Category: Word origin

Q: Some readers may enjoy your take on the difference between “different” and “disparate.” This sentence from a recent New York Times does not sit well with me: “Two similarly titled papers with markedly disparate conclusions illustrate the range of disagreement on this subject.”

A: We think the use of “disparate” can be justified in that Oct. 20, 2021, opinion column by Thomas B. Edsall.

He discusses two scholarly papers that concluded for “markedly disparate” reasons that conservatives were on the whole happier than liberals. (As Edsall writer later, that’s questionable.)

“Disparate” is generally a much stronger word than “different.” Traditionally, it means that there are no common grounds for comparison. And that seems to be true of the two papers’ explanations for the so-called happiness gap between conservatives and liberals.

We won’t attempt to summarize the explanations, since this isn’t a blog about politics or sociology; we’ll simply say that they don’t lend themselves to comparison. Their reasons aren’t merely “different” in the simplest sense of that word (like apples and oranges, which are both fruits). And they aren’t opposites, since things that are opposite are correlated—that is, they have a relationship.

The Oxford English Dictionary notes that in logic “disparate” applies to “things or concepts having no obvious common ground or genus in which they are correlated.”

The dictionary adds that “disparate” is “distinguished from contrary, since contrary things are at least correlated in pairs, e.g. good and bad.” And it’s “also distinguished from disjunct, since disjunct concepts may all be reduced to a common kind.”

The OED is an etymological dictionary based on historical evidence, and its entry for “disparate” may be outdated (it has no examples later than 1883). Nevertheless, its principal definition—“essentially different or diverse in kind”— largely agrees with those in most current standard dictionaries. Here’s a representative sampling, from two British and two American sources:

Lexico: “Essentially different in kind; not allowing comparison … Containing elements very different from one another.”

Collins: “Disparate things are clearly different from each other in quality or type … A disparate thing is made up of very different elements.”

American Heritage: “Fundamentally distinct or different in kind; entirely dissimilar … Containing or composed of dissimilar or opposing elements.”

Merriam-Webster: “markedly distinct in quality or character … containing or made up of fundamentally different and often incongruous elements.”

M-W adds in a synonym note that “different may imply little more than separateness but it may also imply contrast or contrariness,” as in “different foods.” But “disparate emphasizes incongruity or incompatibility,” as in “disparate notions of freedom.”

As for the etymology, the OED says that “disparate” came into English in the early 17th century from the Latin disparatus (“separated, divided”), past participle of the verb disparare (“to separate, divide”). The Latin verb was formed from the prefix dis- (in the sense of “in twain, in different directions, apart”) and the verb parare (“to make ready, prepare, provide, contrive, etc.”).

In English use, the dictionary adds, “disparate” is “apparently often associated with Latin dispar unequal, unlike, different.” However, only one of the ten standard dictionaries we consult, Webster’s New World College Dictionary (5th ed.), includes “unequal” among its definitions. That sense of “disparate” seems to be found mostly in legal language, as in “disparate treatment,” a phrase often used in discrimination cases.

The OED’s earliest example of the adjective in written English is from a sermon delivered on Nov. 5, 1608, by John King, Bishop of London: “Two disperate species and sorts of men.”

And this is the latest citation: “The questions are so utterly disparate as not to be reducible to the same argument” (Frederic Harrison, writing in The Pall Mall Gazette, Nov. 3, 1883).

A noun form, used chiefly in the plural, was recorded a couple of decades earlier than the adjective. The OED defines “disparates” as “disparate things, words, or concepts; things so unlike that they cannot be compared with each other.”

Oxford’s earliest example is from Timothy Bright’s A Treatise of Melancholie (1586): “Contrary faculties, or such as we call disparates in logicke.”

Like “disparate,” the much older adjective “different” has its roots in Latin. And as we’ll explain, it’s often used today in ways that overlap “disparate.”

It can be traced ultimately to the classical Latin verb differre (to differ), derived from ferre (to bear or carry) plus dif-, a prefix used instead of dis- before a verb beginning with “f.”

To the Romans, the OED says, differre had many meanings: “to carry away in different directions, to scatter, disperse, to separate, to bewilder, distract, to spread abroad, publish, to postpone, defer, to keep (someone) waiting,” as well as “to be different, to disagree.”

The earliest sense of “different” that’s still used in modern English, according to the dictionary, is “unlike in nature, form, or quality; not of the same kind; dissimilar,” a sense not unlike “disparate.” This use of “different” was first recorded in the late 14th century and is still quite common now.

