “heart-wrenching” is not, as you put it, “a conflation or hybridization with ‘gut-wrenching.’ ” The term “gut-wrenching” didn’t appear until the late 20th century, long after “heart-wrenching” was recorded.

The OED’s first citation for “gut-wrenching” is from a book about Grant McConachie, a bush pilot and later CEO of Canadian Pacific Airlines:

“Others had made a perfect landing thirty feet in the air, which was followed by a terrific, gut-wrenching splash as they plopped in” (from Bush Pilot With a Briefcase, 1972, by Ronald A. Keith).

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Q: If someone is charging a price we consider unwarranted, we say that’s “highway robbery.” Is highway robbery worse than ordinary robbery? And why do we say “highway robbery” when we are not on a highway, but standing in a supermarket shocked by the price of strawberries?

A: Today “robbery” (the taking of something by force) is worse than “highway robbery” (charging an exorbitant price for something).

If you feel the price of something is “highway robbery,” you usually don’t have to buy it, but you can’t just brush off an armed robber.

However, the expression “highway robbery” was more intimidating when it first appeared in the early 17th century, a time when armed “highwaymen” on horseback preyed upon travelers. Here’s the colorful history of the phrase.

The oldest of these terms, “highway” first appeared as heiweg in the Kentish dialect of early Old English, and meant a public road regarded as being under royal protection, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The earliest OED citation is from a land charter in Latin and Old English, dated around 859, for the sale of property by Ethelmod, an ealdorman or alderman, to a man named Plegred:

“Ab oriente cyniges heiweg. A meritie stret to Scufelingforde” (“From the east, the king’s highway, a street south to Scufelingforde”). From Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, Part 2 (2013), edited by Susan E. Kelly and Nicholas P. Brooks.

The noun “robbery” appeared in Old English writing in the 12th century. The OED’s earliest example, which we’ve expanded here, describes how those who turn away from God are punished:

“Vuele he us briseð. gif he binimeð us ure agte. oðer þurh fur. oðer þurh þiefes. oðer þurh roberie. oðer þurh unrihte dom” (“Wrathfully he crushes us, if he takes away our property, either through fire, either through thieves, either through robbery, either through unjust judgment”).

The first OED example of the phrase “highway robbery” appeared in the early 17th century: “Skulking surprises and vnder-hand stealthes, more neerely resembling high-way robberies, then lawfull battell” (The History of Great Britaine Under the Conquests of Ye Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans, 1611, by John Speed).

The noun “highwayman” soon showed up in Compters Common-wealth (1617), a play by William Fennor about the inmates of a compter, or debtor’s prison:

“It is this that makes Newmarket heath, and Royston-dounes about Christmas time so full of high-way men that poore Countrie people cannot passe quietly to their Cottages.”

In the late 18th century, English speakers began using “highway robbery” figuratively to mean “blatant and unfair overcharging or swindling; the charging of an exorbitantly high price,” the OED says.

The dictionary’s first citation is from All the World’s a Stage (1777), a farce by the Irish playwright Isaac Jackman: “What, five shillings for a boiled fowl! … This is high-way robbery, without the credit of being robbed.”

The figurative use of a literal expression is common in English, as when you “rock the boat,” “shake a leg,” come to a “dead end,” “put your best foot forward,” or have “a laundry list” of things to do.

Finally, here’s an illustration of a literal highway robbery, done by Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827). The tinted etching (Vicissitudes of the Road in 1787: The Highwayman, Lord Barrymore Stopped) was reproduced in a London weekly, The Graphic, Dec. 6, 1890:

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Q: I often hear the term “tuckered out,” but not in any other tenses. My dictionary says “tucker” is a dress. I’m confused. What does “tuckered out” mean, where did it come from, and what are its other tenses?

A: The story begins back in Anglo-Saxon days, when the verb “tuck” (tucian in Old English) meant to punish, mistreat, or torment.

The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Old English Boethius, a late ninth- or early tenth-century translation of De Consolatione Philosophiae (“The Consolation of Philosophy”), a sixth-century Latin treatise by the Roman philosopher Boethius:

“Lustlice hi woldon lætan þa rican hi tucian æfter hiora agnum willan” (“Gladly would they [the unwise] let the powerful torment them at will”).

The “punish” sense of “tuck” is now obsolete, the OED says, but in the Middle English of the late 14th century, the verb came to mean “to pull or gather up and confine” loose garments—a sense we use now when we “tuck in” our shirttails or “tuck in” a child at bedtime.

The dictionary’s earliest citation for the new meaning is from the story of Dido, the Queen of Carthage, in Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women (circa 1385).

When Dido meets Aeneas and Achates in the wilderness, she asks if they’ve seen her sisters, out hunting “i-tukkid vp with arwis” (“[their skirts] tucked up with arrows”).

This “gather up” meaning of “tuck” apparently led to the use of “tucked up” to describe a tired horse or dog—a sense the OED defines as “having the flanks drawn in from hunger, malnutrition, or fatigue; hence, tired out, exhausted.”

The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded here, describes the wild pariah dog: “They generally are very thin, and of a reddish-brown colour, with sharp-pointed ears, deep chest, and tucked-up flanks” (from The Dog, 1845, by the English veterinary surgeon William Youatt).

Meanwhile, the related verb “tucker” appeared in the US with the sense of “to tire, to weary.” The OED says it’s usually seen in the phrasal verb “tucker out,” especially its past participle “tuckered out,” meaning “worn out, exhausted.”

The earliest example we’ve seen, which uses the present participle (“tuckering”), is from an article in a New York literary journal about a shark hunt:

“There’s no sich thing as tuckering out your raal white shark: he’s all bone and sinners [sinews]” (The Knickerbocker, January 1836).

The earliest example we’ve found for the past participle is from an anonymous short story, “The Book Agent,” in The Rhode-Island Republican (Newport, RI), June 22, 1836:

“ ‘I thank you a thousand times,’ said the stranger, ‘I reckoned to have got to the tavern by sun down, but I havn’t, and as I am prodigiously tuckered out, I’ll stay, and thank ye into the bargain,’ following the clergyman into the house.”

The online Cambridge Dictionary has recent examples of the usage in the present tense (“it tuckers you out”) and in the present perfect (“the puppy has tuckered herself out”).

We haven’t been able to find an example of “tucker” used to mean a dress. However, it’s a now-obsolete term for a strip of gathered or pleated material, like a ruffle or frill, sewn in or around the top of a bodice (the upper part of a dress).

The earliest OED citation, which we’ve expanded here, is from a book about heraldry that defines “tucker” as “a narrow piece of Cloth Plain or Laced, which compasseth the top of a Womans Gown about the Neck part” (The Academy of Armory, 1688, by  Randle Holme).

This sense of “tucker” is seen, especially in British English, in the expression “one’s best bib and tucker,” meaning “one’s smartest clothes.”

In another clothing sense, the noun “tuck” has been used since the 14th century to mean one of several folds stitched into cloth to shorten, decorate, or tighten a garment.

The earliest OED citation is from The Testament of Love (1388), by Thomas Usk: “That no ianglyng may greue the lest tucke of thy hemmes” (“That no jangling [quarreling] may grieve [trouble] the least tuck of thy hems”).

(Usk, an English writer and bureaucrat caught up in the turbulent politics of the late 14th century, wrote the Testament in prison as an appeal for mercy. He was convicted of treason, hanged, and beheaded.)

We’ll end on a more palatable note—the use of “tuck” to mean “eat” or “eat heartily,” a sense that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, perhaps from the “gather up” sense of the verb or the use of the noun “tuck” for a fishing net, a usage that appeared in the early 17th century.

The OED’s first citation for “tuck” used to mean “consume, swallow (food or drink)” is from Barham Downs (1784), a novel by the English writer Robert Bage: “We will dine together; tuck up a bottle or two of claret.”

