Tag: Phrase origin

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Cop talk

Q: In Lyndsay Faye’s novel The Gods of Gotham, the words “cop” and “copper” are said to be derived from copper stars worn by New York City policemen in the 1840s. I always thought “cop” comes from “constable on patrol.”

A: We haven’t read The Gods of Gotham, a historical thriller set in 1845—the year the New York City Police Department was founded. And we could find only snippets of it online.

So we can’t comment on what Faye has—or hasn’t—written about the etymology of “cop” and “copper.”

But we can say that the noun “cop,” for a police officer, isn’t an acronym. And it’s not about copper buttons or badges, either.

As we wrote on our blog back in 2006, “cop” is short for an earlier noun, “copper,” meaning a person who seizes or nabs.

Both this word “copper” and its predecessor, the verb “cop” (to nab or capture), are thought to be derived from an Old French verb, caper, from the Latin capere, meaning to seize or take.

We also wrote about “cop” in Origins of the Specious, our book about language myths. Here’s an excerpt:

“The most popular myth about the word is that it comes from the copper buttons on police uniforms. Another is that it comes from the copper badges worn by New York City police in the nineteenth century. Yet another suggests that ‘cop’ is an acronym for ‘constable on patrol’ or ‘chief of police’ or ‘custodian of the peace’ or some such phrase.

“In fact, cops were walking beats long before any of those phony acronyms arrived on the scene. And ‘cop’ has nothing to do with any metals, copper or otherwise, whether in buttons or badges. Metal buttons on police uniforms have tended to be brass, and relatively few badges have been copper.

“The best evidence, according to word detectives who have worked the case, is that the noun ‘cop’ comes from the verb ‘cop,’ which has meant to seize or nab since at least 1704. The verb in turn may be a variation of an even earlier one, ‘cap,’ which meant to arrest as far back as 1589 (think of the word ‘capture’).

“Etymologists say the noun ‘cop’ is short for ‘copper’ (one who cops criminals), which first appeared in an 1846 British court document. The clipped version, ‘cop,’ appeared thirteen years later in an American book about underworld slang.”

In the transcript of a May 11, 1846, criminal trial at the Old Bailey in London, a police sergeant testifies that “a woman screamed very load, ‘Jim, Jim, here comes the b—coppers,’ and at that moment the money was thrown out—I have heard the police called coppers before.”

As it turns out, the slang word “copper” apparently didn’t cross the Atlantic and appear in print in the US until 1859, 14 years after the establishment of the NYPD.

The earliest citations for “copper” and “cop” in the Oxford English Dictionary are from George Washington Matsell’s 1859 slang dictionary Vocabulum, or, The Rogue’s Lexicon.

We looked through the dictionary in Google Books and didn’t find separate entries for either “cop” or “copper.” But the two words showed up many times in the entries for other words. Here’s a typical example:

“COPPED. Arrested. ‘The knuck was copped to rights, a skin full of honey was found in his kick’s poke by the copper when he frisked him,’ [meaning that] the pickpocket was arrested, and when searched by the officer, a purse was found in his pantaloons pocket full of money.”

By the way, we’ve noticed from reviews of The Gods of Gotham that members of the NYPD are repeatedly referred to as “copper stars”—a usage that apparently didn’t exist at the time the book was set.

In searches of Google Books and Google News, we couldn’t find any 19th-century examples of the term being used for police officers.

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On “i.e.” versus “viz.”

Q: I came across the following on your blog: “But they had one obvious difference, i.e., their ears.” In my opinion, “i.e.” is not correct here—it should be “viz.” They are, admittedly, close in meaning, but as Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.) says, “Care should be taken to distinguish viz. from i.e.”

A: Here we must disagree with you and, to some extent, with R. W. Burchfield, author of the latest edition of Fowler’s.

These abbreviations may not be identical, but the difference between them is so slight that it nearly vanishes on close examination. And the use of “viz.” in nonscholarly writing would stop readers in their tracks.

In fact, better writers don’t use either of these scholarly abbreviations, though we’ve occasionally slipped up on our blog. We used “i.e.” in that posting to explain how it differs from “e.g.”

As we wrote, “i.e.” is an abbreviation of “id est” (in Latin id est means “that is”).

In English, the Oxford English Dictionary says, the term means “that is to say” or “that is,” and is “used to introduce an explanation of a word or phrase.”

In the sentence you mention—“But they had one obvious difference, i.e., their ears”—the abbreviation is correctly used, according to the OED definition. It introduces an explanation of a phrase, “one obvious difference.”

The two standard dictionaries we rely on the most—Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.)—say “i.e.” means simply “that is.”

That other scholarly abbreviation, “viz.,” is short for “videlicet” (in Latin videlicet means “it may be seen”).

The original Latin word is composed of the stem of videre (“see”), plus licet (“it is permissible”). In medieval Latin, “z” was the usual contraction for et or -et, which explains the presence of “z” in the abbreviation “viz.”

In English, the OED says, “videlicet” (and its abbreviation “viz.”) means “that is to say,” “namely,” or “to wit.”

The term is used, Oxford adds, “to introduce an amplification, or more precise or explicit explanation, of a previous statement or word.”

The standard dictionaries give similar definitions for “viz.” Merriam-Webster’s gives “that is to say” or “namely,” while American Heritage gives “that is” or “namely.”

It seems to us that the difference between “i.e.” and “viz.” is extremely small, if it exists at all.

Judging from the OED descriptions, it would appear that “i.e.” further explicates a preceding word or phrase, while “viz.” is broader in that it can also explicate a preceding statement.

As you say, Fowler’s advises that care should be taken in distinguishing between them.

But Fowler’s itself doesn’t clearly distinguish between them. And its explanations don’t agree with those in the OED. Here’s what Fowler’s has to say on the subject:

● “i.e. means ‘that is to say,’ and introduces another way (more comprehensible to the reader, driving home the reader’s point better, or otherwise preferable) of putting what has already been said.” [Burchfield no doubt meant “the writer’s point.”]

● “As is suggested by its usual spoken substitute namely, viz. introduces especially the items that compose what has been expressed as a whole (For three good reasons, viz. 1 …, 2 …, 3 …) or a more particular statement of what has been vaguely described (My only means of earning, viz. my fiddle).”

As we said before, these abbreviations aren’t seen in the best writing.

Often no such introduction is needed (beyond perhaps a simple colon), and “i.e.” or “viz.” would merely add hot air.

If an introduction is needed, why not use plain English: “namely,” “that is,” “in other words,” or whatever else makes sense?

The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.) lists both “i.e.” and “viz.” among abbreviations and symbols “that are normally confined to bibliographic references, glossaries, and other scholarly apparatus.”

It’s been our experience that “i.e.” is sometimes seen in ordinary text or what the Chicago Manual calls “running text.”

But “viz.” is very uncommon in ordinary text; it would certainly startle the general reader.

In fact, it’s not even listed in the most recent printing of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (7th ed.).

Besides its scholarly applications, “viz.” is found in judicial writing. It’s used in legal pleadings to mean “namely,” “that is,” “as follows,” and “to wit,” according to the Cornell University Law School’s Legal Information Institute.

As for general writing, here’s what Garner’s Modern American Usage (3rd ed.) says about “viz.”:

“The English-language equivalents are namely and that is, either of which is preferable. … How does one pronounce viz.? Preferably by saying ‘namely.’ ”

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Hear Pat on Iowa Public Radio

She’ll be on Talk of Iowa today from 10 to 11 AM Central time (11 to 12 Eastern) to discuss the English language and take questions from callers. A University of Iowa professor will join Pat to discuss how Watergate changed our language and our culture.

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The earliest Johnny-come-lately

 

Q: Do you guys have any idea who the “Johnny” is in “Johnny-come-lately”?

A: The phrase “Johnny-come-lately” originated as a 19th-century American expression for a newcomer or a novice. It’s now also used for an upstart, a late adherent to a trend or cause, and someone who’s late for an event.

There’s no particular significance in the use of the name “Johnny” here.

Since the 17th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, this familiar diminutive of “John” has been used “humorously or contemptuously” to mean “a fellow, chap.”

For example, the OED cites Allan Ramsay’s poem And I’ll Awa’ to Bonny Tweedside (1724), in which Edinburgh is described as a place “Where she that’s bonny / May catch a Johny.”

Over the years, both in the US and in the UK, people have used the name “Johnny” as a generic term for a guy. (We wrote blog postings in 2007 and 2009 about a similar usage, “Tom, Dick, and Harry.”)

This generic use of “Johnny” is found in many familiar phrases whose origins are explained in the OED.

For example, “Johnny Reb,” a Northern term for a Confederate soldier, emerged during the American Civil War.

And “Johnny-on-the-spot,” for someone who’s always ready and available when needed, was first recorded in an American novel, Artie (1896), by George Ade.

In Britain, “Johnny raw” and “Johnny Newcome” were early 19th-century phrases for a rookie, a newcomer, or a raw recruit. Those were at least the spiritual forerunners of the American phrase “Johnny-come-lately.”

OED citations indicate that “Johnny-come-lately” first appeared in The Adventures of Harry Franco (1839), a humorous novel by Charles Frederick Briggs, a journalist and former sailor.

Here’s the quotation from Briggs’s novel: “ ‘But it’s Johnny Comelately, aint it, you?’ said a young mizzen topman.”

(Briggs’s claim to fame is that he gave Edgar Allan Poe a job on his short-lived magazine, the Broadway Journal, in 1845.)

The phrase may have originated in America but it didn’t stay there.

One OED citation is from the Christchurch Press in New Zealand, which offered this definition for its readers in 1933: “Johnny-come-lately, nickname for a cowboy or any newly-joined hand or recent immigrant.”

Finally, this 1972 example is from the former BBC publication The Listener, in a reference to the state of Utah: “Here man himself is a Johnny-come-lately.”

[Update, Jan. 19, 2015. A reader asks how to form the plural of “Johnny-come-lately.” All the standard dictionaries we’ve checked say that both “Johnny-come-latelies” and “Johnnies-come-lately” are OK. We like “Johnny-come-latelies.”]

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Downton’s steep learning curve

Q: If I type “anachronisms” in a Google search box, Autocomplete suggests adding the words “downton abbey.” So this is not an original topic, but I spotted two possible slip-ups in a recent episode: “learning curve” and “a lot on my plate.”

A: Yes, anachronism-spotting has become something of a sport to watchers of Downton Abbey, and now we can chalk up a couple more.

The period TV drama is set in the years between 1912 and 1921, and it’s highly unlikely people who lived then would have known either “learning curve” or “a lot on my plate.”

Let’s look at “learning curve” first. It’s barely possible that a layman in 1920s England would have known the term, but it’s quite a stretch.

The phrase was in use at the time, in scholarly papers by research psychologists who used it in its literal, scientific sense—a curved line on a graph, representing the rate at which a certain skill is learned.

It’s even less likely that the expanded form of the phrase heard on the show—“steep learning curve”—would have been used then.

The linguist Ben Zimmer has also been following Downton anachronisms, and he had this to say in a recent Word Routes column on his Visual Thesaurus website:

“Matthew Crawley, the presumptive heir of Downton Abbey and now the co-owner of the estate, says, ‘I’ve been on a steep learning curve since arriving at Downton.’ By this he means that he’s had a difficult time learning the ways of Downton. Unfortunately, people didn’t start talking that way until the 1970s.”

Although the term “learning curve” was around in the early 1900s, Zimmer notes, “it didn’t become a common phrase until the ’70s, and it was then that the word steep began to be used to modify it in a rather peculiar way.” A “steep learning curve,” he says, came to mean “an arduous climb.”

He says “learning curve” was apparently first recorded in 1903 in a paper published in the American Journal of Psychology. This is also the earliest usage we’ve been able to find.

The author of the 1903 paper, Edgar James Swift, wrote: “Bryan and Harter (6) found in their study of the acquisition of the telegraphic language a learning curve which had the rapid rise at the beginning followed by a period of retardation, and was thus convex to the vertical axis.”

We checked out the earlier study that Swift refers to, but it didn’t actually use the term “learning curve,” so his usage does appear to be the first.

That earlier study, by William Lowe Bryan and Noble Harter of Indiana University, was published in the Psychological Review in 1897.

The article, “Studies in the Physiology and Psychology of the Telegraphic Language,” described experiments to determine the rates at which telegraph operators learned to send and to receive messages in Morse code.

Bryan and Harter used lines plotted on graphs to illustrate the rates at which the skills were learned. They described the lines with phrases like “sending curve,” “receiving curve,” and “curve of improvement,” but they never used “learning curve.”

Many people credit the concept of a learning curve—if not the phrase itself—to studies in memory published in 1885 by the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus.

But his work doesn’t include the words Lernkurve or Erfahrungskurve, either of which might be translated into English as “learning curve.”

The Oxford English Dictionary hasn’t yet updated its entry for “learning curve” to reflect the earlier usages now available in digitized data banks.

The OED’s earliest example is from a paper published in 1922, and it defines only the literal meaning of the term: “a graph showing progress in learning.”

