Category: Usage

Q: I’m a mom with an almost 2-year-old son. One of his favorite games is peek-a-boo. With Halloween coming up, I wonder if there’s any connection between the “boo” to scare someone and the “boo” in “peek-a-boo.”

A: Yes, there is a connection between the “boo” used to scare people on Halloween and the “boo” in the children’s game “peekaboo,” a term now usually written without hyphens.

The word for the game is a compound made of the verb “peek,” the combining form “-a-,” and an exclamation (variously spelled over the years as “bo,” “boe,” “boh,” “boo,” and “bough”) intended to surprise or frighten someone.

The exclamation was spelled “bo” when it first appeared in writing in the 16th century (it was certainly used much earlier in speech). The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest citation, which we’ve expanded, is from an anonymous medieval tale of a blacksmith who fashions a woman at his forge. Here he asks her to speak and say “bo”:

“Speke now let me se, / And say ones bo / Than he toke her by the heed / And sayd dame art thou deed” (A Treatyse of the Smyth Whych That Forged Hym a New Dame, 1565). Scholars say the poem was composed around 1360; the OED’s 1565 citation is from the most complete copy known to exist.

The dictionary’s earliest example of the exclamation clearly used in its scary sense is from a long poem inspired by London’s plague of 1625: “When a child cryes boh / To fright his Nurse” (from Britain’s Remembrancer, 1628, by George Wither, an English pamphleteer, satirist, and poet).

And here’s an example with the usual modern spelling: “Boo is a word that’s used in the North of Scotland to frighten crying Children” (from The Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, 1692, by J. Curate, a pseudonym).

The OED defines the compound “peekaboo” as “a game played with a young child which involves hiding oneself, or one’s face, and suddenly reappearing, saying ‘peekaboo.’ ” However, the OED’s earliest written example uses the term figuratively. Here a wife dismisses her husband’s romantic overtures as child’s play:

“I’le lay my life this is my hus­bands dotage, I thought so, nay neuer play peeke-boe with me, I know you do nothing but studie how to anger me sir” (The Comicall Satyre of Every Man Out of His Humor, 1600, a play by Ben Jonson).

Undoubtedly, the term was used literally to mean the game itself in speech long before 1600. However, the dictionary’s first literal example in writing is from a 19th-century novel about an orphan girl who unravels the mystery of her parentage:

“Little Nina, grown more bold climbed up beside him, and poised upon one foot, her fat arm resting on his neck, played ‘peek-a-boo’ beneath the shade, screaming at every ‘peek,’ ‘I seen your eyes, I did’ ” (Darkness and Daylight, an 1864 novel by the American writer Mary Jane Holmes).

The word “boo” has had several other meanings since it first appeared (in the form of “bo”) as “an inarticulate spoken sound or exclamation, esp. one made abruptly in order to surprise or frighten,” according to citations in the OED.

The most common is “a sound used to express disdain, contempt, disapproval,” as in this Oxford example: “I’ve heard the folks laugh at that sign; And one crie boo: another chuckled” (from Poor Vulcan, 1778, a comic opera by the English composer and dramatist Charles Dibdin).

Similarly, the dictionary says, “peekaboo” has had a variety of senses since it first showed up in writing at the beginning of the 17th century.

The senses include clothes with a pattern of holes that let the wearer’s body be seen (1895 as an adjective; 1908 as a noun); a hairstyle that conceals one eye (1948, adjective; 1968, noun); and a fighting style in which the boxer protects his face with gloves, then suddenly delivers a surprise punch (1960, adjective).

Finally, here’s a recent example that we’ve found for “peekaboo” used in its original sense of a children’s game:

“Peekaboo is a game played over the world, crossing language and cultural barriers. Why is it so universal? Perhaps because it’s such a powerful learning tool” (from an April 17, 2014,  BBC feature, “Why all babies love peekaboo”).

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Q: At fashion shows, one who sews is invariably referred to as a “seamstress,” though men sometimes do the job. Similarly, one who helps a woman in childbirth is a “midwife” (feminine as in the French sage-femme), though some are men. Any thoughts?

A: The original term for someone who sews was “seamster” (spelled sæmestre, seamystre, semestr, etc., in Old English), and it referred to men as well as women for hundreds of years—until “seamstress” appeared in the 17th century.