Two other uses of “different” are also current today: (1) “distinct; separate; other” (mid-16th century), used in reference to “two or more separate people or things of the same type, rather than two or more things which differ in nature, form, or quality”; and (2) “out of the ordinary, unusual; other than is expected; novel” (mid-19th century).

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Q: The other day one of my students asked me why a segment of a journey is called a “leg.” I didn’t have an answer. Could it be because distance was once measured in leagues, and someone misheard “league” as “leg”?

A: Many English words have literal meanings as well as figurative ones fashioned from them. The noun “leg” originally referred to one of the two long limbs that we stand or walk on, but it has taken on many metaphorical senses over the years.

For example, it may refer to something that covers a human leg (like a pants leg, 1558), or functions as a human leg (a furniture leg, 1616), or serves as a part of something else (a leg of a relay race, 1933). And in the plural, it may describe something popular with staying power (a show with legs, 1930). The dates are for the earliest citations of the senses in the Oxford English Dictionary.

When “leg” is used in the journey sense, according to the OED, it refers to “a part or section of something,” specifically “a distinct stage or stretch.” The dictionary’s earliest written example uses the term nautically for “the course and distance sailed on a single tack”:

“The Swash was under what Mrs. Budd might have called her ‘attacking’ canvas, and was close by the wind, looking on a good leg well up the harbor” (Graham’s Magazine, December 1846).

When English borrowed the word “leg” from early Scandinavian languages (lägger in Old Swedish, leggr in Old Icelandic, leg in Old Danish), it meant “the lower limb of the human body, or the part of the lower limb between the hip and the ankle,” the OED says.

The dictionary’s earliest example, which we’ve expanded, is from Layamon’s Brut, a chronicle of Britain written in Middle English sometime before 1200:

“hii ȝogede hire harmes and greiþede ham-seolue breost wiþ breost bones þar crakede hii soten hire legges þe kempes weren stronge” (“They yoked their arms and crushed themselves breast to breast. Their bones cracked. They thrust out their legs. The warriors struggled fiercely”).

In the struggle, the Trojan warrior Corineus defeats the giant Gogmagog. The clash ends a battle between a group of giants and a Trojan force led by Brutus of Troy, a legendary founder of Britain.

So how did English speakers refer to their legs before the word “leg” appeared in the 12th century? The Anglo-Saxons used the word “shank” (sceanca, scanca, or scance in Old English), a noun that could mean the whole leg or just the lower part, from the knee to the ankle.

The earliest example we’ve seen for “shank” used to mean a leg is from Old English Martyrology, a collection of the lives of saints and other religious figures, written in the second half of the ninth century:

This passage is from the life of St. Victor Maurus, a Christian Moor said to have been tortured and beheaded in 303 on orders of the Roman Emperor Maximian (circa 250-310). Victor is speaking here to the guards taking him to his execution:

“cwæð he to þæm þe hine lædon secgað ge maximiane þæm casere þæt he bið to geare dead ond him beoð þa scancan forbrocen hæfdon ær þon he sy bebyrged” (“Then he said to those who were escorting him, tell Emperor Maximian that he will be dead within a year, and that his legs will be crushed before he will be buried”). Maximian retired to a life of luxury in 305, but he hanged himself five years later after being defeated in a rebellion against Emperor Constantine.

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Q: I’m wondering about the use of the expression “don’t badger me” to mean don’t bother me, a usage that may have a different connotation in Madison, home of the University of Wisconsin Badgers.

A: As you may suspect, the verb “badger,” meaning to pester, comes from the noun “badger,” for the mammal that’s fierce when attacked. The pestering sense of the verb is probably derived from the human baiting of badgers as a blood sport.

The European badger (Meles meles) was common in Anglo-Saxon England, but it wasn’t called a “badger” until the early Modern English of the 16th century, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary.

In Old English and Middle English, the word for the animal was a term of Celtic origin, spelled broc, brok, brock, etc. (In The Tale of Mr. Tod, a children’s book by Beatrix Potter, a badger named Tommy Brock is the arch enemy of Mr. Tod, a fox.)

So how did the animal come to be called a “badger”? The OED says the name probably comes the noun “badge” and is “so called with reference to the white mark borne like a badge on its forehead.” The word “badge” originally referred to a heraldic symbol worn to identify a knight and his retainers.

The earliest OED citation for the noun “badger,” which we’ve expanded, refers to the “propertyes … of a bauson or a badger” and cites “a whyte rase [slash] or a ball in the foreheed.” (From The Book of Husbandry, 1523, by John Fitzherbert.) The word “bauson” is an archaic, French-inspired term for a badger.

