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The stylish origin of ‘tag along’

Q: I’m curious about when the word “tag” became used in “tag along.” Is this an American usage or did it originate earlier than that?

A: Early versions of “tag along” were first recorded in England in the 17th century. But the usage ultimately comes from medieval times, when “tags” referred to the ribbon-like strips of cloth in the decoratively slashed hem of a skirt.

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, the original “tag” was “one of the narrow, often pointed, laciniæ or pendent pieces made by slashing the skirt of a garment.”

The earliest Oxford citation is from a 1402 entry in Political Poems and Songs Related to English History (1861), edited by Thomas Wright:

“Of suche wide clothing, tateris and tagges, it hirtith myn hert hevyly.”

(Chaucer denounced the fashion as “degise endentynge” [ostentatious notching] and a “wast of clooth in vanitee” in “The Parson’s Tale,” late 1300s.)

The use of “tag” as a verb emerged in the early 16th century. The OED defines “to tag” as “to furnish or mark with or as with a tag.”

The dictionary’s first example, which we’ve expanded here, is from a 1503 entry in the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland (1900), edited by James Balfour Paul:

“For ane curpal and ane tee [one crupper strap and one T attachment] to the harnes sadill, tagging, mending, and stopping [padding] of the samyn.”

In the 17th century, the dictionary says, the verb took on the sense of “to trail or drag behind; to follow closely, follow in one’s train,” and is “frequently const. [constructed with] afteralong(a)roundon.”

The dictionary’s earliest example, which uses “tag on,” is from The Plain-Dealer (1676), a comedy of manners by the English playwright William Wycherley: “I hate a harness, and will not tag on in a faction, kissing my leader behind, that another slave may do the like to me.”

The earliest use of “tag along” that we’ve found is from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (1884): “Tom thought it would be a first-rate surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me to by and by tag along and drop in, and let on to be a stranger.”

Oxford’s first citation is from More Fables (1900), a collection of short stories by the American humorist George Ade: “The men Volunteered to help, and two or three wanted to Tag along, but Clara drove them back.”

In the mid-20th century, “tag-along” (later “tagalong”) appeared as an adjective describing “that which is towed or trailed behind something else,” the OED says.

The dictionary’s first example appeared during World War II: “Evidence of trailed, or ‘tag-along,’ bombs still is scanty” (The Baltimore Sun, Jan. 21, 1944).

The adjective was later “applied to an uninvited follower,” as in this Oxford example from a Canadian newspaper: “The small trailer snug beside it like a tagalong pup” (The Islander, Victoria, BC, June 10, 1973).

When the noun “tagalong” first appeared, the OED says, it referred to “an unwelcome, uninvited, or neglected companion.” It cites the Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961), which has this example: “felt honored to be a tagalong tolerated by the older boys.”

Standard dictionaries now define the noun as someone who follows the lead of another. In British English, it can also mean something that’s attached to and pulled behind something else, like a child’s bicycle attached to an adult’s.

Here’s an example of the follower sense from Merriam-Webster: “His little sister was sometimes a tagalong on his outings with his friends.” And here’s a bicycle example from Longman: “The tagalong attaches to an adult’s bicycle.”

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Rhyme and reason in Shakespeare

Q: Did “word” once rhyme with “afford” and “sword,” as it seems to do in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 79 and A Midsummer Night’s Dream?

A: Yes, the noun “word” rhymes with the verb “afford” and the noun “sword” in those two works. Here are the relevant passages:

He lends thee virtue and he stole that word
From thy behavior; beauty doth he give
And found it in thy cheek; he can afford
No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.
     —Sonnet 79

Where is Demetrius? O, how fit a word
Is that vile name to perish on my sword!
     —A Midsummer Night’s Dream

In The Oxford Dictionary of Original Shakespearean Pronunciation (2016), the linguist David Crystal uses the International Phonetic Alphabet for the  pronunciations of the three words: wɔːɹd, əˈfɔːɹd, and sɔːɹd.

The ɔː in Original Pronunciation represents the “aw” sound of “thought” in modern English while the ɹ denotes the “r” sound of “bard” in standard American dictionaries. This “r” isn’t pronounced in standard British dictionaries.

So “afford” and “sword” in the early modern English of Shakespeare sounded much like their pronunciations in contemporary American dictionaries, while “word” sounded like the standard American pronunciation of “ward.”

Crystal writes that “historical phonologists use several types of data to reconstruct the sound system from a period before the advent of audio-recording.”

“For the Elizabethan period,” he says, “chief among them are spellings and rhymes, which—judiciously interpreted, and supplemented by the observations of contemporary writers on language—provide most of the information we need in order to reconstruct OP.”

