Tag: Expression

Q: I was always a snob and looked down on the poor souls who referred to “bleu cheese” as “blue cheese.”  Now “blue” seems to be the preferred spelling. Did this misspelling become acceptable because “bleu” seemed like a mistake to most Americans?

A: You’ll be dismayed to hear this, but the phrase “blue cheese” showed up in English a century and a half before the Frenchified “bleu cheese” version.

In fact, the phrase “blue cheese” may have appeared in English before fromage bleu made its appearance in French. Here’s the story.

The earliest example of the phrase “blue cheese” in the Oxford English Dictionary is from an Aug. 3, 1787, entry in The Torrington Diaries, an account of John Byng Torrington’s travels in England and Wales:

“I eat to day at dinner, and at supper, some excellent blue cheese … which … resembles, both in color and taste, the blue mold of Cheshire cheese.”

It wasn’t until the 20th century that “bleu cheese” showed up. The earliest examples that we could find were from the 1940s.

A 1941 issue of the journal Dairy Industries, for example, notes that “Frenchmen are no longer particularly interested in Argentine bleu cheese.” (Argentine bleu cheese? Who knew?)

Interestingly, the only citation for “bleu cheese” in the OED is from this quip by Ogden Nash in You Can’t Get There From Here (1957): “Every time the menu lists bleu cheese I want to order fromage blue, / Don’t you?”

The earliest example of fromage bleu that we could find in a search of French works in the Google Books database was in Huit Jours d’Absence, an 1821 book by H. Saint-Thomas.

In gushing over a cheesemonger’s creations, the author writes that nous mangeon avec délices (“we eat with delight”) the delicacies from the marchand de fromage bleu (“the blue-cheese merchant”).

But even if it turns out that there are earlier examples of fromage bleu out there, we see no reason why an English speaker should refer to all blue cheeses as “bleu cheeses.”

The three best-known blue cheeses are probably Roquefort (French), Gorgonzola (Italian), and Stilton (English).

It would be just as silly to refer to Gorgonzola as a “bleu cheese” or un fromage bleu as it would be to use either term for Stilton.

As for Roquefort, why shouldn’t an American (good speller or bad) call it a “blue cheese”? After all, the cheese is French, not the speaker.

Update: A French reader of the blog points out that “we rarely say fromage bleu. Instead, we say bleu, du bleu, or bleu de [place where it was made].”

Check out our books about the English language

­

Q: Whence cometh “right now”?  Our newscasters in Detroit use it all the time and this drives me batty. What’s wrong with just plain old “now”? Any light you can shed would be appreciated.

A: Just about any usage can get on one’s nerves if used too much, but we don’t believe “right” is redundant in the adverbial phrase “right now.”

Here the adverb “right” is an intensifier that emphasizes the nowness—the sense of being in the present—of the adverb “now.”

In fact, the word “right” has been used for emphasis since the earliest days of Old English, the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons.

It’s used in the sense of “exactly” or “precisely” to modify such words as “now,” “then,” “here,” and “there,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

In the early days, the OED says, the adverb “right” was used as both a “premodifier” (as in “right anon,” “right now,” or “right then”) and a “postmodifier” (as in “anon-right,” “now right,” or “here-right”).   

As it turns out, the word “right” follows “now” in the dictionary’s earliest example of the usage you’re asking about.

In The Lindisfarne Gospels, an illuminated manuscript that may date from as early as the year 700, the phrase is written as nu reht in Old English.

In case you’re interested, the ultimate source of the word “right” is the Indo-European base reg- (to move in a straight line), according to John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins.

That same prehistoric Indo-European root has given English, via Latin, such words as “regal,” “royal,” “rectangle,” “rectify,” “rectitude,” and “rectum.”

Yes, “rectum.” As Ayto explains, “rectum” is short for rectum intestinum or “straight intestine”—a term “contrasting the rectum with the convolutions of the remainder of the intestines.”

Check out our books about the English language

­

Q: I recently moved from the East Coast to the West Coast. I have noticed that people out West say, “after a while” in situations where I would say, “in a while.” Which is grammatically correct? This is really bothering me!

A: Bother yourself no longer. There’s very little difference between “in a while” and “after a while,” and for the most part they’re interchangeable.

We’ve never heard of a regional preference for one or the other. English speakers seem to choose one or the other at will. Generally, your ear will choose one for you.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that the noun phrase “a while” means “a time, esp. a short or moderate time,” and that it’s used chiefly with the prepositions “after,” “for,” and “in.”

Although the two expressions are generally used the same way, their literal meanings are different.

Here the word “in” means “within limits of space, time, condition, circumstances, etc.,” the OED says. So the literal meaning of “in a while” is within the limits of a short or moderate time.

And “after” in reference to time means “subsequent to, following the interval of, at the conclusion of (a period of time),” the OED says. So “after a while” literally means following a short or moderate time.

But for all practical purposes, the two expressions amount to the same thing, since the time referred to is so nebulous. It’s of little consequence whether something occurs within or following a time that’s general and unspecified.

However, you might prefer one version over the other in certain circumstances—or even for psychological reasons.

For example, agreeing to do a task “in a while” sounds more accommodating than agreeing to do it “after a while.”

And in certain constructions, “in” is more idiomatic—“once in a while” … “see you in a while.” But in others, “after” might seem more natural—“After a while, the pain subsided” …  “After a while, we decided to leave.”

Both “in a while” and “after a while” have been common English phrases for hundreds of years.

“In a while” and the now obsolete “within a while” were first recorded about 1380, the OED says. “After a while” first showed up in 1526.

And after a while, the expressions became almost automatic.

While we’re at it, you might be interested in a post we ran back in 2006 about “a while” versus “awhile,” and a post in 2008 about the use of “while” to mean “although,” “whereas,” or “during the time that.”

In the earlier post, we mention that “while” comes from a prehistoric Indo-European root meaning “rest” or “repose,” and it entered Old English from Germanic sources. It can be a noun, a conjunction, or a verb, as in this sentence:

“For a while, we whiled away our time while answering your question.” 

 Check out our books about the English language

­

Q: I’m designing a client brochure that includes thanks from numerous folks. The heading reads: “Season’s Greeting and thank you’s from our scholars.” Is the use of “thank you’s” OK? Doesn’t this make it possessive, not plural? But without the apostrophe, “thank yous” looks typically “Jersey” to me!

A: We see no reason why “thank you” has to be pluralized here. But if you want to use the plural, a phrase like “thank you” is pluralized by simply adding the letter “s.”

We agree, though, that “thank yous” looks a bit odd. It might look less so if you added a hyphen (“thank-yous”) or capital letters (“Thank Yous”) or perhaps both (“Thank-Yous”).

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.), which hyphenates “thank-you,” gives this plural example: “said their thank-yous and departed.”

Although you may raise a few eyebrows with the use of “thank yous,” you’ll raise a lot more by using “Season’s Greeting” rather than the more idiomatic “Season’s Greetings.”

If we were writing the heading for that brochure, we’d go with this: “Season’s Greetings and Thank You from our scholars.”

As for the Jerseyism you mentioned, we had an item on our blog some time ago about “yous,” “yinz,” “yez,” “y’all,” and other nonstandard plural forms of “you.”

We also had a post around the same time about why some people respond to “thank you” with a “thank you” of their own instead of “you’re welcome.”

And if you’re not thanked-out by now, you might be interested in our views about the expression “thank you kindly.”

Getting back to “thank you” itself, the Oxford English Dictionary says it showed up in Middle English as a short form of the expression “I thank you.”

The OED’s earliest citation is from Why I Can’t Be a Nun, a poem from the 1400s that criticizes religious institutions:

“ ‘Thanke yow, lady,’ quod I than. ‘And thereof hertely I yow pray.’ ” (We’ve expanded the citation.)

The use of “thank you” as a noun phrase referring to an expression of gratitude appeared in the late 1700s, according to OED citations.

The first citation is from a 1792 journal entry by the English novelist Fanny Burney: “He looked even extremely gratified … & Bowed expressively a thank you.”