All of Oxford’s citations for “learning curve” use the phrase in this scientific sense, and the dictionary doesn’t mention any figurative uses.

The other expression you’re asking about, “a lot on my plate,” is another likely anachronism in Downton Abbey. The OED’s earliest citation is from 1928, and we haven’t found an earlier one.

The OED labels the phrase and its variants as colloquialisms meaning “to have a lot of things occupying one’s time or energy.”

Oxford’s earliest example is from the July 4, 1928, issue of a British newspaper, the Daily Express: “I cannot say. I have a lot on my plate. … Mr. Justice Horridge: A lot on your plate! What do you mean? Elton Pace: A lot of worry, my lord.”

This more contemporary example is from Dermot Bolger’s novel Ladies’ Night at Finbar’s Hotel (1999): “I have enough on my plate without worrying about you.”

Want to hear about more Downton Abbey anachronisms? Ben Zimmer has spoken on NPR’s “Morning Edition” about some others, like “I’m just sayin’ ” and “When push comes to shove.”

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“Inalienable” or “unalienable”?

Q: When President Obama quoted from the Declaration of Independence in his Inaugural Address, he used the word “unalienable.” But I’ve also seen the word as “inalienable.” Which is correct English? Which is actually in the Declaration?

A: Both “inalienable” and “unalienable” are legitimate English words, and they have identical meanings.

The word in the final version of the Declaration of Independence is “unalienable,” though it’s “inalienable” in earlier versions of the document. Here’s the word in context:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

You can see an image of the final version on the National Archives page for the Declaration. Click “read transcript” to see a copy in ordinary print.

President Obama has used both words over the years. In his Inaugural Address on Jan 21, 2013, he referred to “unalienable rights,” but in remarks about gun violence on Jan 16, 2013, he used the phrase “inalienable rights.”

Although both words are correct, the one we see most often now is “inalienable.” And that’s the word some dictionaries seem to prefer.

For example, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) has an entry for “inalienable” (defined as “incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred”). But under “unalienable,” the dictionary simply says it means “inalienable.” 

Many other Americans have puzzled over the years about which word is “correct” and which one actually appears in the Declaration. The nonprofit Independence Hall Association, based in Philadelphia, has a page devoted to this question on its website.

As you’ll see, the site has photocopies of the various drafts of the Declaration, some with “inalienable” (in Thomas Jefferson’s handwriting) and some with “unalienable” (in John Adams’s).

The website quotes a footnote from Carl Lotus Becker’s The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (1922):

“The Rough Draft reads ‘[inherent &] inalienable.’ There is no indication that Congress changed ‘inalienable’ to ‘unalienable’; but the latter form appears in the text in the rough Journal, in the corrected Journal, and in the parchment copy. John Adams, in making his copy of the Rough Draft, wrote ‘unalienable.’ Adams was one of the committee which supervised the printing of the text adopted by Congress, and it may have been at his suggestion that the change was made in printing. ‘Unalienable’ may have been the more customary form in the eighteenth century.”

As we said, both words are legitimate. They’ve been part of the language since the early 17th century.

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Make sure you’re sure

Q: A friend of mine, a Stevie Wonder fan, has a “Make Sure You’re Sure” ringtone on his cell. After listening to it a few hundred times, the phrase “make sure” started to sound funny to me. Is it proper English?

A: The phrase “make sure” is a fine old usage dating back to the 16th century, and Stevie Wonder is using it properly in that song, part of the score and soundtrack he composed for the 1991 Spike Lee movie Jungle Fever.

In its earliest usage, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the phrase  meant “to make something certain as an end or result … to preclude risk of failure.”

The OED’s earliest example in writing is from Cardinal William Allen’s A Defence and Declaration of the Catholike Churches Doctrine, Touching Purgatory (1565):

“And therefore to make sure, I humbly submit my selfe, to the iudgement of suche [as] … are made the lawful pastors of our soules.”

Here are some more OED citations:

1698: “To make sure, he made another Shot at her.” (From a description of a tiger hunt in John Fryer’s A New Account of East-India and Persia.)

1891: “It is difficult to make sure of finding the birds.” (From Chambers’s Journal.)

The phrase is still used in that sense. But “make sure of” is also used to mean “to act so as to be certain of getting or winning; to secure,” as the OED says.

Oxford has citations ranging from the 17th to the 19th centuries. The earliest is from a letter written in 1673 by Sir William Temple: “A Peace … cannot fail us here provided we make sure of Spain.”

The phrase can also be followed by a clause, as in this example from Frances Eliza Millett Notley’s novel The Power of the Hand (1888): “That fellow rode up to the house to make sure Tristram was away.”

In another practice dating from the 19th century, the OED says “make sure” is used loosely to mean “to feel certain, be convinced.”

This citation is from Frederick C. Selous’s Travel and Adventure in South-east Africa (1893): “I made sure I should get finer specimens later on.”

Stevie Wonder uses it in this looser sense, and we’ll end with a few lines of his lyrics:

Well the night is young
And the stars are out
And your eyes are all aglow
And you say you feel
Ways you’ve never felt
But are you sure, make sure you’re sure.

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Zero-sum games

Q: I see references to both “zero-sum games” and “zero-sum gains” on the Internet. Which is correct?

A: The term “zero sum” is widely misunderstood as meaning that nobody wins—or perhaps that nobody loses. In fact it means quite the opposite.

In any competitive situation, one side can’t win unless the other loses. “Zero-sum” means that when the losses are subtracted from the gains, the sum is zero.

The adjective “zero-sum” originated in the field of game theory in the mid-1940s, and it’s still commonly used to modify the word “game.” But “zero-sum” is also used to modify all kinds of nouns and to describe a wide variety of situations.

It would be inappropriate, however, to use it in the phrase “zero-sum gain.” That’s because “zero-sum” implies an equal balance between gain and loss.

We suspect that people are simply misunderstanding the phrase and hearing “gain” instead of “game.”

You’re right, though, that there’s a lot of zero-sum gaining on the Web. We got nearly 200,000 hits when we googled “zero-sum gain.” But we had nearly ten times as many hits for “zero-sum game.”

In game theory, as the Oxford English Dictionary explains, the adjective “zero-sum” is “applied to a game in which the sum of the winnings of all the players is always zero.”

In other words, the losses offset the gains, and the sum of losses and gains is zero.

But “zero-sum” is also used, the OED explains, to denote “any situation in which advantage to one participant necessarily leads to disadvantage to one or more of the others.”

So, for example, in “zero-sum diplomacy,” both sides can’t be winners.

The adjective was first used, according to OED citations, in John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern’s book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944):

“An important viewpoint in classifying games is this: Is the sum of all payments received by all players (at the end of the game) always zero; or is this not the case? … We shall call games of the first mentioned type zero-sum games.”

Here are a few more of the quotations cited in the OED:

“Perhaps the contestants in most important games nowadays (from labour disputes … to international diplomacy) too readily regard their games as zero-sum.” (From Stafford Beer’s book Decision and Control, 1966.)

“Everybody can win. Manufacturing is not a zero-sum game.” (A quote by L. B. Archer, from Gordon Wills and Ronald Yearsley’s Handbook of Management Technology, 1967.)

“C. Wright Mills … used a zero-sum conception of power (i.e., the more one person had the less was available to others).” (From the Times Literary Supplement, 1971.)

“We live in a zero-sum world.” (From the former BBC magazine The Listener, 1983.)

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“Each other” vs. “one another”

Q: Some good writers use “each other” and “one another” interchangeably, while others use them in distinctly different ways. What are your thoughts?

A: These terms are interchangeable, despite a common belief that “each other” is properly used in reference to two people or things, and “one another” for more than two. In fact, we’re revising our own thinking on this one.

In a 2006 posting, we said it was OK to use “one another” in either case. But we didn’t go far enough. We said most usage experts would object to using “each other” for three or more, though we acknowledged that the distinction was being relaxed,

Seven years later, our opinion has changed. The old distinction isn’t worth preserving—even for “each other”—and it wasn’t valid in the first place.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage explains that “the prescriptive rule that each other is to be restricted to two and one another to more than two” can be traced to a 1785 grammar book written by George N. Ussher. But it notes that there’s no foundation for such a rule.

Evidence in the Oxford English Dictionary shows “that the restriction has never existed in practice,” the M-W editors write, adding:

“The interchangeability of each other and one another had been established centuries before Ussher or somebody even earlier thought up the rule.”

The usage guide concludes that the restriction is a mere invention (or, as M-W puts it, “was cut out of the whole cloth”) and “there is no sin in its violation.”

The OED’s entries for the expressions confirm this. The dictionary says “each other” means the same thing as “one another.” And it defines “one another” as a “compound reciprocal pronoun” referring to “two or more.”

R. W. Burchfield, the author of Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.), agrees that the traditional restriction isn’t valid:

“The belief is untenable,” Burchfield writes. He goes on to quote many respected writers who use “one another” for two and “each other” for three or more.

Standard dictionaries also recognize the terms as interchangeable.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) says the distinction between the two “is often ignored without causing confusion and should be regarded more as a stylistic preference than a norm of Standard English.”

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, says “each other” means “each of two or more in reciprocal action or relation.” And “one another,” the dictionary says, means “each other.”

In short, this is an issue of style rather than correctness. There’s no harm in following that “traditional” rule if you like, but there’s no harm in ignoring it either.

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An arm and a leg

Q: I just caught up with your Thanksgiving post on the names for turkey parts. How about something on the names for people parts? I was recently surprised to learn that the meanings of “arm” and “leg” in anatomy differ from common usage.

A: This was news to us too, but then we skipped anatomy class. You’re right, though. “Arm” and “leg” have special meanings in medicine.

In standard anatomical terminology, the word “arm” means what most of us think of as the upper arm—the part between the shoulder and the elbow.

And the word “leg” in anatomy means what most of us think of as the lower leg—between the knee and the ankle.

The limbs as a whole are called the “upper limb” and the “lower limb.”

We quizzed our own doctor about this as she was giving us our annual physicals the other day. She said physicians call the upper arm the “arm” or the “brachium”; the part below the elbow is the “forearm” or the “antebrachium.”

Why? Because a doctor is generally concerned with one part of a limb, not the limb as a whole. And the parts are distinct—different bones, different muscles, and so on.

Hence, different terminology. The words “arm” and “leg” as used in the general sense would be too broad for medical purposes.

Kenneth Saladin’s book Human Anatomy (2007) has this explanation:

“The upper limb is divided into brachium (arm proper), antebrachium (forearm), carpus (wrist), manus (hand), and digits (fingers); the lower limb is divided into thigh, crus (leg proper), tarsus (ankle), pes (foot), and digits (toes).”

Elsewhere, Saladin explains that the term “arm proper” means the upper arm, which “extends from shoulder to elbow,” while the “leg proper” is “below the knee.”

Another medical textbook, Grant’s Dissector (2012), by Patrick W. Tank, says, “The upper limb is divided into four regions: shoulder, arm (brachium), forearm (antebrachium), and hand (manus).”

Earlier, Tank writes: “The lower limb is divided into four parts: hip, thigh, leg, and foot. It is worth noting that the term leg refers only to the portion of the lower limb between the knee and the ankle, not to the entire lower limb.”

Tank is right—this IS worth noting, since in ordinary language the words “arm” and “leg” are interpreted less narrowly.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “arm” (the body part, that is) only in the usual sense: “The upper limb of the human body, from the shoulder to the hand.”

There’s no mention in the OED of a medical definition of “arm” that would differ from that one.

Oxford adds that “the part from the elbow to the hand” is known as “the fore-arm.” Elsewhere, it defines the “forearm” as “the part of the arm between the elbow and the wrist; sometimes the whole arm below the elbow.”

On the other hand (if that’s the appropriate expression), the OED’s definition of a person’s “leg” includes the ordinary sense of the word as well as a more restrictive sense.

Here’s the definition: “one of the two lower limbs of the human body; in narrower sense, the part of the limb between the knee and foot.”

It’s interesting to note that while people have “forearms,” they don’t have “forelegs,” a term used only of animals. The OED says a “foreleg” is “one of the front legs of a quadruped.”

We can’t end this without mentioning “an arm and a leg,” which Oxford describes as a colloquial expression meaning “an enormous amount of money, an exorbitant price; freq. in to cost an arm and a leg.”

The OED’s first citation is from Lady Sings the Blues, the 1956 autobiography of one of our favorite singers, Billie Holliday, written with William Dufty: “Finally she found someone who sold her some stuff for an arm and a leg.”

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The singularity of “as follows”

Q: I’ve been having a debate with my wife about the phrase “as follows.” I think the verb should be singular (follows) or plural (follow), depending on the context. My wife thinks it’s always singular. Can you please provide some insight?

A: Your wife is right. The construction is always singular: “My position is as follows” … “The three points are as follows” …  “Her favorite books were as follows,” and so on.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes the phrase “as follows” as “a prefatory formula used to introduce a statement, enumeration, or the like.”

