Tag: Grammar

[The Grammarphobia Blog revisited this subject on Nov. 3, 2014. See our new post.]

Q: I’m an investment banker who’s driven crazy by people using the term “fulsome” for abundant. Any advice on how to correct them without being obnoxious? Please say something about this during one of your appearances on the Leonard Lopate Show.

A: I haven’t found a graceful way to correct people’s English, so I don’t. Leonard once joked on the air that anyone who misuses “fulsome” should be sent to Folsom Prison. But seriously, the word “fulsome” has been confused so much over the years that it may be beyond saving.

In modern times the accepted meaning has been disgustingly excessive, overly flattering, or insincere. But once upon a time it carried no suggestion of insincerity or excessiveness, especially in phrases like “fulsome praise” and “fulsome apology.”

The fact is that “fulsome” didn’t always have negative connotations. The word meant just “abundant” when it first appeared in print back in 1250, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Over the centuries, it came to mean overdone, cloying, gross, nauseating, disgusting, loathsome, and so on.

A case can be made that the folks who misuse “fulsome” now are simply reviving the original meaning of the word. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, in its “fulsome” entry, appears to take that position, saying such a usage “is etymologically justified.”

But the dictionary recommends using “abundant” or “full” in place of “fulsome” to avoid raised eyebrows or misunderstandings. I concur. Let’s give “fulsome” a rest.

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Q: I don’t see anything wrong with using two negatives in a sentence like this one: “He’s not unkind.” Is it true that a double negative is always incorrect?

A: My grammar book, Woe Is I, offers this advice about double negatives: “Never say never.”

For centuries, it was OK to use double and even triple negatives to show how really, really negative something was. Chaucer and Shakespeare did it all the time. (In Twelfth Night, for instance, Shakespeare has Viola using the triple negative “nor never none.”)

It wasn’t until the 18th century that the double negative was declared a no-no on the ground that one negative canceled out the other.

If you want your writing to be taken seriously, stay away from examples like “I can’t see nobody” or “He didn’t do nothing.” But a sentence like the one you mentioned (“He’s not unkind”) is perfectly good English.

A double negative comes in handy when you want to avoid saying something flatly or hurting somebody’s feelings. Instead of blurting out “Your blind date was a dog,” for example, you might use a double negative to say, “Your blind date was not unattractive.”

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Q: I hear people using the words “flammable” and “inflammable” to mean the same thing—easily burnable. Shouldn’t “flammable” mean burnable and “inflammable” mean not burnable? It doesn’t make sense to me. Help, please!

A: Historically, both “flammable” and “inflammable” have meant the same thing, easily ignited and capable of burning rapidly. “Inflammable” is by far the older word, dating back to at least 1605, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. “Flammable,” the new kid on the block, didn’t appear in print until more than 300 years later.

The cause of all the confusion is the “in” at the beginning of “inflammable.” As it turns out, “in” can be either a negative prefix or an intensive prefix (one that shows increased emphasis). It’s negative in words like “incapable” or “inflexible,” while it’s an intensifier in words like “inflate” or “inflame” or “inflammatory.”

Here’s the history. “Inflammable” comes from the Latin “inflammare,” meaning to inflame, while “flammable” comes from the Latin “flammare, which means to set on fire. The word “flammable” was coined in the early 19th century, but it was rarely used for decades, according to The Mavens’ Word of the Day, a Random House website.

Insurers and scientists revived “flammable” in the early 20th century as a replacement for “inflammable,” which was considered confusing because of that two-faced “in” at the beginning. After World War II, the British Standards Institution took up the campaign, encouraging the use of “flammable” vs. “non-flammable” rather than “inflammable” vs. “non-inflammable,” according to the Random House website.

So which word should a careful writer use today? The American Heritage Book of English Usage recommends going with “flammable” when clarity is important, such as in warning signs. I second that opinion.

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Q: Why is something easy as duck soup? I’ve never made it, never tasted it, never seen it on a menu, never found a reference book that answers my question about it. Do you know the origin of the expression?

A: The earliest published reference to “duck soup,” meaning something that’s a cinch, dates from 1902. The American cartoonist T.A. Dorgan, known as TAD, used the term for the caption of a drawing showing a man juggling a bottle, a pitcher, a plate, and a salt shaker, according to The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang.

