Category: Usage

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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Q: Is the sports term “cricket” related to the “cricket” that’s an insect? And what about “croquet”? It sounds like a cousin, if not a sibling.

A: The name for the game “cricket” and the insect “cricket” aren’t related, and “croquet” isn’t connected with either of them. That’s the short answer. Now, for the rest.

Since the bug got its name before the games, we’ll start with the entomological etymology of “cricket.” Not surprisingly, the insect got its name from the noise it makes.

As the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, the noun “cricket,” first recorded in the Middle Ages, is “of imitative origin, reflecting the sounds made by the insects,” which is later described as “a characteristic chirruping sound” produced by the males.

“Cricket” came into Middle English in the late 13th or early 14th century, adopted from the Anglo-Norman criket and Old French criquet, the dictionary says. The creature had similar onomatopoeic names at the time in medieval Dutch (crekel, krekel, criekel).

The English word first appeared in a copy of a verse treatise used to teach English children French. The manuscript is written in the French spoken in 13th-century England, and has explanatory glosses, or notations, added in Middle English.

In Le traité de Walter de Bibbesworth sur la Langue Française, the word salemaundre is glossed as “criket” in this passage: “au four meint le salemaundre” (“in the oven many a salamander”). Bibbesworth died in 1270. The OED dates the passage and gloss at sometime before 1325.

In Anglo-Norman, a cricket was sometimes referred to as a salemaundre or salamandre, according to citations in the online Anglo-Norman Dictionary.

As the OED explains, the insect, which is attracted to warmth, was identified in Middle English with the mythical fire-loving salamander, “perhaps from the house cricket’s traditional association with the hearth.”

In fact, crickets and hearths often appear together in poetry and literature. Here’s an Oxford citation from Milton: “Far from all resort of mirth, / Save the Cricket on the hearth” (Il Penseroso, 1645).

And here’s one from Dickens, which we’ve expanded: “To have a Cricket on the Hearth, is the luckiest thing in all the world!” (from a novella, The Cricket on the Hearth, 1845).

As for the sporting noun, it came into English some 300 years after the name of the insect. But unfortunately its origin is unknown, according to the OED.

The dictionary’s earliest finding, dated as possibly 1575, is a mention of “Kricket-staues” (“staves,” for the bats used in the game). In the work cited, an anonymous translation of Hendrik Niclaes’s Terra Pacis (Land of Peace), they’re listed among playthings like “Balles,” “Rackets,” and “Dyce.”

The dictionary’s earliest sighting with a definite date is from the Guild Merchant Book (1598), records of the borough of Guildford:

“John Denwick of Guldeford … one of the Queenes Majesties Coroners of the County of Surrey being of the age of fyfty and nyne yeares or there aboute … saith upon his oath that hee hath known the parcell of land … for the space of Fyfty years and more, and … saith that hee being a schollar in the Free schoole of Guldeford, hee and several of his fellowes did runne and play there at Creckett and other plaies.”

The first Oxford citation with the modern spelling appeared about a dozen years later: “a Cricket-staffe; or, the crooked staffe wherewith boyes play at Cricket” (A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, 1611, by Randle Cotgrave).

The OED defines the sport this way: “An outdoor game played on a large grass field with ball, bats, and two wickets, between teams of eleven players, the object of the game being to score more runs than the opposition.”

But this is added in an etymological note: “The character of the game denoted by the word has changed enormously over the centuries.”

The sport “developed in the south-east of England in the 16th and 17th centuries,” Oxford says, and by the end of the following century, “organized cricket was common, frequently with one or both sides fielding more than eleven players.”

In the 19th century, the OED adds, “it came to be viewed as the English national game and, subsequently, as an expression of English national identity or Englishness in general.”

At the same time, “cricket” colloquially came to mean “cricket played in the correct manner or proper spirit,” and consequently denoted “honourable dealings between opponents or rivals in any sphere,” or “fair play.”

Here’s the dictionary’s first example for “cricket” used outside the sport to mean dealing honorably: “We should be very much surprised if the Duke really thought that to dissolve [Parliament] would be ‘cricket’ ” (The Westminster Gazette, June 5, 1900).

As we said, the origin of the word is unknown. The OED rules out any etymological connection with the Middle French criquet (a piece of wood), or with the Old English crycc (a crutch or staff), or with a Middle Dutch regionalism, krik (crutch).

The only theory Oxford allows as a possibility is that the word may come from another 16th-century noun “cricket,” for a low wooden stool. The two nouns had a similar mix of spellings.

It could be that the wicket used in the game resembled a small stool. The dictionary notes that in “stool-ball,” an older game “somewhat resembling cricket” and dating from the 1400s, “the ‘stool’ was the wicket.” Alas, there’s no solid evidence for this as the etymology, but it does seem plausible.

Last but not least we arrive at “croquet,” the newcomer in the group. The game and the noun for it were first used in Ireland in the mid-19th century.

The word is “supposed to be” (as the OED says) derived from croquet, a dialectal term for a shepherd’s crook in Old Northern French, an ancestor of Anglo-Norman.