According to Crystal, Shakespeare spelled the noun “word” variously as “word,” “worde,” “ ’ord,” and “ ’ort.”  In addition to “afford” and “sword,” it rhymed with “board,” “ford,” “Ford,” and “lord” in various Shakespearean works.

In a  2012 post about OP, we note that Ben Jonson, one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, said the proper pronunciation of “r” after a vowel, as in “far” or “heart,” sounded “growly.”

Crystal points out that Elizabethan speakers used various regional accents in OP, just as speakers today use various accents in speaking contemporary English.

“OP is a phonology—a sound system—which would have been realized in a variety of accents, all of which were different in certain respects from the variety we find in present-day English,” he says.

So how did Shakespeare sound when he spoke OP? “We know nothing about how Shakespeare himself spoke,” Crystal writes, “though we can conjecture that his accent would have been a mixture of Warwickshire and London.”

When “word” first appeared In Old English, spoken from around 450 to 1150, it had many senses, including an utterance, a statement, a speech, lyrics, news, gossip, fame, a command or request, a promise or pledge, and a maxim or proverb.

In the late 10th or early 11th century, the noun took on its usual modern sense: a meaningful element of speech or writing used by itself or with others to form sentences.

The OED defines this sense more expansively. Here’s the first half of its definition: “Any of the sequences of one or more sounds or morphemes (intuitively recognized by native speakers as) constituting the basic units of meaningful speech used in forming a sentence or utterance in a language (and in most writing systems normally separated by spaces).”

The dictionary’s earliest example, which we’ve expanded, is from an Old English and Latin passage in a grammar book written by the Benedictine abbot and scholar Ælfric of Eynsham (circa 950 to 1010):

“Of ðam syndon fif VOCALES, þæt synd clypiendlice: a, e, i, o, u. das fif stafas seteowjad heora naman purh hi sylfe and biitan dam stafum ne maeg nan word beon awriten.”

(“Of these [the letters of the alphabet] are five VOWELS, which are called: a, e, i, o, u. These five letters are named for their sounds, and no word can be written without them.”)

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On the truckling arts

Q: After watching the Manhunt TV series about the search for Lincoln’s assassin, I looked for further details online. Some articles used the phrase “truckling arts,” but I wasn’t able to find it in dictionaries. Can you help me understand what those particular “arts” are all about?

A: Someone skilled in the “truckling arts” is a sycophant, like Uriah Heep in the Dickens novel David Copperfield (1850) or Mr. Collins in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813).

The expression comes from the verb “truckle,” meaning to act in a subservient manner. But when the verb first appeared in the early 17th century it had a much different sense. To “truckle” was to sleep in a truckle bed, one rolled or slid under another when not in use.

As Merriam-Webster online explains, “the fact that truckle beds were pushed under larger standard beds had inspired a figurative sense of truckle: ‘to yield to the wishes of another’ or ‘to bend obsequiously.’ ”

The figurative usage is derived from an early 15th-century noun, “truckle,” which meant “a small wheel with a groove in its circumference round which a cord passes,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED’s earliest citation is from a 1417 entry in the accounts of King Henry V of England: “j apparaille ix pullifs vj Trokles” (“I furnished 9 pulleys and 6 truckles”).

The term “truckle bed” appeared in the mid-15th century. The OED defines it as “a low bed running on truckles or castors, usually pushed beneath a high or ‘standing’ bed when not in use; a trundle-bed.”

The dictionary’s first citation, in Latin and Middle English, is from the Statutes of Magdalen College, University of Oxford (1459):

“Sint duo lecti principales, et duo lecti rotales, Trookyll beddys vulgariter nuncupati” (“There shall be two main beds and two wheeled beds, commonly called ‘truckle beds’ ”).

When the verb “truckle” appeared a century and a half later, it meant “to sleep in a truckle-bed,” the OED says, and was construed as being “under (beneath) the person occupying the high bed.”

The first Oxford example is from The Coxcomb, a comedy by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, believed written in the early 1600s: “I’le truckle heere Boy, give me another pillow.”

In the mid-1600s, the dictionary says, the adjective “truckling” appeared and meant “subordinate or inferior” or “meanly submissive, servile.”

The OED’s first citation is from a poem, “The Publique Faith,” in a collection of translations and poetry by the English writer Robert Fletcher:

“The elf dares peep abroad, the pretty foole / Can wag [move around] without a truckling standing-stoole [baby walker]” (from Ex Otio Negotium. Or, Martiall His Epigrams Translated: With Sundry Poems and Fancies, 1656, described by Fletcher as “the scattered Papers of my Youth”).