As to where Dorgan got the expression and exactly what he meant by it, we may never know. Was he inspired by the term “sitting duck”? Did a duck floating in a pond remind him of a crouton in a bowl of soup? Questions, questions!

In the immortal words of Chico Marx, “Why a duck?” In fact, Groucho was asked to explain the title of the 1933 Marx Brothers film “Duck Soup,” according to the Internet Movie Database. I’ll leave the last word to him:

“Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you’ll duck soup the rest of your life.”

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Q: I’m always hearing newscasters use the words “irony,” “ironic,” or “ironically” for something that’s surprising or coincidental. I thought “irony” is supposed to be when you say something but mean just the opposite. Or has its meaning changed while I wasn’t looking?

A: No, the meaning of “irony” hasn’t changed, but the more it’s used these days, the more it’s abused. Now, that’s ironic. Here’s the story: “Irony” is saying one thing when you mean pretty much the opposite. Something is “ironic” when it’s the opposite of what you’d expect.

If something is coincidental or surprising, like the burglary of a jewelry store on the same date two years in a row, it’s not ironic. But if the burglars stole a diamond necklace with a homing device that led the police to them, that’s ironic.

Language does change, but the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language still overwhelmingly objects to the use of “irony” and company to refer to something that’s improbable or coincidental. Amen!

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Q: I heard you say on the Leonard Lopate Show that it’s incorrect to use the word “enormity” to mean hugeness. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary disagrees with you and argues that critics of this usage don’t recognize its subtlety. Any comment, please?

A: I have to disagree with that usage note in Merriam-Webster’s. Where is the “subtlety” in abandoning the long-established distinction between “enormity” and “enormousness”? Traditionally, “enormity” refers to something that’s immensely wicked or monstrous or outrageous, while “enormousness” refers to size alone.

Bryan A. Garner, in his Dictionary of Modern American Usage, says careful writers still observe the distinction: “The historical differentiation between these words should not be muddled. Enormousness = hugeness, vastness. Enormity = outrageousness, ghastliness, hideousness.”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language says 59 percent of its Usage Panel “rejects the use of enormity as a synonym for immensity …. Writers who ignore the distinction … may find that their words have cast unintended aspersions or evoked unexpected laughter.”

Imagine, for instance, an Op-Ed piece about the artist Christo, remarking on the “enormity” of his works. Does the writer mean to comment on their size or their hideousness? The mushing together of these ideas can result only in ambiguity, not subtlety.

The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, The Chicago Manual of Style, and many, many other usage references agree that “enormity” should not be used in the sense of largeness.

Lexicographers, the folks who write the dictionaries, must document the language as it is used, not the language as it OUGHT to be used. It may be that the old distinction between “enormity” and “enormousness” will eventually break down and be lost. For now, we still have it, it’s still useful, and we would do well to observe it.

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Q: I have a grammar question about capitalization and proper nouns. I write for a community college with a long name that I use fully on the first reference. When I refer to it subsequently as “the college,” should I capitalize the word “college”? What about other institutions with names like “center” or “system” or “institute”?

A: This is a matter of style, not grammar, but my answer is that it’s wrong to capitalize subsequent references to “college” or “center” or “system” or “institute.” In these instances, the word is generic (even if it refers to a specific college or system or center) and it’s not a proper noun.

But the reality is that colleges, corporations, agencies, and such will persist in capitalizing themselves (the College, the Corporation, the Agency), whether language mavens like it or not. It’s the rare college bulletin, government pamphlet, or corporate report that can resist the urge to capitalize generic references to its parent organization and its chiefs.

One other consideration. Many organizations have their own “house style” for things like capitalization, and if you work for one you’re expected to do as you’re told.

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Q; My dictionary says “flea market” is a translation of a French term, but I’ve heard otherwise. When New York was a Dutch city, there was an open-air market on Vlie Street. In Dutch, “vlie” was pronounced “flea.” Thus the derivation. Have you ever come across this explanation?

A: Yes, I’ve heard the story and similar ones. The most common version is that the term comes from the Fly Market, which operated in old New York until the early 19th century. (The word “fly” was apparently pronounced “flea” after the old Dutch name for the market.)