The dictionary’s first example for “tuck” in the sense of “feed heartily or greedily; esp. with in, into,” uses the gerund (“tucking”): “Tom Sponge now began cramming unmercifully, exclaiming every three mouthfuls, ‘Rare tucking in, Sir William.’ ”

Finally, the Yorkshire schoolmaster Wackford Squeers uses the phrasal verb “tuck into” in this OED citation from the Dickens novel Nicholas Nickleby (1839): “If you’ll just let little Wackford tuck into something fat, I’ll be obliged to you.”

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A: How did the phrase “no object” come to mean “not something important” or “not an obstacle” in a sentence like “I’d fly first class if money were no object”?

A: The usage was first recorded in the late 18th century in newspaper advertising copy. It’s derived from the much older use of the noun “object” to mean a goal or purpose. Here’s the story.

When the noun first appeared in English in the late 14th century, it meant “something placed before or presented to the eyes or other senses,” but now more generally means “a material thing that can be seen and touched,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from On the Properties of Things, John Trevisa’s translation, sometime before 1398, of De Proprietatibus Rerum, an encyclopedic Latin work by the 13th-century Franciscan scholar Bartholomaeus Anglicus:

“The obiecte of þe yȝe is al þat may ben seyn, and al þat may ben herd is obiect to þe heringe” (“The object of the eye is all that may be seen, and all that may be heard is the object of the hearing”).

The OED says the usage ultimately comes from the classical Latin noun obiectum (something presented to the senses) and past participle obiectus (offered, presented).

In the early 15th century, the English noun came to mean a “goal, purpose, or aim; the end to which effort is directed; the thing sought, aimed at, or striven for,” according to the dictionary.

The first Oxford citation is from Grande Chirurgie, an anonymous Middle English translation, written sometime before 1425, of Chirurgia Magna (1363), a Latin surgical treatise by the French surgeon Guy de Chauliac:

“Euacuacioun for his obiecte only biheld plectoric concourse” (“The object of evacuation only concerns plethoric accumulation”). The passage refers to the evacuation, or draining, of plethoric concourse, excessive accumulation of blood.

So how did “object,” a noun for a goal or purpose, come to mean something important or achievable when used in the negative phrase “no object” (not important or achievable)?

As an explanation, the OED cites a 1931 paper by the lexicographer C. T. Onions, the dictionary’s fourth editor.

In “Distance No Object” (Tract XXXVI, Society for Pure English), Onions says the expression is derived from a formula commonly used in early newspaper advertisements, “in which the word object had its normal meaning of ‘thing aimed at,’ ‘aim.’ ”

Thus, he writes, “the advertiser states directly what is his object or his principal object.”

Later, Onions says, “object” was used in negative constructions meaning something that’s not an aim—“the first step” in its “shift of meaning.”

Finally, he says, the negative construction came to mean something that “will not be taken into consideration by the advertiser, that it will not be regarded as an obstacle, that it will not matter.”

The earliest OED citation for “no object” used this way is from a newspaper ad by a woman seeking a job: “A Gentlewoman … wishes to superintend the family of a single Gentleman or Lady …  and salary will be no object” (Morning Herald, London, May 20, 1782).

The expression soon escaped its advertising origins. We found an example in Management (1799), a comedy by the English playwright Frederick Reynolds.

A character who wants to be an actor says he’ll work for free. When offered money, he replies, “Pha!—money’s no object.”

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Q:  The university where I teach is urging the staff to “lean into” the success of our students. Is this trendy use of “lean” legit? So many suits are employing it that I can hear Bill Withers moaning from the great beyond.

A: The phrasal verb “lean into” is indeed legit and means to embrace or commit to. The usage that’s been around since the mid-20th century, but we know of only two standard dictionaries that have embraced it.

The Oxford Dictionary of English and the New Oxford American Dictionary define “lean into” as “commit fully to or embrace something: lean into kindness and community; they’re keys to serving and connecting you and your neighbours well.”

Both are published by Oxford University Press, which produces the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference that says the usage originated in the US and means “to accept and embrace (an experience); to commit to or fully engage with (a role, task, or undertaking).”

The earliest OED citation is from the Princeton Alumni Weekly (Feb. 10, 1941): “Bill D’Arcy is working for the Coco-Cola Co. in Atlanta, Ga. Kent Cooper is leaning into it at Columbia Business.”

The dictionary’s most recent example is from an article in Corn & Soybean Digest (Sept. 29, 2021) about the need for farmers to speak to their children about the future of their farms: “Sometimes it’s a hard subject to get into for many reasons, but you have to lean into it.”

A similar phrasal verb, “lean in,” appeared in the US in the early 21st century and means “to become fully engaged with something; to commit oneself completely to a role, task, or undertaking, esp. in the face of difficulty or resistance,” according to the OED.

The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded, is from an article on interactive storytelling: “Kids are being remade to expect to interact, to lean in and make a difference. They do not want to read or watch passively” (“Psst … Wanna Do a Phrontisterion,” by Thom Gillespie, in Future Courses, 2001, edited by Jason Ohler).

[In case you’re curious, a “phrontisterion” or “phrontistery” is a place for thinking or studying. It comes from the post-classical Latin phrontisterium and the ancient Greek ϕροντιστήριον (“thinking shop”), a term that Aristophanes uses in his comedy Νεφέλαι (The Clouds) to ridicule the school of Socrates.]

You can find the term “lean in” in several dictionaries of American and British English. Merriam-Webster online, for example, defines it as “to persevere in spite of risk or difficulty,” and has this example: “Attending college began as a time of ‘leaning in,’ because it took courage to attend a large campus without much parental support and no friends attending with me.”

The OED notes that “lean in” was “popularized by US business executive Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In (2013), in which she encourages women to challenge traditional gender roles and aspire to leadership in the workplace.”

Finally, you mentioned the American singer-songwriter Bill Withers, who used a much older phrasal verb in his 1972 song “Lean on Me.”

The OED says the use of “lean” with “on,” “upon,” or by itself to mean rely on dates from the Middle English of the 12th century.

The OED’s earliest example, with leonie up on, is from the anonymous Ancrene Riwle, or rules for anchoresses, dating from before 1200. Here’s an expanded version:

“ha understonden þet ha ahen to beon of se hali lif þet al hali chirche, þet is cristene folk, leonie & wreoðie up on ham.”

(“they [the anchoresses] understand that they must live so holy a life that all the holy church, that is, the Christian people, may lean and depend upon them.”)

We’ll end with the chorus from the Bill Withers song “Lean on Me”:

Lean on me
When you’re not strong
And I’ll be your friend,
I’ll help you carry on
For it won’t be long
Till I’m gonna need
Somebody to lean on.

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Q: In “The Dig,” a movie set in England in the 1930s, the characters express gratitude by saying, “Thank you kindly,” and concern for the lady of the manor by asking, “Is she doing poorly?” Are these usages dated?

A: These expressions sound old-fashioned to us too, but they’re still in use and have had somewhat of a revival lately.

“Thank you kindly” first appeared in Middle English in the 16th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines “to thank kindly and variants” as “to thank (someone) very much; (also) to thank politely.”

The dictionary’s earliest example is from an anonymous interlude, or light theatrical work: “Now I thanke you both full kindly” (An Enterlude of Welth, and Helth, Very Mery and Full of Pastyme, first performed in the mid-1550s).

The most recent OED citation is from the Daily Mail (London, Oct. 14, 2002):  “Bernstein … offered me a job as a documentary producer. I thanked him kindly but indicated that my ambitions lay in other directions.”

A search with Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books, shows that the expression began falling out of favor in the late 19th century but had a comeback in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

When the verb “thank” first appeared in Old English as þancian or ðoncian, it meant “to give thanks.” The runic letters þ, or thorn, and ð, or eth, were pronounced as “th.”