The earliest example of the noun phrase used in the plural is from the Aug. 21, 1894, issue of the Westminster Gazette:

“The majority of passengers retreated from the tables regardless of their running fire of ‘thankyous,’ which were thankyous for nothing.”

The phrase is hyphenated in this example from the Sept. 1, 1900, issue of the Westminster Gazette:  “We had not said nearly enough ‘thank-yous.’ ”

As for “season’s greetings,” the earliest references we’ve found in Google Books are from the mid-19th century. We’ll end with this example from a Dec. 29, 1860, item in the Medical and Surgical Reporter, a weekly journal in Philadelphia:

“We offer our readers, far and near, the season’s greetings — of a Christmas gone and the New Year dawning. Much of hope and good cheer we want all; for ourselves, for our profession, for our country.”

Check out our books about the English language

­

Q: I hate it when people say to me, “It’s the least I can do.” I know what they mean, but the implication is that they’ll do the least they can for me. I always point out that I’m more interested in the most they can do for me. It’s a funny old English-speaking world.

A: We interpret the familiar idiom “It’s the least I can do” more generously than you do.

People who say this are suggesting that they’d be willing to do even more if you were to ask. They don’t mean “I’ll do the least I can and no more.”

But there’s another side to this coin. Someone who responds with “It’s the least you can do” isn’t being magnanimous. He means he has a right to expect more!

Enough about the psychology of “the least I can do.” We’re on firmer ground discussing the history of this expression and ones like it.

The word “least” is Germanic in origin. It was first recorded in writing about the year 950 as an adjective, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary.

It’s a superlative form of “little,” and is defined in the OED as “little beyond all others in size or degree; smallest; slightest.” Although “least” once meant “fewest” as well, that sense of the word has died out.

This OED citation, from Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768), nicely illustrates the use of “least” as an adjective: “A fix’d star of the least magnitude.”

Two other good adjectival example are the phrases “line of least resistance” (1746) and “path of least resistance” (1896).

“Least” has also been used as an adverb since around 1300.

This adverbial example is from the philosopher George Berkeley’s Alciphron (1732): “Alciphron has made discoveries where I least expected it.”

But “least” has another important function. Since the 12th century it’s been used as a “quasi-noun,” the OED says.

This is the “least” that we find in expressions like “to say the least,” “at least” (or “at the very least”), “not in the least,” “last but not least,” “that’s the least of it,” “least said, soonest mended,” and the usage you’re concerned with—“the least I can do.”

That last one, and versions that vary with the subject or pronoun used (“the least you/he/she/they can do”), go back to the early 17th century—at least.

The OED has only one example (from the 20th century), but we’ve found many going as far back as the 1600s and we wouldn’t be surprised if there are even older ones.

This one is from a 17th-century volume, The Annals of King James and King Charles the First: 1612-1642 (the quotation is from a speech that James delivered before the House of Lords in 1621):

“And since I cannot yet retribute by a General Pardon (which hath by form been usually reserved to the End of a Parliament) the least I can do (which I can forbear no longer) is to do something in present, for the Ease and Good of my People.”

Here are a few more examples:

1677: “Certainly the least you can do is to wait upon his pleasure for them.” (From John Flavel’s Divine Conduct and Saint Indeed.)

1680: “The least he can do is to be mistrustful of his Judgment, and of the quality of his Understanding.” (From a collection of Jansenist treatises called Moral Essays.)

1694: “And truly this is the least you can do if you would be grateful.” (From Samuel Slater’s An Earnest Call to Family-Religion.)

1695: “You have taken care of Honour, and ’tis the least I can do to take care of Conscience.” (From William Congreve’s comedy Love for Love.)

And that’s not the least of it. The usage became even more ubiquitous in the centuries to come.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: I don’t see any mention of “Mayday,” the danger signal, on your blog. Do you know that it comes from m’aidez in French?

A: Yes, it’s true that the distress signal “Mayday” comes from French. The Oxford English Dictionary says this English interjection is derived from the French m’aidez or m’aider (“help me!”).

The OED notes that the latter form, m’aider, is “either the imperative infinitive or short for venez m’aider  ‘come and help me!’ ”

The term (capitalized in some dictionaries but not in others) was adopted in the early 20th century as an international radio distress signal, principally for use by ships and aircraft.

The National Maritime Museum in Cornwall, England, says on its website that Frederick Stanley Mockford, a senior radio officer at Croydon Airport in London, originated the usage in 1923:

“He was asked to think of a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood by all pilots and ground staff in an emergency. Since much of the traffic at the time was between Croydon and Le Bourget Airport in Paris, he proposed the word ‘mayday’ from the French word m’aidez.”

The OED’s earliest example of the usage, from a February 1923 edition of the Times of London, explains why it was devised as an alternative to “SOS”:

“Owing to the difficulty of distinguishing the letter ‘S’ by telephone, the international distress signal ‘S.O.S.’ will give place to the words ‘May-day,’ the phonetic equivalent of ‘M’aidez,’ the French for ‘Help me.’ ”

This somewhat later example, under the heading “Aircraft and Wireless,” is from the B.B.C. Year-Book for 1930:

“In case of distress, due to engine failure over the sea, the word ‘Mayday’—equivalent to the S.O.S. used by ships—transmitted through the microphone, will summon immediately all possible help.”

 “Mayday” was used later as a noun to mean either “a distress signal consisting of the word ‘Mayday!’ ” or, more generally, “any distress call or call for help,” the OED says.

By the way, the distress signal “SOS” (it’s dotless these days), doesn’t stand for “Save Our Ship” or “Save Our Souls” or anything else. Here’s how we describe it in Origins of the Specious, our book about language myths:

“Wireless radio operators adopted it in the early twentieth century because the letters in Morse code (three dots, three dashes, three dots) were easy to send and unlikely to be misunderstood.”

Check out our books about the English language

­

Q: When my advanced English students use “find out,” I tell them it’s a lazy colloquialism that should be replaced with verbs like “learn,” “perceive,” and “discover.” Your blog is required reading for my students, but the search function returns 58 instances where you use the term. Am I too strict, or are you lazy, also?

A: Well, we may be lazy, but you’re much too strict! The phrasal verb “find out” is perfectly respectable.

It’s been used in scholarly English since the mid-16th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) dates it even earlier, from the 13th century.

When first recorded in writing, the OED says, “find out” meant “to come upon by searching or inquiry; to discover (what is hidden).” Oxford’s earliest recorded example comes from a book on logic, Thomas Wilson’s The Rule of Reason (1551).

In a reference to searching for gold, Wilson writes: “They … do searche narrowly … and … at length fynde out the mine.”

(A few years later, in The Arte of Rhetorique, Wilson uses the phrase “to finde out the trueth,” and refers to logic as “that arte, which by reason findeth out the trueth.”)

Around this same time, the OED says, the verb was used to mean “to discover by attention, scrutiny, study, etc.; to devise, invent; to unriddle, solve.” 

The dictionary’s first citation for this use of “find out” is from an English-Latin dictionary, Richard Huloet’s Abcedarium Anglo Latinum (1552): “Finde out by studye, excudo.”

The sense of the verb that’s most familiar today (“to make a discovery; to discover a fact, the truth, etc.”) emerged in the mid-19th century, according to OED citations. In this usage, “find out” is often followed by “about,” Oxford adds.

Here are a few of the OED’s citations for this sense of the phrasal verb:

1862: “ ‘I don’t like the pigs—I don’t know where they are.’ ‘Well, we must find out.’ ” (From George Macdonald’s novel David Elginbrod.)

1881: “ ‘Who might that one be?’ ‘I am thinking ye’ll have to find out for yourself.’ ” (From Charlotte Eliza L. Riddell’s novel The Senior Partner.)

1893: “ ‘He has found out about Mrs. Le Grice’s bill,’ said Lally to herself.” (From Mary Elizabeth Mann’s novel In Summer Shade.)

1894: “Perhaps death brings peace. I shall soon find out about that.” (From “The Umbrella-Mender,” a short story in Beatrice Harraden’s book In Varying Moods.)