Unfortunately, the first published reference to “flea market” in English didn’t appear until 1922, more than a century after the Fly Market had closed. It seems doubtful that the term could have anything to do with a long-defunct market or its Dutch predecessor.

The most likely explanation is that “flea market” does indeed come from Le Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen, a sprawling old market in northern Paris (“marché aux puces” means “market of the fleas” in French). The marché, which has been around since 1885, is relatively upscale now, though I imagine the word “fleas” once referred to the uninvited guests that came with the clothes.

If you’re not ready to flee from this subject, check out the “itch to shop” entry on Evan Morris’s website, The Word Detective.

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Q: When the vet told me to feed my cat half a cup of kibble each day, I asked him where the word “kibble” came from. He didn’t know. Then I spent two hours on the Internet, but I didn’t find the answer. Can you help me?

A: The verb “kibble,” meaning to grind grain or cereal into rough bits, has been around since the late 18th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The noun “kibble” is even older, dating from the early 15th century, but it had nothing to do with pet food (or bits of grain) in the early days. It meant, among other things, a cudgel, a cobblestone, a piece of coal, and a kibble-hound–a cross between a beagle and the old English hound. (The OED speculates that the “kibble” in “kibble-hound” may have referred to a family name.)

The first published reference to “kibble” as pet-food pellets, according to the OED, was in the early 1930s. The origin of the word is uncertain. One theory is that “kibble” might be related to the word “cobble.” (In the late 19th century, cobbles—small, cobblestone-like chunks of coal—were referred to as “kibbles.”)

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[Note: An updated and expanded version of this post was published on Aug. 5, 2015.]

Q: The word “nonplussed” used to mean baffled or confused. But now it seems to mean calm and collected. This is driving me crazy! Which is correct?

A: Despite widespread misuse in recent years, “nonplussed” doesn’t mean calm and collected; it means just the opposite: bewildered, puzzled, lost in thought.

I suspect that many people mistake “nonplussed” for “nonchalant.” One way to remember the correct meaning is to think of its roots: “non” means no, and “plus” means more. When you’re nonplussed, you feel as if you can do no more. In other words, you feel helpless.

I added an entry on “nonplussed” to the second edition of my grammar book Woe Is I. Unfortunately, it’s a word that’s almost NEVER used correctly now, which probably bodes ill for its survival.

Most dictionaries still list only the traditional definition, but Encarta now includes “cool and collected” as an informal, secondary meaning. Yikes!

It’s a wonderful word, and I’m sorry to see it abused. When the meaning of a word like “nonplussed” gets stretched beyond usefulness, English loses some of its nuance, its elasticity, and its specificity. Too bad!

Q: I’m a teacher and I asked my class to track down the origin of the word “motherboard.” No one could find out who coined it. Do you have any leads?

A: The earliest known reference to “motherboard,” the main circuit board of a personal computer, comes from a 1971 article in the British journal Electrical and Electronics Abstracts, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The article refers to “one daughterboard mounted vertically on a computer size motherboard.”

Other early citations use the terms ‘mother’ board and mother-board. The OED doesn’t go further into the etymology of the word except to state the obvious: it’s a combination of “mother” and “board.” In other words, it’s the mother of all boards.

A website called the Technology Blog offers this additional bit of information:

As with so many other computer terms, the word ‘motherboard’ has its origins in the very early days of PC’s. At that time, computers and other electronic devices would have a main board into which smaller boards connected at right angles to add extra memory or perhaps network cards. These secondary cards were called daughterboards and the main board a motherboard. But there’s no such thing as a fatherboard or a sonboard!

I’m sorry that I can’t be more helpful. Perhaps one of the readers of The Grammarphobia Blog will have more to say on the subject.

Q: I know a capital is a city that’s the seat of government and a capitol is a building where legislators meet. But why are the two words spelled differently?

A: The words “capital” and “capitol” come to us via different etymological routes. “Capital” is derived from “capitalis,” an adjectival form of “caput,” which means head in Latin. “Capitol,” on the other hand, comes from the Capitolium (the Temple of Jupiter) on the Capitoline, the tallest of the seven hills of Rome, though it can be traced to “caput” too.