The verb appeared more than two and a half centuries later. The dictionary defines it as “to bait, hound; to subject to persistent harassment or persecution; to pester, bother.”

The OED says the meaning is “probably with allusion to baiting or drawing of badgers by humans,” though it notes “the supposed tenacity of a badger in biting until its teeth met.”

The dictionary’s first citation for the verb, which we’ve also expanded, is from a critical description of the Académie Française, the official authority on the French language:

“Paris is the only place where it can support any kind of consequence; though, even there, sorely badgered by the wits of the capital, who, expecting neither favour nor friendship, point all their epigrammatical batteries against their members.” (From Paris in Miniature, 1782, Joseph P. Macmahon’s translation of Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s Le Tableau de Paris.)

The OED includes a mid-19th-century naturalist’s explanation of the verb: “A ‘brock’ … led such a persecuted life, that to ‘badger’ a man came to be the strongest possible term for irritating, persecuting, and injuring him in every way.” (From Sketches and Anecdotes of Animal Life, 1855, by the Rev. John George Wood.)

We’ll end with a picture of Bucky the Badger, the fierce-faced mascot of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Badgers:

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Q: When a friend, a fourth-generation Maine islander, likes something, he says, “Well, that’s not too rusty.” I always assumed it was just him, but I recently reread Huckleberry Finn, where a hungover duo is “looking pretty rusty.” Is this an Americanism or does it go farther back? I’ve always thought of rusty as strictly having to do with old iron.

A: English speakers have used “rusty” figuratively since the Middle Ages to describe the appearance, morals, refinement, or fitness of people. And we still often use the adjective in figurative senses derived from its original use for the coating on oxidized iron and its alloys.

For example, if your knowledge or skill is impaired by lack of practice, you might say your tennis or typing or constitutional law or Mandarin is rusty. Something that’s the color of rusting metal—hair, leaves, fur, a sunset—may be described as rusty. And a hoarse or grating voice is sometimes said to be rusty.

The noun “rust,” as you may imagine, is very old. When it showed up in early Old English writing, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it meant a “red, orange, or yellowish-brown substance which forms progressively as a flaking, permeable coating on the surface of iron and its alloys as a result of oxidation, esp. through exposure to air and moisture.”

The dictionary’s earliest example is from an eighth-century Latin-Old English glossary: “Erugo, rust” (Corpus Glossary, MS 144, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge).

The OED’s next citation is from a Latin-Old English version of Matthew 6:19 in the Lindisfarne Gospels: “In terra ubi aerugo et tinea demolitur: in eorðo ðer uel huer rust & mohða g[e]freten bið uel gespilled bið” (OE translation: “On earth where rust and moth corrode or devour”). The manuscript was written in Latin around 700. A scribe added an Old English gloss, or translation, in the 900s.

The adjective “rusty” also showed up in Anglo-Saxon times. It’s written as rustega in the dictionary’s earliest Old English example: “Þa wurdon Ianes dura fæste betyned & his loca rustega, swa hie næfre ær næron” (“Then the gates of Janus were shut fast and their locks became rusty as never before”). In ancient times, the doors at the Temple of Janus in the Roman Forum were closed in times of peace and opened in wartime.

Getting back to your question, “rusty” began taking on figurative senses in the 1300s, when the term could mean physically decrepit or morally corrupt. The OED’s earliest citation for the decrepit sense is from Chaucer’s Middle English translation of an Old French allegorical poem:

“Ful hidous was she forto sene / Ful foule and Rusty was she” (“Full hideous was she to the sight / Full foul and rusty was she”). From Fragment A of The Romaunt of the Rose, a translation, believed done by Chaucer in the 1360s, of the first part of Le Roman de la Rose (circa 1230), by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun.

The dictionary’s earliest citation for the morally corrupt sense of “rusty” is from William Langland’s Piers Plowman (1378). In the allegorical poem, Piers says he won’t hire “Robert þe Ribaudour [the tale-teller] for his Rousti wordes.”

Over the years, “rusty” has been used figuratively to describe many other things, including something that’s rust colored (late 1300s), writing that’s rough or unsophisticated (c. 1425), a grating sound or hoarse voice (c. 1430), someone lacking polish or refinement (1456), physical or mental impairment because of age or inactivity (perhaps 1507), something that’s old-fashioned or obsolete (1549), and knowledge or accomplishment impaired by disuse (1575).

Some of those senses are rare or obsolete today, but contemporary standard dictionaries say “rusty” can now refer to something that’s rust-colored, to knowledge or skill impaired by lack of recent practice, to someone who’s stiff with age or inactivity, and to a hoarse or croaking voice.