So you can see that “find out” has a solid reputation. If a phrase has been used in educated English since before Shakespeare’s (maybe even Chaucer’s) time, you can be sure that it’s a legitimate usage.

And none of the dictionaries or usage guides we’ve checked label “find out” as a colloquialism or as anything other than standard English.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: I’m confused about the expression “let it be.” Is it used in a positive or a negative sense?

A: We wouldn’t describe the usage as either positive or negative, though “let it be” is often used in the sense of letting a complicated or troublesome situation resolve itself on its own.

The verbal phrase “let be,” meaning let someone or something alone, first showed up in English in the 12th century, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED defines the phrase as “to leave undisturbed, not to meddle with; to abstain from doing (an action); to leave off, cease from.”

Here’s an example of the usage from The Legend of Good Women (circa 1385), a poem by Chaucer:

“Lat be thyn arguynge / Ffor loue ne wele nat Countyrpletyd be.” (Modern English: “Let be thine arguing / For love will hear no pleas against itself.”)

And here’s an example of the actual phrase “let it be” from Shelley’s 1822 translation of Goethe’s Scenes From Faust:

“Let it be — pass on — / No good can come of it — it is not well.” (Mephistopheles is speaking here to Faust.)

Of course the best-known use of the expression is from “Let It Be,” the title song of the Beatles’ last studio album, which was released in 1970:

“When I find myself in times of trouble / Mother Mary comes to me / Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.”

Paul McCartney has said the idea for the song came to him in a dream while he “was going through a really difficult time around the autumn of 1968.”

In The Right Words at the Right Time, a book edited by Marlo Thomas, McCartney says he “had the most comforting dream about my mother, who died when I was only fourteen.”

In the dream, McCartney says, “my mother appeared, and there was her face, completely clear, particularly her eyes; and she said to me very gently, very reassuringly: ‘Let it be.’ ”

“So, being a musician, I went right over to the piano and started writing a song: ‘When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me’… Mary was my mother’s name … ‘Speaking words of wisdom, let it be. There will be an answer, let it be.’ ”

McCartney says he wrote “the main body of it in one go, and then the subsequent verses developed from there: ‘When all the broken-hearted people living in the world agree, there will be an answer, let it be.’ ”

Check out our books about the English language

Q: I’m writing fiction that takes place in 1928 New York City and I wonder if these expressions were used at that time: “She didn’t care a fig” … “She didn’t give a hoot.” Also, could you recommend a good book to consult for speaking styles in the 1920s,’30s,’40s, and ’50s?

A: Those two phrases are well within your fictional time frame. The expression “to care (or give) a fig” dates back to the early 1600s, and “to give (or care) a hoot” has been around since before World War I.

In case you’d like to know how figs and hoots got into these expressions, here’s some etymology.

Both nouns—“fig” and “hoot”—have long been used figuratively for something small and unimportant, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

So something that’s “not worth a fig (or a hoot),” or something that you “don’t care a fig (or a hoot) about,” is worthless or contemptible.

The noun “fig”—sometimes “a fig’s end”—was recorded in the sense of something unimportant as early as the mid-1400s.

The OED has this example from The Court of Love, an anonymous poem written about 1450: “A Figge for all her chastite!”

The phrase “not worth a fig” appears in 1600 in a collection of epigrams and satires by Samuel Rowlands: “All Beere in Europe is not worth a figge.”

The OED’s earliest written example of  “care a fig” is from a French-English dictionary published in 1632: “Not to care a figge for one, faire la figue à.”

The “give” version appeared soon afterward, in a Latin-English dictionary of 1634: “Fumi umbra non emerim,  I will not give a fig’s end for it.”

The fact that readers were seeing those “fig” phrases in dictionaries of the 1630s indicates that they were in common use well before that time.  

The “hoot” version came along centuries later, and there are many variations: “give/care/worth a hoot,” even “two hoots,” and “a hoot in hell.”

The noun “hoot” was used in the late 19th century to mean the smallest detail, according to the OED.

Oxford’s earliest example is from John Hanson Beadle’s travel narrative Western Wilds, and the Men Who Redeem Them (1878): “I got onto my reaper and banged down every hoot of it before Monday night.”

“Hoot” started popping up in what are now familiar colloquial expressions shortly after the turn of the century.

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang has the earliest example we know of. It’s from a letter Harry Truman wrote to his wife in 1912, collected in the book Dear Bess:

“I really do not care a hoot what you do with my letters so long as you write me.”

Random House also has this example from the novel Three Soldiers (1921), by John Dos Passos: “I didn’t give a hoot in hell what it cost.”

The OED quotes this passage from another novel that appeared a couple of years later, Ralph Delahaye Paine’s Comrades of the Rolling Ocean (1923): “I am glad of that even if he did tell me that as a supercargo I wasn’t worth a hoot in hades.”

Oxford has five subsequent examples that appeared in print before 1928—two from 1925, two from 1926, and one from 1927. So you can safely use both the “fig” and the “hoot” expressions in your fiction.

As for your final question, we recommend that you get yourself a good slang dictionary.

The three-volume Green’s Dictionary of Slang is pretty pricey, but you can get a used copy of Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English or Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang (both good) online for $10 or $20. Try eBay too. And try to get the most recent edition that you can afford.

Cheaper slang dictionaries aren’t likely to be as authoritative or dependable.

Unfortunately, the really excellent Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang  was never finished. Only the first two volumes appeared, and the company’s dictionary division shut down just before the third volume was to be published.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: On a recent trip to California, a motel desk clerk asked us: “Are we done here?”  When we replied, “Yes,” he said, “Let’s rock ’n’ roll.”  How did this phrase come to mean “Let’s get moving”? I’ve even heard it used as a statement of approval.

A: For more than 30 years, the verb “rock-and-roll” (also spelled “rock ’n’ roll”) has been used in the sense of “get moving” or “get started.”

So that desk clerk meant “Let’s get on with checking you out and preparing your bill” (or words to that effect).

The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest published example for this use of the verb “rock-and-roll” (which it hyphenates) is from the April 2, 1980, issue of the Washington Post: “It’s time to rock and roll. The town is ours.”

A few years later, in 1984, this example appeared in the New York Times: “Mittleman looked down at his mended foot, slipped on a pair of shoes borrowed from Record and said, ‘I’m ready to rock and roll.’ ”

Later the phrase started showing up in books, as in these two OED citations:

“Looks like we’re on, lads. Be ready to rock and roll at eleven-thirty!” (From Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, 1997.)

“He uncapped a fountain pen, and took out a yellow legal pad. ‘Okay, Mrs. Chatterjee, let’s rock and roll.’ ” (From Bharati Mukherjee’s novel Desirable Daughters, 2002.)

The OED describes “rock-and-roll” here as a slang usage meaning “to get going, begin, esp. with vigour and energy.” The phrase occurs “chiefly” in the phrases “let’s rock and roll” and “ready to rock and roll,” Oxford adds.

As it happens, a shorter version, “rock”—also defined as “to get going, begin, esp. with vigour and energy”—was  recorded as early as the mid-’60s, the OED says.

This version also appears “chiefly” in the expressions “let’s rock” and “ready to rock,” according to the dictionary.

The OED’s earliest citation for this use of “rock” is from a football story in the Oct. 17, 1966, issue of the Los Angeles Times: “All the Bruins, as a matter of fact, should be back and ready to rock with the Bears.”

This more recent example is from Wired magazine in 2000: “The infrastructure is still in place, future-proofed and ready to rock.”

The daddy of these usages, born in the USA in the 1950s, is the verb “rock-and-roll,” defined in the OED as “to dance to or play rock-and-roll music.”

And the granddaddy is the noun phrase “rock ’n’ roll” (as Oxford spells it), whose origins as a musical term aren’t so easy to pin down. In its earliest uses, it can probably be traced to black American music between World Wars I and II.

Here we need to back up a bit to point out that individually, the verbs “rock” and “roll” are extremely old.

The OED says “rock” (meaning “to move to and fro in a gentle and soothing manner”) was recorded in late Old English, and “roll” (“to move with a swaying motion”) in Middle English. So they’re pushing a thousand years old.