The adjective “capital,” as in a head or capital city, probably originated in the early 15th century, according to The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology. But the noun “capital” (meaning a capital city) didn’t show up in any published references until the 17th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Bryan A. Garner, in A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, writes that a governor of Virginia decided in 1698 to name the seat of the General Assembly after a temple in Rome. The idea caught on. Since then, buildings have been “capitols” and cities have been “capitals.”

Interestingly, the word that’s not a capital is the one that’s capitalized when it refers to the building where the U.S. Congress or a specific state legislature meets.

Q: I heard you on WNYC when you were discussing the origin of the expression “at sixes and sevens.” I believe that it’s a reference to dice and that it comes from the phrase “at six and seven” in Cadenus and Vanessa, an early 18th-century poem by Swift.

A: You’re probably right about the dice, but the expression didn’t originate with Swift. The earliest published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary is from Troilus and Cresyda, a 14th-century poem by Chaucer that mentions setting the world “on six and seven” (or as Chaucer put it, “on sexe and seuene”).

The original expression was “based on the language of dicing,” according to the OED, and initially meant risking one’s whole fortune or acting rashly without considering the consequences. It now means in a state of confusion or disorder, according to the entry for “six” in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

Phrase-aholics have uncovered several other possible sources. One involves this excerpt from the Book of Job: “He shall deliver thee in six troubles; yea, in seven shall no evil touch thee.” Another involves a dispute between two trading companies in London during the 15th century. For more, see the “at sixes and sevens” entry on Michael Quinion’s website, World Wide Words.

As for me, I’ll stick with the OED’s explanation, but I won’t bet my fortune on it.

Q: In relation to computer data, which is correct: “backed-up” or “back-upped”?

A: The simple past tense of “back up” is “backed up.” If you were to ask somebody about backing up (not “back upping”!) a computer document, for example, you might say, “Did you back it up?” and she might respond, “Yes, I backed it up.” (Not “Yes, I back it upped.”)

The term “back up” is called a phrasal verb—that is, a verb with two or more parts, like “back down” or “back off” or “back out.” The root (“back”) gets the “ed” ending. So, the somebody mentioned above would also say, “Yes, I backed it up” if she were talking about a pickup truck.

Bryan A. Garner, in A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, writes that the parts of a phrasal verb should be separate, not hyphenated (“backed up” instead of “backed-up”).You can read more about these multipart verbs in The American Heritage Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs.

Q: I was listening to NPR and heard an American general report that U.S. troops had found a “weapons cachet” in Fallujah. I’m sure he meant “cache,” but he pronounced it like “cachet.” Since he’s a general and it’s a standard military term, I can only assume that this pronunciation is not limited to him. Is it so widespread that it’s now acceptable?

A: The word “cache” is widely mispronounced both in and out of the military. It should rhyme with “sash,” not “sashay.” I once led off my monthly appearance on WNYC with a discussion of fractured French. When we adopt a “French” pronunciation, we often get it wrong or at best sound pretentious.

Is the mispronunciation of “cache” so widespread that it’s now acceptable? The answer is no! Both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary say only one pronunciation is on the money: the one that sounds like “cash.”

Interestingly, both “cache” and “cachet” come from the same Old French verb, “cacher,” meaning to hide or to press. A “cache” is a hiding place while a “cachet” is a mark of distinction or a seal on a document. Where does the word “press” come in? We stamp an impression on an official document to give it our seal of approval. And we used to secure a letter or an envelope by pressing sealing wax on it.

Q: I am a librarian and I put up a display entitled “Ireland and Its Books, Authors, and Countryside.” Was I correct to use the word “Its” or should I have used “Her”? What is the correct usage of pronouns in referring to countries? I know ships are often referred to as feminine, but what about countries?

A: The personification of nonliving nouns (such as nations, cities, hurricanes, ships, and other vessels) as “she” has fallen out of common usage. It’s now generally considered quaint or poetic.

Both the Associated Press and the New York Times style books, for example, recommend using “it” or “its” to refer to ships and countries.

Nearly five years ago, Lloyd’s List, the 273-year-old London-based shipping newspaper, officially dropped the gender personification and now refers to ships with the pronouns “its” and “it” instead of “her” and “she.”

