Category: Word origin

Q: “Dissociate” or “disassociate”? The New Yorker used the latter, and I think it stinks. But what do I know?

A: A search of the New Yorker’s archive finds that writers for the magazine have used each word, with a slight preference for the shorter version.

Is one correct? Well, these verbs mean the same thing and are considered variants of one another, but some usage guides say “dissociate” is better.

For example, Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.) says “disassociate” is “a common but now widely condemned variant (first recorded in 1603), of dissociate.”

Another guide, Garners Modern American Usage (3rd ed.), calls “dissociate” the “preferred term” and labels “disassociate” a “needless variant.”

Though Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) doesn’t condemn “disassociate,” the dictionary defines it in terms of the other verb: “to detach from association” or “dissociate.”

And “dissociate,” M-W says, means “to separate from association or union with another,” as in “attempts to dissociate herself from her past.”

As mentioned above, “disassociate” was first recorded in writing in 1603. The now favored variant, “dissociate,” followed soon afterward.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the verb “dissociate” appeared in 1623 in a dictionary that defined it as meaning “to separate.” So it must have been in use for some time before that.

An adjectival form (“dissociate”) was recorded in 1548; another adjective (“dissociated”) and a noun (“dissociation”) were both recorded in 1611.

Regardless of the chronology, the two verbs are defined similarly in the OED.

“Dissociate,” Oxford says, means “to cut off from association or society; to sever, disunite, sunder.” And “disassociate” means “to free or detach from association; to dissociate, sever.”

Ultimately, the Latin root of both is sociare (to join together or associate), and both have the negative Latin prefix dis-.

As the OED says, “dissociate” is from the Latin dissociare (to separate from fellowship). “Disassociate” was modeled after the 16th-century French verb désassocier.

Since both verbs have been in use for some 500 years, we can’t see why one is preferred over the other. But perhaps people feel shorter is better, and we often feel that way ourselves. “Dissociate” does save a syllable.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage has an opinion here, as it does on most things:

“Dissociate and disassociate share the sense ‘to separate from association or union with another,’ and either word may be used in that sense. Dissociate is recommended by a number of commentators on the ground that it is shorter, which it is by a grand total of two letters—not the firmest ground for decision.”

M-W’s conclusion: “Both words are in current good use, but dissociate is used more often. That may be grounds for your decision.”

PS: In case you’re wondering about the verb “dis” in the title of this post, we had an item on the blog some time ago about the usage.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: Whenever there’s an insensitive, insulting, inhumane, or vulgar comment about homosexuals, the press describes it as homophobia. However, “homophobia” would seem to be the irrational fear of homosexuals, not the hatred of them.

A: It’s true that the noun “phobia” principally means an exaggerated or irrational fear. But when “-phobia” is a word element that’s part of another noun, it can also mean hatred of something, not just fear of it.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “homophobia” in its usual contemporary sense as “fear or hatred of homosexuals and homosexuality.”

The adjective “homophobic” is defined by the OED as “pertaining to, characterized by, or exhibiting homophobia; hostile towards homosexuals.” And “homophobe” is “a homophobic person”—that is, someone hostile toward gay men or lesbians.

All three terms are relatively new in the sense you’re talking about, judging from the OED’s citations for their first appearances in print: “homophobia” in 1969; “homophobic” and “homophobe” in 1971.

However, the word “homophobia” is much older in another sense: fear of men. The first Oxford citation for this sense is from the June 5,1920, issue of Chambers’s Journal:

“Her salient characteristic was a contempt for the male sex as represented in the human biped …. The seeds of homophobia had been sown early.”

In a search of Google Books, we found a 1908 article in The Alienist and Neurologist, a quarterly medical journal, with what appears to be an even earlier citation for “homophobia” in this sense (juxtaposed with “gynephobia”).

In  an article entitled “La Phobie du Regard” (the fear of being looked at), C. H. Hughes describes a medical case and then adds, “In Beards’ neurasthenia or cerebrasthenia this phobie du regard would appear as homophobia and gynephobia.”

(Hughes is apparently referring to George Miller Beard, a 19th-century American neurologist who popularized the term “neurasthenia.”)