The expression “rock ’n’ roll,” the OED says, originated “probably with reference to the motion of the body when dancing.”

But it adds: “It is possible that there may originally also have been some allusion to uses of each verb as euphemisms for sexual intercourse.”

The journalist and rock historian Nick Tosches is more positive on this note, saying the two words have long had sexual connotations. In Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ’n’ Roll (1977), Tosches writes:

“An early nineteenth-century sea chanty included the line, ‘Oh do, me Johnny Bowker, come rock ’n’ roll me over.’ A lyric found in the ceremonial Fire Dance of Florida’s obeah worshipers was ‘Bimini gal is a rocker and a roller.’ ”

In African-American blues recordings, “rock” and “roll” began to proliferate in the 1920s. Both Tosches and the OED cite a 1922 recording by the blues singer Trixie Smith of the song “My Daddy Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll).”

Similar usages, especially in African-American music, appeared in the later ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s.

“Rock” in this sense, the OED says, meant both “to have sexual intercourse with” and “to dance with.” 

The OED says the early use of “rock ’n’ roll,” in reference to the hot, rhythmic music of the prewar years, meant “a vigorous and compelling rhythm with a strong beat, as in jazz, swing, or rhythm and blues music; (also) music featuring such a rhythm; lively dance music.”

Its two earliest citations for this early sense of “rock ’n’ roll” are from 1938.

This one is from a song, “Rock It for Me,” written by the twin sisters Kay and Sue Werner, and recorded by Ella Fitzgerald:

“It’s true that once upon a time, / The op’ra was the thing, / But today the rage is rhythm and rhyme, / So won’t you satisfy my soul with a rock an’ roll.”

And this example is from a photo caption that appeared in the New York Times in 1938: “ ‘Rock-and-Roll’ men. Band leaders Benny Goodman (left) and Gene Krupa—Their likes are not to be heard abroad.”

Some time in the early 1950s, the OED says, the meaning of “rock ’n’ roll” shifted and came to mean a new kind of music.

The modern sense of the phrase, according to the OED, was “popularized by disc jockey Alan Freed, who broadcast rhythm and blues music to a multiracial audience from 1951, and later promoted various dances and concerts featuring rhythm and blues performers.”

As the OED explains, Freed’s “1953 ‘Biggest Rhythm and Blues Show’ tour is often regarded as the first major rock ’n’ roll tour, although many of the performers featured would now typically be classified as rhythm and blues vocalists. From this time, the term rock ’n’ roll became popular with white audiences, esp. teenagers.”

Here’s an OED citation from Billboard magazine in 1954: “Freed is now calling his program the ‘Rock and Roll Show.’ ”

Of course, both “rock and roll” and “rock” have taken on whole new meanings in recent generations.

As you mention, the adjective “rock and roll” is now used in the affirmative—it means “cool,” more or less, a usage the OED first records in 1976.

This is an example that Oxford quotes from Esquire magazine in 2008: “Tea is so rock’n’roll these days; according to one rumour, Led Zep’s rider for the O2 gig asked for nothing more than a decent brew of English Breakfast.”

And since the late 1960s, the OED says, to “rock” has meant “to be full of energy, life, and excitement; to be excellent.”

Oxford’s earliest citation is from an advertisement in a 1969 issue of the Times-Bulletin newspaper (Van Wert, Ohio): “Bored? Uptight? In a box? Weekend bowling really rocks!”

[Update, Nov. 11, 2013: A couple of readers pointed out that “let’s roll” is used in the same way as “let’s rock” (let’s get moving), and that the expression took on a special significance for Americans after Sept. 11, 2001. During the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93 over Pennsylvania, Todd Beamer and other passengers worked out a plan to overcome the hijackers and regain control of the plane. Beamer’s last words, overheard on an open phone line, were “Are you guys ready? OK, let’s roll.” The OED says the use of “roll” to mean get started, get moving, or take action dates back to 1931.]

Check out our books about the English language

Q: On the news, I often hear a source quoted “on condition of anonymity” and several variants thereof. This usage sounds like journalese or legalese. Can you clarify the original and the subtleties of its forms?

A: The expression “on condition of anonymity” is associated with news reporting, but we see it in legal contexts as well. So you’d be justified in calling it both “journalese” and “legalese.”

On the legal front, someone might wish to give information without having it linked to his name. This might happen, for instance, in organized-crime or securities-fraud cases, as well as other kinds of law-enforcement investigations.

But anonymous sources are probably most common in journalism, and have been for quite some time. As a British weekly, the Publishers’ Circular, noted in an editorial in 1893, “Anonymity in the press is not a new subject of discussion.”

Someone who talks to a reporter “on condition of anonymity” is willing to give information—but only if he’s not named. He wants certain information to be made public, but he’s not willing to take responsibility for it.

In both the law and in journalism, such information carries a taint of suspicion, even when it’s perfectly legitimate. The informant could have an ulterior motive, since  anonymity allows him to smear another person’s name while remaining nameless himself.

But sometimes journalists and investigators can’t get certain information in any other way, so they promise to protect their source. And it could be that the informant’s reason for anonymity is simply to protect himself—he might face retaliation if identified.

As we said, the anonymous source—even the anonymous reporter—isn’t new. Periodicals of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries commonly featured articles written anonymously or under pen names.

In the 17th century, a satirical pamphlet entitled Whimsies caricatured the anonymous journalist as a weekly “newes-monger” whose “owne genius is his intelligencer” (in other words, his source is himself).

“No matter though more experienced judgements disprove him; hee is anonymos, and that wil secure him,” the pamphlet said. (Here we’ve expanded on a 1631 quotation that appears in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

In the early 18th century, the Spectator, founded by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, was notorious for its anonymous columns and for its “letters” (often fictional) from nameless or pseudonymous writers.

The OED quotes one letter-writer in 1712 as begging to be heard “amongst the crowd of other anonymous correspondents.”

And in 1820 Blackwood’s Magazine spoke of “the merit due to us, for being the first to carry on a periodical work, without that vile anonymous disguise, under which such unwarrantable liberties are frequently taken with You, my public.”

Oxford cites this 1882 quotation from the Times of London: “Academical dignitaries, writing … under a disguise of transparent anonymity.” Notice how the writer of that article recognized the evasive nature of the writings he was quoting.

The OED has no citations for the exact expression “on condition of anonymity,” and we can’t say for sure when it first appeared in print.

In 1925 E. M. Forster wrote in the Atlantic that “all literature tends toward a condition of anonymity.” But he used the expression in a different sense than the one we’re discussing here. Forster meant “condition” merely as a state, not as a requirement.

We find the “requirement” sense of the word in this 1925 quotation from the British Medical Journal:

“The Society had since received from the same generous and anonymous source a further munificent gift of something over £28,000, to be applied on the same terms and under the same condition of anonymity.”

And a 1949 article in the Proceedings of the American Association for Public Opinion Research referred to “the condition of anonymity” as “a condition which had for many years been resorted to on the assumption that servicemen would otherwise not give frank reports on the state of their morale.”

The expression as used by journalists quoting unnamed sources wasn’t common, as far as we can tell, until the latter half of the 20th century.

The first such use in the New York Times appears in a 1964 article: “But, though Kennedy himself kept his silence, some of his intimates, on condition of anonymity, did not.”

We’ve found 19th-century examples of the journalistic usage that come close, without using that exact wording.

This one, for example, is from a letter written by Jean Joseph Louis Blanc in 1863 and published in Letters on England (1876):

“Whence comes it that in such a country as England journalism is anonymous? Whence comes it that, generally speaking, anonymity is considered an indispensable condition of journalism? I confess that I am at a loss to explain it.”

And here’s an 1895 example from the Harvard Graduates’ Magazine:

“The first consideration should be, therefore, to create the condition most favorable for the critic to produce an unbiased opinion, and one of the elements of the condition is often anonymity, because it allows him to work impersonally.”

By now, the phrase “on condition of anonymity” is almost a journalistic cliché. 

Walter Shapiro wrote a humorous column on the subject in the Atlantic in 2005, entitled (naturally) “On Condition of Anonymity.”