Q: My wife and I were taking our usual evening stroll when she admonished me not to “wax philosophical.” That led to a discussion about the origin of the expression. We couldn’t come up with an answer, so we thought of you. Will you please enlighten us about this phrase and others that start with “wax”?

A: I’m most familiar with “wax eloquent,” which I always thought would be a terrific name for a floor polish.

Seriously, the word “wax” is ancient, with Indo-European roots going back to prehistory. The earliest published reference in English dates from around 897 (it was spelled “weaxan” in those days), according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

In Anglo-Saxon days, the verb “wax” (with its archaic spellings) was often used to mean grow or increase. That usage is much less frequent these days and has a literary flavor. You might say it has waxed and waned.

I believe the most common combinations today are “wax eloquent,” “wax philosophical,” and “wax sentimental.” But if you’re waxing nowadays, it probably involves a car, a floor, a table, or your legs.

Q: I heard you discussing George Carlin’s seven dirty words and I beg to differ with you about one of them. The word “shit” isn’t a thousand years old as you believe. It comes from the 16th and 17th centuries when manure was shipped from the New World to the Old as fertilizer. The cargo had to be kept high in the hold so it would stay dry. If it got wet, the manure could produce methane gas and explode. So the label “Ship High In Transport” was stenciled on the crates, and the acronym “S.H.I.T.” became a new word for manure.

A: Thank you for your comment. It’s an interesting story and thousands of Web pages say it’s so (though many of them say the “T” is for “Transit”). However, it didn’t happen that way.

The word “shit” has been around a long time, probably longer than transatlantic shipping. In its earliest form, it appeared more than a thousand years ago as the Old English verb “scitan.”

Besides, good old farm manure was always plentiful wherever animals were domesticated, so there was no need for the Old World to import it.

Hugh Rawson, in his book Wicked Words, notes that “shit” has a long history of made-up acronyms. In the Army, for example, officers who didn’t go to West Point have referred to it as the South Hudson Institute of Technology.

Q: Help! What is the proper way to make the term maitre d’ plural? Is it maitres d’ or maitre d’s?

A: When a compound word is split into parts, with or without hyphens (like “mother-in-law” or “attorney general”), the plural ending traditionally goes on the most important part (“mothers-in-law,” “attorneys general”).

But maitre d’ is a special case. The plural of the full version is maitres d’hotel, as one would expect, but the plural of the shortened form is maitre d’s, according to standard British and American dictionaries.

The Oxford English Dictionary has references in English texts for maître d’hôtel, an expression borrowed from French, going back to 1540. (In English today, the circumflex is optional and the term is not italicized. We’ve used italics here only because quotation marks might be confusing.)

The early citations refer to the head domestic or butler or steward of an estate. By the late 19th century, the term was being used to refer to a hotel manager; in the mid-20th century, it came to mean the manager of a hotel dining room and eventually a headwaiter.

The OED says the clipped maitre d’ (for a headwaiter) is an American usage. The dictionary’s first published reference is from an article about a Hollywood restaurant in the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune, Feb. 24, 1942:

“Marcel, a plump and smiling Frenchman, is Earl-Carol’s maitre d’. … Marcel guesses he is the only combination psychoanalyst and maitre d’ in the business.”

[Note: We discuss the possessive forms in a later post.]

Q: I live in the East where people are always misusing “bring” and “take.” That’s why my kids don’t have a clue about using them right, no matter how many times I try to explain. “Will you bring me to school?” they ask when they should be saying, “Will you take me to school?” Do you have a simple way to explain to my children how to use “bring” and “take” correctly?

A: In my new grammar book for kids, Woe Is I Jr., which is coming out in May, I put it like this:

“Which way is the stuff moving? Is it coming or going? If it’s coming toward you, someone’s bringing it. If it’s going away from you, someone’s taking it. ‘Bring me my desert,’ said Stewie, ‘and take away these vegetables.’ “

Things get a bit more complicated, however, when you’re the one who’s carrying the stuff. This is how Woe Is I Jr. deals with it:

“Are you bringing it or are you taking it? It all depends on on which end of the journey you’re talking about. If you’re talking about where the stuff is coming from, you’re taking it. I’m taking you from the dragon. If you’re talking about where the stuff is going, you’re bringing it. Lord Farquaad wants me to bring you to him.“

I hope this helps. Show it to the kids and maybe light bulbs will come on!