In this early OED example, ðoncade is the past tense of þancian: “genimmende calic ðoncunco dyde vel ðoncade & sealde him” (“taking the cup, he gave thanks and gave it to them”). From Matthew 26:27 in the Lindisfarne Gospels.

As for “poorly,” it first appeared in Middle English as povreliche, an adverb meaning “inadequately, imperfectly, unsatisfactorily.” The earliest Oxford citation is from Ancrene Riwle (also known as Ancrene Wisse), an anonymous guide for monastic women, written sometime before 1200:

“Ant tah min entente beo to beten ham her-inne, ich hit do se povreliche, ant sunegi in othre dei-hwamliche seoththen ich wes nest i-schriven” (“And though my intent is to atone for them [sins] in this, I do it so poorly and sin in other [matters] daily since I was last confessed”).

We’ve expanded the example above and used a more recently edited version of the manuscript. The OED’s passage is from The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle (1962), edited by J.R.R. Tolkien and Neil Ripley Ker. Ours is from Ancrene Wisse (2000), edited by Robert Hasenfratz.

The form of the word you’re asking about, the adjective “poorly,” meant “unwell, in ill health” when it first showed up in the 16th century, the OED says. The dictionary describes the usage as “chiefly British,” but all four standard American dictionaries we regularly consult recognize it.

The first Oxford citation, which we’ve expanded, is from a farming guide, written in verse, that refers to the health of cattle:

“From Christmas, till May be wel entered in, / Al cattel wax faint, and looke poorely and thin” (from A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandry, 1570, by the English poet-farmer Thomas Tusser).

The earliest OED example for “poorly” used to describe human health is from The Witch, a tragicomedy written in the early 17th century by the English playwright Thomas Middleton: “Why shak’st thy head soe? and look’st so pale, and poorely?”

The dictionary’s most recent citation is from Paper Faces (1991), a children’s novel by the English author Rachel Anderson: “Children couldn’t go into the children’s ward unless they themselves were poorly.”

A search for “feel poorly” in Ngram Viewer indicates that this use of “poorly” fell out of favor in the 20th century, but has come back somewhat in the 21st.

A final note: Thomas Tusser, the author of the farming guide mentioned above, coined an early version of the proverb “a fool and his money are soon parted.”

In an expanded version of his guide, Fiue Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1573), Tusser has these lines: “A foole and his monie be soone at debate, / which after with sorrow repents him too late.”

A version closer to the usual wording soon appeared in A Defence of the Gouernment Established in the Church of Englande (1587), by John Bridges: “a foole and his money is soone parted.”

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Q: How did the word “card” end up in expressions like “play the race card” and “play the gender card”?

A: The “card” in those expressions ultimately comes from the use of the word in card playing. Think of it as a metaphorical use of a valuable playing card, like an ace that completes a royal flush in poker.

Middle English borrowed the word “card” from Middle French, where the plural cartes referred to a game of cards, as in jouer aux cartes (to play cards).

When the English term first appeared in the 15th century, it was also used in the plural to mean such a game. The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the “Code of Laws” for the town of Walsall in the West Midlands of England.

A statute, believed written around 1422, sets penalties for “plaiyng at eny unlawefull games,” including “dyce, tables [backgammon], cardes.” (From A History of Walsall and Its Neighbourhood, 1887, edited by Frederic W. Willmore.)

The noun soon came to be used for the cards themselves. The term “cardes for pleiyng” appears in a 1463-64 law prohibiting the importation of playing cards. (From The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1275–1504, edited by Chris Given-Wilson in 2005.)

A century later, the OED says, “card” took on “various figurative uses arising from card games, esp. denoting something that may be useful in obtaining one’s objective, or a person who can be called upon to support one’s case.”

The dictionary says the noun was used “chiefly with modifying adjective, as good, safe, strong, etc.” The first OED citation uses “sure card” to mean someone or something “that can be relied on to attain an intended end” or success:

“Nowe thys is a sure carde, nowe I maye well saye That a cowarde crakinge here I dyd fynde.” (From Thersytes, an anonymous play, sometimes attributed to Nicholas Udall, first published in the early 1560s. Thersytes was a Greek warrior slain by Achilles for mocking him.)

In the 19th century, according to Oxford citations, the noun when used with a “modifying adjective (as knowing, rum, etc.)” took on the sense of “a person (esp. a man) regarded as having the specified character or quality.”

The earliest citation is from a short piece by Dickens that was originally published as “Scenes and Characters, No. 4, Making a Night of It” in the magazine Bell’s Life in London (Oct. 18, 1835) and later as “Making a Night of It” in Sketches by Boz (1836):

“But Mr. Thomas Potter, whose great aim it was to be considered as a ‘knowing card,’ a ‘fast-goer,’ and so forth, conducted himself in a very different manner.” We’ve expanded the citation.

Two decades later, the OED says, “card” by itself took on the sense of “an ingenious, clever, or audacious person.”

The earliest example cited is in Dickens’s novel Bleak House (1853): “You know what a card Krook was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter.”

In the early 20th century, according to OED citations, the term took on the sense of “an odd or eccentric person, esp. one in whom these qualities are regarded as entertaining or comical; a joker.”

The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded, is from “His Worship the Goosedriver,” a short story by the English author Arnold Bennett in Tales of the Five Towns (1905):

“It would be an immense, an unparalleled farce; a wonder, a topic for years, the crown of his reputation as a card.” In the story, a jokester buys 12 geese and 2 ganders from a gooseherd and tries to herd them to his home. The geese have other plans!

Finally we come to the usage you ask about. Like the use of “card” for a person, this one also emerged in the first half of the 19th century.

The OED says “to play the —— card” means “to introduce a specified issue or topic in the hope of gaining sympathy or political advantage, by appealing to the sentiments or prejudices of one’s audience.”

In the dictionary’s first citation, the word “card” precedes the hot topic: “The Tories will doubtless play the card of ‘Irish misgovernment’ against Ministers” (The Scotsman, June 1, 1839).

The next Oxford example reverses the order in referring to “Liberal friends in Ulster, who wish to play the land purchase card at the elections” (The Times, London, May 22, 1885).

The next citation uses “Orange card” in the sense of an appeal to Northern Irish Protestants:

“I decided some time ago that if the G.O.M. [Grand Old Man, a reference to Gladstone] went for Home Rule, the Orange card would be the one to play” (from a letter written Feb. 16, 1886, by Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill’s father).

The earliest Oxford example of “race card” uses it to mean an appeal to anti-Black voters: “the Tory leadership declined to play the race card” (The Observer, March 3, 1974).

The OED doesn’t have an example of  “gender card,” but Merriam-Webster online says it showed up in the US more than a dozen years later.

M-W cites an analysis by Gary Orren, a professor of public policy at Harvard, about the unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign of Evelyn Murphy, Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts:

“But Orren thinks if Murphy plays the gender card in her ads she will lose the broader coalition of votes needed to win the election” (The Boston Globe, Aug. 9,1990).

The OED says “play the race card” and similar expressions can now be “depreciative, and chiefly used in accusations of others,” when they mean “to exploit one’s membership of a specified minority or marginalized group as a means of gaining sympathy or an unfair advantage.”

A recent Oxford example cites a Black soldier who appeared in recruitment posters and was “attacked on social media by white colleagues for ‘playing the race card’ to secure career advancement” (Morning Star, London, Sept. 25, 2020).

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Q: I’ve seen “becoming ever-more Prussian” and “studied the ever more frequent engravings.” For me the hyphen is incorrect in the first example, but admissible in the second because of the determiner “the.” What are your thoughts?

A: The short answer is that the modifying phrase “ever more,” meaning “increasingly more,” now needs no hyphen in either of those examples, though the usage was sometimes hyphenated in the past.