And Matt Carlson wrote a book on the uses and abuses of anonymity, On the Condition of Anonymity: Unnamed Sources and the Battle for Journalism (2011).

We can’t leave without giving you a little etymology.

The adjective “anonymous,” according to the OED, was first recorded in 1601 (an earlier form, “anonymal,” died out). It literally means “without  name.”

English owes the word “anonymous” to Latin (anonymus) and ultimately Greek (anonymos). But it’s not classical at heart.

Its root is the ancient Indo-European word nomen, the source of the word for “name” in the Germanic languages as well as Latin and Greek.

“Anonymous” is the source of the short-lived noun “anonymousness” (1802) and the more durable “anonymity” (1820).

Check out our books about the English language

Q: In reading some of the old Cold War literature, I frequently come across the term “running dog” in reference to the Chinese disdain for America. What are its origins and implications?

A: The English term “running dog” has been around a lot longer than you might suspect—for hundreds of years before Mao Zedong was a gleam in his father’s eye.

When it first showed up in the early 1600s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the phrase referred to “an animal, esp. a dog: that is raised or kept for pursuing animals in the course of a hunt.”

The earliest citation in the OED is from A Helpe to Discourse (1619), a collection of miscellaneous writings of questionable authorship: “Miso, because I hunted in his grounds / Let lose his running dogges, and baukt my hounds.”

The dictionary notes that a similar term, “running hound,” showed up a couple of centuries earlier.

In The Master of Game (1425), a book on hunting, Edward, Duke of York, writes about “rennyng houndis hunten in diuers maners” on the moors.

In fact, the OED says the use of the term “running dog” by the Communists is derived from zougou, a Chinese term for a hunting dog (from zou, to run, and gou, dog).

The dictionary says the Chinese used the term figuratively in the “18th cent. or earlier in political contexts” to refer to a “servile follower, lackey.”

In the 20th century, according to Oxford, the Chinese Communists used the term for “a person who is subservient  to a foreign power, esp. to one that threatens revolutionary interests.” Later, the dictionary notes, the Communists used the term in a “generalized” sense.

Interestingly, the OED’s earliest written example of the term used in the political sense is from an American newspaper in which the Chinese are referred to as “running dogs” of the Russians.

Here’s the citation, from the June 8, 1925, issue of the Los Angeles Times: “The Communists cry ‘overthrow imperialism,’ but they themselves are the running dogs of red Russian imperialists.”

The next Oxford example is from China: A Nation in Evolution (1928), by Paul Monroe: “The intelligent Chinese … may believe that missionaries in general are but the ‘running dogs’ … of the imperialistic business and political interests.”

The earliest example citing a Chinese source is from Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Volume IV (1961):

“Without a revolutionary party … it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses of the people in defeating imperialism and its running dogs.”

We’ll end with an example from The Honourable Schoolboy, a 1977 novel by John le Carré:

“Czarist imperialist running dogs drank tasteless coffee with divisive, deviationist, chauvinist Stalinists.”

Check out our books about the English language

Q: Why do people say “dead body” instead of just “body”? In a news story about a murder, one would assume that the body found in the woods or in the water was dead.

A: Yes, one would assume that a body found floating in the water was dead. And yes, in many cases it’s unnecessary or redundant to add the adjective “dead” to the noun “body.”

But we might want to add “dead” as an intensifier to emphasize the deadness of the body. And of course “body” doesn’t always refer to a corpse. In fact, the word was around for hundreds of years before it came to mean a dead body.

When the word first showed up in early Old English (spelled bodæi or bodeg), it referred to the “complete physical form of a person or animal,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED’s earliest citation is from a translation of Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, a church history written in the 8th century by the English monk Bede.

That original sense of “body” is still one of the major meanings of the word. It wasn’t until the 13th century, according to Oxford, that “body” took on the meaning of a corpse.

In fact, the OED says the “corpse” sense of the word “perhaps originally” was “a euphemistic shortening of ‘dead body.’ ” And the dictionary has 115 written examples of the phrase “dead body” used over the last five centuries.

John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins says the early etymological history of the word “body” is surprisingly sketchy.

“For a word so central to people’s perception of themselves, body is remarkably isolated linguistically,” Atyo writes.

With the exception of a connection with an Old High German term, “it is without relatives in any other Indo-European language.”

“Attempts have been made, not altogether convincingly, to link it with words for ‘container’ or ‘barrel,’ ” he adds.

All this talk about bodies reminds us of these lines from Robert Burns’s poem “Comin Thro’ the Rye”:

Gin a body meet a body
Comin thro’ the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need a body cry?

(“Gin” means “if” in Scots and dialectal English.)

And of course there’s J. D. Salinger’s version in Catcher in the Rye, where Phoebe corrects Holden for thinking it’s “catch a body.”

“It’s ‘If a body meet a body coming through the rye’!” old Phoebe said.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: I’m a journalism student at Mizzou and recently disagreed with an editor about the word “percentage.” I thought it was interchangeable with “percent,” but she wasn’t so sure. We checked the AP stylebook, but it didn’t illuminate anything. What’s the verdict?

A: These words aren’t necessarily interchangeable. A “percent” is a hundredth part of something, but a “percentage” can mean any part of a whole. 

This is why “percent” is generally used with a number: “50 percent of the flour was ruined.”

And this is why “percentage” is not used with a number, just an ordinary adjective: “a large percentage of the flour was ruined.”

Still, “percent” is sometimes used in place of “percentage,” as in “What percent of the flour was ruined?”

This usage has been discouraged by some language authorities, but it’s recognized in most standard dictionaries and seems idiomatic to us.

The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, by Kenneth G. Wilson, has this to say about the subject:

“Percentage is the more widely accepted noun, especially in Edited English, but Informal use of percent (What percent of your time do you spend watching TV?) seems thoroughly established.”

So if that’s what you and the editor disagreed about, you can both relax. If you’re writing formal English, however, you might want to stick with “percentage.”

Now comes the sticky part.

“Percentage” is a noun. (The noun can also be used attributively as a modifier, as in “percentage point.”)

And “percent” is a noun when it means “percentage.” But there’s some disagreement about how to classify “percent” in other cases.

The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, classifies “per cent” (it’s two words in British English) as an adverb in almost all the other cases.

The dictionary describes “percent” as an adverb when it appears with a number to form a noun phrase that expresses a proportion in hundredths (for example, “10 percent of the students”).

That definition covers a lot of territory. Too much, in our opinion and in the opinion of some standard dictionaries.

Those dictionaries include The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.), Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, and the online Macmillan Dictionary in both its US and UK editions. 

All standard dictionaries, including those three, would agree with the OED that “percent” is an adverb when it modifies a verb or an adjective.

In this adverbial Oxford citation, for example, it modifies a verb: “The Funds rose 1 per cent. on the news” (1804).

However,  American Heritage, Webster’s Third, and Macmillan would disagree with the OED that “percent” is an adverb in these Oxford citations:

“The Blank Tickets bear seven per Cent. Interest” (1710); “At the rate of ten per cent. therefore …” (1776); “Ninety per cent of the cooks do their full share” (1904); “cut my social life by about 35 per cent” (1973).

The three standard dictionaries would consider “percent” an adjective or a noun in those citations. We’ll quote some of their own examples of “percent” used as an adjective, a noun, and an adverb.

Adjective : “a 0.75 percent increase in interest rates” … “harvested 50 percent more wheat” … “another 100 percent result” … “a 3½ percent government bond” … “a 2.25 percent checking account.”

Noun: “provided 40 percent of Europe’s requirements” … “42 percent of the alumni contributed” … “owns 20 percent of the business” … “represent 50 percent of the workforce.”

Adverb: “agreed with her suggestions a hundred percent” … “sales increased 30 percent” … “if he is even one percent responsible for the accident.”  

Why does the OED call “percent” an adverb in cases where some standard dictionaries do not? This probably has a lot to do with the fact that “percent” started out as an adverbial phrase. 

The OED says “per cent” (it uses the British form) was modeled on the Italian phrase per cento, which can be translated as “for (every) hundred.”

The dictionary says the phrase appeared in Italian in 1263 or earlier. (In the following century, incidentally, the Italians invented the % sign.)