As for “midwife,” it’s not a gendered term (unlike its French counterpart, sage-femme). When midwif appeared in Middle English, mid meant “with” and wif meant woman, as we note in a 2016 post. So etymologically “midwife” refers to someone (usually a woman, but not always) who is “with” a woman giving birth. We’ll have more to say about “midwife” later, but first a look at “seamstress.”

The Oxford English Dictionary describes “seamster” as “originally a designation of a woman, but in Old English already applicable to a man.” The earliest OED example, which we’ve expanded, is from a will, dated around 995, in which a woman named Wynflæd beqeathes two female slaves to her granddaughter Eadgyfe:

“Hio becweđ Eadgyfe ane crencestræn and ane semestran” (“She bequeathes to Eadgyfe a weaver and a seamster”). From Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici (1839-48), edited by John Mitchell Kemble. The term semestran is the accusative (direct object) of seamystre, and crencestræn is the accusative of crencestre.

The first OED citation for “seamstress,” which we’ve expanded, is from a 1643 treatise about the early days of the English Civil War of 1642-51: “a great masse of money and plate, was brought into the Guild-Hall, the Semstresse brought in her silver Thimble, the Chamber maid her Bodkin, the Cook his Spoones” (Twelve Several Treatises, 1661, by James Howell, a supporter of Charles I and Charles II).

Several gender-free nouns have shown up over the years for someone who sews, including “tailor” (1297), “sewer” (1399), “needleworker” (1611), and “sewist” (1867). The dates are the first appearances in the OED.

“Tailor” and “needleworker” refer to someone who sews for business, while “sewist” usually means someone who sews as a hobby. We’ve seen “sewer” used both ways, though some people are reluctant to use it because it’s spelled the same as the conduit for sewage. We wrote a post a few years ago on “sewer” versus “sewist.”

The two of us generally use gender-free occupational nouns (“actor,” “author,” “editor,” etc.) for men and women. But the goal of language is communicating. And we’re willing to make exceptions if the people we’re communicating with expect a gendered term.

So in discussing the winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress, we’d use “actress,” and in talking about a female sewer (pronounced SOH-er) for a fashion show, we’d use “seamstress,” the usual term for a woman who sews professionally.

However, language changes, and these usages may soon go the way of “authoress” and “editrix.” We wrote a post in 2018 about the history of “stewardess” and other “-ess” words.

As for “midwife,” the noun first appeared around 1300 in Middle English as a compound of the Old English mid and wif. The earliest citation in the OED is from a Middle English life, or story, of St. Edmund the Confessor:

“Þe mide-wyues him wolden habbe i-bured, ac þe moder seide euere nay” (“The midwives would have buried him, but the mother said ever nay”). From The Early South-English Legendary (1887), edited by Carl Horstmann, a collection of the lives of saints and other church figures.

Although a “midwife” is usually a woman who helps women give birth, the term has also been used since at least the 17th century in reference to men. The OED says the men were originally referred to as “man-midwives” and “were called on to help female midwives only in cases of difficult births.”

The man-midwives were barber-surgeons who used surgical instruments like forceps “in a desperate attempt to save the life of the birthing woman,” Deanna Pilkenton and Mavis N. Schornon write in “Midwifery: A Career for Men in Nursing,” a February 2008 article on the website of the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing.

The first OED citation for the term is from a play, The Whore of Babylon (1607), by the Elizabethan dramatist Thomas Dekker: “Why they are certaine men-midwiues, that neuer bring people to bed, but when they are sore in labour, that no body els can deliuer them.”

And here’s a description of a difficult 17th-century birth that we’ve found in Aristotle’s Masterpiece: Or, the Secrets of Generation, an anonymous 1694 sex manual:

“In case of Extremity, greater regard must be had than at other times; and first of all, the Situation of the Womb, and her posture of lying, must be cross the Bed, being held by such as have the strength to prevent her from slipping down, or moving her self in the operation of the Man-Midwife, or the Chyrurgeon [surgeon].”

The man-midwife of the 17th century, sometimes referred to as a “forceps man,” was “the predecessor of the obstetrician,” according to Pilkenton and Schornon:

“Female childbirth attendants, largely excluded from educational institutions (and thereby prohibited from using surgical instruments), would remain practicing empirical midwifery. Hence, midwifery and obstetrics would be divided along gender and philosophical lines for many years to come.”

Today, “women have overcome many barriers to practicing medicine and now make up a large proportion of obstetricians,” the authors say, but men now comprise only “a minuscule number” of midwives.

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Q: I know it is relatively new, but please fill me in on the origins of the literary term “faction.”