Historians of the game have said that in Brittany, 18th-century French peasants played the game under the name croquet. But there’s no documentary evidence for this; the word for the game apparently wasn’t used in France until the late 19th century.

Émile Littré’s Dictionnaire de la Langue Française (1886) describes croquet as an English word (“Angl. croquet”) for an English game: “Jeu anglais qui se joue avec un marteau, des boules et de petites arcades que l’on plante sur le terrain.” And the English word’s origin? Littré says it’s derived from a Norman term for a hook (“du normand croquet, crochet”).

Oxford’s definition of the sport is similar: “A game played upon a lawn, in which wooden balls are driven by means of wooden mallets through iron arches or ‘hoops’ fixed in the ground in a particular order.”

In the OED’s earliest citation, the game is described as played in County Meath, Ireland: “There is no game which has made such rapid strides in this county within a few years as croquet” (from The Field, a British sporting magazine, July 10, 1858).

The same magazine reported a few issues later (Nov. 27, 1858) that the game “was introduced into the North of Ireland some twelve years ago from a French convent.” As we said, the French use of croquet for the game in the 18th or early 19th centuries has not been confirmed.

The OED also notes that an anecdotal report, published in 1864, “stated that the game had been played under this name (though this is perhaps doubtful) near Dublin in 1834-5.” Who knows? As old documents continue to be digitized, earlier uses may come to light.

At any rate, the OED goes on to say this, unequivocally: “From Ireland the game and name were introduced into England in 1852, where between 1858 and 1872 croquet attained great popularity.” And the rest is history.

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Q: I couldn’t find “perne” in the OED.  Did Yeats coin the word? It means something like to turn or gyrate. He uses both “perne” and “gyre” in “Byzantium.”

A: Yes, William Butler Yeats did coin the verb “perne,” which means to revolve or spin. The Oxford English Dictionary discusses it under the spelling “pern,” which is odd since Yeats never spelled the verb that way.

He first used the verb in 1920, but he didn’t exactly pull it out of thin air. He adapted it from an Irish dialectal noun, “pern,” meaning a spool or bobbin.

In fact, Yeats had used the Irish noun earlier in his poetry. Here it is in a poem about recollecting youth in old age: “He unpacks the loaded pern / Of all ’twas pain or joy to learn” (from an elegy eventually titled “Shepherd and Goatherd,” written in 1918 and collected in The Wild Swans at Coole, 1919).

No doubt aware that “the loaded pern” would be obscure to many readers, Yeats added a note at the end of the collection: “When I was a child at Sligo I could see above my grandfather’s trees a little column of smoke from ‘the pern mill,’ and was told that ‘pern’ was another name for the spool, as I was accustomed to call it, on which thread was wound.”

The poet soon appropriated this noun and transformed it into a verb that would evoke the motion of revolving or spinning. In his poetry, it conveys the vacillation of a conflicted soul. He uses the verb for the first time in “Demon and Beast” (written in 1920, published in Michael Robartes and the Dancer, 1921):

Though I had long perned in the gyre,
Between my hatred and desire,
I saw my freedom won
And all laugh in the sun.

The OED says that the verb was “adopted by W. B. Yeats from Irish dialect use.” The dictionary defines the verb as “to spin, revolve; to move with a winding or spiral motion.”

A better-known use of “perne” is from Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium” (written in 1926, first published in October Blast in 1927).

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.

By the way, the noun “gyre,” for a circle or spiral, also crops up frequently in Yeats’s poetry, as in these famous lines from “The Second Coming” (1919):

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.

But getting back to “perne,” the OED notes that the Irish dialect noun that inspired it, “pern,” was in fact a variant of “pirn,” a Middle English noun for “a bobbin, spool, or reel.”

The old word “pirn” is now found in Scots dialect, the OED says, both as a noun and as a verb (meaning to weave, wind, or spin).

“Yeats does not seem to have been aware of the existence in Scots usage” of the noun and verb “pirn,” the dictionary says, “or he treated them as separate words, despite the obvious proximity in sense.”

And now a historical note about an even more obscure word spelled “perne,” a 16th-century verb that the OED labels “rare” and “now historical” (meaning that it’s now found only in references to times past).

The verb first meant “to turn (a garment)” and thus “to change (one’s opinion, adherence, etc.) frequently and insincerely,” Oxford says. It originated as a mocking reference to Andrew Perne, a noted turncoat.

Perne, who died in 1589, was master of Peterhouse College, Cambridge, and vice-chancellor of the university in the latter half of the 1500s. These were treacherous times for influential academics, but Perne managed to survive the violent and tumultuous times by skillfully shifting his political and religious views to suit the prevailing winds.

So this “perne,” unlike Yeats’s, is an eponym: a word inspired by a person or a person who inspired a word. We wrote posts about eponyms in 2010 and 2019.

The word (though in an adjectival form) was used to mock Andrew Perne even during his lifetime. This is the OED’s earliest sighting: “Who from their snares by sleight can slide, / In these so pernest tymes” (Epigrams and Sentences Spirituall in Vers, Thomas Drant’s 1568 translation of the works of Gregory of Nazianzus, a fourth-century Archbishop of Constantinople).