A decade later, Oxford says, the verb took on the figurative sense of  “to take a subordinate or inferior position; to be subservient, to submit, to give precedence.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from a Sept. 2, 1667, entry in The Diary of Samuel Pepys: “[Sir Willam Coventry says] he will never, while he lives, truckle under anybody or any faction, but do just as his own reason and judgment directs.”

The OED doesn’t mention the phrase “truckling arts,” but the usage was apparently first recorded in the 19th century. The earliest example we’ve found is from the Secret History of the Court of England (1832), by Lady Anne Hamilton.

In this passage, she criticizes the actions of George Canning, the British Foreign Secretary and later Prime Minister:

“But, to anyone acquainted with the truckling arts of Mr. Canning, such conduct was no more than might have been expected.”

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Whence the silent ‘c’ in ‘indict’?

Q: Why isn’t the letter “c” pronounced in “indict”?

A: Interestingly, the verb “indict” wasn’t spelled or pronounced with a “c” when it first appeared in Middle English in the early 14th century. In fact it wasn’t even spelled with a “c” in Anglo-Norman or Old French, the sources of the English word.

The “c” crept into the spelling in the early 17th century when scholars apparently decided to make the verb look more like indictare, an Anglo-Latin term for “indict” that developed in medieval legal writing in England.

As it happens, indictare didn’t exist in Classical Latin, where a “t”-less version, indicare, meant “to give evidence against,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The medieval legal term combined the prefix “in-” with the Classical Latin dictare (“to say, declare, dictate”).

As the OED explains, the medieval legal term “seems to be merely the latinized form of the Anglo-Norman and Middle English verb.” In other words, it was apparently a misconceived scholarly attempt to make the Anglo-Norman and Old French look more Latin.

When “indict” first appeared in Middle English in the early 14th century as endyte or enditeOxford says, it meant “to bring a charge” against someone or “to accuse (a person)” of a crime.

The earliest OED example, which we’ve expanded, is from Handlyng Synne (1303), a devotional work by the English historian and poet Robert Mannyng:

what shul we sey of þys dytours,
Þys fals men, þat beyn sysours,
Þat, for hate, a trewman wyl endyte,
And a þefe for syluer quyte?

(What shall we say of these accusers,
These false men that be jurymen,
But for hate will indict a true man,
And for silver acquit a thief?)

The first OED citation for “indict” spelled with a “c” is from a legal textbook: “If he bee indicted of Felonie, or Treason.” From The Lawyers LightOr, a Due Direction for the Study of the Law for Methode (1629), by John Doddridge, an English lawyer, judge, and legislator.

In a post we wrote in 2022 about the silent “b” in English, we quote the classicist J. D. Sadler as saying, “There are many words borrowed from Latin through French where we have gone back to the Latin root to replace a letter lost in transit. Most involve the initial consonant in the groups btctlt, and pt.”

In his article, “Popular Etymology” (The Classical Journal, February-March 1971), Sadler gives “debt,” “doubt,” and “subtle” as examples, along with “arctic,” “perfect,” “subject,” “verdict,” “victuals,” “assault,” “fault,” “somersault,” and “receipt.”

In some of these words, he notes, the initial letter of the consonant cluster is mute, while in others “we have recovered the sound.” He adds that “perhaps words of this sort [those latinized retroactively] should be termed examples of scholarly etymology, rather than of popular etymology.”

We’ve written several other posts on silent letters, including one in 2024 about the final “e” in “dote,” “fate,” “hate,” and “note,” as well as one in 2009 on the “gh” in “caught,” “ought,” “thought,” and “bought.”

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Playing the etymology card

Q: How did the word “card” end up in expressions like “play the race card” and “play the gender card”?

A: The “card” in those expressions ultimately comes from the use of the word in card playing. Think of it as a metaphorical use of a valuable playing card, like an ace that completes a royal flush in poker.

Middle English borrowed the word “card” from Middle French, where the plural cartes referred to a game of cards, as in jouer aux cartes (to play cards).

When the English term first appeared in the 15th century, it was also used in the plural to mean such a game. The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the “Code of Laws” for the town of Walsall in the West Midlands of England.

A statute, believed written around 1422, sets penalties for “plaiyng at eny unlawefull games,” including “dyce, tables [backgammon], cardes.” (From A History of Walsall and Its Neighbourhood, 1887, edited by Frederic W. Willmore.)

The noun soon came to be used for the cards themselves. The term “cardes for pleiyng” appears in a 1463-64 law prohibiting the importation of playing cards. (From The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1275–1504, edited by Chris Given-Wilson in 2005.)

A century later, the OED says, “card” took on “various figurative uses arising from card games, esp. denoting something that may be useful in obtaining one’s objective, or a person who can be called upon to support one’s case.”