A: The genre known as “faction,” which in its meaning and etymology is a blend of “fact” and “fiction,” apparently got its name in 1930.

The earliest use we’ve found is in Hugo Gernsback’s essay “Science Fiction vs. Science Faction,” published in the fall 1930 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly, which he then owned.

In the text, Gernsback uses “faction” six times, italicizing it, and says he coined the word. Here’s how he introduces the term.

Jules Verne, he says, “knew how to use fact and combine it with fiction. In time to come, also, our authors will make a marked distinction between science fiction and science faction, if I may coin such a term.”

He later writes: “In sharp counter-distinction to science fiction, we also have science faction. By this term I mean science fiction in which there are so many scientific facts that the story, as far as the scientific part is concerned, is no longer fiction but becomes more or less a recounting of fact.”

The science fiction scholar Gary Westfahl has written that “Gernsback’s editorial could be read as the first manifesto on behalf of hard SF, in that Gernsback isolates, defines, and defends a type of SF where scientific accuracy is central” (from “ ‘The Closely Reasoned Technological Story’: The Critical History of Hard Science Fiction,” Science Fiction Studies, July 1993).

For the next 30 years, the term was confined to science fiction criticism, as far as we can tell. The earliest literary use of “faction” we’ve found outside science fiction is from The New York Times Book Review (April 2, 1961).

In this passage Lewis Nichols, writing the “In and Out of Books” column, reports on Ernest K. Gann’s upcoming project: “He’ll decide whether his investigations will go into fact or fiction, novel or documentary. At the present moment he’s thinking of trying something he calls ‘faction,’ which is a combo. He expects to give faction ‘a hell of a go,’ before perhaps settling for one part of it or the other.”

Later that same year, the usage appeared in an academic paper about the novels of James Joyce. After describing Ulysses and Finnegans Wake as “deeply autobiographical in their materials,” the author writes:

“The coincidence of ‘faction’ with fiction is, however, markedly high in all of Joyce’s writings” (from “James Joyce: Unfacts, Fiction, and Facts,” by William T. Noon, in PMLA, the journal of the Modern Language Association of America, June 1961).

A few years later, the term cropped up three times in a very different venue—a trade magazine The author apparently felt the context sufficiently explained the term. We’ll quote just one of the uses:

“Perhaps it is not faction, nor fiction, nor even fancy to believe in the near future we will have a German who gets up to put on his Italian suit, has ham for breakfast from the Netherlands, looks at his Luxembourg watch, kisses his Belgian wife goodbye amid the delightful aroma of French perfume, and then drives off to work in his English car … which is insured by an American insurance company!” (from “Insurance and the European Common Market: Faction, Fiction or Fancy?” by David L. Bickelhaupt, Journal of Risk and Insurance, March 1964).

Later in the 1960s, the term became somewhat more common in literary criticism. The two earliest uses cited in the Oxford English Dictionary are from the same year:

“This is the great work of faction of 1967—fiction based on fact, the novel form of our time” (a publisher’s note with Hugh Atkinson’s novel The Games) … “An Australian has tried his hand at writing a ‘faction’ (half fact, half fiction) novel” (The Courier-Mail, Brisbane, Dec. 30, 1967).

Those two 1967 citations illustrate each of the OED’s definitions—“faction” can mean the genre as a whole or a single work. The dictionary defines the word this way: “A literary and cinematic genre in which fictional narrative is developed from a basis of real events or characters; documentary fiction or drama; (also) a work in this genre.”

The OED, en etymological dictionary based on historical evidence, says the word was “formed within English, by blending” the nouns “fact” and “fiction.”

Standard dictionaries define the term similarly. Here’s American Heritage: “1. A form of literature or filmmaking that treats real people or events as if they were fictional or uses real people or events as essential elements in an otherwise fictional rendition. 2. A literary work or film that is a mix of fact and fiction.”

In 2017, we wrote about such phrases as “creative nonfiction,” “literary nonfiction,” and “narrative nonfiction.” In 2011, we discussed the word “fact,” and in 2008 we wrote about “fiction” and “nonfiction.”

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Q: I was driving in the Grand Rapids area the other day and noticed a sign for “bespoke homes.” I’d only heard “bespoke” used in British tailoring contexts and didn’t know it was imported. How long before we have bespoke hamburgers or bespoke Air Jordans?