Taking a closer look, the adverbs “ever” + “more” form a phrase that modifies an adjective (“Prussian” … “frequent”). The result is an adjectival phrase: “ever more Prussian” … “ever more frequent.” The first is a post-modifying complement; the second pre-modifies a noun.

Note that no hyphens are used in these examples from  the Collins English Dictionary: “He grew ever more fierce in his demands” … “He was deluged by ever more plaintive epistles from his devoted admirer” … “It will become ever more complex.”

The presence or absence of a determiner like “an,” “the,” “some,” etc., is irrelevant, as in this example from the Oxford English Dictionary:

“In an ever more brutal, if technically sleek, world where the skies are filled with killer drones” (New York Magazine, Nov. 2, 2015).

A similar usage combines the adverbs “ever” + “so” to modify an adjective, resulting in an adjectival phrase. Here the sense of the adverbial modifier is “extremely” or “very.”

Merriam-Webster online has these examples: “I’m ever so glad that you got better” … “In the back seat was a Chinese American woman looking ever so chic and glamorous.”

Getting back to “ever more,” it’s also used by itself to modify a noun, as in “ever more Prussians” … “ever more engravings.” In this case, “more” is an adjective, and “ever more” is an adjectival phrase. A pair of examples found in the Oxford English Dictionary: “ever more gadgets in hand” … “ever more artists.”

No hyphens there either. But with an adjective other than “more,” that type of “ever” phrase usually has a hyphen. Some examples from the Cambridge Dictionary: “ever-decreasing profits” … “ever-increasing demand” … “an ever-present threat.”

(We should add that “ever more” and “ever so” can also be used with adverbs, resulting in adverbial phrases: “the price fell ever more steeply” … “he ran ever so quietly.”)

As for the term “evermore” (one word, no hyphen), it means “forever” or “always.” This example is from Merriam-Webster: “he promised to love her evermore, if only she would consent to be his wife.”

When “evermore,” the oldest of these terms, first appeared in Old English as æfre ma, it meant “for all future time,” according to the OED.

We’ve expanded the dictionary’s earliest citation, which is from King Alfred’s late ninth-century translation of Liber Regulae Pastoralis (Pastoral Care), a sixth-century Latin treatise by Pope Gregory:

Gif hwelc wif forlæt hiere ceorl, & nimð hire oderne, wenestu recce he hire æfre ma, ode mæg hio æfre eft cuman to him swa clænu swa hio ær was?

(If a wife leaves her husband and takes another man for herself, do you think her husband will evermore consider her, or can she ever return to him as pure as she e’er was?)

The earliest written use of the phrase “ever more,” as far as we can tell, is from Middle English, where it’s hyphenated. Here’s the OED citation:

“Pitous and Iust, and ever-more y-liche, Sooth of his word, benigne and honurable” (“Compassionate and just, and ever more constant, True to his word, kind and honorable”). From “The Squire’s Tale,” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (circa 1386).

And we found this early unhyphenated example: “Praye God that he will wyte [keep you] safe to worke fayth ī thyne herte / or else shalt thou remayne ever more faythelesse.” From William Tyndale’s A Compendious Introduccion, Prologe or Preface vn to the Pistle off Paul to the Romayns (1526).

And this is the earliest use we’ve found for “ever more” used adjectivally to modify a noun: “there is ever more paine in keeping, then in getting of mony.” From the essays of Montaigne, translated from French by John Florio (1613).

We’ll end with the early use of “ever so” to mean “very” or “extremely” or, in the words of the OED, “in any conceivable degree.”

The dictionary cites a Nov. 5, 1686, letter by Gilbert Burnet, a Scottish historian and Anglican bishop of Salisbury, written from Florence during a trip to Italy:

“When it hath rained ever so little … the Carts go deep, and are hardly drawn” (from An Account of What Seemed Most Remarkable in Travelling Through Switzerland, Italy, Some Parts of Germany, &c. in the Years 1685 and 1686, by Burnet, published in 1687).

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Q: I’m accustomed to seeing “as such” refer back to a specific word or phrase. Lately, I’ve noticed it where the referent is unspecified or absent. Example: “He broke his leg, and as such he missed work.” I’m curious about the history of this term and its changing usage.

A: Yes, “as such” traditionally refers to a word or phrase already mentioned. But the referent is often obscure in a colloquial use of “as such” that’s almost as old as the original.

Traditionally, “as such” means “in itself” (intelligence as such won’t make you rich), “in that capacity” (a judge as such deserves respect), or “in its exact meaning” (she wasn’t a vegetarian as such).

However, the phrase has been used colloquially for three centuries to mean “consequently,” “subsequently,” or “thereupon,” a usage that’s not recognized by standard dictionaries.

The principal definition of “as such” in the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference based on historical evidence, is “as being what the name or description implies; in that capacity.”

The earliest example in the OED is from an essay by Richard Steele in The Spectator (April 17, 1711): “When she observed Will. irrevocably her Slave, she began to use him as such.”

(An earlier, longer version of the phrase, “as it is such” or “as they are such,” appeared in The History of England, 1670, by John Milton: “True fortitude glories not in the feats of War, as they are such, but as they serve to end War soonest by a victorious Peace.”)

The colloquial sense of “as such” was first recorded a decade after the phrase appeared in The Spectator. As the OED explains, the original sense “passes contextually into: ‘Accordingly, consequently, thereupon.’ ” The dictionary describes the usage as “colloquial or informal.”

The first colloquial Oxford citation, which we’ve edited and expanded, is from a Feb. 25, 1721, entry in the church warden’s accounts for a parish in Salisbury, England:

“he [the curate] had chosen the said William Clemens to be his parish Clerk … And bid the Congregation to take notice thereof and accept him—as such Witness Henry Biggs, F. Barber [and others].” From Churchwardens’ Accounts of S. Edmund & S. Thomas, Sarum (1896), edited by Henry James Fowle Swayne.

The next two Oxford citations are from letters written in England in the early 1800s and published in The Correspondence of William Fowler of Winterton, in the County of Lincoln (1907), edited by Joseph Thomas Fowler:

“I very much longed to hear from you … and as such I did not the least esteem it for its having been delayed for the reasons assigned” (from an 1800 letter by John King).

“H. R. H. Princess Augusta … motioned for me to come to her Highness. As such she addressed me in the most pleasant manner possible” (from an 1814 letter by William Fowler).

Although “as such” in those colloquial examples doesn’t refer to a specific word or phrase mentioned previously, it does concern an earlier occurrence or situation. But as we’ve said, the colloquial usage isn’t recognized by standard dictionaries. And we find it vague and sometimes confusing.

We’ll end with the noun “as-suchness,” a derivative of “as such” that’s defined in the OED as the “absolute existence or possession of qualities, independently of all other things whatever.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from A Pluralistic Universe (1909), by the American philosopher and psychologist William James. In this passage, the “it” at the beginning refers to “Bradley’s Absolute,” the British philosopher F. H. Bradley’s concept of ultimate reality:

“It is us, and all other appearances, but none of us as such, for in it we are all ‘transmuted,’ and its own as-suchness is of another denomination altogether.”

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Q: How did “foot” come to be used in “He’ll foot the bill”? And doesn’t it sound awkward to say “He footed the bill”?

A: The use of the verb “foot” in the expression “foot the bill” ultimately comes from the use of “foot” as a noun for the lower part of something—in this case, the total at the bottom of a bill.

When “foot” first appeared in Old English, it referred (as it does now) to the part of the leg below the ankle. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the epic poem Beowulf, dating back to as early as 725:

“Sona hæfde unlyfigendes eal gefeormod fet ond folma” (“Soon he’d devoured the lifeless body, feet and hands”). The passage describes the monster Grendel eating one of his victims.