In this formula, the OED says, the verb is impersonal and should always be used in the singular—“follows.” Use of the plural verb “follow,” Oxford adds, is “incorrect.”

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage concurs, saying “All experts agree” that “as follows regularly has the singular form of the verb—follows—even if preceded by a plural.”

The OED’s earliest examples of the phrase in writing are in the singular: “als her fast folowys” (as here directly follows), from 1426, and “He openly sayde as foloweth” (He openly said as follows), from 1548.

A more telling example, from George Campbell’s The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), discusses the correct use of the phrase:

“Analogy as well as usage favour this mode of expression. ‘The conditions of the agreement were as follows’; and not as follow. A few late writers have inconsiderately adopted this last form through a mistake of the construction.”

An inquiring mind might well ask why this is true. Here’s an answer from Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.), edited by R. W. Burchfield:

“The phrase as follows is naturally always used cataphorically, i.e. with forward reference, and is not replaced by as follow even when the subject of the sentence is plural: His preferences are as follows … ; his view is as follows.”

“The reason for its fixed form,” the usage guide adds, “is that it was originally an impersonal construction = ‘as it follows.’ ”

In case you’re still not convinced, Garner’s Modern American Usage (3rd ed.) has this to say:

“As follows is always the correct form, even for an enumeration of many things. The expression is elliptical for as it follows—not as they follow.”

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Still sleeping with the fishes

Q: After reading your entry on “sleeping with the fishes,” I ran across the usage in Moby-Dick. The passage is late in the book—so few readers get that far, it’s no wonder the reference isn’t cited on the Internet.

A: By Jove, you have it! And so do we now. It’s not the oldest written example of the usage, but we’re happy to have another 19th-century citation.

The reference, from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851), comes as Stubb, the second mate, recognizes the signs of the zodiac on the gold doubloon that’s nailed to the mast of the Pequod.

In this passage from Chapter 99, “The Doubloon,” Stubb reads the signs with the help of his almanac and interprets them as a birth-to-death calendar of human life. (For blog readers in a hurry, the usage is in the last sentence.)

“By Jove, I have it! Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter; and now I’ll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin: there’s Aries, or the Ram—lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull—he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins—that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path—he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that’s our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales—happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in the rear; we are curing the wound, when whang come the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here’s the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Water-bearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and to wind up with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep.”

Today the phrase “sleeping with the fishes” is associated with mob rubouts. But as we wrote in our earlier post, death has been likened to sleeping with the fishes since at least as far back as the 1830s, according to searches of digitized books.

In Sketches of Germany and the Germans (1836), Edmund Spencer describes a trip by a British angler to an area occupied by superstitious villagers who considered fly fishing a form of black magic:

“This terrible apprehension was soon circulated from village to village: the deluded peasants broke in pieces the pretty painted magic wand, and forcibly put to flight the magician himself, vowing, with imprecations, if he repeated his visit, they would send him to sleep with the fishes.”

Thanks for rounding out the picture, and all the best,

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Where is “put” in “stay put”?

Q: My daughter was in the Northeast during the recent snowstorm and I asked her if she was planning to stay put. That got me to thinking: where is put?

A: The Oxford English Dictionary describes “stay put” as a colloquialism that originated in the US in the mid-19th century.

The OED defines the verbal phrase as meaning “to remain where or as placed; to remain fixed or steady; also fig. (of persons, etc.).”

The earliest published reference in the dictionary is from the Sept. 23, 1843, issue of the New Mirror, a weekly journal in New York: “And now we have put her in black and white, where she will ‘stay put.’ ”

The usage apparently raised eyebrows in its early days. John Russell Bartlett, in his Dictionary of Americanisms (1848), describes it as a “vulgar expression”—that is, a common one.

In Haunted Hearts, an 1864 novel by Maria Susanna Cummins, the expression refers to a thing: “This curl sticks right out straight; couldn’t you put this pin in for me, so that it would stay put?”

James Russell Lowell, uses it to refer to a person in his 1871 essay collection My Study Windows: “He has a prodigious talent, to use our Yankee phrase, of staying put.”

Where, you ask, is put?

The OED doesn’t explain the origin of the usage, and we couldn’t find an explanation in any of our usual language references.

But there may be a clue in Oxford’s definition of the phrase: “to remain where or as placed.”

If we had to guess, we’d say the verbal phrase originally meant something like “to stay where someone or something is put,” or “to stay where one puts oneself.”

However, an idiomatic expression like “stay put” doesn’t necessarily have to make sense, as we’ve mentioned several times on the blog, including in a posting a couple of years ago. In other words, there may be no “where” there.

The word “put,” by the way, is one of the commonest English verbs, but its source is uncertain, according to John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins.

Ayto says it goes back to an Old English word, putian, “never actually recorded but inferred from the verbal noun putung ‘instigation,’ but where that comes from is not known.”

He speculates that putung “was presumably related to Old English potian ‘push, thrust,’ whose Middle English descendant pote formed the basis of Modern English potter.” (Think of that, next time you find yourself pottering in the garden.)

In case you’re curious, the golfing term “putt” as well as the track-and-field term “shot put” are descended from that same uncertain source.

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Rhetorical deviltry

Q: Do you know who said this: “God gave us the word and the Devil gave us religion”?

A: This fill-in-the-blank formula—“God gave us X and the Devil gave us Y”—dates back in one form or another at least as far as the 16th century.

The old saying “God sends meat and the Devil sends cooks” has appeared, with slight variations, since about 1542, according to Robert William Dent, a scholar of colloquial and proverbial language in literature.

And it’s been much quoted ever since, especially in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Sometimes the verb is “give” instead of “send,” and the object is “food” instead of “meat.”

(Dent, a UCLA English professor who died in 2005, dated the expression in a footnote to Colloquial Language in Ulysses: A Reference Tool, a 1994 study of James Joyce’s Ulysses.)

Over the years, the expression has proved highly adaptable, inspiring other proverbs like “God sent the wheat and the Devil sent the bakers,” and “God sends corn and the Devil mars the sack.”

We found this passage, for example, in A Cordial for Low Spirits (1763), a collection of tracts by Thomas Gordon:

“It is a common saying, that God sends meat, but the Devil sends cooks; so I think one may say of the Dean that God gave him an understanding, but the Devil gave him a will.”

In 1796, an English pastor, the Rev. William Huntington, wrote this in a letter to his brother: “As soon as God sent me ten pounds, the devil sent one or other to rob me of twenty.”

The formula is a handy rhetorical device for any writer wishing to contrast something good with something not so good.

For instance, here’s a passage from the April 1869 issue of The Methodist Quarterly Review, published in New York:

“Mr. Froude tells us that God gave us the Gospel, but that the devil gave us theology.” (The italics are the author’s.)

The formula survived intact into the 20th century and beyond.

A classmate of Samuel Beckett’s wrote that the headmaster at their Dublin school used to say, “God sends me the boys but the Devil sends me their parents.”

And you can find dozens of variations on the Internet with “religion” in the final position:

“God gave us truth [the universe … spirituality … reason … the world … love] and the devil gave us religion.”

It’s sometimes embellished a bit: “God gave us truth; the devil organized it and called it religion.”

Deepak Chopra is often quoted at second hand as saying something similar. For a direct quote, here’s an excerpt from an interview with him published April 18, 1998, in the St. Petersburg Times:

 “I like to think of myself as seeking spirituality, which is the basis of religion. God gave humans the truth, and the devil came and he said, ‘Let’s give it a name and call it religion. ’ ”

The original was a highly flexible old proverb and we haven’t seen the last of it.

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Blood and treasure

Q: I’m curious about the origin of the expression “blood and treasure,” as in “Was Vietnam worth the price in blood and treasure?”

A: We’ve seen the phrase “blood and treasure” a lot lately, but it’s an age-old poetic expression meaning “lives and money.” It’s generally been used in reference to the high price of war or conquest.

The expression seems to have been fairly common in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The earliest references we’ve been able to find appeared in the 1640s.

Passages from the proceedings of the House of Lords include “the Blood and Treasure that hath been spent” (1646) and, reversing the formula, “with great Expence both of their Treasure and Blood” (1643).

We found a petition to the British Parliament on behalf of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, dated 1647, that refers to “those our Native Liberties, which have now cost the Kingdom such vast Expence of Blood and Treasure.”

Sir Henry Vane used the expression in attacking Richard Cromwell in a speech before Parliament in 1659:

 “We have driven away the hereditary tyranny of the house of Stuart, at the expense of much blood and treasure, in hopes of enjoying hereditary liberty, after having shaken off the yoke of kingship.” (Vane was executed for treason the following year.)

The phrase crops up a lot in early 18th-century political pamphlets and essays, such as Robert Crosfeild’s The Government Unhing’d, a political treatise written in 1702 and published in 1703:

“In vain has the Nation spent so much Blood and Treasure, to preserve its Liberty, if Men have not the Freedom of Speech without Doors, as well as within.”

Daniel Defoe frequently used the expression. So did Jonathan Swift, who was so fond of it that he used it twice in a single sentence in this passage from his pamphlet The Publick Spirit of the Whigs, written in 1712:

“I cannot sufficiently commend our Ancestors for transmitting to us the Blessing of Liberty; yet having laid out their Blood and Treasure upon the Purchase, I do not see how they acted parsimoniously; because I can conceive nothing more generous than that of employing our Blood and Treasure for the Service of Others.”

In Swift’s other political writings, we find passages like these: “the Disposal of their Blood and Treasure” … “without whose blood and treasure” … “obtained by the Blood and Treasure of others”… “sacrificing so much Blood and Treasure” … “the blood and treasure of his fellow-subjects” … “prodigal of our Blood and Treasure” … “conquered … with so much Blood and Treasure” … “the loss of infinite blood and treasure,” “our best Blood and Treasure,” and others.

Possibly because of Swift’s influence, countless examples of the phrase appeared in books, newspapers, pamphlets, and journals of the 1720s, ’30s and ’40s.

In 1742, a speaker in the House of Commons referred to “Spain, which hath cost us much Blood and Treasure, and is like to cost us much more.”

And the 1778 issue of The Annual Register, a summary of the year’s events in Britain, referred to the Revolutionary War as “So great an exhausture of blood and treasure.”

Byron used the phrase in his poem The Age of Bronze (1823): “Blood and treasure boundlessly were spilt.”

At least two American presidents have used the expression at times of great political turmoil.

John Adams wrote on July 3, 1776: “I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States.”

And Abraham Lincoln said on Dec. 1, 1862, that the country’s essential nationhood “demands union and abhors separation. In fact, it would ere long force reunion, however much of blood and treasure the separation might have cost.”

In our own time, we’ve seen the phrase used in reference to the war in Afghanistan.

In a Pentagon press conference on Jan. 10, 2013, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta used the phrase in response to a similar usage by a journalist.

The journalist asked Panetta: “How do you go to the American people and ask for yet another year, 18 months, or more of blood and treasure to pour into this war that kind of seems endless?”

Panetta’s reply: “Look, we have poured a lot of blood and treasure in this war over the last 10 years. But the fact is that we have also made a lot of progress as a result of the sacrifices that have been made.”

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Are you bored to flinders?

Q: Any idea of the origins of the phrase “bored to flinders”? I looked up the word “flinders,” but can’t reason out a connection with boredom!

A: Someone who’s “bored to flinders” is bored to pieces. The word “flinders” is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as meaning “fragments, pieces, splinters.”

So in the phrase “bored to flinders,” the word is used in a figurative way.

The word was first recorded in English, according to the OED, in Golagros and Gawane, a Scottish poem published in a pamphlet in 1508:

“Thair speris in the feild in flendris gart ga.” (“Their spears went to flinders in the field.”)

This seems to echo a line from the 12th-century French epic poem La Chanson de Roland, usually translated as “Right to the hilt, his spear in flinders flew.”

The word “flinders” may be Scandinavian in origin, since according to the OED, it’s similar to the modern Norwegian word flindra, meaning a thin chip or splinter.

But it’s often used figuratively, as in this line from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Poganuc People (1878): “Parson Cushing could knock that air all to flinders.”

(When the speaker here says “that air,” he’s referring to a sermon by another minister, one who “don’t weigh much ’longside o’ Parson Cushing.”)

Though it’s not cited in the OED, there’s another reference to “flinders” in Stowe’s novel. In the chapter “Election Day in Poganuc,” a character says, “Well, Doctor, we’re smashed. Democrats beat us all to flinders.”

It’s a colorful word, and it’s still sometimes used to good effect. The OED has some modern citations, including this one from the novel Speed (1970), by William S. Burroughs Jr.:

“About noon, the transmission went all to flinders and the car would only run in first.” (We’ve expanded the OED citation a bit.)

Green’s Dictionary of Slang records another form of the word, “flindereens,” apparently a slang variant that combines “flinders” and “smithereens.”

We found an example in Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s novel Seasoned Timber (1939), which is set in Vermont: “Ezry, d’y remember the time they busted the Ashley town snowplow t’flindereens?”