A: Yes, the adjective “bespoke” is more common in the UK than in the US. And it usually refers to custom-made clothing. But the word is evolving—in American as well as British English. In fact, “bespoke burgers” and “bespoke running shoes” have already shown up in both the US and the UK.

Here are a few American examples we’ve found:

“Samsung’s Bespoke Appliances Bring Custom Color And Coordination To Your Home” (Forbes, May 13, 2021).

“How to Buy a Bespoke Shotgun. A custom-fitted shotgun is expensive, but if you can afford one, it will become a family legacy to be handed down from one generation to the next” (Outdoor Life, May 20, 2021).

“Bespoke Bathing: Say the words ‘carbon fiber’ and you’ve got an aficionado’s full attention. That’s no surprise, as this sleek material is used in supercars, aircraft and top-end sports equipment … and now tubs” (Brickell Magazine, Miami, Dec. 27, 2018).

“Decadent Dogs and Bespoke Burgers at Riley’s” (Hartford Courant, Nov. 17, 2014).

“Adidas Wants to Create Bespoke Running Shoes Using 3-D Printing” (Racked, Oct 7, 2015).

And now here are some British examples :

“Duchess of Cornwall shares her bespoke recipe for a Victoria Sponge—with a twist” (from a recipe for sponge cake in The Independent, Sept. 2, 2011).

“In recent years, there has been a growing trend in bespoke burgers, with themed restaurants cooking them to provide the ultimate laid-back dine out experience” (Somerset Live, a website covering news, entertainment and sports in Somerset, Dorset, and Wiltshire, Aug. 24, 2021).

“software experts dedicated to designing bespoke software for one-off applications” (Reading Evening Post, June 24, 1980).

“Adidas Futurecraft 3D Wants to Print You a Pair of Bespoke Running Shoes in Store” (an Oct. 7, 2015, post on the website ManyMiles).

“With over 40 models on display you’ll be sure to find a style to suit you. Standard Range and Bespoke.  Garden Sheds • Summer Houses • Gazebos • Garages • Greenhouses • Conservatories, etc.” (West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser, June, 17, 1999).

All of the 10 standard dictionaries we regularly consult define the adjective “bespoke” as meaning custom-made. Two of them, (American Heritage and Dictionary.com) say it refers especially to clothing, while two others (Collins and Longman) include websites and computer software along with clothes.

Most of the published examples the standard dictionaries provide describe clothing, but quite a few others suggest that the term has outgrown its apparel etymology.

Cambridge, for instance, cites “bespoke furniture” and Macmillan “bespoke software.” Merriam-Webster notes the online use of “a very bespoke approach” to high-end real estate.

Lexico, an online dictionary using the resources of Oxford University Press, has examples in both its US and UK editions for “bespoke kitchens,” “bespoke software systems,” “bespoke itineraries,” “bespoke leather sofas,” even “a bespoke craftsman boatbuilder.”

Though the use of “bespoke” for things other than clothing may seem odd to you, the earliest example for the usage in the Oxford English Dictionary refers to a commissioned play—one ordered in advance—for a performance by a touring theatrical troupe:

“At length the bespoke Play was to be enacted” (A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, 1755, an autobiography by the actress, playwright, and novelist). The book also uses “bespoke” as a verb meaning to commission: “the Gentleman bespoke a Play.”

As Merriam-Webster explains in an etymology note, “In the English language of yore, the verb bespeak had various meanings, including ‘to speak,’ ‘to accuse,’ and ‘to complain.’ In the 16th century, bespeak acquired another meaning—‘to order or arrange in advance.’

“It is from that sense that we get the adjective bespoke, referring to clothes and other things that are ordered before they are made,” M-W continues. “You are most likely to encounter this adjective in British contexts, such as the recent Reuters news story about a young pig in Northern England who was fitted with ‘bespoke miniature footwear’ (custom-made Wellington boots) to help it overcome a phobia of mud.”

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Q: During a baseball game on TV the other night, the announcer referred to putting a little extra “English” on the ball. Is this an Americanism? How do the English speak of putting spin on a ball?

A: We’ve seen several theories, most of them pretty far-fetched, for why Americans use the word “English” to describe the spin on a ball. The least unlikely in our opinion is that the usage may have been influenced by the spin, or “side,” favored by English players of billiards, pool, or snooker in the 19th century.

The Oxford English Dictionary, which is similarly cautious about the etymology, has this to say about the origin of the American usage: “Perhaps so named because English players introduced the technique to the U.S.”