The noun “foot” soon took on the additional sense of something resembling a foot. The OED’s first citation for this meaning, which we’ve expanded here, is from an Old English riddle that refers to the base of an inkhorn (an inkwell made from an antler) as a foot, spelled fot:

“nu ic blace swelge wuda ⁊ wætre … befæðme þæt mec on fealleð ufan þær ic stonde eorpes nathwæt hæbbe anne fot” (“now I swallow the black wood and water.  … I embrace within me the unknown darkness that falls on me from above. Where I stand on something unknown, I have one foot”). From the Exeter Book, “Riddle 93.”

In the early 15th century, the OED says, the noun “foot” took on the sense of “the sum or total of a column of numbers in an account, typically recorded directly below the final entry in the column.”

The dictionary’s first citation is from a 1433 financial report in the records of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York, a merchant guild:

“First, the saide maister and constables hafe resayved [have received] in mone tolde [money counted], iiijli. ijs. xd., as it profes be [proves by] the fote [foot] of accounte of the yere past” (from The York Mercers and Merchant Adventurers 1356–1917, a 1918 work by the British historian Maud Sellers).

A similar use of “foot” as a verb appeared in the late 15th century, according to the OED, which defines the term as “to add up (a column of numbers, or an account, bill, etc., having this) and enter the sum at the bottom.”

The earliest Oxford citation, with “footed” spelled “futit,” is from a record of judicial proceedings in Scotland: “The tyme that his compt [account] wes futit.” From The Acts of the Lords of Council in Civil Causes, 1478–95 (edited by Thomas Thomson, 1839).

The sense of “foot” you’re asking about showed up in the early 19th century. Oxford defines it as “to pay or settle (a bill, esp. one which is large or unreasonable, or which has been run up by another party).”

The first OED citation, which we’ve expanded, is from A Pedestrious Tour, of Four Thousand Miles, Through the Western States and Territories, During the Winter and Spring of 1818, an 1819 memoir of a walking tour by Estwick Evans, a New England lawyer and writer:

“My dogs, knowing no law but that of nature, and having forgotten my lecture to them upon theft, helped themselves to the first repast presented, leaving their master to foot their bills.” (The dogs were later killed by wolves in the Michigan Territory as Evans was on his way to Detroit.)

As for “footed,” it may sound awkward, but it’s the only past tense and past participle listed in the standard dictionaries we regularly consult.

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Q: I’m curious when the phrase “left for dead” became common usage. Why is the phrase not “left to die”? I saw the “for dead” version recently in an article and I began wondering.

A: The expression “leave for dead” first appeared in Anglo-Saxon times and has been used regularly since then to mean abandon someone or something almost dead or certain to die.

The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary, which we’ve expanded here, is from a passage concerning St. Paul in The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, First Series, written around 990 by the Benedictine Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham:

“Æne he wæs gestæned oð deað, swa ðæt þa ehteras hine for deadne leton, ac ðæs on merigen he aras, and ferde ymbe his bodunge” (“Once he was stoned unto death, so much so that the persecutors left him for dead, but on the morrow he arose and went about his preaching”). In Old English, “hine for deadne leton” is literally “him for dead left.”

As the OED explains, the preposition “for” is being used here “with an adjective as complement.” This use of “for,” the dictionary adds, is now found chiefly in “set expressions, as in to give a person up for lost, to leave a person for dead, to take for granted, etc.”

In early Old English, the preposition “for” began being used similarly with a noun to mean “with a view to; with the object or purpose of; as preparatory to,” according to the OED.

Here’s a citation from the Gospel of John, 11:4, in the West Saxon Gospels: “Nys þeos untrumnys na for deaðe, ac for Godes wuldre” (“This sickness is not for death, but for the glory of God”). Jesus is speaking about the ailing Lazarus.

Getting back to your question, one could say “left to die” as well as “left for dead.” Both have been common for centuries. In fact, “left to die” is slightly more popular, according to Google’s Ngram viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books.

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Q: Charitable giving is often characterized as “giving back,” which has a connotation of paying something owed.  My wife and I make substantial donations. I think of this as freely giving, not paying a debt.

A: We’ve also made quite a few charitable donations over the years, and done many hours of volunteer work. And like you, we see this as giving freely of our savings and our time rather than repaying a debt to society.

Merriam-Webster defines the phrasal verb “give back” in this sense as “to provide help or financial assistance to others in appreciation of one’s own success or good fortune,” and has this example: “The community had people with time to volunteer and give back.”

We’d add that the way charities now use the term strikes us as marketing jargon that conveys a sense of obligation to contribute, as well as guilt for not doing so.

A less promotional version of the usage dates back to the 19th century. The earliest example we’ve seen is from a speech given Dec. 27, 1877, by W. M. Brooks, president of Tabor College, at a meeting in Cedar Rapids of the State Teachers’ Association of Iowa:

“I believe in general it is true, both of private and State schools, that they are doing their work so faithfully as to give back to the community vastly more than enough to repay the outlay.” In that example, “give back” is used literally (“to repay the outlay”).

We especially like this example from “Problems of Property,” an article by George Iles in The Popular Science Monthly, July 1882:

“It used to be thought that the sons or grandsons of rich Americans could be relied upon to give back to the community their inherited wealth through demoralization and incompetence; but that reliance is proved baseless in a noteworthy proportion of cases in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.”

And here’s a turn-of-the-century example from “The University and the City,” a speech by Seth Low, president of Columbia University, given at the University of Rochester on Oct. 11, 1900:

“The cities can justify themselves, in thus absorbing the population of the land, only by demonstrating that they have the capacity to give, as well as to take. If they take the people out of the country, they must not only give to these individuals enlarged opportunity and greater happiness, but, through them and through their own sons, they must give back to the country in a thousand ways what they have taken from it.”

The sense of repaying an obligation is even clearer in a Jan. 27, 1964, speech by Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine at the Women’s National Press Club in Washington.

One reason she decided to seek the Republican nomination for President, she says, “is that women before me pioneered and smoothed the way for me to be the first woman to be elected to both the House and the Senate—and that I should give back in return that which had been given to me.”

The use of the term was relatively rare until the 1980s, according to a search for “give back to the community” in Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books.

Business executives began using the expression at the time in describing charitable contributions by their companies, as in this example from a business forum in The New York Times, Jan. 3, 1988:

“The challenge in business is to find a socially responsible niche where you can effectively give back to the community in which you operate and in which you have prospered” (M. Anthony Burns, chairman of Ryder Systems).

The term is now often used by businesses, public figures, charities, and volunteers in connection with the Giving Tuesday movement, begun in 2012 by the 92nd Street Y in New York and the United Nations Foundation:

“Giving Tuesday 2023: 27 brands giving back: Giving Tuesday is a day for people and businesses to give back after Black Friday and Cyber Monday—here’s how to participate this year” (from the website of NBC News, Nov. 28, 2023).

In looking into the usage, we found an article in which Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill, director of the Campus Free Expression Project of the Bipartisan Policy Center, says the “demand that wealthy should ‘give back’ is heard mostly from progressive or leftist voices.”

In “Giving vs. ‘Giving Back’ ” (Philanthropy Daily, Jan. 4, 2012), Merrill says the “Harvard political theorist John Rawls gave expression to this view in his highly influential A Theory of Justice (1971).”

However, Rawls doesn’t use the term “give back” in his book about distributive justice, the fair allocation of resources. And we’ve seen no indication that people using the expression are particularly progressive, leftist, or aware of his work.

We’ll end with a passage from the book Gratitude: Reflections on What We Owe to Our Country (1990), by William F. Buckley Jr. In discussing the impossibility of repaying our cultural inheritance, he gives several examples, including this one about our musical heritage:

“If you listen, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in May of every year, to four hundred musicians performing the St. Matthew Passion by J. S. Bach, it becomes numbingly plain that there is simply no way in which one can ‘repay’ the musical patrimony we have inherited.”