We also found an interesting later example of “homophobia” used to mean hatred of men. It comes  from The New Adventures of Ellery Queen, a 1940 story collection by Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee (a k a Ellery Queen):

“Mr. Ellery Queen paled, and choking, set down his weapons. When he had first encountered the lovely Miss Paris, Hollywood’s reigning goddess of gossip, Miss Paris had been suffering from homophobia, or morbid fear of men.”

Now let’s return to your question about the modern use of the word “homophobia” to mean hatred or fear of homosexuals or homosexuality.

A precursor was “’homoerotophobia,” a term used by Wainwright Churchill in Homosexual Behavior Among Males (1967). Churchill, a clinical psychologist, described it as a cultural fear of same-sex sexuality.

Another clinical psychologist, George Weinberg, has said he coined the use of the term “homophobia” in its contemporary sense in the mid-1960s.

In an interview with Gay Today, Weinberg says he used the term in a speech in 1965. However, he didn’t use it in print until 1971, when his book Society and the Healthy Homosexual appeared.

In a prologue to the interview, Gay Today claims inaccurately that the OED credits Weinberg with coining the use of the term “homophobia” in this sense.

In fact, the OED’s first written citation for the term used in its newer sense is from the Oct. 31, 1969, issue of Time magazine:

“Such homophobia is based on understandable instincts among straight people, but it also involves innumerable misconceptions and oversimplifications.”

The noun “phobia” in English—as in “I have a phobia of spiders”—is defined this way in the OED: “a fear, horror, strong dislike, or aversion; esp. an extreme or irrational fear or dread aroused by a particular object or circumstance.”

The noun came into English in the 1780s and was adapted from Latin and Greek compounds that had –phobia as an element, according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology.

As Chambers explains, the Romans borrowed the word element –phobia from the Greeks. In Greek, the noun phobos means fear and the verb phobein means frighten or put to flight. A related Greek verb, phebesthai, means to flee in terror.

The first such classical compound to come into English, according to the OED, was “hydrophobia,” which was borrowed from Latin in the 16th century. (Chambers says an early erroneous spelling, “ydroforbia,” appeared in 1392.)

“Hydrophobia” literally means a fear or a morbid dread of water, but since its earliest appearance it has also meant rabies. As the OED explains, this is because “an aversion to water or other liquids, and difficulty in swallowing them,” are symptoms of the disease when transmitted to humans.

“Hydrophobia,” the OED says, “is probably the model for subsequent English formations” ending in “-phobia.” Such words became “very abundant” in the 19th century, Oxford says.

Here are some examples, and the dates when they were first recorded in OED citations:

“Anglophobia” (coined by Thomas Jefferson, 1793), “pyrophobia” (fear of fire, 1858), “agoraphobia” (fear of crowds or of leaving home, 1871), “claustrophobia” (1879), and “gynophobia” (fear of woman, sometimes spelled “gynephobia,” 1886).

Also, “acrophobia” (fear of heights, 1888), “xenophobia” (aversion to foreigners, 1909), “triskaidekaphobia” (fear of the number thirteen, 1911), and “arachnophobia” (fear of spiders, 1925).

Check out our books about the English language

Q: When somebody tries to sell me a car and says, “Our prices are incredibly low,” he’s literally telling me that I shouldn’t believe him. Wouldn’t it make more sense to say, “Our prices are credibly low”?

A: The adjective “incredible” meant not credible when it entered English in the early 1400s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

And the adverb “incredibly” meant in an incredible manner—that is, not credibly—when it showed up around 1500.

The two words still have those clearly negative meanings today, but people began using them loosely—“in a weakened sense,” as the OED says—almost from the start.

In this sense, Oxford says, the adjective means, among other things, exceedingly great, and the adverb means exceedingly, extremely, and so on.

Those car dealers you mention are using “incredibly” to mean exceedingly or extremely or (we’d add) astonishingly.

The two words are derived from the Latin incredibilis (unbelievable), made up of the negative prefix –in and credibilis (worthy to be believed). The ultimate Latin source is the verb credere (to believe).

Here’s how The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) defines the two modern meanings of “incredible”:

“1. So implausible as to elicit disbelief; unbelievable: gave an incredible explanation of the cause of the accident.

“2. Astonishing, extraordinary, or extreme: dressed with incredible speed.”