The specific phrase “bored to flinders” doesn’t appear in the OED. But we’ve read it in many books, including David Mamet in Conversation (2001), an anthology edited by Leslie Kane.

In an interview conducted in 1994, the critic John Lahr asked Mamet whether he was a bad student in school. The playwright replied: “I was a nonstudent. No interest, just bored to flinders.”

As we all know, there are many others ways of expressing ennui: “bored to pieces,” “bored to death,” “bored to tears,” “bored to distraction,” “bored stiff,” “bored rigid,” “bored silly,” and so on.

If you’re not bored yet, you might be interested in a recent post of ours that discusses whether the word “bore” that refers to tedium is related to the much older word “bore” that refers to making a hole.

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Since Christ left Chicago

Q: As my retired physician father was perusing the ancient black bag he used to take on house calls, a doctor friend stopped by and said he hadn’t seen such medicines and paraphernalia “since Christ left Chicago.” I was wondering if you know the origin of that vivid expression.

A: The expression “since Christ left Chicago” is a variation on a theme. Other—and much more popular—versions include “since Christ was a corporal” and “since “Christ was a cowboy.”

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang says the phrase “since Christ was a corporal” means “since time immemorial.”

We don’t see an entry for “since Christ left Chicago” in Random House or any of our other reference works, but we can safely assume from reading a few dozen examples online that it also means for a very long time or since ages ago.

The earliest published example of the “Chicago” version, as far as we can tell, appeared in Life magazine in June 1959.

An article on labor unrest quoted a dissident New York Teamster as calling the attorney Edward Bennett Williams “the biggest liar the world has ever seen. He ain’t told the truth since Christ left Chicago!”

More recently, the writer Nick Tosches has used the expression a couple of times.

He wrote in Spin magazine in 1988: “My brother asks me if Island is one of the dumb-ass companies that still sends me free records even though I haven’t reviewed a record since Christ left Chicago.”

And Tosches used it in his first novel, Cut Numbers (1988): “Someday, if they’re lucky, they’ll look up and see that co-op roof cavin’ in and they’ll realize they been carryin’ thirty-year paper to live in some shit-hole that’s been fallin’ apart since Christ left Chicago.”

The older version, “since Christ was a corporal,” was a favorite of John Dos Passos. Though many people have used the phrase since World War II, most of the earliest examples we’ve found, from 1921 to 1944, are from his works.

Dos Passos used it twice in his World War I novel Three Soldiers (1921), even putting it in the mouths of different characters.

In one section, a character remarks: “Ain’t had any pay since Christ was a corporal. I’ve forgotten what it looks like.” And later a soldier asks, “How long have you been here?” The reply: “Since Christ was a corporal.”

Dos Passos used the same expression in his play The Garbage Man (1926) and in his novel Adventures of a Young Man (1939).

It also turned up in State of the Nation, a book of reportage by Dos Passos that was excerpted in a 1944 issue of Life magazine.

In the book, he quotes an anonymous returning soldier as saying, “Ain’t seen a woman since Christ was a corporal.” (We can’t help wondering whether the reporter enlivened some of the quotes with words of his own.)

As Random House points out, variations on the “corporal” version exist too: “since George Washington was a ‘lance
jack’ ” (from Ira L. Reeves’s Bamboo Tales, 1900), and “since ‘Christ was a lance corporal,’ as the men said” (from Charles L. Clifford’s novel Too Many Boats, 1933).

As for the Wild West version, “since Christ was a cowboy,” the earliest example we’ve found is from a bit of dialogue in Leila Hadley’s travel book Give Me the World (1958), about a trip aboard a cargo ship:

“I haven’t felt such a wind since Christ was a cowboy. Must have been hitting fifty knots for a while back there.”

This “cowboy” version—sometimes the protagonist is “Jesus” instead of “Christ”—has appeared many times since then.

The word sleuth Barry Popik has found several examples in books and newspapers from 1973 to 2007, and notes on his Big Apple website that the phrase is especially popular in Texas.

But phrases like this have been around since Shakespeare’s time. Random House quotes Twelfth Night (circa 1595): “They haue beene grand Iury men, since before Noah was a Saylor.”

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Passive distribution

Q: What is your “ruling” on “passive distribution”? An allowable oxymoron?

A: We don’t think the two elements in the phrase “passive distribution” are necessarily contradictory. And in our opinion, the term pretty well describes the various processes it refers to.

We couldn’t find the phrase in any of the references we usually consult. We looked for it in the Oxford English Dictionary as well as in eight standard American or British dictionaries.

However, we did find thousands of examples of the phrase on the Internet—in both technical and nontechnical usages.

In the technical sense, the term often refers to an electrical junction device, like a cable TV splitter, that lets one line feed a signal into two or more lines.

We found several other technical senses, including the natural diffusion of fluids in body tissue, human and animal migrations, the movement of heat and cold, and the dispersion of seeds in nature.

The earliest use of the term that we found in Google Books is from “The Darwinian Theory and the Law of the Migration,” an 1873 English translation of an 1868 paper by the German explorer Moritz Wagner:

“Even the passive distribution of seeds has not a little diminished in comparison with earlier times. In garden, meadow, and field, man wages eternal warfare against all intruders, and where extirpation is impossible, he at all events limits their number, and checks their distribution.”

We assume, however, that you’re referring to a nontechnical usage that apparently showed up in the 1990s: letting outsiders into schools to place religious material on tables for students to take.

For example, members of a conservative group, World Changers, come into schools in two Florida counties, Orange and Collier, to distribute Bibles.

Under a Nov. 2, 2010, consent decree filed in US District Court in Fort Myers, the group has the right to distribute Bibles at the schools one day a year.

The decree stipulates that the Bibles have to be placed on an unattended table, the visitors can’t have contact with students, and a sign must say the event isn’t sponsored or endorsed by the school board.

The document, signed by Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell, refers to the practice as “the passive distribution of literature.”

A brief online search found this earlier example of the usage in a January 1999 report in which the American Association of School Administrators discusses the distribution of religious material in schools:

“Only passive distribution is permitted, however, and no outside adult should be allowed to come onto campus and hand out the materials.”

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Wigs, bigwigs, and big Whigs

Q: A recent headline in the Salt Lake Tribune: “GOP big-whigs suggest Romney quietly go away.” I initially assumed that “big-whigs” was an error (albeit an amusing one), but a quick look on the Internet suggests that there might be a historical basis for this mistake. Can you enlighten me?

A: The headline writer for that post-election article no doubt meant “bigwigs,” not “big-whigs.” The chances are pretty slim that the writer intended a pun on the Whig political parties in Britain or the United States.

Even if a pun was intended, it wouldn’t have been appropriate, since the Whigs—at least in Britain—were known for being liberal.

But a few years ago another headline writer did manage such a pun. In 2007, the Telegraph of London used this headline on a review of a book about the 18th-century British prime minister Robert Walpole: “First of the big Whigs.”

There were Whigs in Britain in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and in the United States in the 19th century. The last Whig president was Millard Fillmore, who left office in 1853.

Certainly many big Whigs in 17th-century England wore big wigs (probably curled and powdered), but etymologically “Whig” and “wig” are not related.

The origin of “Whig” has never been pinned down. It might possibly be from “whiggamer” or “whiggamore,” one of a group of Scottish rebels who marched on Edinburgh in 1648, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The word “wig,” for the hairpiece, was first recorded in the 1600s as a short form of “periwig,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Two words for a hairpiece, “periwig” and “peruke,” came into English in the 1500s, and both were derived from a Middle French word spelled perrucque or perruque, the OED says.

The French terms originally referred to a natural head of long hair, but “periwig” and for most of its history “peruke” have meant artificial hairpieces.

They’re not heard much these days, but here’s a 19th-century example of “peruke.” It comes from a primer on Shakespeare written in 1875 by Edward Dowden:

“That a most Christian king should each morning receive his peruke inserted upon a cane through an aperture of his bed-curtains is entirely correct; for the valet cannot retain faith in a perukeless grand monarch.”

And “bigwig”? We call important people “bigwigs,” according to the OED, because “of the large wigs formerly worn by men of distinction or importance.”

The term “bigwig” was first recorded in 1703 in a weekly journal called English Spy: “Be unto him ever ready to promote his wishes … against dun or don—nob or big-wig—so may you never want a bumper of bishop.”

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English lit or British lit?

Q: Which is correct: English literature or British literature? I studied “English literature” during my schooldays in England. We read the works of authors and poets born in England, Wales, and Scotland. “British literature” sounds strange to me.

A: This is a somewhat sensitive subject, one that seems to change along with ideas about national identity.

When the two of us were in college, in the 1960s and ’70s, the term “English literature” loosely meant works by writers from the British Isles (a term not popular in the Republic of Ireland).

The problem with “English” is that it can refer either to the people of England or to the language, which is spoken in many other nations.

That makes the term “English literature” a little ambiguous. It could mean works written in English, or works written by English authors.

Today, “English literature” is often defined simply as literature written in the English language.

“British literature,” on the other hand, usually refers to works by authors from the United Kingdom (comprising England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland), and sometimes from the Republic of Ireland.

The choice of terms can be difficult. A case in point is the five-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, which includes entries for authors and works from the UK and the Republic of Ireland, an independent nation.

The editor in chief, David Scott Kastan, says in the preface that the choice of an adjective for the title was “vexing,” and explains why “British” was chosen instead of “English”:

“ ‘English’ would either limit the field too narrowly (that is, by restricting the focus to the writers of England) or not enough (that is, by opening it up to all writers writing in English),” Kastan writes.

The adjective “British,” he says, “accurately if sometimes uneasily accommodates the Welsh and Scottish entries. The Irish entries less comfortably fit under the rubric.”

So the term “British literature,” Kastan writes, “is admittedly a compromise,” and is intended “largely as a geographical rather than a political term.”

Consequently, Irish writers like Seamus Heaney, Jonathan Swift, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, and others are included in the encyclopedia as writers “participating in and substantially contributing to a common linguistic and cultural history with writers who with greater terminological precision are labeled ‘British.’ ”

As we hinted above, you’ll find that opinions on such terminology often differ. It’s been our experience, for example, that some people from England resent being referred to as “British” and insist on being called “English.” And we’ve heard from some Scots who don’t care to be referred to as “British” either.

We will leave all that for them to sort out. Meanwhile, a little etymology might be in order.

The short version of the story is that the word “English” is Germanic in origin and “British” is from Latin or Celtic or both.

“English” and “England” are derived from an ancient and long dead noun, Engle, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Engle was used in early Old English as a collective plural. It referred both to the Angles—a Germanic tribe that invaded Roman-occupied Britain in the fifth century and settled the region north of the Thames—and to the people of England.

The Angles were originally from Angeln, a region now known as Schleswig and located in northern Germany and southern Denmark.

The words “British” and “Britain” are derived from Latin by way of Celtic (or vice versa), and can trace their roots to the Roman occupation or even further back. The occupation extended into the southern part of what is now Scotland and lasted from the first through the fifth centuries.

“Britain” is from the classical Latin adjective Britannus, which the OED says is “perhaps ultimately [from] the Celtic base of Welsh pryd,” meaning “countenance, image, beauty, form.” (The Old Welsh for “Britain” was Priten.) 

Why, you’re probably asking, can’t we be more precise about the ultimate origin of  “British” and “Britain”? Did their ancestors come into Old English from Latin or from Celtic? Here’s what the OED has to say on the subject:

“At the time of contact with the Anglo-Saxons, south-eastern Britain was heavily Romanized and bilingualism with Latin must have been common. Therefore, although post-classical Latin Brittus (as well as classical Latin Britto and Brittannus ) appears ultimately to have a Celtic base …, it is unclear whether Latin or British forms (or both) were borrowed into Old English.”

The name “Britain” has been used since the Old English period, the OED says, “to denote the geographical area comprising England, Wales, and Scotland, with their dependencies (more fully called Great Britain).” More recently, the term is “also used for the British state or empire as a whole.”

We mentioned the term “British Isles” above, so let’s not keep it dangling.

It’s defined in the OED as “a group of islands, including Britain, Ireland (Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland), the Isle of Man, the Hebrides, the Orkney Islands, the Shetland Islands, the Scilly Isles, and the Channel Islands, lying off the coast of northwestern Europe, from which they are separated by the North Sea and the English Channel.”

The OED says the phrase “British Isles” is “generally regarded as a geographical or territorial description, rather than as one which designates a political entity.” The term, the OED adds, “is deprecated by some speakers in the Republic of Ireland.”

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Behind the Iron Curtain

Q: A recent article in the New York Times Book Review says Winston Churchill coined the term “Iron Curtain.” Churchill, as you’ve written, is a notorious quote magnet, which prompts my question: Did he actually come up with the metaphor or is this another ersatz Churchillism?

A: Max Frankel, in a Nov. 25, 2012, review of Anne Applebaum’s book Iron Curtain, says Churchill “coined the metaphor in a message to President Truman a full year before he used it in public in Fulton, Mo.”