Q: Do you know the origin of the word “malarkey” (as in “a bunch of malarkey”). My mother, may she rest in peace, liked to use it. I hope it’s not vulgar!

A: “Malarkey” (also spelled “mullarkey,” “malarky,” “malaky,” etc.) is slang for humbug, foolishness, or nonsense. It’s certainly not vulgar, but not much else is certain about it.

The Oxford English Dictionary, whose first published reference for “malarkey” is from 1929, says the origin of the word is unknown.

Some researchers have suggested possible links to the Irish word “mullachan,” meaning a strong boy or a ruffian, or to the modern Greek word “malakia,” which means, among other things, worthlessness.

Others think it might come from the Irish family name “Mullarkey” and its various spellings. Both Michael Quinion (World Wide Words) and Evan Morris (The Word Detective) suggest the source may be a notorious, long-forgotten Mullarkey.

The word seems to have been popularized by the American newspaper cartoonist T.A. Dorgan, known as Tad, who also helped popularize the terms “hard-boiled” and “kibitzer” in his drawings.

Since we’ll probably never know for sure where the word comes from, all this speculation may turn out to be a lot of malarkey.

PS: You might be interested in knowing that there’s a board game called Malarky in which players try to separate real answers from, well, malarkey. The game is based on the Imponderables books by David Feldman.

Q: I was watching “The Sopranos” and I got to wondering about the word “goon.” Do you know the origin of the term?

A: The Oxford English Dictionary speculates that “goon” may be related to “gooney,” an older word meaning booby or simpleton. The OED’s earliest published reference for “gooney” goes back to 1580. By the early 19th century, the word was also being used by sailors to refer to the awkward-looking albatross.

The OED’s first citation for “goon,” meaning a dull or stupid person, dates from 1921 (in a Harper’s Magazine article). The word gained in popularity when the cartoon character Alice the Goon, a hulking bodyguard, showed up in the Popeye comic strip in 1933.

By the late 1930s, “goon” was being used to mean a thug, especially one hired to terrorize workers. Some language people trace the thuggish meaning to Alice the Goon. But Hugh Rawson, in his book Wicked Words, suggests that the source may be “gunda,” a Hindi word for hired tough.

The union-busting meaning was well-established by 1940 when Woody Guthrie’s song “Union Maid” referred to the “goons and ginks and company finks” who tried to intimidate workers. (A gink, by the way, is a stupid guy.) For more, check out the “goon” entry on Evan Morris’s website, The Word Detective.

Q: I heard you say on the radio that you had a bun in the oven. Good luck with your pregnancy! And what is the origin of the phrase “a bun in the oven”?

A: Oops! My face is red. Sorry for the confusion, but the “bun” in question is a children’s grammar book, not a child. Woe Is I Jr. will be out in May. But thank you for the congratulations anyway.

As for the origin of “bun in the oven,” the earliest published references date back only to the mid-20th century. The Oxford English Dictionary’s first citation comes from The Cruel Sea, a 1951 novel by Nicholas Monsarrat.

But the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang notes that the word “oven” has been used to mean “vagina” or “womb” since the end of the 17th century. And the late scholar Beryl Rowland has described the expression as “a colloquial use of an ancient folk metaphor” with roots in classical times. In an article in the journal American Speech, she wrote:

“The ancient gods such as Zeus were conceived as millers and their consorts as mills; the human race was the product they ground and baked, and on a terrestrial scale, man and woman performed similar functions.”

PS: I guess confusion is the price one occasionally pays for using figurative speech. Go figure.

Q: You were discussing “Jeep” on the air and you said something about Popeye but I didn’t catch it all. Anyway, I saw on the Internet that “Jeep” comes from GP, an Army abbreviation for “general purpose” vehicle. I hope you find this helpful.

A: Thank you for your comment. Unfortunately, you can’t believe everything that you see on the Internet. So keep an open mind.

For the real story, let’s go back to 1936 when Eugene the Jeep, a cartoon character, first appeared in the Popeye comic strips. Eugene was a cute little guy—a fuzzy creature the size of a small dog, with the ability to disappear into the fourth dimension in an emergency and to foresee the future. He ate a diet of orchids and the only sound he could make was “jeep, jeep.”