The OED’s earliest citation for the adjective is from John Lydgate’s Hystorye, Sege, and Destruccyon of Troye (1412-1420).

In his Middle English poem, Lydgate describes as “incredible” (that is, not credible) an account of the Greeks put to flight during the Trojan War.

The dictionary’s first citation for the adjective used in its looser sense is from The Revelation of the Monk of Evesham (1482): “An inestymable and incredibulle swetenes of ioyfull conforte.”

The earliest OED citation for the adverb is from The Three Kings’ Sons (circa 1500), an English translation of a work by the French calligrapher David Aubert: “He had seen hem do in armes that day yncredibly.” The adverb here seems to be used in the looser sense.

An even clearer example of the adverb used loosely is from The Itinerary of John Leland, written sometime before 1552. In writing of his travels, the English poet and antiquary describes a church “adorned it with Gould and Sylver incredibly.”

We’ll end with the OED’s most recent example for the adverb used in its looser sense.

We’ve gone to the original to expand on this citation from English Traits, an 1856 book in which Ralph Waldo Emerson describes a meeting with Thomas Carlyle in Scotland:

“He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this moment; recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by the great booksellers for puffing. Hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted now, no books are bought, and the booksellers are on the eve of bankruptcy.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Check out our books about the English language

Q: You pushed one of my buttons when you made the claim that squash is a fruit, not a vegetable. I hear the same thing about tomatoes, usually accompanied by some level of know-it-all smugness. Simply put, the words “fruit” and “vegetable” are not mutually exclusive.

A: You’re right, and we’ve fixed our posting, which discusses whether the “squash” that means to crush is related to the “squash” that one eats.

As you say, something can be a fruit in the botanical sense as well as a vegetable in the culinary sense. It all depends on whether one is using the vocabulary of the kitchen or of the garden.

In the garden, a fruit is the edible reproductive part of a seed plant, while a vegetable is any edible part of a plant.

In the kitchen, a fruit is any edible part of a plant with a sweet flavor, while a vegetable is any edible part of a plant that’s spicy, salty, or otherwise pungent.

Interestingly, the word “fruit” referred to edible “vegetable products in general” when it entered English in the 12th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The earliest OED citation is from the Lambeth Homilies, a collection of sermons dating from around 1175: “Me saweth sed on ane time and gedereth thet frut on other time.” (In this and subsequent quotations, we’ve changed the letters eth and thorn to “th.”)

It wasn’t until the 13th century that the word “fruit” took on its reproductive sense, which the OED defines as the “edible product of a plant or tree, consisting of the seed and its envelope.”

The earliest Oxford citation for this new meaning is from the Ancrene Riwle (circa 1225), which refers to a tree that “bereth swete frut.”

Although the Old French noun fruit is the immediate source of our English word, the term is ultimately derived from the Latin verb frui (to enjoy).

The noun “vegetable” (from the post-classical Latin vegetabilia) first showed up in English in the late 15th century, according to OED citations.

The word initially referred to “any living organism that is not an animal,” Oxford says, but it has come to mean “one belonging to the plant kingdom.”

The first OED citation is in a translation from around 1484 of Secretum Secretorium, a medieval treatise on, among other things, astrology, alchemy, and magic:

“Euiry thyng wantyng lyght of the nombyr of vegetabyllis is attribute to Saturne.”

Thanks for catching our mistake and keeping us on our toes. And thanks for giving us a chance to write about these sweet and savory edibles.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: I’m taking an online course in emergency management and I’ve come across the word “collocate” used to mean share, as in, “a Unified Command to collocate facilities.” When I looked the word up, however, this usage seems incorrect. Please educate me!

A: The Oxford English Dictionary defines the verb “collocate” as to set in a place, place side by side, or arrange.

The verb entered English in the 16th century (first recorded in 1548, according to the OED), but its ultimate source is the Latin col- (together) plus locare (to place).

Oxford says a specialized meaning in linguistics showed up in the mid-20th century: “To place (a word) with (another word) so as to form a collocation.”

A “collocation” is a group of two or more words that often appear together: “green” and “envy,” for example, or “blond” and “hair.”

The definitions in the two standard dictionaries we use the most—The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.)—agree with those in the OED.

It would appear that the language used in your emergency management course stretches the meaning a bit.