Frankel was referring to a May 12, 1945, telegram from Churchill to Truman, and a March 5, 1946, address by the British Prime Minister at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo.

You’re right that Churchill is a notorious quotation magnet, as we noted in a posting earlier this month.

An oft-quoted example (in one form or another) is the mythological response to a pedant who dared tinker with his writing: “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”

Did Churchill coin “Iron Curtain”? No, but his speech at Westminster College helped popularize the term as a metaphor for the divide between the former Soviet bloc and the rest of the world.

As it turns out, the phrase “iron curtain” first showed up in English more than a century before the Russian Revolution, in a much different context. But first let’s look at the figurative usage you’ve asked about.

The earliest example of the usage in The Yale Book of Quotations is by the English reformer Ethel Snowden, though she used the term two years before the Soviet Union was officially established.

In her 1920 book Through Bolshevik Russia, Snowden writes: “We were behind the ‘iron curtain’ at last!”

The Yale reference, edited by Fred R. Shapiro (who coined the term “quotation magnet”), cites two other early examples of the usage, and one of them preceded Churchill’s:

“At present an iron curtain of silence has descended, cutting off the Russian zone from the Western Allies.” (T. St. Vincent Trowbridge, a British army officer, quoted in the Oct. 21, 1945, issue of the Sunday Empire News.)

“Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend.” (Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, in the Feb. 25, 1945, issue of Das Reich.)

The Oxford English Dictionary cites another Goebbels example in which the German word vorhang is translated by the Times of London as “screen” instead of “curtain.” (Our two German dictionaries translate it as “curtain.”)

In the Feb. 23, 1945, issue of the Times, Goebbels is quoted as saying: “If the German people lay down their arms, the whole of eastern and south-eastern Europe, together with the Reich, would come under Russian occupation. Behind an iron screen [ein eiserner Vorhang] mass butcheries of peoples would begin.”

A letter to the editor of the New York Times Times Book Review, commenting on the review you asked about, noted on Dec. 16 that the Nazi propaganda magazine Signal used the phrase in a May 1943 article entitled Hinter dem Eisernen Vorhang (“Behind the Iron Curtain”).

As we mentioned above, the phrase “iron curtain” was around for more than a century before the Russian Revolution. In fact, it first showed up in English before Karl Marx was a gleam in his mother’s eye.

In the late 18th century, it was a theatrical term for a literal iron curtain that could be lowered between the stage and the auditorium.

A citation from the March 13, 1794, issue of the Times of London says “an iron curtain has been contrived, which, on such occasion [of fire], would compleatly prevent all communication between the audience and stage.”

By the early 19th century, the phrase was being used figuratively to refer to any impenetrable barrier, according to published references in the OED.

Here’s an example from the Earl of Munster’s 1819 journal of a trip across India: “On the 19th November we crossed the river Betwah, and as if an iron curtain had dropt between us and the avenging angel, the deaths diminished.”

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Hear Pat live today on WNYC

She’ll be on the Leonard Lopate Show around 1:20 PM Eastern time to discuss the English language and take questions from callers. Today’s topic: the language of Watergate, 40 years later. If you miss the program, you can listen to it on Pat’s WNYC page.

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Meantime, back at the ranch

Q: Since when has “meantime” become acceptable by itself? I’ve heard several news commentators begin sentences with “Meantime” instead of “In the meantime” or “Meanwhile.” I’ve also seen “meantime” instead of “meanwhile” on news tickers. I was taught in high school that this is incorrect. What happened?

A: The words “meantime” and “meanwhile” have identical meanings and can be used interchangeably, but most of the time we use them for different purposes.

Both are nouns as well as adverbs. When used as adverbs they appear alone, but when used as nouns they’re part of an adverbial phrase beginning “in the …” or “for the ….”

So all of these sentences are correct:

(1) “In the meantime, Herbie did his laundry.” (Here, “meantime” is a noun.)

(2) “In the meanwhile, Herbie did his laundry.” (Here, “meanwhile” is a noun.)

(3) “Meantime, Herbie did his laundry.” (“Meantime” is an adverb here.)

(4) “Meanwhile, Herbie did his laundry.” (“Meanwhile” is an adverb here.)

However, most people use #1 and #4 much more often than #2 and #3. For most of us, the preference is to use the noun “meantime” in the adverbial phrase (#1) and to use “meanwhile” when we want a stand-alone adverb (#4).

While those are the customary idiomatic usages, it’s not incorrect to go the other way—to use “meantime” all by itself and “meanwhile” as part of a phrase (“in the meanwhile,” “for the meanwhile”).

We’re not alone in saying this, by the way. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage comments: “The evidence shows that meantime and meanwhile have been used interchangeably as nouns since the 14th century and as adverbs since the 16th century.” (And that, we might add, is as long as they’ve been in the language.)

“The general observation that meantime is now the more common noun and meanwhile the more common adverb is undoubtedly true,” M-W continues, “but the adverb meantime and the noun meanwhile have been in continuous use for hundreds of year, and their use in current English is not rare.”

The usage guide’s advice: “There is no need to make a point of avoiding such usage.”

Another authority, R. W. Burchfield, writes in Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.): “The phrases in the meantime and in the meanwhile are still to some extent interchangeable, though the former is the more usual.”

As we said above, the definitions of “meantime” and “meanwhile” are identical.

The nouns mean “the time intervening between one particular period or event and another,” the OED says, while the adverbs mean “during the intervening time between one particular period or event and another; while or until a particular event occurs; at the same time; for the present.”

Their parallel histories are interesting to trace. Both words originally showed up as parts of longer phrases.

In its earliest uses, “meantime” was part of the phrase “in the meantime,” which the OED defines as “during or within the time intervening between a particular period or event and a subsequent one; while or until a (specified) period or event occurs.”

OED citations for the phrase date back to 1340, and it appears (as “in the mene tyme”) in a circa 1384 edition of the Wycliffe Bible.

This modern example is from Muriel Spark’s novel A Far Cry From Kensington (1988): “We thought … we would soon have to find another job. In the meantime we got on with the job we had.”

“For the meantime” was first recorded in 1480 (as “for the mene tyme”), and means “so long as a period of (intervening) time lasts; for the interim,” the OED says.

The OED’s most recent example is from a 1990 issue of the journal Modern Railways: “For the meantime he has a tremendous task, compounded by the managerial and organisational changes racking BR as it attempts to meld the Sectors and production.”

But “meantime” has been used as a stand-alone adverb since the late 16th century. Oxford’s earliest example is from Christopher Marlowe’s play Edward II, written sometime before 1593: “Mean time my lord of Penbrooke and my selfe Will to Newcastell heere, and gather head.”

The dictionary’s examples continue into modern times. The most recent is from BBC Top Gear Magazine (1999): “Ferrari is readying a fully convertible version of the fab 360 Modena…. Meantime, the 360 comes with a removable-panel sunshine roof option.”

Like “meantime,” the noun “meanwhile” first appeared as part of a phrase: “in the meanwhile” (dating to before 1375) and “for the meanwhile” (circa 1390).

This modern example is from a 1986 issue of the Daily Telegraph (London): “In the meanwhile, the Government is effectively admitting that state spending is out of control.”

And this one is from a 1993 novel, Will Self’s My Idea of Fun: “I didn’t know who or where to turn to. So for the meanwhile I continued with my ritualised observances.”

But like you, most people are more comfortable with “meanwhile” used solo as an adverb, a usage first recorded (as “mene whyle”) in 1440.

This elegant example is from D. H. Lawrence’s novel The Rainbow (1915): “Meanwhile the brook slid on coldly, chuckling to itself.”

And here’s one from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel Tender Is the Night (1934): “He … took a small beer on the terrace of the station buffet, meanwhile watching the little bug crawl down the eighty-degree slope of the hill.”

As you can see from all the examples, sometimes these adverbs and adverbial phrases appear at the beginning of sentences and sometimes later; sometimes they’re set off by commas and sometimes they’re not.

We can’t sign off without mentioning the phrase “meanwhile, back at the ranch,” which the OED says was “originally used in western stories and films, introducing a subsidiary plot; now chiefly humorous and in extended use.”

In Oxford’s earliest example, the phrase is in its infancy and lacks the word “back.” It’s from a classic of the genre, Zane Grey’s novel Riders of the Purple Sage (1912):

“Meantime, at the ranch, when Judkins’s news had sent Venters on the trail of the rustlers, Jane Withersteen led the injured man to her house.”

Fowler’s says the complete phrase (“Meanwhile, back at the ranch”) originally appeared as a subtitle in silent Western films and was later “promoted from caption to voice-over.”

The OED’s first published example of the complete phrase is from a 1940 issue of the Oakland Tribune: “Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Sandy’s dog, Pat, began to whine.”

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Quote magnets

Q: I enjoyed hearing Pat discuss quote magnets last month on WNYC. I have a favorite Mark Twain quote, and I’d like to know whether it’s genuine: “If you always tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

A: We can’t find any evidence that Mark Twain ever wrote this. We can’t find it in any of his works, and the Internet websites that say he wrote it don’t say where.

If you can’t look something up to verify it at the source, it’s probably not true. And as Pat said on that WNYC program, Twain never said a lot of the things attributed to him.

In fact, Twain is a good example of a quotation magnet, a term coined by Fred Shapiro, author of The Yale Book of Quotations, for people often credited with saying things they never said.

When a quote is catchy but of unknown or obscure origin, it tends to attach itself to some famous person, like Twain, Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Lincoln, or Dorothy Parker.

In an article in the July-August 2011 issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine, Shapiro calls Twain “the great American quotation magnet” because “any folksy or mildly satiric line tends to be pinned on him.”

The quote you mention is found in many different versions and has been attributed to more than one person, which leads us to think that it should be chalked up to that great fount of platitudes, Anonymous.

We found an early version—“If you always tell the truth, you will never have to fix up excuses”—among a list of anonymous “Ironical Ifs” printed in the Bay City (Michigan) Times-Press on Nov. 19, 1898. The same list was reprinted the following year in the Muskegon (Michigan) Chronicle.

Twain was alive and kicking then and was wildly popular. If those newspapers had been quoting him, they no doubt would have said so.

Over the years, the quotation morphed into many different forms. One version showed up in an African-American newspaper, the Negro Star, of Wichita, Kansas, on Feb. 8, 1952.

In an opinion column devoted to the importance of accuracy, the writer, Ruth Taylor, quoted “a machinist friend” of hers as saying, “If you always tell the truth, then you never have to remember what you said before.”

Similar versions of the quote have been posthumously attributed to Sam Rayburn, the longtime Speaker of the House of Representatives, who died in 1961.

According to a United Press International dispatch that ran in the Chicago Tribune in July 1967, Rayburn “was fond of saying: ‘If you always tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said.’ ”

And in 1978, the Washingtonian magazine quoted Rayburn as saying, “Son, always tell the truth. Then you’ll never have to remember what you said the last time.”

George McGovern apparently made a similar observation. In a New Yorker article in May 1972, when McGovern was running for president, Shirley MacLaine is quoted as saying that McGovern “never gets tired.”

“I asked him how he did it,” MacLaine says, “and he told me that the secret is telling the truth. If you always tell the truth you don’t have to use up energy trying to remember what you said in other places.”

Yet another version appears in David Mamet’s play Glengarry Glen Ross (1982). In Act Two, the character Roma is giving advice on how to talk to the police: “Always tell the truth. It’s the easiest thing to remember.”

Yet other versions appear on the Internet, some attributed to Twain, some to Rayburn, and some to “legend.” Versions differ, to the effect that if you tell the truth, you won’t have to remember “your words,” or “what you said,” or “your lies.”

As for Twain, he did write, “When in doubt, tell the truth,” according to The Yale Book of Quotations. The quote is from Following the Equator, chapter 2, “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar” (1897).

If Twain was the “great American quotation magnet,” then Churchill was the great British one. The tendency for wisecracks to attach themselves to Churchill is so common that it’s been given a name of its own: “Churchillian drift.”

As Pat mentioned on the program, Lady Astor supposedly told Churchill at a dinner party, “If I were married to you, I’d put poison in your coffee.” Churchill’s alleged reply: “If I were married to you, I’d drink it.”

According to legend that exchange took place in the 1920s, but Shapiro has traced it to a joke line from a 1900 edition of The Chicago Tribune.

Similarly, there’s no truth to the old story about someone who wanted to “fix” one of Churchill’s sentences because it ended with a preposition.

There are many versions of what Churchill is supposed to have written in a marginal note. The most common: “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”

While we’re at it, Churchill never described Britain and the United States as “two nations divided by a common language.” We’ve written about these last two legends in our book about language myths, Origins of the Specious.

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The whole six yards?

[Note: An updated post about “the whole nine yards” appeared on Dec. 14, 2016.]

Once more, we interrupt our regular programming for an update on “the whole nine yards,” an expression whose origin has eluded etymologists for decades.