“Per cent” was first recorded in English in 1568, but a slightly earlier form showed up in 1565—“per centum,” abbreviated as “per cent.” with a period.

As the OED explains, “per centum” was “the usual form in Acts of Parliament and most legal documents.”

This coinage too was modeled after the Italian per cento, though it was fashioned out of Latin elements (per plus centum). In fact, per centum did not exist in Latin.

The facts remain that in Britain the word is still mostly written as a phrase—“per cent”—and is still regarded as adverbial in some standard dictionaries.

The Cambridge Dictionaries Online, for instance, says it’s an adverb in the examples “You got 20 percent of the answers right” and “Only 40 percent of people bothered to vote.”

American dictionaries would generally regard “percent” as a noun in those examples, though perceptions about the linguistic function of “percent” aren’t unanimous even in the United States.

The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.), for example, sort of agrees with Cambridge and sort of doesn’t.

“Despite changing usage,” the manual says, “Chicago continues to regard percent as an adverb (‘per, or out of, each hundred,’ as in 10 percent of the class)—or, less commonly, an adjective (a 10 percent raise).”

And by the way, the manual, which is widely used in the publishing industry (that means in formal, edited English), also recommends “percentage as the noun form (a significant percentage of her income).”

While we’re on the subject, many people use “percent” and “percentage point” incorrectly—the terms are not interchangeable.

For instance, if a mortgage rate falls to 6 percent from 8 percent, that’s a decline of 2 percentage points, or 25 percent. 

So beware. There’s no percentage in getting things wrong.

By the way, an old friend of ours from the New York Times graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism. Good look with your career!

Check out our books about the English language

[NOTE: This post was updated on July 3, 2016.]

Q: My wife went to a country schoolhouse that was being swallowed up as Omaha grew. Unlike the modern schools in town, hers had no facilities for a hot lunch. But once a month the school system would deliver a hot lunch (usually hot dogs) called a “jitney lunch.” What does “jitney” mean and where does it come from?

A: You’d be surprised at how much time and effort language scholars have spent trying to find out where the word “jitney” comes from.

In Studies in Etymology and Etiology (2009), for example, David L. Gold explores possible French, Russian, Spanish, British, Yiddish, and other sources. His conclusion: origin unknown.

All the other references we’ve checked, including the Oxford English Dictionary and the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, agree: origin unknown.

But in 2016, the language scholar Stephen Goranson of the Duke University Libraries managed to confirm what had previously been only conjecture: The source of “jitney” was jetnée, an African-American word, via the French or Creole spoken in Louisiana, for jeton, French for “token.”

Goranson cites a ditty described in a 1915 issue of the Literary Digest as “a little catch popular with the Louisianian French-Speaking Negro”:

“Mettons jetnée danz il trou / Et parcourons sur la rue—  / Mettons jetnée—si non vous / Vous promenez à pied nou! This may be freely translated: Put a jitney in the slot / And over the street you ride; / Put a jitney—for if not / You’ll foot it on your hide.”

The 1915 article suggests that jetnée/“jitney” was coined by Southern blacks to mean a nickel, and was influenced by French jeton or jetton.

Now for the news. As Goranson says, “The following newly reported discovery appears to confirm such an origin by giving—in an African-American newspaper in 1898—a transitional form.”

Here he cites an article, published in January 1898 in the Illinois Record, headlined “Spingfield South-End Happenings”:

“What little jetney coachman on S. 6th street has such a big head he cant put on the coachman’s hat he only wears the coat with brass buttons?”

Goranson adds: “Note association with coach as well as (presumably) coin (or token), of little worth.”

Once established, the term for a bus or coach token spread quickly. As linguists have previously reported, the word showed up the following year, spelled “jitney,” in the Dec. 16, 1899, issue of the Morning Herald in Lexington, KY:

“ ‘Can’t spare de change. Me granmaw died in Sout’ Afriky an’ I need dis to float me over ter de fun’ral.’  ‘Quit yer kiddin’ an’ let me have a jitney.’ ”

Slang dictionaries say that at the turn of the century, “jitney” (sometimes spelled “gitney”) meant either five cents or a nickel, the fare to ride minibuses at the time. 

But by the early 20th century, the term was being used adjectivally to refer to the minibuses themselves. The OED’s earliest example is in a Nov. 28, 1914, letter from Los Angeles published in the Jan. 14, 1915, issue of the Nation:

“This autumn automobiles, mostly of the Ford variety, have begun in competition with the street cars in this city. The newspapers call them ‘Jitney buses.’ ”

Soon the word was being used by itself as a noun for the minibuses. Here’s an OED example from the April 16, 1915, issue of the New York Evening Post: “The jitney wears out the streets and should contribute to their repair.”

You’ll be especially interested in the next step in the evolution of “jitney”—as a noun used attributively (that is, adjectivally) to mean cheap or shoddy or inferior. Here’s how Oxford explains the new usage:

“So, on account of the low fare or the poor quality of these buses, used attrib. to denote anything cheap, improvised, or ramshackle.”  

The earliest published reference in the OED for this new usage is from Somewhere in Red Gap (1916), Harry Leon Wilson’s sequel to his better-known novel Ruggles of Red Gap (1915):

“It would be an ideal position for him. Instead of which he runs this here music store, sells these jitney pianos and phonographs and truck like that.”

As for those hot dogs served at your wife’s country school once a month, we imagine the meal was referred to as a “jitney lunch” either because it was cheap or uninspiring or because it was delivered by a jitney.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: Is there a term for a song that has the same title as the album it’s on? Is it called the “titular track”?

A: Although the phrase “titular track” is sometimes used for such a tune, the most common terms are “title song” and “title track.”

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) says that when the word “title” is used as an adjective it can mean “having the same title as or providing the title for the collection or production of which it forms a part.” It gives this example: “the title song.”

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “title song” as “the song or track giving its name to a long-playing record.”

The OED’s earliest example is from the Jan. 6, 1961, issue of the British weekly magazine New Musical Express: “Am I that easy to forget … is the title song of a soft-sung album by Debbie Reynolds.”

Oxford defines “title track” (it hyphenates the term) simply as “title song.” The first citation in the dictionary is from the Feb. 21, 1970, issue of Melody Maker, a British weekly that merged with New Musical Express in 2000:

“It’s hard to believe that the same man who could write and play the extraordinary title track could also be responsible for ‘Spirits’ and ‘Search.’ ”

We’ve written a couple of posts about a related term, “eponymous,” which has traditionally referred to the person something is named for, as in “Hamlet is the eponymous hero of Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.”

Modern dictionaries say the term can now refer to the named as well as the namer, as in “Hamlet is the eponymous title of Shakespeare’s play about Hamlet.”

Getting back to your question about a song with the same title as its album, here are the results of a few Google searches: “title song,” 14.1 million hits; “title track,” 10.3 million; “titular track,” 126,000; “titular song,” 22,400.

In case you’re wondering, the word “title” is quite old, dating back to Anglo-Saxon days. The OED says it was spelled titul in Old English and probably pronounced with a short “i” (as in “little”), similar to the short “i” in its Latin source, titulus (an inscription or a title).

Check out our books about the English language

Q: Do you know the origin and precise meaning of “brought to brook”? I used it recently as a shorthand for “made to answer for one’s bad actions” or “brought to justice.” But I may be misusing it and couldn’t readily find it with a Google search.

A: You’ve mushed together two somewhat similar constructions that are often conflated: “bring someone to book” (that is, to bring him to justice or punish him) and “bring someone to brook something” (bring her to accept or tolerate it).

The two expressions are often seen in similar passive constructions: “We have to make sure he’s brought to book” … “I don’t think she’ll ever be brought to brook their bigotry.”

Both usages showed up in English in the early 1800s, though we could find only one (“bring to book”) in dictionaries.

However, we’ve found many versions of “bring to brook” in 19th-century  writing, and some writers have used “brook” in the sense of “book” (though lexicographers don’t acknowledge this usage).