However, this isn’t all that unusual in the academic world, where educators often prefer a bureaucratic-sounding word like “collocate” to a simple one like “share.”

Thanks for sharing this—or, as the people teaching that course might say, collocating this!

[Note: We’ve written a new post that updates and expands on this item.]

Check out our books about the English language

Q: I was reading a posting on the religious blog Patheos about critics who are both “hypercritical” and “hypocritical,” which got me to thinking about those two words. They look like antonyms, but being “hypercritical” isn’t the opposite of being “hypocritical.” Are these terms related?

A: You’re right. The two adjectives aren’t antonyms. Someone who’s “hypercritical” is excessively critical while someone who’s “hypocritical” is insincere. But as that posting suggests, a “hypercritical” person can be “hypocritical.”

Are the words “hypercritical” and “hypocritical” related? Yes, if you go back far enough.

The English prefixes “hyper” and “hypo” are derived from the Greek prepositions hyper (over) and hypo (under). The “critical” part of these words ultimately comes from the classical Greek verb krinein (to judge, decide, etc.).

So someone who’s “hypercritical” is overly judgmental. But why, you’re probably wondering, is a “hypocritical” person insincere?

In ancient Greek, according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, hypokrinesthai meant to play a part, hypokrisis was acting on the stage, and hypokrites was an actor.

How did the classical terms hypo (under) and krinein (to judge) give the Greeks the terms for act, acting, and actor?

The etymology is fuzzy here, but one possibility is that the Greeks recognized that actors had to subordinate their own judgment to play a role.

Now how did hypokrisis, the Greek term for acting, give English “hypocrisy,” a negative word for professing beliefs you don’t really have?

It turns out that in classical times hypokrisis also had an unpleasant odor to it, according to Chambers. In addition to meaning acting, the term referred to pretense and dissimulation—that is, insincerity.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: We were watching the news the other morning when the title card on the screen said “Sandy Aftermath.” My husband turned to me and asked: “Does the ‘math’ in ‘aftermath’ have anything to do with mathematics?” Could you enlighten us?

A: The “math” that’s part of “aftermath” is an entirely different noun from the one in “mathematics.” In fact, they came into English from two different routes—one from old Germanic sources and the other from Latin.

“Aftermath” got its start as an agricultural term associated with mowing. You might say its literal meaning is “after-mowing.”

The word entered the language in the 15th century as a compound of the prefix “after-” plus the noun “math,” which once meant a mowing or the portion of a crop that’s been mowed.

This sense of “math” is very old, dating back to Old English and beyond, to ancient Germanic sources.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the Old Saxon word maddag meant mowing day, and the Old High German mada is ultimately from the same Germanic base that gave us the word “mow.”

When first recorded in writing in the late 1400s, the OED says, “aftermath” meant “a second crop or new growth of grass (or occas. another plant used as feed) after the first has been mown or harvested.”

This example from 1601 is a good illustration of its use: “The grasse will be so high growne, that a man may cut it down and have a plentifull after-math for hay.” (From Philemon Holland’s translation of Pliny’s Natural History.)

The agricultural sense of “aftermath” has survived into modern times, as illustrated by this citation from Heather Smith Thomas’s book Getting Started With Beef and Dairy Cattle (2005): “They can’t graze cornfield aftermath where herbicides or pesticides were used.”

But today “aftermath” is more familiar in its figurative sense, defined by the OED as “a period or state of affairs following a significant event, esp. when that event is destructive or harmful.”

The figurative usage dates back to the mid-17th century. The OED’s earliest citation is from Robert Fletcher’s 1656 translation of Martial’s Ex Otio Negotium: “Rash Lover speak what pleasure hath Thy Spring in such an Aftermath?”

Here’s another figurative example, from the writer David Hartley Coleridge’s Essays and Marginalia (1851): “The aftermath of the great rebellion.”

We know you’re still wondering about the other “math,” the one that’s about numbers. This “math,” first recorded in 1847, is an American short form of “mathematics.” The British shortened form, “maths,” was first recorded in 1911.

The long form, “mathematics,” was first recorded in the mid-16th century, according to the OED, and developed from the earlier adjective “mathematic,” which dates from the 1300s.