This anonymous use (misspelled) appeared around the time of Perne’s death: “What Doctor Pearne? Why he is the notablest turnecoate in al this land … it is made a prouerb … that if one haue a coate or cloake that is turned, they saye it is Pearned.” (From a religious pamphlet, A Dialogue Concerning the Tyrannical Dealings of the Lord Bishops, circa 1589.)

Rare though it is today, the usage was fairly well known in the early 17th century. Among the OED’s citations is one from Randle Cotgrave’s A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611), in which the phrase “retourner sa robbe” is defined as “to Pernize, or Apostatize it; to play the turne-coat.”

[Note: A reader writes on July 9, 2021, to say that the old word “pirn” is still used by weavers today. “This word is alive and well in the weaving world. A shuttle can hold a bobbin, which is flanged at both ends, or it can be made to use pirns, narrow tubes of cardboard or occasionally metal. Both serve the purpose of feeding weft thread across the warp, but pirns generally feed off the end while bobbins feed off the side. So many weaving terms have ancient roots; it’s always been fascinating to me.”]

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Q: I think it’s truthy to say Stephen Colbert coined “truthiness.” How could he coin a word that’s been around since the 19th century?

A: We disagree. Colbert coined a new use for an old word that was never common and had pretty much died out by the time he rediscovered and redefined it.

And like the noun “truthiness,” the little-used adjective “truthy” was similarly rediscovered and redefined in the late 20th century.

When “truthiness” showed up in English in the 19th century, it was a colloquial term for truthfulness, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The dictionary’s earliest example, which we’ve expanded, is from Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, February 1832:

“You do not speak the truth well, North. I do not deny that you may possess very considerable natural powers of veracity—of truth-telling; but then, you have not cultivated them, having been too much occupied with the ordinary affairs of life. Truthiness is a habit, like every other virtue.” (From a contribution by the Scottish author John Wilson to Noctes Ambrosianae, a monthly column of imaginary conversations.)

The OED, an etymological dictionary based on historical evidence, describes the original “truthiness” as a noun formed from “truthy,” a colloquial and regional adjective meaning “characterized by truth; truthful, true.” The dictionary labels the truthful senses of the adjective and noun as “now rare.”

The first Oxford example for the adjective is from an opera: “You … are afraid, Theodore, your sweetheart shouldn’t prove truthy.” (Poems; and Theodore, an Opera, a collection of works by the English author John Henry Colls, published in 1804, two years after his death.)

In the early 21st century, according to the OED, the old noun took on a new meaning, chiefly in the US: “The quality of appearing to be true while not actually or necessarily being so; the fact or quality of accepting or presenting something which is not true as the truth.”

The dictionary notes that the new sense was “first used by United States humorist Stephen Colbert” and it cites the Oct. 17, 2005, premiere of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central: “The truthiness is anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you.” (We added the italics.)

On Jan. 6, 2006, the American Dialect Society named “truthiness” as its “word of the year” for 2005, saying it “refers to the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.”

The adjective “truthy” showed up the next day in an Associated Press article about the ADS decision: “Michael Adams, a professor at North Carolina State University who specializes in lexicology, said ‘truthiness’ means ‘truthy, not facty.’ ”

We’ll end with an expanded version of the remarks by Colbert’s on-air persona:

You’re looking at a straight shooter, America. I tell it like it is, I calls ’em like I sees ’em. I will speak to you in plain, simple English. And that brings us to tonight’s word: truthiness.

Now I’m sure some of the word police, the wordinistas over at Webster’s, are gonna say, ‘Hey, that’s not a word.’ Well, anybody who knows me knows that I’m no fan of dictionaries or reference books.

They’re elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn’t true, or what did or didn’t happen. Who’s Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I wanna say it happened in 1941, that’s my right. I don’t trust books. They’re all fact, no heart.

And that’s exactly what’s pulling our country apart today. Cuz face it, folks, we are a divided nation. Not between Democrats and Republicans, or conservatives and liberals, or tops and bottoms. No. We are divided between those who think with their head and those who know with their heart. …

The truthiness is anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you.

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Q: How did an app come to be referred to as a widget?

A: The story begins in the early 20th century, when an unnamed gadget was called a “widget” for the first time, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The usage appeared in Beggar on Horseback, a 1924 play by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly about a struggling classical composer who plans to marry the daughter of a rich industrialist.

In a dream sequence, the composer imagines giving up music to work for the industrialist: “What business are we in?” he asks. “Widgets,” his father-in-law says. “We’re in the widget business.” On waking up, the composer decides to marry the girl next door instead.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “widget” in this sense as “an indefinite term for a small gadget or mechanical contrivance.” The dictionary labels it “origin uncertain,” but adds that it’s “perhaps an arbitrary alteration of gadget.”

In the 1990s, according to the OED, “widget” took on the computing sense of “an application designed to perform a relatively simple task, esp. one which displays a simple piece of information (such as a weather report or the date and time) on the screen of a computer, smartphone, etc.”

The first Oxford citation is from a June 19, 1991, comment on a Usenet newsgroup (comp.windows.x): “A customer wants to have a row of clocks showing different timezones. Unfortunately the clock widget doesn’t handle that case very well.”