As you can imagine, the noun “book” is quite old, first showing up in the writings of King Alfred in the late 800s. In Old English, the word referred to various kinds of written documents, including deeds, lists, treatises, and literary works.

At the end of the 1400s, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “book” (later “books”) came to mean the accounts of a business.

And by the 1500s, “book” was being used loosely in the sense of an official or personal set of standards.

The expression “bring to book” first showed up in the early 1800s in the sense of requiring someone to account for his actions.

The OED defines the expression as “to bring to account, cause to show authority (for statements, etc.); to examine the evidence for (a statement, etc.), investigate.” The earliest example in the dictionary is from an 1804 issue of Sporting Magazine:

“ ‘Tis not my business to examine your accounts, Sir—but should I bring you to book … there is something in that sly countenance that tells me you have sometimes staked your credit at too great a venture.”

The OED, like the other dictionaries we’ve checked, doesn’t have an entry for “bring to brook,” but it includes the verb “brook,” which meant to “make use of” or “profit by” when it showed up in Old English.

In the 1500s, according to Oxford’s citations, it took on the sense of to “put up with, bear with, endure, tolerate.”   

Here’s an example from Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost (1667): “Heav’n … Brooks not the works of violence and Warr.”

And here’s one from Northanger Abbey (1803), Jane Austen’s first novel: “The General … could ill brook the opposition of his son.”

All the OED citations for this sense of “brook” are in negative constructions, and the dictionary says that’s the only way the usage is seen now.

As for “bring to brook,” we’ve found many examples of the expression used in the 19th century in the sense of bringing someone to accept or tolerate something.

Here’s an entertaining equine example from Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae, an 1826 book of religious writing by Robert Southey:

“It was always a gentle beast, and for that reason had always been ridden by the nobleman’s wife. But after carrying the Pope, the horse could never again be brought to brook his mistress; showing by the most expressive snorting and neighing, and by his indignant motions, that, consecrated as his back had been, no woman must ever presume to take her seat there.”

We’ve also seen quite a few examples, especially in the 20th century, of “bring to brook” used in the sense of “bring to book”—that is, bring to justice or punish.

Here’s one from a 1906 report by the National Association of Training Schools, an organization representing institutions for young offenders:

“You cannot solve the juvenile question by merely punishing the child. You must reach the home—the guilty parent who in most instances is the cause of the child’s undoing. The parents should be brought to brook for delinquency of the child as well as truancy.”

Check out our books about the English language

Q: I recently came across “stroke their egos” in the Globe and Mail in Toronto. I always thought one “stokes” (i.e., feeds) an ego, not “strokes” it. I’d appreciate your opinion.

A: The more popular—and, in our opinion, the more idiomatic—version of the usage is “stroke one’s ego.” It’s also the one that makes more sense etymologically.

However, this usage is relatively new and may still be evolving, perhaps even evolving into two similar expressions with somewhat different meanings.

Although we’ve found a few examples of both “stroke” and “stoke” versions from the 1950s, “stroke” was the clear favorite by the time the usage caught on in the ’70s and ’80s.

Our feeling is that “stroke one’s ego” showed up first and that the “stoke” version was initially the result of an eggcorn, the misinterpretation of a word or phrase as another plausible word or phrase.

But we haven’t yet found evidence in searchable newspaper and literary databases to support this belief. In fact, the earliest example of the expression we could find uses “stoke,” not “stroke.” Here’s the story.

When the verb “stroke” entered Old English in the ninth century, it generally meant to run a hand softly over the head, body, or hair of a person or an animal “by way of caress or as a method of healing,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from Pastoral Care, King Alfred’s translation (circa 897) of a Latin treatise by Pope Gregory I on the responsibilities of the clergy.

But in the early 1500s, the OED says, the verb “stroke” took on a new meaning—to soothe, flatter, or treat indulgently.

Here’s an example from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest (circa 1610): “When thou cam’st first / Thou stroakst me, & made much of me.”

In recent usage, Oxford says, “stroke” has added the sense of reassuring someone (say, a timid child) or manipulating somebody (perhaps a politician).

The OED doesn’t include the phrase “stroke one’s ego,” but its entry for the verb “stroke” cites this convoluted example from the March 1975 issue of the Atlantic Monthly:

“It’s Show Biz, man—a bunch a’ egomaniacal people using a captive audience to stroke themselves.”

We think that the expression “stroke one’s ego” is an extension of the soothing or flattering sense of the verb “stroke.”

Although the phrase “stoke one’s ego” also makes sense, it’s a somewhat different sense. Yes, we might “stoke” an ego to manipulate a politician or pep up an athlete, but we’d be more likely to “stroke” an ego to flatter a client or reassure a child.

The verb “stoke” (meaning to “feed, stir up, and poke the fire”) showed up in English in the 17th century, according to John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins.

Ayto describes “stoke” as a back-formation, a term given to new words formed by dropping prefixes or suffixes from older ones—in this case the noun “stoker” (the guy who feeds a furnace).

Ayto says English borrowed “stoker” from a similar term in Dutch, where the verb stoken meant to put fuel into a furnace.

By the 18th century, according to the OED, the English verb “stoke” was being used figuratively in the sense of stoking or stirring up a controversy.

However, the OED has no examples of “stoke” used in the sense of flattering or treating indulgently.

As we’ve said, the expressions “stroke one’s ego” and “stoke one’s ego” both showed up in the 1950s.

The earliest example we could find of either one is this quote from an Oct. 22, 1952, editorial in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune about wage controls:

“But whom are they going to fight to get the 40 cents a day for that milk while you stoke your ego by encouraging them to stay away from work?”

The earliest example we’ve found of the “stroke” version is from a publication about the Kansas Veterinary Medical Association’s 1954 convention. In discussing how to deal with behavioral psychologists, this advice is given:

“Deal with them on an equal basis, and appeal to their pride; stroke their egos, recognize their importance. Recognition, to a behavioristic psychologist, is the most important word in the profession. People want to be recognized.”

By the 1970s and ’80s, as we’ve mentioned above, “stroke one’s ego” was the predominant version the expression.

Here’s a “stroke” example from Cat Astrology, a 1976 book by Mary Daniels: “It’s actually very easy to get along with a Leo cat. Stroke his ego as much as his fur, call him your ‘King of Beasts,’ or your ‘Little Princess’ or ‘Movie Star.’ ”

And here’s a “stoke” example from a Feb. 24, 1986, article in the Glasgow Herald about Wallace Mercer, the flamboyant chairman of the Scottish soccer club team Heart of Midlothian: “Hearts may have benefited from having him front but it has also helped stoke his ego.”

In googling various versions of the expression (with “his,” “her,” “your,” and “their” egos being stroked or stoked), we’ve found that “stroke” is now clearly more popular than “stoke.”

Although the “stoke” version may have begun life as an eggcorn, some people (you, for example) are deliberately choosing “stoke” (to feed) over “stroke” (to soothe).

Could we be seeing the evolution of two similar expressions with somewhat different meanings? Only time will tell.

Check out our books about the English language

Q: My words for “flip-flops” are “zories” and “go-aheads.” My daughter cringes if I call them “thong sandals”—what could she be thinking of? I’ve lived in Iowa for 40 years now, but I grew up in the ’50s on Navy bases in California. Sailors brought the term “zories” back from Okinawa.

A: We’ve saved your question for the Labor Day weekend, summer’s last hurrah. We hope you and our other readers get in one last fling before putting away the flip-flops.

Pat used to call them simply “thongs” when she was growing up in Iowa in the ’50s and ’60s, but some sensitive folks (like you know who) may find the usage cringe-worthy today.

As for your terms for those floppy, usually rubber sandals, you may have picked up “go-aheads” as well as “zories” on those naval bases in California.

The Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary defines “go-aheads” this way: “Chiefly Hawaii and California. A sandal held on the foot by a strap between the big toe and the next toe.”

And an item entitled “Marine Corps Slang” in the December 1962 issue of the journal American Speech has this definition: “GO-AHEADS, n. Japanese zori, or the American adaptation, thong sandals.”

Doris E. Thompson, a University of Nebraska contributor who wrote the item, said she’d heard the “go-aheads” usage as a civilian employee at the Marine Corps schools at Quantico, VA.