In our last bulletin, just four months ago, we said that word sleuths had traced the expression back to the mid-1950s, when it appeared in two articles in a Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife publication.

But the references—“So that’s the whole nine-yards” and “These guys go the whole nine yards”—provided no clue to the phrase’s origin. Even the author of the articles said he had no inside information.

Now Fred R. Shapiro, author of the Yale Book of Quotations, has announced new findings. In the January-February issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine, he says several references to “the whole six yards” (yes six, not nine) have turned up in print from 1912 to 1921.

And the six-yard version of the expression meant exactly what the nine-yard version does—the whole extent of something. What this suggests, Shapiro says, is that “the whole six yards” eventually became “the whole nine yards.”

As he explains: “Anyone who studies quotations and phraseology often sees a phenomenon I hereby dub ‘phrase inflation’: in expressions that use a number meant to be impressive, that number is likely to grow over time.”

He cites the example of “cloud nine,” a phrase that originally appeared as “cloud seven” and “cloud eight.” Likewise, the expression “Let a hundred flowers bloom” now usually appears as “Let a thousand flowers bloom.”

His research was also reported in an article in the New York Times.

So what about the phrase’s original meaning? As Shapiro writes in his article, “Still, we have no explanation of why something six or nine yards long is being alluded to—of what was originally six or nine yards long.”

“Perhaps,” he adds, “the reference was never a specific length of a specific thing, but only a colorful locution vaguely signifying something very long. We can now at least trace the inflation that apparently led to the final formulation.”

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More about caring less

[Note: This post was updated on March 19, 2021.]

Q: How did “I could care less” (US) and “I couldn’t care less” (UK) come to mean the same thing? Is the American version a shortened form of something like “See if I could care less”? (I’m an emeritus professor of education at a British university.)

A: “I could care less,” which we’ve written about before on our blog, is an extremely common idiom—almost a cliché—even though many English speakers strenuously deplore it. And it wasn’t first recorded in the US, as we’ll show later.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes “could care less” as a US colloquialism dating from the 1960s that means the same thing as “couldn’t care less” but omits the negative element. However, earlier examples have been spotted in Canadian and Australian newspapers of the 1940s.

The earliest example reported so far is from an article published in the Ottawa Evening Citizen, July 20, 1948:

“The idea is that because their frost comes earlier (if it does) the Gatineau goers are a more rugged, tougher breed than people who stick around in Ottawa. I could care less!” (Sightings were reported in separate, nearly simultaneous postings to the ADS-L, the mailing list of the American Dialect Society, by Ben Zimmer and Garson O’Toole on March 9, 2021.)

And your hosts at Grammarphobia found several examples in a letter written in February 1949 in Australia. Here are some excerpts from the letter, which was read in divorce court testimony in Perth:

“I did love you with all the passion and love that is possible of a man (if you can call me a man in your idea) and now I could care less.”  … “But at the present time I could care less.” … “I don’t care how you take it, I could care less.” … “I’m writing how I feel and I could car [sic] less. Goodnight Zoe and goodbye if you wish it—I could care less.” (The Mirror, Perth, June 28, 1952.)

The news article examines a case tried in 1950 in which a woman who lived near Melbourne and taught English was granted a divorce on grounds of desertion. The February 1949 letter, which her husband wrote after he’d left her, was entered into evidence.

In the 1950s and ’60s, published uses of “could care less” became more common. Here are two from the mid-’50s:

“He received the most indifferent treatment which a government department can hand out. He hasn’t heard from the department since. Apparently they could care less.” (The Chilliwack Progress, Chilliwack, B.C,  Jan. 6, 1954; the finding was first reported by Mark Liberman on the Language Log.)

“The National League clubs have always shied from pitching left-handers against the Dodgers, but Casey Stengel could care less about the Dodgers’ reputation for beating southpaws.” (The Washington Post, Sep. 25, 1955; the sighting was first reported by Ben Zimmer.)

This example, which we found in a 1960 issue of the Sourdough Crock, published by the California Folklore Society, shows just how familiar “could care less” had become by then:

“Dear Uncle Flabby: I get sick and tired of hearing people say, ‘I could care less,’ which doesn’t mean what they mean to mean at all. If they would only stop and think about it, they would know that what they are trying to say is, ‘I couldn’t care less,’ which means ‘I don’t care at all.’ ” (The comment appears in a column by the pseudonymous Flabby Van Boring.)

Here’s another California sighting from the same year: “People who ordinarily could care less about a symphony orchestra have been known to see him [Leonard Bernstein], if only out of curiosity. While they are there, they are exposed to music at its best.” (An article about a New York Philharmonic concert in San Diego, published in the Coronado Eagle and Journal, Sept. 8, 1960.)

The OED’s earliest citation is from a 1966 issue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “My husband is a lethargic, indecisive guy who drifts along from day to day. If a bill doesn’t get paid he could care less.”

We quoted so many earlier examples only to show that “could care less” was more widespread, both geographically and sociologically, than has been assumed.

But here we’d like to speculate a bit about its origins, if you don’t mind.

This common idiomatic phrase—amounting to a negative statement without a negative element—might have grown from an earlier usage in which the negation comes before the phrase. This earlier usage, which is quite literal, appears in both British and American writing.

In this mid-19th-century example, for instance, the negative “few” appears before the “could care less” part: “Few men in the diocese could care less who are the lucky recipients of Church gifts.” From an article in The Times by “S. G. O.” (the Rev. Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne), London, July 30, 1862.

And in this American example, the negation is implied by an “if” used conditionally: “As to profits, if our farmers could care less for the comforts of themselves and their families … they could now with their present facilities, no doubt double their incomes.” From a letter by the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, published in The Caledonian (St. Johnsbury, Vt.), July 18, 1889, and widely reprinted.

Later examples are plentiful: “no man could care less” (1900); “few could care less” (1915); “no one could care less” (1917); “nobody could care less” (1925); “neither of them could care less” (1954); “I don’t believe they could care less” (1955), and so on.

Perhaps it’s not much of a jump from “nobody could care less” to “they could care less.” Just a thought. 

As for the fuller version of the phrase, “couldn’t (or could not) care less,” it apparently dates from the early 1940s.

The earliest example we know of was also found by the intrepid Ben Zimmer. It’s from a story, “The Coup of Mr. Marsland Faille,” by Marcel Wallenstein, printed in the Kansas City Star, Jan. 25, 1942:

“ ‘Why, Mr. Pennington, I think you’re funny.’ ‘I mean it. You see, I’ve lost.’ ‘Have you?’ she said, and poured herself another drink. ‘Yes, I have.’ ‘I couldn’t care less,’ responded Miss Mond lightly.”

The usage, both contracted and uncontracted, began showing up with great frequency in the later 1940s, in both the US and the UK.

The OED’s earliest example for either form—contracted or not—is the title of a book, I Couldn’t Care Less (1946), by the English air transport pilot Anthony Phelps. We found one from the same year in an American newspaper: “the mayor’s campaign fund to preserve the G. O. P. in city hall is being given the bird by a number of city employees who couldn’t care less.” (The Indianapolis Times, March 21, 1946.)

You aren’t alone in suggesting that “I could care less” may be a shortened  form of something like “See if I could care less.” The usage has been discussed to death by academic linguists, and theories abound.

Some have analyzed the abbreviated idiom as deliberately ironic or sarcastic. Yet others disagree, pointing out that even if it did begin sarcastically, it’s certainly not sarcastic anymore.

And as the linguist Arika Okrent has written, the “could care less” / “couldn’t care less” partnership isn’t unique. Think of “you know squat” (which really means “you don’t know squat”),  and “that’ll teach you to mess with me” (meaning “that’ll teach you not to mess with me”).

Whatever its origins, we see nothing wrong with using “I could care less” as long as the user is aware that many fussbudgets still view it as an atrocity—or, as Steven Pinker has called it, “an alleged atrocity.”

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Never forget! Never again!

Q: Since the Newtown tragedy, I’ve wanted to post “Never forget” on my Facebook page, but I couldn’t trace its origin. Can you help?

A: People have used the phrase “never forget” for hundreds of years. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary, for example, dates from 1647, and we expect that a thorough search would find examples that are centuries older.

But you’re obviously wondering about the use of the phrase as an interjection in reference to a mass killing. Many people believe “Never forget!” was first used this way in referring to the Holocaust.

We can’t confirm that, but we have found an example of that usage from soon after World War II. As part of Allied de-Nazification efforts, an exhibition entitled “Never Forget” opened on Sept. 14, 1946, in Vienna.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has a photo on its website from the brochure for the exhibition, with the words “Never forget!” in German: Niemals vergessen!

The website of the Austrian National Library says the exhibition, seen by 840,000 people, was organized by the graphic artist Victor Theodor Slama at the suggestion of the Soviet Union.

Also in 1946, the writer Howard Fast and the artist William Gropper published a book about the Holocaust entitled Never to Forget: The Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Since then, the interjection “Never forget!” has been used often in reference to other genocides and mass killings, though most of the examples we’ve found date from the last couple of decades, especially since 9/11.

A June 25, 2005, headline in the New York Times, for example, describes the feelings of students who had to flee Stuyvesant High School as the nearby Twin Towers burned: “For This Class, ‘Remember When’ Mingles With ‘Never Forget.’ ”

“Never again!” is another phrase that’s often used in reference to the Holocaust and other atrocities. But when it was first used as an interjection in the 19th century, the phrase had nothing to do with genocides and massacres.

The OED’s earliest published reference to the phrase as an interjection is from The Pickwick Papers (1837), Charles Dickens’s first novel. The phrase appears twice in this exchange between a husband and his dying wife:

“Rouse yourself, my dear girl. Pray, pray do. You will revive yet.”

“Never again, George; never again.”

But when was the phrase first used in its genocidal sense?

The historian Raul Hilberg, a Holocaust scholar, has said prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp put up signs reading “never again” in many languages after they were freed by the Allies, but we’re not convinced.

Hilberg made his comments in an interview with the journal Logos shortly before his death in 2007, but he didn’t mention the signs in his three-volume history of the Holocaust, The Destruction of the European Jews (1961).

The earliest use of the phrase in reference to the Holocaust, according to the Yale Book of Quotations, is in Mein Kampf, a 1961 documentary about the Holocaust by the German-born Swedish director Erwin Leiser.

In the documentary, originally entitled Den Blodiga Tiden (Swedish for The Bloody Time), the narrator says at the end: “It must never happen again—never again.”

The phrase also became the slogan of the militant Jewish Defense League, which was founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1968. Kahane was shot to death in 1990.

The word “holocaust” has an interesting etymology. When it first showed up in English in the early 1300s, a “holocaust” was a “sacrifice wholly consumed by fire; a whole burnt offering,” according to the OED. The earliest citations were in reference to biblical sacrifices.

In the early 1700s, the word (from the Greek holokaustos, burnt whole) took on the sense of a great slaughter or massacre, initially by fire but later by war, rioting, and other means.

By the early 1940s, the word was being used to describe the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis.

It wasn’t until the 1950s, however, that the phrase “the Holocaust” (with the “H” capitalized) was used in reference to this Nazi genocide. Here’s how the OED describes the evolution of this new usage:

“The specific application was introduced by historians during the 1950s, probably as an equivalent to Hebrew hurban and shoah ‘catastrophe’ (used in the same sense); but it had been foreshadowed by contemporary references to the Nazi atrocities as a ‘holocaust.’ ”  

The earliest contemporary reference in the OED is from the Dec. 5, 1942, issue of the News Chronicle in London:

“Holocaust…. Nothing else in Hitler’s record is comparable to his treatment of the Jews. … The word has gone forth that … the Jewish peoples are to be exterminated. … The conscience of humanity stands aghast.”

We couldn’t find a more complete example of the News Chronicle citation elsewhere, but here’s an OED reference from a March 23, 1943, debate in the House of Lords:

“The Nazis go on killing …. If this rule could be relaxed, some hundreds, and possibly a few thousands, might be enabled to escape from this holocaust.”

The earliest Oxford examples of the phrase “the Holocaust” appear in 1957 issues of the Yad Vashem Journal. (Yad Vashem is a memorial, museum, and research center in Israel devoted to the Holocaust.)

A heading in the April 1957 issue of the journal refers to “Research on the Holocaust Period.” An article in the July issue says, “The Inquisition, for example, is not the same as the Holocaust.” (We’ve expanded on the second citation.)

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Making love, then and now

[Note: This post was updated on April 3, 2022.]

Q: I’ve been reading a lot of Agatha Christie stories lately, and I’ve noticed that she uses the phrase “make love” to denote the earliest stages of a relationship—perhaps kissing, hugging, and so on. Now, it means a sexual relationship. Comment?

A: Yes, the verbal phrase “make love” has evolved, along with social and cultural attitudes about lovemaking.

The noun “love” is very old, of course, dating back to the early days of Old English, when it was written lufo, lufu, or luuu, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED notes similar words in Old Frisian (luve), Old Saxon (luba), Old High German (luba), and other Germanic languages.