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Q: How did the expression “dog days” change from meaning the hottest time of the year to a period of sluggishness or stagnation?

A: When “dog days” first appeared in English in the 16th century, it referred to the hottest part of summer in the Northern hemisphere, a period once considered unhealthy and evil.

Because of the lethargy caused by the heat or fears of malignant influences, the term came to mean a period of stagnation and inactivity. Here’s the story.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes “dog days” as “the hottest part of the summer, associated in ancient times with the heliacal rising of the Dog Star in the Mediterranean area, and formerly considered to be the most unhealthy period of the year and a time of ill omen.”

The expression has its roots in Greek mythology, where Sirius is the name of the hunter Orion’s dog. In the Iliad (Book XXII), Homer refers to the star as κύν᾽ Ὠρίωνος (kun Orionos, Orion’s dog).

English borrowed the phrase from the post-classical Latin caniculares dies (dog days), which was borrowed in turn from the Hellenistic Greek κυνάδες ἡμέραι (kunades hemerai, dog days).

When the phrase first appeared in English the 16th century, it referred to the hottest days of summer. The earliest OED example, which we’ve expanded, is from The Dictionary of Syr Thomas Eliot Knyght (1538):

“Canicula, a lyttell dogge or bytche. Also a sterre, wherof canicular or dogge days be named Dies caniculares.”

The dictionary says the phrase soon took on the figurative sense of “an evil time; a period in which malignant influences prevail.” The earliest citation for this sense is from a letter by a Protestant clergyman (and later martyr) to a fellow inmate at Newgate Prison in London:

“Neither that any giddy head in these dog-days might take an ensample [example] by you to dissent from Christ’s true church” (from a 1555 letter by John Philpot in The Examinations and Writings of John Philpot, 1842, edited by Robert Eden).

The OED says the evil figurative usage is seen “now (in weakened sense): a period of inactivity or decline.”

It’s not uncommon for the sense of a usage to strengthen or weaken over time, as we note in a 2021 post. A linguist might refer to weakening as “semantic loss” or “semantic reduction.”

It’s unclear when the weakened sense of “dog days” first appeared in English, though this Oxford citation may be an early sighting or a perhaps an indication of things to come:

“What then shall wee now expect in these dogge-dayes of the worlds declining age?” (Achitophel; or, the Picture of a Wicked Politician, 1629, three sermons by the philosopher and Anglican clergyman Nathanael Carpenter).

The dictionary’s first clear example of the weakened sense, which we’ve expanded, is from a July 12, 1992, article in The New York Times about mid-level bosses being laid off in troubled economic times:

“One possibly beneficial byproduct of the managerial dog days may be that it will prepare younger people for the job- and career-jumping likely to be their lot.”

And here’s the OED’s most recent example: “In the dog-days of The Beatles, one of Paul’s plans for holding it all together had been for the world’s most fabled band to just go out and play” (“The Beatles: Stoned, sloppy—shelved!” Mojo, February 2002).

Oxford notes that “the dog days have been variously reckoned, as depending on either the Greater Dog Star (Sirius) or the Lesser Dog Star (Procyon), and on either the heliacal rising or the cosmical rising (which occurs at an earlier date).”

The heliacal rising of a star occurs when it first becomes visible above the eastern horizon at dawn just before sunrise. The cosmical rising occurs when it rises in the morning at the same time as the sun.

“The timing of these risings depends on latitude, and they do not occur at all in most of southern hemisphere,” the OED says, adding that “very different dates have been assigned for the dog days,” with their beginning “ranging from 3 July to 15 August, and their duration varying from 30 to 61 days.”

In the Calendar of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, the dog days run from July 7 to Sept. 5. In current calendars, Oxford says, “they are often said to begin on 3 July and end on 11 August (i.e. the 40 days preceding the cosmical rising of Sirius at the latitude of Greenwich).”

The dictionary says the usage “arose from the pernicious qualities of the season being attributed to the ‘influence’ of the Dog Star; but it has long been popularly associated with the belief that at this season dogs are most liable to go mad.”

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Q: I don’t know if you care about older columns, but you may want to update your 2011 item about “cahoot.” It seems silly to say, as your source does, that this Western Americanism descends from French. Many (most?) Westernisms come from Mexican Spanish.

A: The term “cahoot” first appeared in the American Southeast in the early 19th century and didn’t show up in the West until decades later, so it’s unlikely that the usage comes from Mexican Spanish.

In the early days, the word was singular (“cahoot”) and could refer to either a legitimate partnership or a devious collaboration. It’s now used primarily in the scheming sense in plural constructions such as “in cahoots” and “in cahoots with.”

The first known use of the term, tracked down by the linguist Ben Zimmer, is from “Barney Blinn,” an anonymous sketch in a Georgia newspaper about a fictional backwoods orator:

“I ha’nt read newspapers for nothing–Gin’ral Government and the ministration are going in cahoot to undermine and overrule the undertakings of the free People of Georgia” (The Augusta Chronicle, June 20, 1827).

We found the following example, which appeared a year later in a public notice in a Mississippi newspaper:

“I have reason to beleve, that a certain clan, cahoote of connexion, and othrs residing in the vicinity of my residence are predisposed to create, unnecessary and illegal liabilities on me, thro, the agency of my wife, LOUISA HOLMES” (Statesman & Gazette, Natchez, July 24, 1828).

The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary, which we’ve expanded, is from a list of “provincialisms and vulgarisms” in “Md. Va. Ky. or Miss.,” with “improper” examples followed by “corrected” ones:

“Hese in cahoot with me. He is in partnership with me” (Grammar in Familiar Lectures, 1829, by Samuel Kirkham).

This South Carolina example, found by the language researcher Pascal Tréguer, is from a list of “cracker” slang: “Co hoot—Copartnership” (City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser, Charleston, May 14, 1830).

And here’s an example from a February 1839 speech on the floor of the House of Representatives by Rep. Alexander Duncan, a Democrat from Ohio:

“Only think of this! A rank Abolition Whig from the North in ‘cahoot’ with a rank anti-Abolition Whig from the South” (from the Congressional Globe, predecessor of the Congressional Record).

The OED cites a different passage from the same speech: “I will splice the member from North Carolina to you, and for a short time will consider you one person, or in ‘cahoot.’ ”

The first Oxford citation for the plural “cahoots” is from a manuscript diary of G. K. Wilder (1862): “Mc wished me to go in cahoots in a store.” And “cahoots” it’s been ever since.

In his Dictionary of Americanisms (1848), John Russell Bartlett describes “cahoot” as a term used in “the South and West to denote a company or union of men for a predatory excursion, and sometimes for a partnership in business.”

However, the only Western example cited by Bartlett is from what we would now consider the Midwest. The passage, from a humorous newspaper sketch, describes an encounter on a Mississippi steamship:

“One day, the confidential hoosier took him aside, told him that there was a ‘smart chance of a pile’ on one of the tables, and that if he liked, he (the hoosier) would go in with him—in cahoot!” (from “A Resurrectionist and His Freight,” by J. M. Field, in The St. Louis Reveille, March 9, 1846).

The earliest example we’ve seen for “cahoot” used in the region now considered the West is from a newspaper in the Oregon Territory:

“I’m much obleeged to ye, sir; but old Betsey Baker (Betsey Baker was the name he gave to his own rifle) hev ben so long in cahoot together, that I hev a kind of efiction for the old lady” (from the Oregon Spectator, Oregon City, Oct. 18, 1849).

As for the origin of “cahoot,” the OED, an etymological dictionary updated regularly online, says the term is “probably a borrowing” from cahute, French for a hut or shack, and notes that “cahute” meant a cabin in the Scottish English of the 1500s.