As for “application,” it showed up as a computer term in the 1950s, according to the earliest OED citation:

“This approach to a file maintenance application implies that a number, or ‘batch’ of transactions is collected and sorted into the order of the master file” (Programming for Digital Computers, 1959, by Joachim Jeenel).

The shortened version, “app,” showed up a few decades later in an advertisement (originally with a period at the end to indicate an abbreviation): “Strong IBM customer … will hire a tech support person to … interface with app. development and comp. operations people” (Computerworld, April 20, 1981).

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Q: Is Leonotis, the plant genus, related etymologically to Leonidas, the Spartan king?

A: The botanical Latin name of Leonotis, a genus of flowering tropical plants native to Africa and India, ultimately comes from the classical Greek terms for “lion” and “ear.” Not surprisingly, a common name for it is “lion’s ear.”

As far as we can tell, the German botanist Christiaan Hendrik Persoon was the first person to use the term. In Synopsis Plantarum, Book 2 (1807), he lists Leonotis as a subgenus of Phlomis, a genus of shrubby and herbaceous plants native to the Mediterranean.

A few years later, the Scottish botanist Robert Brown listed Leonotis as a genus in Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen (Introduction to the Flora of New Holland and Van Diemen’s Island), an 1810 treatise on the plants of mainland Australia and Tasmania.

Leonotis and Phlomis are each now considered a genus of the family Lamiaceae.

Neither Persoon nor Brown explain why they named the plant Leonotis, but the term probably refers to the shape of the corolla, or petals.

In this image of the species Leonotis leonurus, the corolla also looks a bit like the tip of a lion’s tail—and “lion’s tail” is another common name for the genus.

The botanical Latin name ultimately comes from the classical Greek terms for “lion” (λέων, leon) and “ear” (ὠτός, otos, the genitive form of οὖς, ous).

We’ve seen no evidence that it’s derived from Leonidas, the fifth century BC king of Sparta. However, the king as well as the plant had leonine names. The king’s name in ancient Greek, λέωνῐ́δᾱς, means “son of a lion.”

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Q: I’ve always assumed that “rap” in its speaking sense was derived from “rapport,” but dictionaries offer only talking or conversing as a definition, and almost no indication of the etymology. Am I right about the origin?

A: The use of “rap” in the sense of talking in an easy, familiar, and frank way may very well have been influenced by “rapport.” But “rap” had nothing to do with conversation when it first appeared in Middle English.

It was originally a noun meaning “a heavy or severe blow from a weapon,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. In the earliest OED example, the weapons are stones:

“Þai gun anoþer fiȝt & stones to gider þrewe; Gode rappes for þe nones Þai ȝauen wiþ þe stones” (“They began another fight and threw stones at each other; Good raps for the nonce they gave with the stones”). From Roland and Vernagu, circa 1330, a medieval romance about Charlemagne’s conquest of Spain and Roland’s battle with the Saracen Vernagu.

A verb meaning to strike someone forcefully appeared a couple of decades later in this OED citation: “Mony a mannes hed foro þe body he rappeþ” (“Many a man’s head from the body he rappeth”). From The Seege or Batayle of Troye, an anonymous romance believed written around 1350 or earlier.

The OED says the verb “rap” probably came from the noun, which is thought to be “an imitative or expressive formation.” In other words, “rap” means  what it sounds like. The dictionary notes similar imitative words in other Germanic languages: rapp (Norwegian), rapp (Swedish), and rap (Danish).

Over the years, according to Oxford, the hitting sense of the noun and verb weakened. The verb came to mean “to strike (a person or thing) in a sharp, usually relatively light, manner,” while the noun meant “a sharp, but usually relatively light, stroke with a stick, etc.”

Getting back to your question, the OED says the verb “rap” took on a speech sense in the mid-16th century, when the phrase “rap out” meant “to utter (words, speech, etc.) sharply or suddenly” or “to swear (an oath) vigorously.”

The dictionary’s earliest example is from a 1541 letter by Sir Thomas Wyatt, an English politician and poet:

“I am wonte some tyme to rappe owte an othe in an erneste tawlke.” From Life and Letters of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1963), by Kenneth Muir. (Wyatt, who is said to have introduced the sonnet to English literature, was briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London for a rumored affair with Anne Boleyn.)

The noun “rap” took on a similar sense in the 18th century. The OED’s first citation is from a 1787 letter by the antiquarian Joseph Ritson: “I shall be most glad of my Lords arrival if it were only for the raps you promise me.” From Letters of Joseph Ritson (1833), edited by his nephew Joseph Frank. (Ritson is better known for his 1795 compilation of the Robin Hood legend.)

Finally, in the 20th century, the verb took on an informal sense in American English that the OED defines as “to talk or chat in an easy or discursive manner.”

Oxford, an etymological dictionary, describes this usage as “probably influenced by rapport n. in later use.” Two standard dictionaries, Merriam-Webster and Longman, suggest that it may have been influenced by “repartee.”

The earliest OED citation for the American usage is from a collection of criminal slang: “ ‘Rap’ means to speak. If you ‘rap’ to a man you speak to him or recognize him.” From a lexicon of criminal jargon in the book How to Be a Detective (1909), by F. H. Tillotson, a Pinkerton’s detective.