The OED defines the usage as “U.S. Sport (originally Billiards). Spin imparted to a ball by striking it on one side rather than centrally so as to affect its course, esp. after an impact or bounce.” The dictionary says the word “English” here is a synonym for the British term “side.”

The earliest Oxford example for the American usage is from a humorous description of a billiards player who makes various gestures with his cue and body in useless attempts to put spin on the ball or move it in the right direction:

“Tricks at Billiards. … Immediately after shooting using his cue as a magic wand and flourishing it in the air above the table to give an increased ‘English’ to his ball” (Cleveland Daily Plain Dealer, Oct. 14, 1861). The quotation marks around “English” suggest that the usage was relatively new in writing, but perhaps heard in speech.

The next OED citation also uses the term humorously, but refers to putting actual spin on a ball. The passage, which we’ve expanded, describes a game of billiards in Paris:

“The cues were so crooked that in making a shot you had to allow for the curve or you would infallibly put the ‘English’ on the wrong side of the ball” (Innocents Abroad, 1869, by Mark Twain).

The British use of “side” in that sense appeared a few years before Americans used “English” for spin. This is Oxford’s earliest citation:

“I do not feel satisfied of any writer being able to convey in diagrams the amount of side to put on a ball for canons when the side stroke is required” (from Billiards, 1858, by Walter White).

Finally, we should mention that we wrote a post in 2012 about the British use of “side” as a slang term meaning insolence, arrogance, pride, pretentiousness, and so on.

Oxford’s earliest example for this sense of the word is from the Nov. 26, 1870, issue of Punch: “Swagger a bit, and put on ‘side’ in the streets of the gay Versailles.”

The dictionary describes the slang usage as “of uncertain origin,” but it notes a possible connection to the use of the term in billiards.

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Q: As for your post about the use of “around” or “surrounding” instead of “about,” you didn’t mention another option: We can also use “anent.” No, please don’t! Just kidding.

A: Some usage writers consider “anent” archaic, but it isn’t quite as dead as the dodo. In fact, its use has increased a bit in recent years, according to Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks usage in digitized books.

In an etymological note, Merriam-Webster says “anent” (which it defines as “about” or “concerning”) has roots in Anglo-Saxon times. It nearly died out by the 17th century, according to the dictionary, but was revived in the 19th century.

“Various usage commentators have decried ‘anent’ as ‘affected’ and ‘archaic,’ ” M-W says. “It is not archaic, however. Although ‘anent’ is rarely found in speech, plenty of examples of current use can be found in written sources. Dead words do occasionally rise from the grave, and ‘anent’ is one of them.”

OK, stuffy little “anent” is still alive, but we wouldn’t recommend using it, except playfully, as W. H. Auden does at the end of this post.

When “anent” first appeared, written in Old English as on efen or on efn (that is, “on even”), it meant “along, in line with; alongside, beside; even or level with,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

We’ve found a dramatic example in Beowulf, an epic poem that may date from as early as 725. In this passage near the end of the work, Beowulf, Lord of the Geats (medieval Geatland is Götaland in modern Sweden), lies dead alongside the body of a dragon he fought:

“dryhten geata, deaðbedde fæst, / wunaðwælreste wyrmes daedumm / him on efn ligeð ealdorgewinna” (“the Lord of the Geats lies fast on his deathbed, brought down by the dragon’s deed. And beside him is stretched out the slayer of men”).

The modern sense of “anent,” which the OED defines as “with reference to, in relation to; regarding, concerning, about,” first appeared in the Middle English of the mid-14th century.

The dictionary’s earliest example (with “anent” spelled “onentes”) is from The Lay Folks’ Catechism (1357), by John Gaytryge: “Wharefore, onentes [with reference to] the first of this sex thinges [these six things] … Thare falles un-to the faithe fourtene poyntes.”

The “anent” spelling showed up a few decades later, according to OED citations. In the dictionary’s earliest example, which we’ve expanded, the term means “with” or “among”:

“Forsothe vnpitouse men seiden, thenkende anent hemselue not riȝt” (“Forsooth, pitiless men, thinking among themselves, but not right”). From the Wycliffe Bible of 1382, Wisdom of Solomon 2:1.

We’ll end with this playful use of “anent” from Auden’s Academic Graffiti (1972), a collection of clerihews, or whimsical four-line poems:

Oxbridge philosophers, to be cursory,
Are products of a middle-class nursery:
Their arguments are anent
What nanny really meant.