The British, as we’ve written before, have invented some whimsical ways of referring to  “love,” spelling it “lurve,” “luurve,” “lerv,” “lurv,” and “lurrve.” But that’s another story.

In its earliest days, the noun “love” referred to a feeling of affection or fondness or attachment.

The phrase “make love” first showed up in English in the late 16th century, according to published references in the OED, influenced by similar usages in Old Occitan (a Romance language) and Middle French.

Originally, the dictionary says, to “make love” meant to “pay amorous attention; to court, woo.” It’s frequently used with “to,” the OED adds.

The dictionary’s earliest example is from George Fenton’s 1567 translation of a discourse by Matteo Bandello: “The attire of a Cortisan [courtesan], or woman makynge loue [making love].” The passage refers to the sort of clothing worn by a flirtatious or amorous woman.

This old meaning was extremely common for many centuries and is still found today, though the OED labels it “Now somewhat archaic.” This is the meaning of “make love” that you’re seeing in those Agatha Christie stories.

The dictionary’s most recent example is from Sandra Cisneros’s story collection Woman Hollering Creek (1991): “Ay! To make love in Spanish, in a manner as intricate and devout as la Alhambra.”

The newer meaning of “make love”—to have sex—didn’t appear in writing until the 1920s. This sense of the phrase is defined in the OED as “to engage in sexual intercourse, esp. considered as an act of love.” It’s frequently accompanied by “to” or “with,” the dictionary says.

This usage was originally American, Oxford says, giving this as the earliest known example:

“Jimmy embraces Margie LaMont and goes through with her the business of making love to her by lying on top of her on a couch, each embracing the other.” (From a police detective’s 1927 court deposition in an obscenity trial. It’s quoted by Lillian Schlissel in a book she edited and wrote an introduction for, Three Plays by Mae West: Sex, The Drag, The Pleasure Man. All three plays, written by Mae West and staged on Broadway in 1926-28, were closed by the police.)

Nearly a century later, the new meaning has almost eclipsed the old one.

We’ll end with an OED citation from the Daily Telegraph (London, Jan. 15, 1971): “Couples who make love frequently are more likely to have sons than those who do so less often.”

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Full time

Q: I’m curious (and I hope you are) about the expression “I’m full. ” It’s a funny way of saying “I’ve had enough to eat.” I wonder—do people in impoverished countries have such a usage or even the notion of being full?

A: It’s the holiday season, and the adjective “full” has been on a lot of lips lately. In fact, it’s been on the lips of English speakers since Anglo-Saxon days, though not always in reference to their stomachs.

When the word first showed up, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it was used to describe a bowl or other object “having within its limits all it will hold; having no space empty; replete.”

The earliest written example in the OED is from the Old English poem “Judith,” which describes the beheading of the Assyrian general Holofernes in the Book of Judith:

“Thær wæron bollan steape boren æfter bencum gelome, swylce eac bunan ond orcas fulle fletsittendum.” (We’ve changed the runic letter thorn to “th.”) Here’s a modern English version of the citation, which describes a feast for warriors:

“There were goblets deep borne off to the benches, with bowls and beakers full, to the feasters.”

The date of the poem is uncertain, but it’s an appendage to the Nowell Codex, the manuscript that contains Beowulf, which may have been written as early as 725.

The adjective “full” took on its gastrointestinal sense around the year 1000, according to published references in the OED. The dictionary’s first citation is from the Paris Psalter, a Byzantine illuminated manuscript.

Here’s an example from an early (1382) version of the Wycliffe Bible: “Thei ben ful of must.” (The word “must” here refers to the juice of freshly pressed grapes in winemaking.)

We don’t agree with you that “I’m full” is a strange way of saying “I’ve had enough to eat.” It’s not much of an etymological leap from a full goblet to a full stomach.

Over the years, the adjective “full” has been used to describe, among other things, a pregnant animal, an emotional heart, a circular moon, a plump person, a sail filled with wind, a complete payment, a poker hand, a football player, etc.

John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins says the word “full” is ultimately derived from the Indo-European root ple-, which passed into prehistoric Germanic as the reconstructed words fulnaz and later fullaz.

The Indo-European root gave Latin the word plenus (full), which is the source of such English words as “plenary,” “plenty,” and “complete,” as well as plein and pieno, French and Italian words for full.

You’ve asked whether people in impoverished countries say things like “I’m full” at mealtime or even have the notion of being full.

Well, there are fat cats in poor countries as well as rich ones, and we’re pretty sure they feel full when they leave the dinner table.

Do they say things like “I’m full”? Some of them, apparently. We’ve read that in Swahili, which is spoken in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and other African nations, “Nimeshiba” means “I’m full.”

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Nice and nasty

Q: We say things like “nice and short” and “nice and sweet” all the time, but what exactly is the meaning of “nice” in this context? Is it simply an intensifier? Or does it have something to do with “nicely”?

A: As you suggest, the adjective “nice” is indeed an intensifier—a word that adds emphasis—when used in a phrase like “nice and short.”

“Nice,” as the Oxford English Dictionary explains is “used as an intensifier with a predicative adjective or adverb in nice and—.”

Examples in writing date back to the late 18th century in OED citations, but the usage is undoubtedly older in ordinary speech. Here are the two earliest published examples Oxford gives:

1796: “Just read this little letter, do, Miss, do—it won’t take you much time, you reads so nice and fast.” (From Fanny Burney’s novel Camilla.)

1800: “Skipping … is a very healthful play in winter; it will make you nice and warm in frosty weather.” (From The Infant’s Library, a collection of miniature books for children.)

Sometimes “nice” is used ironically in such phrases, as the OED points out. Oxford gives examples from fiction for “nice and ill” and “nice and sick.”

“Nice” is heard so commonly these days—in this and other usages—that it almost escapes our radar. (When was the last time someone invited you to “Have a nice day”? Did you even register the word?)

“Nice” has done so many jobs over the centuries and meant so many things that it’s simply worn out.

English acquired the word around 1300 from Anglo-Norman and Old French. But its roots are in the Latin adjective nescius (ignorant, unknowing). We had a posting a couple of years ago that discussed the not-so-nice origins of “nice.”

Since it entered Middle English, “nice” has meant ignorant, foolish, cowardly, absurd, lazy, dissolute, lascivious, ostentatious, extravagant, elegant, precise, effeminate, meticulous, fussy, refined, strict, cultured, fastidious, virtuous, respectable, tasteful, proper, fragile, precise, pampered, strange, shy, modest, reluctant, complicated, subtle, exact, insubstantial, trivial, attentive, sensitive, dexterous, critical, risky, and attentive. And that’s only a summary!

Most of those meanings are now obsolete or rare, and for the last couple of centuries the word has meant what it does today: satisfactory, pleasant, attractive, good-natured, friendly, kind—in short, pleasing.

That’s a lot of work for such a small word!

As the OED says, “The semantic development of this word from ‘foolish, silly’ to ‘pleasing’ is unparalleled in Latin or in the Romance languages. The precise sense development in English is unclear.”

This may be an understatement. In fact, the OED notes, lexicographers have found that in some 16th- and 17th-century examples it’s hard to say what the writers meant by “nice.” That’s what happens when a word loses its specificity.

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Beyond the pale

Q: I’ve seen many examples of “beyond the pail” on the Internet. In fact, I googled the phrase and got many thousands of hits. I’d always thought the phrase was “beyond the pale,” a reference to the Russian Jewish ghetto.

A: You’re right that the correct phrase is “beyond the pale.” You’re also right that “beyond the pail” shows up a lot on the Internet.

However, many of the Google hits are from punsters or people pointing out the error.

The language writer Michael Quinion has a great quip about this on his website World Wide Words. When asked about the meaning of “beyond the pail,” he joked, “Isn’t that where you go when you kick the bucket?”

As for “beyond the pale,” it refers to something that’s improper or exceeds the limits of acceptability.

The other phrase you refer to, about the isolation of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, is the “Pale of Settlement.”

But the two expressions have little to do with one another, beyond their common use of the noun “pale” in the sense of a boundary or a limit.

“Beyond the pale” isn’t a reference to the other phrase, since it’s 170 years older. It was first recorded in 1720, while the first reference to the Pale of Settlement was recorded in 1890, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

We briefly discussed these expressions on our blog five years ago, but they’re worth another look.

When the noun “pale” was first recorded in the 1300s, it referred to a wooden stake meant to be driven into the ground.

At that time, “pale” was a doublet—that is, an etymological twin—of the much earlier word “pole,” according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology.

Both “pale” and “pole” once had the same meaning and came from the same source, the Latin word palus.

As the OED explains, in classical Latin a palus was a stake or a “wooden post used by Roman soldiers to represent an opponent during fighting practice.”

In post-classical Latin, palus also meant a palisade (originally a fence or enclosure made with wooden stakes), or a stripe (as in heraldry).

The noun “pale” was first recorded in writing in the mid-14th century. Its original meaning, the OED says, was a stake or “a pointed piece of wood intended to be driven into the ground, esp. as used with others to form a fence.”

In the late 14th century, “pale” was also used to mean the fence itself.

In the following century, “pale” acquired a couple of new meanings.

It could be “an area enclosed by a fence,” or “any enclosed place,” to quote the OED. It could also mean “a district or territory within determined bounds, or subject to a particular jurisdiction.”

Here’s where our two expressions come in. “Beyond the pale” came first, as we said, dating from the early 18th century.

Originally the phrase was followed by “of” and it meant “outside or beyond the bounds of” something. For example, here are the OED’s three earliest citations:

“Acteon … suffer’d his Eye to rove at Pleasure, and beyond the Pale of Expedience.” (From Alexander Smith’s A Compleat History of Rogues, 1720.)

“Nature is thus wise in our construction, that, when we would be blessed beyond the pale of reason, we are blessed imperfectly.” (From Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of the World, 1773.)

“Without one overt act of hostility … he contrived to impress me momently with the conviction that I was put beyond the pale of his favour.” (From Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, 1847).

But late in the 19th century the prepositional phrase fell away, according to Oxford, and “beyond the pale” was used by itself to mean “outside the limits of acceptable behaviour; unacceptable or improper.”

That’s how it’s been used ever since, as in these two OED citations:

“Unknown, doubtful Americans, neither rich nor highly-placed are beyond the pale.” (From the 1885 novel At Bay, written by “Mrs. Alexander,” the pen name of Annie Hector.)

“If you pinched a penny of his pay you passed beyond the pale, you became an unmentionable.” (From a 1928 issue of Public Opinion.)

Now for our other “pale” expression. As we mentioned above, the use of “pale” to describe a region or territory subject to a certain control or jurisdiction dates from the mid-1400s.

When first used, the reference was to English jurisdiction, and over the centuries “the pale” (sometimes capitalized) has been used to refer to areas of Ireland, Scotland, and France (that is, the territory of Calais) when they were under England’s control.

But this sense of “pale” is perhaps most familiar in the phrase “Pale of Settlement,” which the OED says is modeled after the Russian certa osedlosti (literally, “boundary of settlement”).

Oxford defines the phrase as “a set of specified provinces and districts within which Jews in Russia and Russian-occupied Poland were required to reside between 1791 and 1917.”

The OED’s earliest citation for the use of the phrase in writing comes from Russia and the Jews: A Brief Sketch of Russian History and the Condition of Its Jewish Subjects (1890), written by an author identified as “A. Reader”:

“The Jews … as soon as the contract was completed … had to return within the ‘pale’ of settlement.”

This more contemporary example is from the Slavic and East European Journal (1999): “Deeply depressed by Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement, Gershenzon struggled to escape the ‘darkness’ and reach the light.”

As for the relationship between the two expressions, the OED has this to say:

“The theory that the origin of the phrase [‘beyond the pale’] relates to any of several specific regions, such as the area of Ireland formerly called the Pale … or the Pale of Settlement in Russia … is not supported by the early historical evidence and is likely to be a later rationalization.”

By the way, the adjective “pale,” dating from the early 1300s, has nothing to do with the noun. It comes from another source altogether, the classical Latin pallidum (pale or colorless), from which we also get the word “pallid.”

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Donkey’s years

Q: Recently I read the phrase “donkey’s years” in one of Lawrence Block’s books. Given the context, I assume that he was referring to a long period of time. I’d never heard of this phrase and I hope you can shed some light on its history.

A: The mystery writer Lawrence Block has used the expression several times in his works, including this example from Telling Lies for Fun & Profit (1994), a book about writing fiction:

“I don’t write many short stories these days and I haven’t perpetrated a poem in donkey’s years.”

The phrase “donkey’s years,” meaning a long time, originated in the early 20th century, apparently as a pun on the long ears of a donkey.

In fact, the first published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary uses the phrase “donkey’s ears.” Here’s the citation, from The Vermillion Box, a 1916 novel by E. V. Lucas:

“Now for my first bath for what the men call ‘Donkey’s ears,’ meaning years and years.”

It’s not certain, though, which came first: “donkey’s ears” or “donkey’s years.”