A couple of decades later, the usage appeared in a short story by Damon Runyon: “I wish Moosh a hello, and he never raps to me but only bows, and takes my hat.” From “Madame La Gimp,” published in the October 1929 issue of Cosmopolitan.

And a few decades after that, it showed up as “rapping” in the writings of Eldridge Cleaver: “In point of fact he is funny and very glib, and I dig rapping (talking) with him.” From a letter Cleaver wrote on Sept. 19, 1965, from Folsom State Prison in California and included in his memoir Soul on Ice (1968). It’s interesting that Cleaver felt it necessary to include a parenthetical definition of “rapping.”

Meanwhile, says the OED, the noun “rap” took on the sense of “a verbal display, esp. one intended to impress. Hence: improvised dialogue; banter, ‘spiel’; an instance of this.” The dictionary’s first example is from “All Through the Night,” a short story by Nelson Algren in the April 1957 issue of Playboy:

“People like to say a pimp is a crime and a shame. But who’s the one friend a hustling broad’s got? …  Who puts down that real soft rap only you can hear to let you know your time is up and is everything alright in there Baby?” (An expanded version of the story appeared later as “Watch Out for Daddy.”)

The next Oxford example is from a 1965 soul song originally performed by the C.O.D.’s: “His rap is strong, with lots of fame / When the girls see him coming they tighten up their game.” From “Michael (the Lover),” written by Larry Brownlee, the Chicago group’s lead singer.

And here’s an OED citation from The Politics of Ecstasy (1966), a collection of essays and lectures by Timothy Leary: “He started a three-hour rap about energy, electronics, drugs, politics, the nature of God and the place of man in the divine system.”

The word “rap” has had many meanings over the years: a bum rap, a spirit’s rapping, a rap on the knuckles, and of course rap music.

It’s notable that the use of “rap” in music is descended from the conversational meanings of the word, especially the “verbal display” sense mentioned above.

The OED has two definitions of “rap” as used in music—one for a performance or a work, and one for the genre itself. Both, like the “verbal display” meaning, are labeled “originally U.S. colloquial.”

In the earliest usage, dating from the late 1970s, “rap” means “a performance in which lyrics (typically rhyming and sometimes improvised) are spoken rhythmically over a strong background beat.” Here the word can also mean “a rap song” or “a set of rap lyrics,” Oxford says.

This is the dictionary’s earliest citation: “Young DJs like Eddie Cheeba, DJ Hollywood, DJ Starski, and Kurtis Blow are attracting followings with their slick raps. … Tapes of Hollywood’s raps are considered valuable commodities by young blacks.” From Billboard magazine, May 5, 1979.

Soon after, the OED says, “rap” came to mean “a genre of popular music in which lyrics (typically rhyming and sometimes improvised) are spoken rhythmically, and usually rapidly, over an instrumental backing which has a strong background beat and often features samples.”

And here’s Oxford’s earliest use of that sense of the word: “Rap isn’t simply a male monopoly as Blondie, Angie B and Cheryl rap to the shuffle boogie beat of the Sugarhill Gang band.” From the Boston Globe, April 10, 1980.

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Q: In Little Women, the girls chide their friend Teddy for flirting, to which he replies that sensible girls “won’t let me send them ‘flowers and things,’ so what can I do? my feelings must have a went.” I haven’t seen “went” used as a noun before. Have you come across it?

A: The “went” that Teddy uses is an antiquated noun for a path or road. The word dates from the Middle Ages and wasn’t an everyday usage by the time Louisa May Alcott published Little Women in 1868. A more modern character might say, “My feelings must have an outlet.”

We’ve found only one current standard dictionary that still recognizes this use of “went.” Merriam-Webster Unabridged, an American dictionary, labels it a British noun for “a traveled way,” synonymous with “road, lane, alley, passage.”

However, we don’t know of any standard British dictionary that now includes the term. And the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological dictionary based on historical evidence, says it’s obsolete except in dialect.

The OED defines a “went” as “a course, path, way, or passage,” and says the noun is related to the verb “wend.” Oxford’s earliest example for the noun, which we’ve expanded, is from a Middle English translation of Genesis:

“He knowned one ilc ſterre name, / He ſettes in ðe firmament, / Al abuten ðis walkne went” (“He alone knoweth the name of each star, / He sets in the firmament, / All across this vaulted way”). The passage, from around 1250, is cited in The Middle English Genesis and Exodus, edited by Olof Sigfrid Arngart (1968).

In the following century, Chaucer used the noun in a more literal way: “Hyt forthe went Dovne by a floury grene went Ful thikke of gras” (“It forth wended down by a flowery green path full thick with grass”). From The Book of the Duchesse, circa 1369. (Note that the first “went” in the Middle English passage means “wended” and the second means “path.” More on that later.)

Oxford notes that the noun “went” in this sense was sometimes used in reference to a crossroad. The dictionary cites 18th- and 19th-century examples in which “went,” used with a number, meant a point where several roads converged, as in a “three-went way” or a “four-went way.”