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Q: I’ve read that in the 19th century people referred to the craze over the composer Franz Liszt as “Lisztomania.” Was “mania” really used in that manner at the time? It seems to me as if it might be something from a more modern vernacular.

A: Yes, “Lisztomania” was used in the 19th century for the craze over Franz Liszt (1811-86), but the Hungarian composer and pianist was a lot more popular in his day than the term that referred to his popularity.

The poet Heinrich Heine coined a German version of the word, Lisztomanie, in 1844, but as far as we can tell he used it only once in his writing and the term was rarely used by others during Liszt’s lifetime. In fact, most of the 19th-century examples we’ve seen are reprints of Heine’s original remark in collections of his  work.

Heine, the Paris correspondent for the German newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung, used Lisztomanie in an April 25, 1844, report on the Parisian concert season: “So dachte ich, so erklärte ich mir die Lisztomanie” (“So I thought, and so I explained Lisztomania to myself”).

But “Lisztomania” didn’t appear in English until seven years after Liszt’s death—when it was used in a translation of Heine’s comment.

The translation, the same as ours above, was published in The Salon: Or, Letters on Art, Music, Popular Life and Politics (1893), the fourth volume in Charles Godfrey’s translation of Heine’s works.

However, a two-word version of the English term did appear during Liszt’s lifetime, in a London magazine’s translation of that passage: “So thought I; so I explained to myself the Liszt mania” (The Monthly Musical Record, Jan. 1, 1875).

And the phrase “Liszt fever” appeared a couple of times in the late 19th century, including a reference to “Liszt fever in the Austrian capital” (from My Musical Recollections, 1896, by the German pianist and composer Wilhelm Kuhe).

“Lisztomania” showed up in print every once in a while in the 20th century, but it wasn’t seen much until the appearance of Lisztomania, a 1975 musical film written and directed by Ken Russell. The musical, featuring the rock star Roger Daltrey of The Who as Liszt, is based in part on on the composer’s affair with Marie Catherine Sophie, Comtesse d’Agoult. (Note: Ringo Starr appears in the film as the Pope.)

As for “mania” itself, English borrowed the noun from medieval Latin and ancient Greek terms for mental illness, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Its original meaning in English was “madness, particularly of a kind characterized by uncontrolled, excited, or aggressive behaviour.”

The earliest OED example contrasts mania with melancholy: “Þese passiouns beþ diuers: madnes þat hatte mania & madnes þat hatte malencolia” (“These passions are different: the madness that is called mania and the madness that is called melancholy”). From John Trevisa’s translation in the late 1300s of De Proprietatibus Rerum (On the Properties of Things), an encyclopedic Latin reference compiled in the mid-1200s by the medieval scholar Bartholomeus Anglicus.

In the early 17th century, English writers began using “-mania” (originally spelled “-manie” or “-many”) as a combining form that referred to excessive or irrational desires or beliefs. The earliest OED example refers to “demonomany,” a now obsolete term for the belief in or worship of demons:

“I leaue vnto them that doe write of Demonomanie to philosophize vpon that matter.” From Noua Francia (New France), Pierre Erondelle’s 1609 translation of Marc Lescarbot’s Histoire de la Nouvelle-France, a book published that same year about the French exploration of North America.

A somewhat earlier OED citation mentions the French source of the term: “Who likes to be curious in these thinges, he may reade, if he will here of their practises, Bodinvs Dæmonomanie.” From Daemonologie (1597), by King James VI of Scotland (later James I of England). The citation refers to De la Démonomanie des Sorciers (Of the Demonomany of the Sorcerers), 1580, by the French jurist Jean Bodin. Both Bodin and King James wanted to prosecute those who practiced sorcery.

Here are a few other early examples of the combining form: “idolomany” (zealous idolatry, 1614); “nymphomania” (1708); “bibliomania” (a rage for collecting books, 1734); and “balloonomania” (a passion for balloons or ballooning, 1785).

Both the combining form “-mania” and the separate noun “mania” have been used over the years in compounds, as in these two terms for a craze over tulips: “tulipomania” (1710) and “tulip mania” (1839).

When used as a combining form, “-mania” has sometimes been preceded by a connecting vowel (“-o-”) and sometimes linked directly to a noun, as in these two terms for an obsession to write: “scribbleomania” (1815) and “scribblemania” (1813).

Getting back to your question, the OED notes the use of “-mania” in compounds with a proper name, but cites only one example, “Beatlemania” (1963), which was a much more common term when the Beatles were a craze than “Lisztomania” was when Franz Liszt was all the rage.