Eugene was tremendously popular and adopted as a mascot by several government contractors and other corporations in the late 1930’s. A bomber plane, a naval boat, an Army truck, and other military vehicles were whimsically referred to as Jeeps. Some even had Eugene’s picture painted on the side.

When the Army introduced its small all-terrain reconnaissance vehicle in 1941, the little car was made mainly by two big companies, Willys-Overland and Ford. It just so happened that Ford, on its models, used the factory designation GP (G for government contract and P as a code for 80-inch wheelbase).

So GP, as applied to the vehicle, wasn’t an Army designation, it didn’t stand for “general purpose,” and it wasn’t the origin of the name “Jeep.”

When Willys-Overland unveiled its prototype, reporters wanted to know its name. The publicist said, “You can call it a Jeep.” Later Willys began using the name officially. The company changed hands over the years and now the trademark “Jeep” is owned by Chrysler.

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang agrees that “jeep” comes from the cartoon character. And the Oxford English Dictionary says the term it was “probably influenced by the name ‘Eugene the Jeep.’ ”

However, the OED says “jeep” for the vehicle ultimately comes from “G.P.,” an initialism for “general purpose,” an adjectival phrase that first appeared in the mid-19th century. But the dictionary offers no documented evidence connecting the adjectival phrase (or its abbreviation) with the army vehicle.

[Note: This post was update on April 6, 2024.]

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[Note: An updated post about “butt naked” and “buck naked” appeared on July 13, 2020.]

Q: Why do so many people mistakenly say “butt naked” when it should be “buck naked”? This common mistake really annoys me.

A: You’ll be surprised to learn that the language world has debated the issue quite a bit. Some language types believe that “butt naked” is a mispronunciation of an earlier “buck naked.” Others think that “buck naked” is a euphemism for an earlier “butt naked.”

So which came first? The “butt” or the “buck”? We may never know for sure, but I think the available evidence indicates that “buck naked” came first and “butt naked” was the result of phonic confusion.

The first published reference to “buck naked” in the Dictionary of American Regional English is from 1928, while the first citation for “butt naked” comes from a 1966-70 DARE survey.

On the other hand, both DARE and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language speculate that “buck naked” may be an alteration of “butt naked,” indicating that “butt” may have come first.

Meanwhile, why a “buck”? Michael Quinion, in an entry for the word “buff” on his website World Wide Words, suggests that “buck” may refer to “buckskin,” which is supposedly the color of naked skin exposed to the sun.

At this point, I’ll butt out.

Q: Why are pictures hung and people hanged?

A: Both past tenses have been around for hundreds of years, but it’s been customary since the 16th century to use “hanged” for executions and “hung” for other meanings. Why? It’s an impossibly complicated history and takes up about a zillion (give or take) pages in the Oxford English Dictionary. I’ll summarize.

The story begins with several different verbs that were imported into different parts of England by different invaders who brought with them different forms of old Germanic tongues. In these different regions, different dialects evolved. Over the centuries, the English present tense (variously “hing,” “hang,” “heng,” “hong”) stabilized as “hang.”

Meanwhile, the past tense and past participle eventually stabilized as “hung,” a form popular in northern England that by the 16th century had spread to the south and superseded the many older forms for those tenses.

However, one old past tense and past participle, “hanged,” survived in a single sense: to put to death by hanging. The OED suggests that this archaic form was preserved in legal language, since it was used by judges to pronounce sentences in capital crimes.

Q: Most people pronounce “flaccid” to rhyme with “acid,” but it looks like it should be pronounced to rhyme with the first two syllables of “accident.” What are your thoughts?

A: Traditionally, dictionaries have listed FLAK-sid as the first, or more common, pronunciation, with FLASS-id given as second choice (if listed at all; very old dictionaries list only FLAK-sid).

In more recent editions of many dictionaries, though, the editors have reversed themselves and listed FLASS-id first and FLAK-sid second, as in these entries from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

It may be that the newer (mis-)pronunciation arose by association with the word “placid.” At any rate, FLASS-id has become not only acceptable but finally the more common.