Though we’ve found some 20th-century examples of the noun “went,” it’s generally used historically—that is, in reference to times past—or as a curiosity. By Louisa May Alcott’s time it wasn’t in common use.

The word doesn’t appear in the dictionaries of John Kersey (1708), Nathan Bailey (1731), Samuel Johnson (1755), William Kenrick (1773), Thomas Sheridan (1780), Noah Webster (1806, 1828), or Joseph E. Worcester (1860).

As we mentioned, there’s a connection between the noun “went” and the quaint old verb “wend” (to turn, change direction, or go).

The story begins with “wend,” a word that may date as far back as the 700s in early Old English writing. Similar words are known in other Germanic languages, and the ultimate source, according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, is a prehistoric Proto-Germanic verb that’s been reconstructed as wandjanan (to turn or twist).

As the OED explains, “The core sense of the Germanic base is evidently ‘to turn.’ ” However, in Old English the verb “wend” acquired an additional meaning not known in its Germanic cousins: “to go.” This development, the dictionary suggests, came about “probably via a sense ‘to turn in a particular direction in order to go.’ ”

Significantly, a past-tense form of “wend” was “went,” which isn’t an unusual pattern in English. The “-d” ending of the infinitive became “-t” in the past tense, as in pairs like “send/sent,” “bend/bent,” “lend/lent,” and “spend/spent.”

Meanwhile, the unrelated verb “go” had its own past tense in Old English: eode (sometimes spelled yode). But beginning in the 1400s that old past tense began to slip away and was gradually replaced by “went.” This was only natural, since “went” was already a familiar past tense to English speakers, who often used “wend” and “go” for the same thing.

Consequently, “wend” acquired a new past tense all its own: “wended.” The result, the OED says, was that in many writings of the 15th century and a bit later “it is often unclear whether a particular instance of went should be interpreted as the past tense of wend … or of go.”

The meaning of “wend” gradually changed too. It lost its more straightforward “go” senses (to move, proceed, etc.), which were transferred to “go.” But it kept the twisting and turning senses. Today “wend” and its modern past tense “wended,” Oxford says, “often imply an indirect or meandering course” as well as denoting “unhurried movement.”

And as for that old noun “went,” it has wended its way into history.

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Q: I’ve got both vaccinations now. Why do so many people refer to them as “jabs”? Is this something new?

A: No, the use of “jab” in reference to injections isn’t at all new. The usage dates from the late 19th century.

However, as we’ll show later, the Covid-19 pandemic has given the word “jab” (both the noun and the verb) a tremendous boost.

First, some etymology. You might say that “jab” means what it sounds or feels like. It developed as a variant of a late 15th-century word, spelled “job,” that was “apparently imitative of the sound or effect of a stab or prod,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The verb “job” used in this sense appeared in writing somewhat earlier than the noun, according to OED citations. In its earliest use, in 1499, the verb described what a bird does with its bill, but in the 1500s it was used more generally, Oxford says, meaning “to penetrate into, to stab, pierce, or prod at.”

Similarly, in the 1500s the old noun “job” meant “an abrupt stab with the point or end of something; a peck, a thrust, a jab,” the dictionary says. All these uses of “job,” verb and noun, are rare in modern English, Oxford says.

The modern “jab” emerged as a variant spelling of “job” in Scots English in the early 19th century. Oxford labels all uses of “jab”—verb and noun, then and now—as  “colloquial or dialect.”

The verb originally meant “to thrust with the end or point of something; to poke roughly; to stab,” the dictionary says, while the noun meant “an act of jabbing; an abrupt blow with something pointed, or (in Boxing slang) with the fist.”

The OED’s earliest examples for the verb and the noun are from the same source, John Jamieson’s Supplement to the Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1825): “To Jab, to prick sharply,” and “Jab, the act of pricking in this way” [i.e., sharply].

The use of “jab” in connection with injections was bound to come along.

The earliest examples we’ve seen for both the verb and the noun are in “The Hypodermic Syringe,” an article in The Prairie Farmer, a Chicago weekly, Oct. 14, 1882.

The article cites a woman who has been a morphine addict since a doctor treated her for sciatica with injections of the drug. It quotes a dealer of surgical instruments who taught the woman’s husband how to inoculate her himself:

“To administer the injection, you take up a bit of skin between your finger and thumb, jab the needle in and squirt away. It does not hurt at all, not as much as poking a needle into the skin not pinched that way would, but care must be exercised to throw the solution to just the proper depth, or else it is likely to produce hideous ulcers difficult to cure. Well, each of these jabs leaves a little, hard, calloused-like lump.”

The OED’s first citation for the noun used in connection with injections refers to illicit drug use:

“Jab, current amongst morphine and cocaine fiends. A hypodermic injection.” From A Vocabulary of Criminal Slang (1914), by Louis E. Jackson and C. R. Hellyer.

Here’s a later medical use of the noun: “The visitor must … take precautions and submit to a variety of jabs.” From a Liberia Supplement to The Times (London, April 17, 1973).

Oxford’s first example of the verb in this sense is from a 1938 issue of the journal American Speech: “To jab, to take drugs hypodermically.”