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Q:  Sir Ernest Gowers has written that the main reason for the popularity of Henry W. Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage is “the idiosyncrasy of the author.” My understanding is that “idiosyncrasy” is a quirk of personality, not personality as a whole.

A: Etymologically, “idiosyncrasy” refers to an individual’s overall makeup—a combination of physical and mental characteristics. However, it now usually means a peculiar trait of someone or, less commonly, something.

The etymological sense reflects the Greek origin of the usage. In Hellenistic Greek, spoken from roughly 300 BC to AD 300, the noun ἰδιοσυγκρασία (idiosugkrasia) meant an individual’s combination of personality, appearance, character, and so on.

As John Ayto explains in his Dictionary of Word Origins, the usage comes from two ancient Greek terms:  ἴδιος (idios), “one’s own,” and σύγκρασις  (sugkrasis), “mixture.” (In Hellenistic Greek, σύγκρασις is a mixture of personal characteristics.)

Fowler favored the etymological sense of “idiosyncrasy.” In the 1926 first edition of Modern English Usage, he says “idiosyncrasy” should refer to overall character, not a single trait, and he defended its spelling with an “s” (not a “c”) at the end to reflect its etymology.

Gowers has a similar entry in his 1965 second edition of Fowler’s usage guide. The comment that got your attention is in the preface.

The last two editors of the usage guide, Robert Burchfield and Jeremy Butterworth, agree with Fowler on the spelling but don’t restrict the modern meaning to ancient etymology.

As Burchfield puts it in the 1996 third edition and Butterfield repeats in the 2015 fourth, “It is not suggested that everyone should be a walking etymologist, but simply that people should learn to spell correctly.”

All ten standard dictionaries we regularly consult define “idiosyncrasy” as an unusual characteristic or behavior of someone or something. However, four of them include the less common sense favored by Fowler: the overall makeup of a person or thing.

We’d add that the plural “idiosyncrasies” is often used in phrases describing idiosyncratic people or things (“his many idiosyncrasies,” “her iPad’s little idiosyncrasies”).

In fact Lexico, an online standard dictionary with content from Oxford University Press, says the term is “usually idiosyncrasies” when referring to “a mode of behavior or way of thought peculiar to an individual.”

The Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological dictionary, says English adopted “idiosyncrasy” in the early 17th century, either directly from Hellenistic Greek or by way of idiosyncrasie, which showed up in French in 1581.

In English, the word originally meant “peculiarity of physical or physiological constitution” or “an instance of this,” the OED says. The dictionary’s earliest citation is from a medical treatise warning about the use of arsenic amulets to ward off plague:

“The idiosygcrasye or particular Natures (as Galen calleth them) are vnknown” (A Modest Defence of the Caueat Giuen [Caveat Given] to the Wearers of Impoisoned Amulets, as Preseruatiues [Protectives] From the Plague, 1604, by the English physician Francis Herring).

A few decades later, the term took on the sense Fowler preferred, which the OED defines as “the individuality of a person’s outlook, temperament, or behaviour; the distinctive nature of something.”

The first Oxford example is from a dictionary of English words derived from other languages: “Idiosyncrasie, the proper, or natural temper of any thing” (The New World of English Words, 1658, by Edward Phillips).

The term soon took on the usual modern sense, which the OED defines as “a way of thinking or a mode of behaviour limited to a particular person, people, or type of person.” The dictionary’s earliest citation, which we’ve expanded, is from a treatise attacking dogmatism:

“And I believe the Understanding has its Idiosyncrasies, as well as other faculties. Some men are made to superstition, others to frantick Enthusiasm; the former by the cold of a timorous heart, the latter by the heat of a temerarious brain: And there are natures, as fatally averse to either.” (The Vanity of Dogmatizing, 1661, by the English philosopher and clergyman Joseph Glanvill.)

We’ll end with the latest Oxford citation for this sense: “One idiosyncrasy of the tequila drinker is the desire to swill the last mouthful in the bottle and with it the Agave worm” (from The Mammoth Book of Cocktails, 2003, by Paul Martin).

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Q: Why is there no antonym for ‘lukewarm’? There seem to be plenty of synonyms but I cannot find a commonly used antonym. Why not ‘lukecool’?

A: We’d use “coolish” if we wanted a single word for somewhat cool—that is, the opposite of “lukewarm” when it means somewhat warm.