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Q: What are your thoughts about “gravitas” and its overuse in recent election cycles?

A: This pompous word for “seriousness” or “solemnity” sounds ancient, but “gravitas” has only been an English word since the late 19th century. As you’ve noticed, though, it’s become ubiquitous lately.

In fact, “gravitas” has been worked to death. You might say that among certain classes of writers, “gravitas” carries a lot of weight. It seems especially popular in criticism (literary, artistic, etc.) as well as in writing about politics and culture.

A search with Google’s Ngram viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books, shows that its use has shot up steeply since the mid-1980s, charting an almost vertical climb.

But there are signs that the word is showing some wear. In the last couple of years, the chart shows, its use has leveled off and may have peaked.

What’s more, writers have started giving it modifiers—“epic gravitas,” “monumental gravitas,” “enormous gravitas,” “great gravitas,” “tremendous gravitas”—as if mere “gravitas” alone is losing its cachet. Our suspicion is that “gravitas” will eventually sink of its own weight.

The word as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary means “weighty dignity; reverend seriousness; serious or solemn conduct or demeanour befitting a ceremony, an office, etc.; staidness.” But by the mid-20th century it was used more widely to mean “seriousness or sobriety (of conduct, bearing, speech, temperament, etc.); opposed to levity and gaiety.”

And it doesn’t always refer to people and their behavior. Here’s the current definition in Merriam-Webster: “high seriousness (as in a person’s bearing or in the treatment of a subject).”

As for its etymology, the noun was borrowed in the late 1800s from the Latin gravitas, which primarily meant weight in its physical sense, but was also used figuratively to mean weightiness or seriousness. The noun comes from the Latin adjective gravis (heavy, important).

It’s interesting that the word “gravity” itself, which came into English in 1509, first meant seriousness or solemnity. It was “introduced in figurative senses, corresponding generally to the English senses of the adjective [grave],” the OED says. “The primary physical sense of the Latin word came into English first in the 17th cent.”

Similarly, when “gravitas” first appeared in English writing in the late 19th century (usually italicized), it had the figurative rather than the literal meaning of its Latin ancestor.

Initially, English speakers may have used “gravitas” as a substitute for the serious meaning of “gravity,” which by then was commonly used in its scientific sense.

In its earliest uses, both American and British, “gravitas” referred to a character trait admired by the Romans.

The oldest use we’ve found is from a humorous poem: “The gravitas that marked a Roman / Methinks will never find a home in / Our versatile and jovial Harry” (from The Epitome, 1887, an annual publication by students at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA).

The next appeared in London: “He is a man exceptionally endowed with that gravitas which the Romans used so much to desiderate in character” (St James’s Gazette, March 18, 1897).

And this early 20th-century example is from an American magazine: “But many of these have what President Roosevelt has not—namely, that noble old Roman virtue, gravitas” (Current Literature, November 1904).

The OED’s earliest citation is mid-1920s British: “He never sheds a certain Roman gravitas” (The Manchester Guardian Weekly, Oct. 20, 1924).

And we found this example from that same year in an Australian newspaper’s eulogy for a headmaster: “When, indeed, did anyone … embody such gravitas, such dignity, such fortitude, such independence, such justice, such contempt for all that is unworthy and dishonourable? Temperamentally he was more an antique Roman than an Englishman” (The Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, Queensland, Dec. 30, 1924).

Only since the mid-20th century has “gravitas” been applied to serious things and ideas rather than to people. These two OED citations illustrate the wider use of the term:

“A certain gravitas in the atmosphere of the Scottish universities” (The Spectator, May 30, 1958) … “Its leading articles, and even its news coverage, will have a superb Victorian gravitas” (The Times, London, Aug. 2, 1961).

The noun, which is almost never italicized today, is only the latest in a long list of English words derived from the Latin adjective gravis and its prehistoric source—an ancient Indo-European root reconstructed as gwerə– (heavy).

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (2nd ed.), by Calvert Watkins, says the root gwerə– produced not only the Latin gravis but also the Sanskrit element guru- (heavy, venerable), the Greek words βαρύς (barus, heavy) and βάρος (baros, weight), the Latin brutus (heavy, cumbersome), and the Celtic elements brig-o- (strength) and brig-a- (strife).

These eventually gave English the words “grief,” “grieve,” “gravid,” “guru,” “aggravate,” “aggrieve,” “baritone,” “barium,” “isobar,” “brio,” “brigade,” “brigand,” and “brigantine,” in addition to “gravity,” “gravitas,” and the adjective “grave.”