And here’s a medical citation from a book of military slang: “Be jabbed, to be inoculated or vaccinated.” From A Dictionary of Forces’ Slang, 1939-1945, by Eric Partridge et al. (1st ed., 1948).

As we said above, the pandemic has given new life to the word—both noun and verb.

A search of the NOW (News on the Web) corpus shows that until late 2020, the use of  “jab” had held steady for decades at a quiet frequency of 2 to 3 appearances for every million words. All that changed when uses of “jab” rose sharply in November and December, then skyrocketed during each month of early 2021.

Currently, the NOW corpus figures for the month of April are almost double those for January, at more than 28 per million words—an enormous increase. There’s no question about what’s caused the surge; vaccines were approved at the end of 2020 and made available to the public in 2021. The rise in the use of “jab” has closely tracked these developments.

[Note: This post was updated on March 31, 2023.]

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Q: I notice more and more the spelling “lead” where “led” is intended. Is this a case of evolution? Or merely a misspelling?

A: The only standard past tense and past participle of the verb “lead” is “led.” All ten standard dictionaries we regularly consult (five American and five British) agree on this.

But as you’ve noticed, the past and participle are sometimes written as “lead,” though this isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s a usage that’s been criticized since the late 19th century, if not earlier.

For example, a paper analyzing the writing of students applying for admission to Harvard College in 1896 found that “led” and “lead” were among “a large class of misspelled words that indicate a difficulty in deciding between ‘e’ (or ‘ee’ ) and ‘ea.’ ”

In the paper, “Sub-freshman English,” Adams Sherman Hill and Elizabeth Aborn Withey report that Harvard applicants misspelled the metal “lead” as “led,” and the past tense and past participle “led” as “lead” (Educational Review, December 1897).

Why the mix-ups? Merriam-Webster, one of the standard dictionaries mentioned above, says confusion over the pronunciations of the various words “lead” (the noun for a metal, the verb for going ahead, the adjective for most important, etc.) results in confusion over the spellings.

“The homophonic confusion leads to homographic confusion, and you will therefore occasionally see lead in constructions where led is called for (as in, ‘She lead the ducklings to safety’ instead of ‘She led the ducklings to safety’),” the dictionary says in a usage note, “When to Use Lead or Led.”

We’d add that “lead” belongs to the same class of irregular verbs as “bleed,” “breed,” and “feed.” Like them, it forms the past and past participle with a short “e” (“bled,” “bred,” “fed”).

We suspect that the people who write “lead” for the past and past participle pronounce the word as if it were spelled “led,” along the lines of “read,” which is pronounced like “red” in its past forms.

As it turns out, the past and past participle of “lead” have been spelled all sorts of way since the verb appeared in Anglo-Saxon times as lædan. In Old English, for example, the past tense was lædde and the past participle læded.

The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest example, which uses the past tense, is from an early eighth-century Old English translation of the Book of Psalms: “Astigende in heanisse gehefte lædde heftned” (“You ascended on high; you led your captives in captivity”). From the Vespasian Psalter, Psalm 68:18.

In Middle English, the tense forms were written in many different ways: the past as leaded, ledd, ledde, and so on, and the past participle as læded, læd, ledde, etc. The “led” spelling first appeared in Middle English for both the past and past participle, but some of the other spellings were still seen in early Modern English.

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Q: I see usages like “His age belies his strength” when I think it should be “His strength belies his age.” But I’m a bit confused about this. What do you think?

A: The verb “belie” usually means to give a false impression (“His amiable smile belies his toughness”) or to prove false (“The fingerprints belie her claim to have been elsewhere”). All ten standard dictionaries we regularly consult include those two senses, though some add a slight variation or two.

So in answer to your question, one could say either “His strength belies [gives a false impression of] his age” or “His age belies [gives a false impression of] his strength.”

Of course “belie” can be misused. As Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed.) points out, it’s sometimes thought to mean disclose or reveal, “a sense almost antithetical” to giving a false impression. The usage guide gives this example of the misuse: a “soft drawl belied his Southern roots.”

As for its etymology, “belie” dates from Anglo-Saxon days, when it meant “to deceive (a person) by lying” or “to tell lies about, to slander or libel (a person),” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

In Old English, the verb was written as beleogan, formed of the prefix be- (about) plus leogan (to lie or deceive). The earliest example in the OED, dating from the late 9th or early 10th century, uses belogene, the past participle:

“forþon þe we men syndon & beoþ ful oft belogene fram oþrum mannum” (“because we are men we are often belied [deceived] by other men”). From Bishop Wærferð of Worcester’s Old English translation of the Dialogues of Pope Gregory I, written in Latin over the late 6th and early 7th centuries.

In early Middle English, the verb (written as biliȝhe, beleiȝe, bilye, etc.) meant “to tell lies about; esp. to slander or libel, to calumniate,” the OED says. Here’s the dictionary’s earliest citation:

“Þe treowe is ofte mis trouwed & þe sakelese biloȝen … for wane of witnesse” (“the faithful are often mistrusted and the innocent belied [lied about] … for want of witness”). From Ancrene Riwle (Rule for Anchoresses), a guide for monastic women. The work survives in several manuscripts; the OED dates this one from the early 1200s or perhaps late 1100s.