Originally, as the OED says, “mathematics” was a collective term for “geometry, arithmetic, and certain physical sciences involving geometrical reasoning, such as astronomy and optics.”

Later it came to mean “the science of space, number, quantity, and arrangement, whose methods involve logical reasoning and usually the use of symbolic notation, and which includes geometry, arithmetic, algebra, and analysis.” To most of us, that means numbers.

We owe “mathematics” to Latin (mathematica), which got it from Greek (mathematikos). The Greek is derived from the noun mathema (science, learning, knowledge) which is related to the verb manthanein (to learn). The word “polymath” (a person of great and varied learning) has a similar Greek etymology.

As John Ayto writes in his Dictionary of Word Origins, etymologically the word “mathematics” means “something learned.” He points out that “from earliest times the notion of ‘science’”—mathema in Greek—“was bound up with that of ‘numerical reasoning.’”

The ultimate source of the Greek mathematikos, according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, is an ancient Indo-European compound reconstructed as mens-dhe.

The first element means mind and the second means direct or toward, so the compound means “direct the mind (toward),” Chambers says.

This compound, the dictionary adds, has filtered down into many languages, including Sanskrit (medha, wisdom) and Avestan (mazda, memory). In case you’re wondering, Avestan is the language of Zoroastrian scripture.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: I was just reading your post about “lectititude” and I’m now determined to bring back the word “lectory.” I’m thinking of a reading room with a nice chair and a sign saying “Lectory.” Anyway, towards the end of your post you mention the obsolete word “lection,” which looks incredibly similar to “election.” Are they related?

A: We like the idea of a lectory too. We picture an oak-paneled room with a fireplace, a comfy overstuffed chair, a good reading lamp—and books, of course. A nice bottle of wine wouldn’t hurt, either.

As we wrote in our Oct. 26 post, the Latin verb legere (to read) has given us many words, including a couple that are now obsolete—“lectory” (a place for reading) and “lection” (the act of reading).

Yes, “lection” sounds a lot like “election.” But “election” has nothing to do with reading. It means the act of choosing, and it’s descended from the Latin verb eligere (to pick out or select).

Nevertheless, you’re right to suspect that there’s a link here.

As the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology and John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins explain, eligere is a compound verb, formed from ex- (out) and ligere, an alternate form of legere. And another meaning of legere, besides to read, is to gather or choose.

So eligere is a cousin of legere.

In fact, it’s not unknown for compound Latin verbs to be spelled both ways, ending in –ligere as well as –legere, as the Oxford English Dictionary explains.

For example, the OED says the compound Latin verb meaning to neglect has two spellings, negligere and neglegere. “The reason for preference for -ligere or -legere in compounds of legere is not always apparent,” the editors say.

Getting back to “lection” and “election,” it seems that they too have been conflated in the past.

According to the OED, “lection” was briefly used long ago as a version of “election” in the sense of “the formal choosing of a person for an office.”

Oxford has four examples of this usage, including one from the records of the Scottish burgh of Peebles (1462): “Ilke man be his awn vos gaf thair lectioun to the sayd Schyr John.” (“Each man by his own voice gave their lection to the said Sir John.”)

The usage seems to have died out in the 16th century, since the OED’s most recent citation is from 1535.

Besides “lection” and “election,” the Latin verbs legere and eligere are at the roots of many familiar English words, some to do with reading and some to do with being picky (or not).

These words include “lectern,” “lesson,” “lecture,” “legible,” “legend” (literally, something read), “elegant,” “eligible,” “elite,” “collect,” “neglect,” and “select.”

Check out our books about the English language

Q: Are flacks so named because they take flak for being such pests?

A: No, “flack” and “flak” aren’t related. While a “flack” (a promoter or publicist) often takes “flak” (criticism), the two words evolved independently.

It’s a common myth that “flack” is a misspelling of “flak.” In fact, it’s one of the myths about language that we discuss in our book Origins of the Specious. Here’s what we say:

“Ask almost anyone and you’ll hear that ‘flack’ is a misspelling of ‘flak,’ a term coined during World War II to describe enemy antiaircraft fire. (‘Flak’ was an acronym for fliegerabwehrkanone, a German antiaircraft gun.) After the war, ‘flak’ also came to mean a barrage of criticism or disapproval. It’s understandable, then, that the flacks who bombarded news hounds relentlessly with press releases got confused with flak. Even slang lexicographers have described ‘flack’ as a misspelling of ‘flak.’