The dictionary has two 16th-century citations (the earliest is from 1508 and describes a “foule cahute,” or foul cabin, on a ship).

Other modern etymological references are more hesitant than the OED to link cahute and “cahoot.” Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, for example, says “cahoot” is “of uncertain origin; occasionally thought to be borrowed from French cahute cabin.”

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang and Green’s Dictionary of Slang have similar entries. Green’s also has the French term cohorte, which gave English the word “cohort,” as a possible source of “cahoot.”

The OED doesn’t indicate how an obsolete Scottish term of French origin came to mean a partnership or conspiracy in the American South of the 19th century. The idea perhaps is that the cabin suggests people working together in private.

We’ve searched newspaper and book databases for the use of “cahoot” in various spellings by Scottish and Latin American immigrants  in the late 18th century and early 19th.

We also checked such sources as Dictionaries of the Scots Language, Diccionario Etimológico Castellano En Línea, and Dictionary of American Regional English for hints of a possible Spanish or Scottish connection to the American usage. No luck.

We’d describe the origin of “cahoot” as uncertain.

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Q: Sometimes in books set in the 1920s and ’30s, mainly in Agatha Christie’s books, I’ll see a reference to a maid wearing a “print dress,” but the dress actually seems to be a solid color. Can you shed any light on this?

A: As far as we can tell, the term “print dress” has always meant a garment made of a fabric with a printed design, though it’s often used without describing the design or the color.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the adjective “print” here has referred to a garment “made of printed fabric” or a fabric “bearing a printed pattern or design” since the usage first appeared in the mid-19th century.

The OED’s earliest citation for the phrase “print dress,” which we’ve expanded, is from Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe:

“Fanny herself was arrayed in a very pretty print dress, which her father had brought home in a recent visit, with a cape of white muslin.”

The dictionary includes an earlier example of “print” used to describe curtains: “a cylinder fall writing desk, sets of modern cotton print window curtains, 2 chimney glasses” (from an ad listing property “of a Gentleman quitting his residence,” The Times, London, May 8, 1820).

In the 17th century, “print” was used as a noun in a similar sense, which Oxford defines as “a printed (usually cotton) fabric; a piece of such fabric; the pattern printed on the fabric. Also: a garment or other article made from printed fabric.”

The dictionary cites a list of items in a 1679 probate inventory: “36 tufted fringe … 5 score and 13 yards of print … 8 Hand fringes” (from Probate Inventories of Lincoln [England] Citizens, 1661-1714, edited by J. A. Johnson in 1991).

Middle English borrowed the noun from Anglo-Norman and Middle French, where preinte referred to an “impression or imprint made by the impact of a seal or stamp.”

Getting back to your question, in The Body in the Library (1942), Agatha Christie uses “print dress” without any additional information in describing the early morning household noises as Mrs. Bantry awakens at Gossington Hall:

“They would culminate in a swift, controlled sound of footsteps along the passage, the rustle of a print dress, the subdued chink of tea things as the tray was deposited on the table outside, then the soft knock and the entry of Mary to draw the curtains.”

But when additional information is given in some other Christie works, the dress is clearly made of a fabric with a printed pattern, as in these examples:

“A real chambermaid looking unreal, wearing a striped lavender print dress and actually a cap, a freshly laundered cap” (At Bertram’s Hotel, 1965).

“ ‘My dear,’ he exclaimed, ‘do you see what she’s got on? A sprigged print dress. Just like a housemaid–when there were housemaids’ ” (“Greenshaw’s Folly,” a short story in The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, 1960).

We couldn’t find examples of the phrase “print dress” in Christie’s novels from the 1920s or ’30s, but here’s one from Sweet Danger (1933), by Margery Allingham:

“Her costume consisted of a white print dress with little green flowers on it, a species of curtaining sold at many village shops. It was cut severely, and was rather long in the skirt.”

When one color is mentioned, it probably refers to the background or the predominant color. Here’s an example from Jacob’s Room (1922), by Virginia Woolf: “Not that any one objects to a blue print dress and a white apron in a cottage garden.”

A design is assumed even if no color or pattern is described: “Poor Cecily! To go to church in a faded print dress, with a shabby little old sun-hat and worn shoes!” (The Golden Road, 1925, by Lucy Maud Montgomery).

The OED’s most recent example for “print dress” is from Timebends: A Life, a 1987 memoir by the playwright Arthur Miller. In this passage, Miller describes the dress worn by the grandmother of his first wife, Mary Slattery, at their wedding reception in 1940:

“She wore a flowered blue cotton print dress, high-crowned tucked bonnet of the same material with a visor ten inches deep.” (We’re quoting from the hardcover original; Oxford cites a shorter version in the 1988 paperback.)

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Q: How did the expression “double-edged sword” come to mean something that has both positive and negative results?

A: The expression ultimately comes from the use of “two-edged sword” in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin versions of the Bible to mean something very sharp, like a weapon or piercing words.

Here are a few examples we’ve found for “two-edged sword” in Hebrew (חרב פיפיות), Greek (μαχαιρας διστομου), and Latin (gladio ancipiti) from the Old and New Testaments:

• “רוממות אל בגרונם וחרב פיפיות בידם” (“Praise of God in their mouths and a two-edged sword in their hand”). From the 10th-century Aleppo Codex of the Hebrew Bible, Psalms 149:6 (thought to have originated around 1000 BCE).

• “υστερον μεντοι πικροτερον χολης ευρησεις και ηκονημενον μαλλον μαχαιρας διστομου” (“Later however you will find her [an immoral woman] more bitter than gall and sharper than a two-edged sword”). From the Septuagint, Proverbs 5:4, believed translated in the second century BCE.

• “vivus est enim Dei sermo et efficax et penetrabilior omni gladio ancipiti” (“for the word of God is living and powerful and more penetrating than any two-edged sword”). From the Vulgate, Epistle to the Hebrews 4:12, dating from the late fourth and early fifth centuries of the Common Era.

(The medieval Jewish scholar Rashi [1040-1105] interprets Psalm 149:6 figuratively in the first example above: “With paeans to God in their throats, and these same are like two-edged swords in their hands.” Rashi’s Commentary on the Psalms, 2004, translated by Mayer I. Gruber.)

Why is the expression “two-edged sword” used in the Bible to describe the word of God? Perhaps because the Hebrew noun for “edge” here, פה, can also mean “mouth,” among other things.

The plural of פה is פיות (“edges” or “mouths”) and the construct state, or genitive, is פיפיות (“of edges” or “of mouths”). So חרב פיפיות (“a sword of edges,” usually translated as “two-edged sword”) could also mean “a sword of mouths”—that is, a source of sharp words.

Similarly, when the phrase “two-edged sword” first appeared in English, it was used to describe the word of God. The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest example, which we’ve expanded, is from Hebrews 4:12 in William Tyndale’s 1526 translation of the New Testament:

“For the worde of god is quycke and myghty in operacion and sharper then eny two edged swearde.”

As far as we can tell, the sense of “two-edged sword” as something with both good and bad consequences appeared a few decades later.

The earliest example we’ve found is from an English translation of a Latin sermon about the Apocalypse by the Swiss pastor, reformer, and theologian Heinrich Bullinger (1504-75):

“For a sharpe two edged sworde commeth out of the Lordes mouth. This swearde is the worde of God … And it is two edged, sharpe and pearsing, as well as in the heart of the Godly unto saluation, as well as in the heartes of the wycked to payne and condemnation.” (From A Hundred Sermons Vpo[n] the Apocalips of Iesu Christe, 1561, John Daus’s translation of Bullinger’s sermons.)