In the 14th century, the expression “belie the truth” came to mean “misrepresent or pervert the truth,” as in this Oxford example: “Þei lede lordes with lesynges and bilyeth treuthe” (“they lead lords with lies and belie the truth”). From Piers Plowman (1378), by William Langland.

The OED, an etymological dictionary based on historical evidence, labels all these early senses of “belie” as obsolete or rare.

Over the next few centuries, the lying sense of “belie” lessened and the verb took on its modern meanings of to give a false impression and to prove something false.

Here’s an early Oxford example of the false-impression sense: “It is a straunge thing how men bely themselues: euery one speakes well, and meanes naughtily” (from “Of Alehouses,” a 1600 essay by William Cornwallis, an English courtier and member of Parliament).

And this is an expanded OED example of the other sense, to prove something false: “A Neat, spruce, affecting Courtier, one that weares clothes well, and … cares not what Ladies fauor he belies” (from Ben Jonson’s description of Fastidius Briske, in the cast of characters of his satire Every Man Out of His Humor, 1600).

Finally, here are some modern examples from Merriam-Webster, a standard dictionary:

“Her gentleness belies her strength.”

“His manner and appearance belie his age.”

“The evidence belies their claims of innocence.”

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Q: The words “vote” and “veto” seem so similar, yet opposite. One involves the making of choices, the other the blocking of choices. Do these words have a common origin?

A: Despite their resemblance, “vote” and “veto” are not related etymologically, and they aren’t really opposites. They’re descended from different Latin verbs meaning, respectively, to vow (vovere) and to forbid (vetare).

We’ll start with “vote,” the older of the two words.

It first entered English as a noun in the 15th century, borrowed directly from votum, a Latin noun derived from the verb vovere. The classical Latin noun meant a vow or offering to a god, but in post-classical times it came to mean a choice or a decision.

In English, the noun “vote” has had its choosing or deciding senses from the start. (At various times in the past, both noun and verb have also had meanings related to vowing or pledging, but those are now obsolete.)

The earliest recorded meaning of the noun “vote,” dating from the mid-1400s, was a “formal statement of opinion by a member of a deliberative body on a matter under discussion,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The dictionary’s oldest citation, in Scots English, is from The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland (1458): “haifande wotis in the deliverance of causis” (“having votes in the deciding of causes”).

All the other meanings of the noun “vote”—a collective choice, an individual’s selection of a candidate, a decision by ballot or show of hands, and so on—developed steadily from the late 1400s onward.

The verb “vote” in the political sense emerged a century after the noun, and it also appeared first in Scots English. Here’s the OED definition: “to give or register a vote; to exercise the right of suffrage; to express a choice or preference by ballot or other approved means.” And this is the dictionary’s earliest example:

“swa that monsieur Desse … with the rest off capitainis and gentilmen woittit ilk ane for ther awyn part” (“so that Monsieur Dessé … with the other captains and gentlemen voted every one according to their duty”). From a Feb. 20, 1549, letter by the Scottish clergyman Alexander Gordon to Scotland’s Queen Dowager, Mary of Guise, mother of Mary, Queen of Scots.

(A final note on “vote” before we move on to “veto.” The defunct “vow” senses of “vote” have been replaced by the word “vow.” But old senses related to prayers and vows live on in the related words “devote,” “devotion,” “devoted,” and “devout.” The “de-” is not a negative prefix but means “from.”)

The word “veto,” meanwhile, still echoes what it meant to the Romans. In classical Latin, veto meant “I forbid”; it was the first-person singular present form of the verb vetare (to forbid). As the OED explains, veto was “the word by which the Roman tribunes of the people opposed measures of the Senate or actions of the magistrates.”

The Latin expression veto was borrowed directly into English as the noun “veto” in the 17th century. And the noun’s original English meaning hasn’t changed. This is the OED definition:

“A prohibition having as its object or result the prevention of an act; an instance of rejecting, banning, or blocking an action, proposal, etc. Also: the power to prevent or check action in this way.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from William Mure’s True Crucifixe (1629): “Hee who doth exalt Himselfe to raigne … Dare gainst this Law most impudently stand, And God’s great Veto boldly counter-mand.”

A more specific meaning of the noun soon emerged, and it too is still alive today—the rejection of a legislative or other political measure, as in a presidential “veto.”

The noun in this sense was first recorded in a sermon by a Church of England clergyman, Anthony Farindon, sometime before 1658: “There is a Law staring in our face, like a Tribune with his Veto, to forbid us.”

As for the verb “veto,” it was formed within English in the 18th century, simply by the conversion of the noun into a verb. It’s defined in the OED as “to put a veto on (a legislative or political measure); to stop or block by exercising a veto.”

Oxford’s earliest example: “Letters for degrees (including D.D. for Potter) read in Convocation, but vetoed by the Proctors because they had not been previously acquainted with the contents.” We’ve expanded the citation, from a 1706 letter by the antiquary and diarist Thomas Hearne.

Although “vote” and “veto” aren’t etymologically related, over time they’ve become political bedfellows.

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