“In the interest of giving credit where credit is due, let’s do some public relations on behalf of the now-obscure PR man who gave us ‘flack.’ His name was Gene Flack (yes, that was his real name), and in the 1920s and ’30s he was a movie publicist without peer. He was so good at his job that Variety, the showbiz weekly, starting calling all publicists ‘flacks.’ ”

One reason the origins of “flack” and “flak” have become confused is that the words emerged at about the same time.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that “flak,” an acronym of the German term described above, was first recorded in a 1938 edition of the naval reference book Jane’s Fighting Ships, which is published in Britain. “Flak” apparently remained a technical term for a couple of years and didn’t become current until wartime, since published usages didn’t appear again until 1940.

The OED says “flack,” which it defines as “a press agent” or “a publicity man,” is a “chiefly U.S.” slang term of unknown origin first recorded in 1946.

But “flack” is older than the OED indicates, and showed up at least a year before “flak” was recorded in Jane’s. Here are the two oldest citations given in Green’s Dictionary of Slang:

1939: “Variety which is trying to coin ‘flack’ as a synonym for press agent (without much luck) might like to know it was born in the offices of Gene Flack, a film publicist.” (From Walter Winchell’s syndicated newspaper column On Broadway.)

1937: “Whereupon Paramount elected to cash in on the publicity and the flack as Variety calls press agents, leaped to his typing machine.” (From the Oakland Tribune.)

Winchell’s column isn’t the only published source that connects “flack” with the press agent Gene Flack.

Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, wrote in the journal American Speech in 1984 about another sighting:

“In the June, 1939 issue of the magazine Better English: A Monthly Guide for the Improvement of Speech and Writing, a small note on p. 28 reads: ‘That alert weekly, Variety, birthplace of numerous Americanisms, is trying to coin the word ‘flack’ as a synonym for publicity agent. The word is said to be derived from Gene Flack, a movie publicity agent. Something Variety may have overlooked, however, is that a Yiddish word similar in sound means ‘one who goes around talking about the other fellow’s business.’ ”

Shapiro went on to say: “Variety‘s eponymous etymology of flack, although questioned by Better English, is backed by the authority of the word’s apparent coiner, and must now replace the chronologically untenable flak theory as the probable derivation.”

You can disregard that suggestion about a Yiddish connection. The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang mentions that 1939 quotation, but notes that the Yiddish word referred to is unknown and “the closest words available are unlikely on various grounds.”

So that’s the story to date. As we noted in Origins of the Specious, “it’s ironic that the press agent behind the word ‘flack’ should be all but forgotten today.”

Check out our books about the English language

Q: I’ve been to several restaurants that have “Hostess Stand” signs, though I’ve noticed that sometimes the “hostess” turns out to be a man. I’ve always thought that “hostess” only applied to women, and that when you’re unsure of the gender you should use “host.” Have times changed?

A: “Hostess” is not an appropriate job title for a man, and we’d be very surprised if restaurants are extending the meaning of the word. No matter what those signs say, we’d bet that those men are called “hosts.”

The standard dictionaries that we use the most say a “hostess” is always a woman.

For example, every definition of “hostess” in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) begins with either “a woman” or “a female employee.”

When the noun “hostess” entered English around the year 1290, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it referred to a “woman who keeps a public place of lodging and entertainment; the mistress of an inn.”  

The OED says the noun “host,” which entered English around the same time, referred to, among other things, a “man who lodges and entertains for payment; a man who keeps a public place of lodging or entertainment; the landlord of an inn.”

In modern usage, however, “host” is unisex and can serve for either male or female.

Here are the relevant definitions of “host” in American Heritage:

(1) “One who receives or entertains guests in a social or official capacity.” (2) “A person who manages an inn or hotel.” (3) “One that furnishes facilities and resources for a function or event: the city chosen as host for the Olympic Games.” (4) “The emcee or interviewer on a radio or television program.”

The OED, however, still defines “host” as “a man who lodges and entertains” people, either as guests or for payment. But Oxford is obviously behind the times here; a note says, “This entry has not yet been fully updated.”