Getting back to “double-edged sword,” the usual wording now, the expression is used literally for an actual weapon in the earliest example we’ve found:

“And in their mouths let be the actes of God the mighty Lord / And in their hands let them beare a double edged sword” (Psalms 149:6, The Whole Books of Psalmes, 1581, by Thomas Sternhold, John Hopkins, and others).

The first example we’ve found with the phrase used figuratively in its good-bad sense is from a sermon that says the Gospel has both “the power of God to salvation” and “the power of God to confusion”:

“It is a double-edged Sword, and giues, vel vitam, vel vinditam, either instruction, or destruction” (from A Divine Herball Together With a Forrest of Thornes in Five Sermons, 1616, by the English clergyman Thomas Adams).

As for the ultimate origin of the “good/bad” sense of “double-edged sword,” Dictionary.com suggests that it “seems to be based on an idea that a sword with two edges poses a danger of bouncing back and cutting its own wielder.” However, we’ve seen no evidence to support this idea.

We’ve also seen no evidence that the English expression is ultimately derived from the Arabic term for a two-edged sword, سلاح ذو حدين, as suggested by the collaborative dictionary Wiktionary.

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Q: I was wondering how the expression “steal a march” came to mean get an advantage over somebody.

A: When the verb “steal” first appeared in Anglo-Saxon times it had the word’s usual modern meaning—to take something dishonestly, especially in secret.

That sense of acting secretly led to the use of the expression “steal a march” in the 18th century to mean get a secret advantage over a rival. Here’s the story.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the original sense of the verb as “to take away dishonestly (portable property, cattle, etc., belonging to another); esp. to do this secretly or unobserved by the owner or the person in charge.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation, which we’ve expanded, is from the Benedictine Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham’s loose Old English translation, circa 1000, of Genesis in the Latin Vulgate:

“þæt feoh, pe we fundon on ure saccum, we læddon to þe of Chanaan lande. wenst þu, þæt we þines hlafordes gold oððe his seolfor stælon” (“That money, which we found in our sack, we brought to thee out of the land of Canaan. Think thou that we should steal thy lord’s gold or his silver?”). Genesis 44:8.

The verb “steal” has had many related meanings over the years, as in to steal happiness (circa 1374), steal a kiss (1390), steal writing (1544), steal a heart (1587), and steal a glance (1794).

The expression “steal a march” was originally used in a military sense, meaning to “succeed in moving troops without the knowledge of the enemy,” according to the OED.

The dictionary’s earliest citation, which we’ve expanded, is from a letter dated March 27, 1716, by the Town Council of Edinburgh in praise of the Duke of Argyll, commander of British forces in Scotland during the Jacobite uprising of 1715:

“We saw him with incredible celerity steal a march for our preservation; And when, by his surprising Expedition he had chas’d the enemy from our gates.”

The OED says the expression soon came to be used more generally to mean “to get a secret advantage over a rival or opponent.” In this example, which we’ve also expanded, it refers to one theater company’s getting an advantage over another:

“After we had stolen some few Days March upon them, the forces of Betterton came up with us in terrible order.” (From An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber, Comedian, 1740, by Cibber, an actor and theater manager, as was Thomas Betterton.)

The dictionary’s next example is from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), by Tobias Smollett. In this expanded citation from the novel, the husband-hunting Tabitha Bramble tries to get a jump on her niece Lydia Melford:

“You must know, she yesterday wanted to steal a march of poor Liddy, and went to breakfast in the Room without any other companion than her dog, in expectation of meeting with the Baronet.”

We’ll end with an example from “The Oblong Box” (1844), a short story by Edgar Allan Poe: “He evidently intended to steal a march upon me, and smuggle a fine picture to New York, under my very nose.”

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Q: What is the origin of the “bobby” in “bobby pins”? Is it related to the one in “bobby socks” or the “bobby” walking a beat in London?

A: The “bobby” in “bobby pins” and “bobby socks” (or “sox”) is believed to come from the use of “bob” and “bobbed” in reference to something shortened.

“Bobby pins” originally referred to sprung pins used with bobbed hair, while “bobby socks” referred to ankle socks, presumably because they were a shortened, or bobbed, version of knee socks.

The slang term for a police officer is understood to come from the given name of Robert Peel, who was England’s Home Secretary when the Metropolitan Police Act was passed in the early 19th century. In fact, bobbies are also called “peelers.”

As for the etymology, the noun “bob” first appeared in Middle English when it meant a bunch of leaves, flowers, fruit, and so on, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The dictionary’s earliest example, which we’ve expanded, is from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a chivalric romance written in the late 1300s:

“Bot in his on honde he hade a holyn bobbe, Þat is grattest in grene when greuez ar bare” (“But in one hand he held a bunch of holly, that is greatest in green when groves are bare”).

That early sense of “bob” evolved over the centuries to mean, among other things, bobbed hair.

In the 17th century, the OED says, it referred to “a knot or bunch of hair such as that in which women sometimes do up their back hair.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation refers to a wig with “the side or bottom locks turned up into Bobs or Knots, tied up with Ribbons” (from The Academy of Armory, 1688, by Randle Holme).

In the 18th century, “bob” came to mean “a horse’s tail docked short; a short knob-like tail.” The first Oxford example refers to “a high bob unusual in Horses” (The London Gazette, Dec. 1, 1711).

A century later, the OED says, the verb “bob” took on the sense of “to dock, cut short (a horse’s tail, etc.).” The dictionary cites this 1822 example describing feral horses:

“Two of them must have been in Hands [domesticated], as their tails were Bobed short” (from The Journal of Jacob Fowler, edited by Elliott Coues and published in 1898).

In the early 20th century, the noun “bob” took on the modern sense of “a style of cutting women’s hair short and even all round,” as well as “hair cut in this way,” the OED says.

The OED’s earliest citation is from The Silver Spoon (1926), one of John Galsworthy’s Forsyte novels: “Her hair, again in its more natural ‘bob’, gleamed lustrously under the light.”

Getting back to your question, Oxford defines a “bobby pin” as “a kind of sprung hair-pin or small clip, originally for use with bobbed hair.” It says the etymology is uncertain, but points readers to the verb for docking a horse’s tail.

The earliest example we’ve found is from a newspaper in Nyack, NY: “Her locks have just reached that trying length that require the existence of a ‘bobby pin’ ” (Rockland County Evening Journal, Oct. 2, 1928).

The OED’s first citation is from a novel published a few years later: “She wondered whether she had lost all the bobby-pins from her marcelled hair” (If I Have Four Apples, 1936, by Josephine Lawrence).

As for “bobby socks,” the OED defines them as “socks reaching just above the ankle, esp. those worn by girls in their teens.” It describes the etymology as uncertain, but again points readers to the verb for docking a horse’s tail.

The earliest example we’ve found is from a California newspaper: “Any bobby socks around school all week?” (from “The Hatchet,” a column about La Habra Grammar Schools in La Habra Star, May 29, 1929).

Oxford’s earliest citation, which we’ve expanded, describes the scene at a Frank Sinatra concert: “In CBS’s Manhattan playhouse, at the Paramount, at the Lucky Strike Hit Parade, hundreds of little long-haired, round-faced girls in bobby socks sat transfixed” (Time magazine, July 26, 1943).

Finally, we come to the constabulary “bobby.” Oxford defines it as “a slang nickname for a policeman” that’s “probably in allusion to the name of Mr. (afterwards Sir) Robert Peel, who was Home Secretary when the new Metropolitan Police Act was passed in 1828.”

The dictionary’s first example, which we’ve expanded, is from testimony in a burglary case tried June 10, 1844, at the Old Bailey, London’s Central Criminal Court:

“I heard her say something, but could not understand what it was exactly—I could not understand whether it was ‘a crush’ or ‘a bobby’—I cannot swear that I heard any words of that kind—I heard her say something—it was a signal to let them know a policeman was coming” (from Old Bailey Proceedings Online).

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