We found “donkey’s years” in another 1916 book, With Jellicoe in the North Sea, by Frank Hubert Shaw:

“This isn’t a battleship war at all; it’s a destroyer-submarine-light cruiser show. They’ll never come out in donkey’s years, not they. They know jolly well we shall scupper ’em if they so much as dare to show their noses outside the wet triangle.”

The OED defines “donkey’s years” (also “donkeys’ years”) as a colloquial usage meaning a very long time.

It describes the phrase as a “punning allusion to the length of a donkey’s ears and to the vulgar pronunciation of ears as years.”

Gary Martin’s Phrase Finder website speculates that the usage originated as rhyming slang.

In rhyming slang, the last word of a short phrase is rhymed with a word that the phrase stands for. So an expresson like “trouble and strife” (“trouble” for short) stands for “wife.”

The earliest OED citation for the actual phrase “donkey’s years” may indeed be, in the dictionary’s words, an example of “a vulgar pronunciation of ears as years.”

In Hugh Walpole’s 1927 novel Wintersmoon, Mrs. Beddoes tells Mr. Hignett about a wedding she attended:

“I was at the wedding, you know, Mr. ’Ignett, ’ad a special card all to myself, ’aving worked for Miss Janet and her sister donkey’s years.”

The most recent OED citation is from a March 19, 1961, article in the Observer: “American influence and financial participation have been strong here for donkeys’ years.”

Although we occasionally hear Americans use the expression, all of the OED citations are from British writers, and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) describes the usage as chiefly British.

We recently sighted the “y”-less version, “donkey’s ears,” in Jutland Cottage, a 1953 novel by the British writer Angela Thirkell.

In the novel, one of Thirkell’s Barsetshire books, Mr. Wickham, an estate agent, interrupts a toast by asking a fellow naval veteran, Tubby (a k a Canon Fewling), for his first name:

”Well, here’s to Horatio Nelson coupled with the name of—what the hell is your name, Tubby? I’ve known you for donkey’s ears, but we always said Tubby.”

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Why is a turkey leg a drumstick?

Q: I have a Thanksgiving question: Why is a turkey leg called a “drumstick”? Why not a “club” or a “bat” or a “bowling pin”?

A: You’re right. The leg of a turkey isn’t as long and skinny as a real drumstick. Even the bone alone isn’t quite like a drumstick—it has big knobs at each end instead of a single knob or padded head.

So calling this part of the bird a  “drumstick” seems to be stretching a metaphor. But why use a metaphor at all?

Etymologists think that people started calling this part of a fowl the  “drumstick” because the word “leg” wasn’t polite table talk in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Neither were the words “thigh” and “breast,” so discreet (OK, prudish) diners referred to them as “dark meat” and “white meat.”

Sometimes the breast of the turkey was referred to as—ahem—the “bosom.” And occasionally the term “upper joint” was used instead of “thigh,” and “lower joint” or “limb” instead of “leg.”

Yes, really. There actually was a time when “leg,” “breast,” and “thigh” were considered too coarse for the ears of ladies and unfit for mixed company.

The word “drumstick,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was first used in the mid-18th century  to mean “the lower joint of the leg of a dressed fowl.”

The OED’s earliest citation is from Samuel Foote’s play The Mayor of Garret (1764): “She always helps me herself to the tough drumsticks of turkies.”

Our fellow word maven Hugh Rawson recently discussed
dinner-table euphemisms like these on the Cambridge Dictionaries Online blog.

As he writes, “By the end of the eighteenth century, drumstick was being used by the authors of cookbooks, and it eventually was lumped in with other dinner-table euphemisms.”

Rawson cites a lecture, “The Laws of Disorder,” by the Unitarian minister and speaker Thomas Starr King, who died in 1864: “There are so many that love white meat, so many that can eat nothing but dark meat, two that prefer a wing, two that lie in wait for drumsticks.”

Such terms, particularly in America, made table talk easier for everyone, Rawson explains: “Polite guests at American tables knew that asking a poultry-serving hostess for white meat instead of ‘breast meat,’ dark meat instead of a ‘thigh’ and a drumstick in place of a ‘leg’ saved embarrassment all around.”

The 19th-century British novelist and naval captain Frederick Marryat pokes fun at this kind of squeamishness in Peter Simple (1834). In one episode, Rawson points out, the novel’s hero describes a dinner party on the island of Barbados.

“It was my fate to sit opposite a fine turkey, and I asked my partner if I should have the pleasure of helping her to a piece of breast. She looked at me very indignantly, and said ‘Curse your impudence, sar, I wonder where you larn your manners. Sar, I take a lily turkey bosom, if you please. Talk of breast to a lady, sar! – really quite horrid.’ ”

The OED cites another example from Marryat’s works as an example of “limb” as a euphemism for “leg,” a usage it describes as “now only (esp. U.S.) in mock-modest or prudish use.”

In his book A Diary in America: With Remarks on Its Institutions (1839), Marryat says a young American woman told him that “leg” was not used before ladies; the polite term was “limb.” She added: “I am not so particular as some people are, for I know those who always say limb of a table, or limb of a piano-forte.”

That example, like several others from the OED, seems to have been used with humorous intent.

For example, Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his novel Elsie Venner (1861), has this bit of dinner-table conversation: “A bit of the wing, Roxy, or the—under limb?”

And John S. Farmer, in his Slang and Its Analogues, Past and Present (1885), uses this illustration: “Between you’n me, red stockings ain’t becomin’ to all—ahem—limbs.”

Euphemistic language has proven itself useful, not just at the dinner table. It comes in handy for swearing, too.

We’ve written before on our blog about euphemistic oaths like “doggone it,” and “gosh a’mighty,” milder substitutes for “God damn it” and “God almighty.”

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At the end of the day

Q: The expression “at the end of the day” grates on my ears. I hear it constantly, even from my own lips. At the end of the day, it is what it is: too damn useful to ignore. Perhaps you could say a word about where it comes from and why it’s so prevalent.

A: As a matter of fact, we’ve mentioned “at the end of the day” on the blog a couple of times in discussions about expressions used to death in the media.

As we said in a posting in 2008, a survey in Britain found that “at the end of the day” was the most annoying cliché in the opinion of those polled.

It seems to have aced out its chief competitors in the
summing-up category, “in the final analysis” and “when all is said and done.”

However, we’ve never looked into the origins of this prepositional phrase, so here goes.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “at the end of the day” as a “hackneyed” expression meaning “eventually” or “when all’s said and done.”

The OED has several citations for the published use of the phrase, all dating from the 1970s and ’80s.

The earliest is from Henry McKeating’s book God and the Future (1974): “Eschatological language is useful because it is a convenient way of indicating … what at the end of the day we set most store by.” (The italics are McKeating’s.)

Oxford’s citations also include this one, from Bill Beaumont’s Thanks to Rugby (1982): “But, at the end of the day, it is an amateur sport and everyone is free to put as much or as little into the game as he chooses.”

However, we’ve googled several earlier citations, many from the 20th century but a few extending back into the 19th.

This passage comes from an autobiographical sketch written in 1889 by the scientist Thomas H. Huxley:

“The last thing that it would be proper for me to do would be to speak of the work of my life, or to say at the end of the day whether I think I have earned my wages or not. Men are said to be partial judges of themselves. Young men may be, I doubt if old men are.”

We wouldn’t describe this example of the usage as hackneyed. Huxley, who died in 1895, seems to be using the expression to sum up his life’s work.   

We also found a couple of examples from religious writings published earlier in the 19th century. In both of them, “at the end of the day” seems to be used figuratively in the sense of “when all is said and done,” though it’s possible that the authors may have been using it in a more literal way.

An essay entitled “An Interpretation of the Fourteenth Chapter of the Apocalypse,” published in an 1832 issue of The Morning Watch, a theological quarterly, includes this passage:

“And thus it is that Christ at the end of the day will have his own will in the church … and all the carnality and bondage which hath been in the church shall be proved to be not of him, but of Antichrist. … Ah me! how I long to see it.”

And this one comes from a sermon by the Rev. Ebenezer Erskine, published in 1826:

“Christ’s flock is but a little flock, comparatively considered. … They are but little in respect of their numbers. Indeed abstractly considered, at the end of the day, they will make an ‘innumerable company, which no man can number’; but, viewed in comparison of the wicked, they are but few.”

We’re sure that even earlier examples will come to light as old books and other documents are digitized.

Why is this expression so common today? We can’t say. But generally as phrases are used to death, they lose their novelty and new ones spring up to take their places. Perhaps the days are numbered for “at the end of the day.”

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Must a love affair include sex?

Q: I wrote to the New York Times the other day concerning the Sept. 16 obituary of the actor-playwright Jerome Kilty, who wrote a play based on the correspondence between George Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. I pointed out that the obit spuriously described their platonic relationship as an affair. A Times editor responded that an affair does not necessarily have to involve sex. Your thoughts, please?

A: The short answer is that you’re both right. There are good arguments to be made on both sides of this dispute, which we can’t settle one way or the other because dictionary definitions of “affair” disagree on whether sex is involved.

Technically the Times editors are correct, if having the Oxford English Dictionary on your side makes you right.

The OED defines an “affair” in this sense as “a romantic or sexual relationship, often of short duration, between two people who are not married to each other.”

So the OED would agree with the Times that Shaw’s passionate yet nonsexual liaison with Mrs. Campbell, described in Kilty’s play Dear Liar, was an “affair.”

In its definition of the word, the OED adds that specifically the relationship is “(a) one that is carried on illicitly, one or both partners being involved in a relationship with another person; (b) an intense sexual relationship.”

The dictionary adds that the word can mean “a sexual encounter of any of these types.”

However, we must say that most if not all of the OED’s citations for the published use of the word sound as if something is going on between the sheets. You can judge them for yourself.

Oxford’s earliest example is from William Congreve’s play The Way of the World (1700): “I got a Friend to … complement her with the Imputation of an Affair with a young Fellow, which I carry’d so far, that I told her the malicious Town took notice that she was grown fat of a suddain.”

When a woman’s “affair” results in sudden weight gain, one suspects sex was involved.

Here are the OED’s other citations:

1732: “In our Dialect a vicious Man is a Man of pleasure … a Lady is said to have an affair, a Gentleman to be gallant, a Rogue in business to be one that knows the World.” (From George Berkeley’s philosophical dialogue Alciphron.)

1762: “Why, then, do you pursue your affair with Araminta; and not find some honourable means of breaking off with her?” (From William Whitehead’s play The School for Lovers.)

1825: “Ovid … discovered some incestuous affair in the imperial family, and was banished from Rome for life.” (From the Encyclopedia Londinensis.)

1888: “I shall let the liaison run its course—it will be very amusing & not as costly as an affair with a regular horizontale.” (From a letter by the English poet and novelist Ernest Dowson, describing a singer he had picked up in a music hall.)

1933: “We could carry on a backstairs affair for weeks without saying a word about it.” (From Noel Coward’s play Design for Living.)

1965: “The story of his affair with Mother. … It’s hot stuff, as we used to say at school.” (From David Lodge’s novel The British Museum Is Falling Down.)

2005: “What kind of a sophisticated guy in his fifties doesn’t have an affair? It’s basically mandatory.” (From Zadie Smith’s novel On Beauty.)

You see what we mean. The bulk of those references appear to be sexual rather than romantic.

The use of “affair” to mean a romantic or sexual relationship was preceded by the longer phrase “affair of love,” described by the OED as now somewhat archaic.

“Affair of love,” first recorded in 1574, is defined as “(a) a matter or experience connected with love,” usually used in the plural, or “(b) a romantic or sexual relationship between two people in love.” It can also mean “a sexual encounter.”

A term first recorded in 1710, “affair of the heart,” is defined in the OED as “a matter concerning romantic love; a love affair.”

And “love affair,” dating from 1767, is defined as “a romantic or sexual relationship between two people in love.”

By the way, the faux-French phrase “affaire d’amour” would be meaningless in France, where an affaire is a business deal, not a romance.

As we write in Origins of the Specious, our book about language myths and misconceptions, “affaire d’amour” is simply a froufrou version of “love affair.”

Getting back to your question, an “affair of the heart” does sound as if it could be an innocent romance, conducted fully clothed. But we think most people would assume an “affair” or a “love affair” has a sexual component.

However, we can’t support this with solid evidence; it’s mere intuition, which doesn’t count for much.

Standard dictionaries are split on the issue of whether the principals in an “affair” are actually having sex.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) defines “affair” in its romantic sense this way: “A sexual relationship between two people, especially when at least one of them is married or in another committed romantic relationship.”

The Macmillan Dictionary, in both its American and British editions, agrees: “A sexual relationship between two people, especially when one of them is married to someone else.”

But Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) has this broader definition: “A romantic or passionate attachment typically of limited duration.”

And Webster’s New World College Dictionary (the Times’s house dictionary) also takes a broader view: “An amorous relationship between two people not married to each other; an amour.”

So the word “affair” will have to be allowed to retain some of its mystery.

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