You’ll be surprised to hear this, but the use of the term “zori” (or “sori”) for those sandals first showed up in English nearly two centuries ago.

The earliest example of the usage in the Oxford English Dictionary is from a book called Japan, an 1822 collection of writings edited by the English journalist Frederic Shoberl:

“The shoes of the Japanese consist of straw soles or slips of wood. Those in common use are called sori.”

The OED describes “zori” as a plural noun, and defines it as “Japanese thonged sandals with straw (or leather, wood, etc.) soles.” The word is derived from two Japanese terms: so (grass or straw) and ri (footwear or sole), according to Oxford.

(Geta, similar Japanese sandals, are on elevated wooden platforms and worn with kimonos and other traditional clothing.)

Although most of the OED examples cite the use of “zori” in Japan, the most recent is from a 1984 awards manual issued by the British Judo Association:

“Zori (flip-flops) are compulsory wear at BJA events and should be worn off the mat in Clubs, Schools, etc.”

All six Oxford citations for the usage have “zori,” not “zoris” or “zories,” as the plural.

However, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) list “zori” or “zoris” as the plural.

Our Google searches indicate that when an “s” plural is used, the spelling “zoris” is preferred over “zories” two to one.

The Dictionary of American Regional English has citations for “zori” going back to the late 1950s, and says the usage appears most often in the West and Hawaii. The DARE examples include “zori,” “zoris,” and “zories” as plurals.

The earliest DARE citation is from a Sept. 30, 1958, ad in the Idaho State Journal: “ ‘Zoris’ Thong Sandals—Ideal Shower Shoes … 77¢.” (The newspaper is in Pocatello.)

The most recent citation is from Our Lady of the Forest, a 2003 novel by David Guterson (author of the bestseller Snow Falling on Cedars):

“Was there really something called Florida Priest Week? A coterie of priests in bathing suits and zoris, discussing, say, the communion of saints?”

The term “flip-flop,” by the way, is quite old too, first showing up in English in the 1600s, when it referred to the sound of a footfall. However, the OED describes this appearance as a “nonce-use,” one coined for a specific occasion.

In the late 1800s, the term showed up in American political lingo to mean “a change of mind or position on something; a reversal,” according to Oxford.

The dictionary’s first citation for this usage is from the July 13,1890, issue of the Chicago Tribune: “Mr. Ericksen’s friends in the twenty-third executed a flip-flop, and … went over to Michael Francis in a body.”

The use of the word in reference to “a plastic or rubber sandal consisting of a flat sole and straps” showed up in the 1950s, according to OED citations.

Interestingly, the first citation for the usage in the dictionary is from a British customs form filled out in 1958 by the novelist P. D. James: “Maps, 1 pair of ‘flip-flops’, 1 shirt (white), 1 shirt (coloured) [etc.].”

As for “thong,” it’s not just quite old, it’s very, very old, with prehistoric roots in the days before writing.

“Etymologically, a thong is something that ‘binds’ up,” John Ayto writes in his Dictionary of Word Origins.

The word, according to Ayto, is derived from thwangg-, a term reconstructed from prehistoric Germanic term.

“In the Old English period,” he says, “it was thwong; it began to lose its w in the 13th century.”

When it first showed up in Old English sometime before 950, according to the OED, it meant a “narrow strip of hide or leather, for use as a lace, cord, band, strap, or the like.” In the early days, it generally referred to a shoe lace.

The earliest written examples in the OED of “thongs” or “thong sandals” used to mean footwear date from the mid-1960s.

However, we’ve found many examples of “thong sandals” from the 1940s and ’50s in searches of Google Books. Here’s one from A Charmed Life, a 1955 novel by Mary McCarthy:

“They seemed utterly different from the other New Leeds people—a thing Jane often pondered on, aloud, in a dreamy reverie, studying her bare toes in her Mexican thong sandals and half-wondering whether she was getting a callous.”

And we’ve found examples dating from the ’50s of  “thongs” used alone. Here’s one from a July 11, 1958, ad in the Los Angeles Tribune for a leather version of the familiar flip-flops:

“GENUINE ALL / LEATHER THONGS / Glove leather wrapped / Full Foam / cushion construction / $5.00 value … $1.”

Finally, we get to the “thong” your daughter has in mind. It’s described by American Heritage as a “garment for the lower body that exposes the buttocks, consisting of a narrow strip of fabric that passes between the thighs supported by a waistband.”

The earliest citation for what the OED calls a “skimpy garment (similar to a G-string)” is from the April 22, 1975, issue of the Times of London: “Rudi Gernreich[’s] … new bathing suit, also available as an item of lingerie … is called the Thong.”

The dictionary’s latest example is from a Feb. 17, 1988, article in the Chicago Tribune: “Cindy Crawford … wears a little lacey swimdress with golden Lycra thong in Sports Illustrated’s annual T-and-A swimsuit issue.”

Again, enjoy the Labor Day weekend, and thongs for the memories!

Check out our books about the English language

Q: If I ask a friend to an art exhibit and she’s not sure when she’ll be in town, I respond, “OK, let’s play it by ear.” But can you suggest an alternative for “play it by ear”? The few I’ve found are also clichés or don’t have the meaning I’m looking for.

A: We can suggest a few alternatives—“wing it,” “ad-lib,” “improvise”—but what’s wrong with “play it by ear”? Yes, the expression is used a lot, but it probably says what you want to say better than any other.

Pat includes “play it by ear” in “Death Sentence,” the chapter on clichés in her grammar and usage book Woe Is I. But she says there’s nothing wrong with using a cliché once in a while, especially if nothing else will do the job as well.

“There’s no way to eliminate all clichés,” she writes. “It would take a roomful of Shakespeares to replace them with fresh figures of speech, and before long those would become clichés too.”

On the other hand, in a formal essay we might go to great lengths to avoid a cliché that we’d use without a thought in speech or casual writing.

The verb phrase “play it by ear” has its roots in the 16th-century use of the noun “ear” to mean the ability to recognize sounds and musical intervals, as in “have a good ear,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The earliest example in the OED of “ear” used this way is from Pylgrimage of Perfection, a 1526 treatise on English by the monk William Bonde: “In the psalmody … haue a good eare.”

A little over a century later, people began using “play by ear” (or a close facsimile) to mean play an instrument without the aid of written music.

The OED’s first citation for the newer usage is from A Breif Introduction to the Skill of Musick (1658), by John Playford: “To learn to play by rote or ear without book.”

Interestingly, an example from the July 1839 issue of the Edinburgh Review uses “play by ear” in the musical sense, while hinting at the figurative modern sense of dealing with something without a plan.

To add context, we’ll expand on the OED citation, which comes from a review of Harriet Martineau’s novel Deerbrook:

“Miss Austen is like one who plays by ear, while Miss Martineau understands the science. Miss Austen has the air of being led to right conclusions by an intuitive tact—Miss Martineau unfolds her knowledge of the principles on which her correct judgment is founded.”

We’d like to compare that comment with Mary Shelley’s remarks that same year about Deerbrook:

“Without Miss Austen’s humour she has all her vividness & correctness. To compensate for the absence of humour, she has higher philosophical views.”

We haven’t read Deerbrook, but we suspect that we’d prefer Jane Austen’s humor to Martineau’s philosophy.

But back to business. It wasn’t until the 1930s, according to a search of book and news databases, that the expression “play by ear” (or “play it by ear”) developed its modern sense of doing something without a definite plan in mind.

In an Oct. 24, 1935, sports story in the New York Times, for example, Mike Mikulak, a fullback with the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals), says his family came from Russia and he understands the language, but “I play it by ear only.”

And here’s an example from The Twisted Claw, a 1939 Hardy Boys mystery by Franklin W. Dixon (a k a John Button), in which Frank and Joe are locked in a dark storeroom and can’t get out:

“I guess we’ll just have to wait until someone comes down again, and then play it by ear,” Joe muttered.

Should you use the expression “play it by ear” the next time you want to meet your friend? It’s up to you. You’ll have to wing it.

Check out our books about the English language