As for “lukecool,” some creative English speakers are indeed using it as an antonym for “lukewarm,” though the usage hasn’t made it into any of the 10 standard dictionaries we regularly check.

Urban Dictionary, a collaborative slang reference, has several “lukecool” entries, including a May 17, 2013, contribution defining it as “only slightly cold, flip-side of lukewarm.” The contributor offers an example: “The A/C system must need some freon, it is only lukecool in here.”

The word occasionally appears in formal writing and speech. For example, Harold Leventhal, a US Appeals Court judge for the District of Columbia, has observed that nonlawyers “are ‘lukecool,’ if not hostile, to lawyers” (from “The Lawyer in Government,” a speech delivered Oct. 15, 1971).

And the term appears twice in the March 1981 issue of the British journal Current Archaeology. This is from a report about archeologists’ reactions to a proposed reorganization of the British government’s oversight of ancient monuments and historic buildings:

“Although inevitably there are some who are strongly against, the basic division is between those who are luke-warm and those who perhaps can be described as ‘luke-cool.’ At a straw vote taken at the Council for British Archaeology on January 8th, 32 declared themselves to be luke-warm as against 14 who are luke-cool, and this sort of split seems to be fairly general.”

In English Lexicogenesis (2014), an analysis of word formation, the linguist D. Gary Miller notes that “some words do not exist despite an obvious need.” One of the gaps he mentions is “(*)lukecool in the face of lukewarm, a very old word in English.” The parenthetical asterisk indicates that “lukecool” is considered nonstandard.

“Nothing but tradition makes luke acceptable as a qualifier of warmth but not coolness,” Miller writes. “Since only tradition stands in the way of lukecool, there is no reason it could not become generally accepted if enough people started using it.”

Yes, the people who speak a language ultimately determine what’s acceptable. But we think Miller may be too dismissive of the long association of “luke” with “warm.”

In fact, “luke” by itself originally meant moderately warm, so “lukewarm” is etymologically a puffed-up, or pleonastic, version of “luke.” And “lukecool” is etymologically an oxymoron, or contradiction in terms. However, most English speakers today are probably unaware of the warmish origin of “luke,” and may believe it means something like “sort of.”

The OED’s earliest example for the adjective “luke,” which we’ve expanded, is from Laȝamon, or Layamon’s Brut, an imaginative chronicle of Britain written sometime before 1200. In this gory excerpt, the King of Media kills Bedivere, one of King Arthur’s knights, by driving a spear through his byrnie, or coat of mail:

“he heold on his honde; ænne gare swiðe stronge. / Þene gare he uorð strahte; mid strongen his maine. / and smat þene eorl Beduer; forn a þan breoste; / þat þa burne to-barst sone; biuoren and bihinde. / an-opened wes his breoste; þa blod com forð luke.” (“The spear he thrust forth with his strong might, and smote the Earl Bedivere in the breast, so that his byrnie soon burst, before and behind, and his breast was opened. The blood came forth luke.”)

Oxford says the Middle English term luke appears to be derived from hléow, an Old English adjective meaning warm, sunny, or sheltered. The Old English word is the source of lew, a Middle English adjective that meant lukewarm and later appeared in the phrase lew-warm, which survives in dialectal English.

As for the adjective “lukewarm,” it didn’t appear until the late 14th century. We found this example in a Middle English herbal, or treatise on the medicinal use of plants:

“Resayve iij sponefull of þe juis luke warme, and yf þou haue evil stomake hit opyneþ hit” (“Take three spoonfuls of the juice lukewarm, and if you have an upset stomach it empties it”). From the Lelamour Herbal (1373), compiled from various Latin and Middle English sources by the Hereford schoolmaster John Lelamour (Sloane MS 5, folios 13-57, British Library).

In the 16th century, according to the OED, the adjective took on the sense of “having little warmth or depth of feeling, lacking zeal, enthusiasm or ardour, indifferent.” The dictionary’s earliest citation is from a treatise by Thomas More:

“Like as god said in thapocalips vnto the churche of Loadice. Thou arte neyther hote nor cold but luke warme, I would thou were colde yt thou mighteste waxe warme.” From The Four Last Things, written around 1522 and published posthumously (More was convicted of treason and executed in 1535).

And in its indifferent sense, as you know, “lukewarm” has many antonyms, including “avid,” “eager,” “enthusiastic,” “excited,” “passionate,” and “wholehearted.”

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