And by the way, the noun “grave,” for a burial place, has entirely different origins. Its prehistoric source is an Indo-European root reconstructed as ghrebh- (dig, bury, scratch), according to Watkins. Ancient Germanic descendants of this root ultimately gave English not only the noun “grave” but also “engrave,” “gravure,” “groove,” the adjective “graven,” and the verb “grub.”

Thus the two English words “grave,” both of which have an air or solemnity, came into the language from different directions.

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Q: I came across the following passage in the The New Yorker from a 1949 diary entry by Patricia Highsmith:  “I came home in a silent, pent fury.”  It made me wonder if “spent” and “pent” are related—a letting go and a holding in. Thoughts?

A: No, “spent,” the past tense and past participle of the verb “spend,” isn’t etymologically related to the adjective “pent” (more commonly “pent-up”), which originated as the past participle of the verb “pen” (to enclose or confine).

The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology says “spend” is ultimately derived from the classical Latin verb expendere (to weigh out or pay out). In Old English, it was aspendan (to spend, spend entirely, squander) or more frequently forspendan (to spend utterly, spend away, exhaust with spending).

The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest example of an Anglo-Saxon version of “spend” is from the Old English Orosius, an anonymous ninth-century translation of a Latin history written in the fifth century. The citation is in the OED’s entry for the obsolete verb “aspend”:

“Hys gestréon béoð þus eall aspended” (“His wealth was thus all spent”). The manuscript is believed to have been written in the late 800s during the reign of King Alfred. The writer took many liberties in translating the Latin of Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII (History Against the Pagans in Seven Books), written in the early 400s by the Roman historian Paulus Orosius.

As for “pent,” Chambers describes it as a variant spelling of “penned,” the past participle of the verb “pen” (to confine someone or something). The verb, in turn, is derived from the noun “pen” (an enclosure), which is of uncertain origin but possibly Germanic.

The noun first appeared in Anglo-Saxon land charters, but it’s often hard to date the early examples because pen in Old English could mean an enclosure or a hill. The earliest OED example “positively identified” as an enclosure is from a 1227 copy of a 1061 land grant:

“Þonne adun onstream oð rean clif, þanon oð hæð pen suþewardne on þone holan stoc” (“then downstream to the cliff, thence to the heath pen and southward to the hollow place”). From Pre-Conquest Charter-Bounds of Devon and Cornwall (1994), by Della Hooke.

The verb “pen” apparently existed in Old English as pennian, but only a negative version has survived in writing, onpennian (to “open,” which etymologically is to un-pen).

The OED’s earliest onpennian example, which we’ve expanded, is from Pastoral Care, King Alfred’s late ninth-century translation of Liber Regulae Pastoralis, a sixth-century Latin treatise by Pope Gregory. The past participle onpennad is used here:

“Ðæt wæter, ðonne hit bið gepynd, hit miclað & uppað & fundað wið ðæs ðe hit ær from com, ðonne hit flowan ne mot ðider hit wolde. Ac gif sio pynding wierð onpennad, oððe sio wering wirð tobrocen, ðonne toflewð hit eall” (“The water, when it is dammed up and cannot flow where it wants, grows and rises and tries to go where it originally intended. But if the dam is opened, or the weir bursts, it all runs off”).

The dictionary’s first written citation for “pen” used as a verb meaning “to enclose, shut in, confine, or trap (a person or thing)” is in Middle English, from a sermon written sometime before 1200:

“Þe pit tineð his muð ouer þe man þe lið on fule synnen … gif ure ani is þus forswolgen and þus penned, clupe we to ure louerd ihesu crist” (“The pit closes its mouth over the man who lies down on foul sins … and if any of us are thus swallowed and penned, let us call upon Our Lord Jesus  Christ”). From Old English Homilies of the Twelfth Century (1873), edited by Richard Morris.

The OED’s earliest example for “pent” used as an adjective in the sense of “penned” is from a pseudo-Chaucerian text: “He nas nat alway in cloystre ypent” (“He was not always pent in a cloister”). From the Plowman’s Prologue, added to a 1542 edition of Chaucer’s works.

Finally, the dictionary’s first example for “pent-up” appeared a dozen years later: “Yea as a capon longe pent vp in the caue [cave] / Exiled haue I bene miserably.” From The Resurreccion of the Masse (1554), a collection of religious poems by Hughe Hilarie, thought by some scholars to be a pseudonym for John Bale, an English dramatist and Protestant polemicist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are a few American examples we’ve found:

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

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

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

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

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

And now here are some British examples :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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