It’s probable that when the OED eventually updates its definitions for “host,” the term will apply to both sexes as well as host cities, organizations, and so on.

We can’t tell you exactly when “host” became a gender-neutral term. But our 1956 copy of Webster’s New International Dictionary (the unabridged second edition), defines it in a unisex way (“one who …”).

Many people seem to assume that if a feminine version of a noun exists, then the original can’t apply to women.

In this respect, “host” is similar to the “master” in “master of ceremonies,” which we’ve written about before on the blog.

Just as we aren’t compelled to use “hostess” in referring to a woman, there’s no law that says we must use “mistress of ceremonies,” though many people do.

Similarly, the terms “actor” and “comedian” are gender-neutral and appropriate for both men and women, as we discussed in a post a few years ago.

We aren’t saying that feminine titles like “hostess,” “mistress,” “actress,” and “comedienne” should be relegated to the junk heap. Sometimes they seem more appropriate than their neutral counterparts. And if a woman prefers a feminine title, then by all means she should have it.

But certainly feminine titles shouldn’t be extended to men. In fact, restaurants would do well to get rid of those “Hostess Stand” signs. Why name the furniture, anyway?

A simple sign reading “Host,” would be quite enough, posted on the desk or stand or station or whatever. And it wouldn’t have to be changed when a man takes over the job.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: Your posting about the difference between “quash” and “squash” raises another question: Is there a connection between the “squash” that means to crush and the “squash” that you eat?

A: This question came up recently during one of Pat’s appearances on Iowa Public Radio. The caller wondered what the two words had to do with each other.

The answer is nothing. The two “squashes” aren’t even remotely related.

As we wrote in that earlier post, the verb “squash” (to crush) ultimately comes from exquassare, a popular Latin derivative of quassare, one of the ancestors of “quash.”

When the verb entered English in the 16th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it meant to “squeeze, press, or crush into a flat mass or pulp; to beat to, or dash in, pieces, etc.”

But the “squash” that’s a gourd—the British would call it a “marrow”—is a short form of asquutasquash, a word in Narragansett, an Algonquian language spoken by native Americans in Rhode Island.

In the word asquutasquash, the OED explains, asq means “raw, uncooked,” and “-ash is a plural ending, as in succotash.”

Roger Williams, who is generally accepted as the founder of Rhode Island colony, was the first person to use this “squash” in writing.

The OED’s earliest citation is from A Key Into the Language of America (1643), Williams’s study of native American languages:

“Askutasquash, their Vine aples, which the English from them call Squashes, about the bignesse of Apples, of severall colours, sweet, light, wholesome, refreshing.”

To some early settlers, the Narragansett word asquutasquash sounded like “squanter-squash,” and that was an early name for the gourd, first recorded in 1634. It’s no longer used; the OED calls it obsolete and rare.

Now how’s this for confusing? The word “quash” was also sometimes used to mean a squash or pumpkin

The OED says that some examples of this usage “may be based on misunderstanding by early naturalists, others may represent misreadings of manuscripts by later editors.” OK, now let’s forget all about it.

One more thing. We probably shouldn’t let that fleeting reference to “succotash” pass without an explanation. After all, we’ve recently celebrated Thanksgiving and food, as well as our country’s Native American heritage, has been on everybody’s mind.

“Succotash” too is derived from a Narragansett word, msiquatash, a plural with “divergent explanations,” the OED says.

We do know what “succotash” meant to colonists in 18th-century New England. The OED defines the English word as “a dish of North American Indian origin, usually consisting of green maize and beans boiled together.”

Oxford’s earliest example of its use in writing comes from a letter written in 1751 by James MacSparran, a Church of England clergyman in early America:

“Mo^r dined with us upon Suckatash and Ham.” (The superscript “r” probably indicates that first word was an abbreviation.)

This later example is more redolent of the wilderness. It’s from Jonathan Carver’s Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America (1778):

“This [dish] is composed of their unripe corn … and beans in the same state, boiled together with bears flesh. … They call this food Succatosh.”

And here’s a literary example, from James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826): “The wise Huron is welcome … he is come to eat his ‘suc-ca-tush’ with his brothers of the lakes!”

We’ll conclude with an example from Sylvester the Cat: “Sufferin’ succotash!”

Check out our books about the English language