The dictionary says the noun was used “chiefly with modifying adjective, as goodsafestrong, etc.” The first OED citation uses “sure card” to mean someone or something “that can be relied on to attain an intended end” or success:

“Nowe thys is a sure carde, nowe I maye well saye That a cowarde crakinge here I dyd fynde.” (From Thersytes, an anonymous play, sometimes attributed to Nicholas Udall, first published in the early 1560s. Thersytes was a Greek warrior slain by Achilles for mocking him.)

In the 19th century, according to Oxford citations, the noun when used with a “modifying adjective (as knowingrum, etc.)” took on the sense of “a person (esp. a man) regarded as having the specified character or quality.”

The earliest citation is from a short piece by Dickens that was originally published as “Scenes and Characters, No. 4, Making a Night of It” in the magazine Bell’s Life in London (Oct. 18, 1835) and later as “Making a Night of It” in Sketches by Boz (1836):

“But Mr. Thomas Potter, whose great aim it was to be considered as a ‘knowing card,’ a ‘fast-goer,’ and so forth, conducted himself in a very different manner.” We’ve expanded the citation.

Two decades later, the OED says, “card” by itself took on the sense of “an ingenious, clever, or audacious person.”

The earliest example cited is in Dickens’s novel Bleak House (1853): “You know what a card Krook was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter.”

In the early 20th century, according to OED citations, the term took on the sense of “an odd or eccentric person, esp. one in whom these qualities are regarded as entertaining or comical; a joker.”

The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded, is from “His Worship the Goosedriver,” a short story by the English author Arnold Bennett in Tales of the Five Towns (1905):

“It would be an immense, an unparalleled farce; a wonder, a topic for years, the crown of his reputation as a card.” In the story, a jokester buys 12 geese and 2 ganders from a gooseherd and tries to herd them to his home. The geese have other plans!

Finally we come to the usage you ask about. Like the use of “card” for a person, this one also emerged in the first half of the 19th century.

The OED says “to play the —— card” means “to introduce a specified issue or topic in the hope of gaining sympathy or political advantage, by appealing to the sentiments or prejudices of one’s audience.”

In the dictionary’s first citation, the word “card” precedes the hot topic: “The Tories will doubtless play the card of ‘Irish misgovernment’ against Ministers” (The Scotsman, June 1, 1839).

The next Oxford example reverses the order in referring to “Liberal friends in Ulster, who wish to play the land purchase card at the elections” (The Times, London, May 22, 1885).

The next citation uses “Orange card” in the sense of an appeal to Northern Irish Protestants:

“I decided some time ago that if the G.O.M. [Grand Old Man, a reference to Gladstone] went for Home Rule, the Orange card would be the one to play” (from a letter written Feb. 16, 1886, by Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill’s father).

The earliest Oxford example of “race card” uses it to mean an appeal to anti-Black voters: “the Tory leadership declined to play the race card” (The Observer, March 3, 1974).

The OED doesn’t have an example of  “gender card,” but Merriam-Webster online says it showed up in the US more than a dozen years later.

M-W cites an analysis by Gary Orren, a professor of public policy at Harvard, about the unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign of Evelyn Murphy, Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts:

“But Orren thinks if Murphy plays the gender card in her ads she will lose the broader coalition of votes needed to win the election” (The Boston Globe, Aug. 9,1990).

The OED says “play the race card” and similar expressions can now be “depreciative, and chiefly used in accusations of others,” when they mean “to exploit one’s membership of a specified minority or marginalized group as a means of gaining sympathy or an unfair advantage.”

A recent Oxford example cites a Black soldier who appeared in recruitment posters and was “attacked on social media by white colleagues for ‘playing the race card’ to secure career advancement” (Morning Star, London, Sept. 25, 2020).

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‘Ever more,’ ‘ever-more,’ ‘evermore’

Q: I’ve seen “becoming ever-more Prussian” and “studied the ever more frequent engravings.” For me the hyphen is incorrect in the first example, but admissible in the second because of the determiner “the.” What are your thoughts?

A: The short answer is that the modifying phrase “ever more,” meaning “increasingly more,” now needs no hyphen in either of those examples, though the usage was sometimes hyphenated in the past.

Taking a closer look, the adverbs “ever” + “more” form a phrase that modifies an adjective (“Prussian” … “frequent”). The result is an adjectival phrase: “ever more Prussian” … “ever more frequent.” The first is a post-modifying complement; the second pre-modifies a noun.

Note that no hyphens are used in these examples from  the Collins English Dictionary: “He grew ever more fierce in his demands” … “He was deluged by ever more plaintive epistles from his devoted admirer” … “It will become ever more complex.”

The presence or absence of a determiner like “an,” “the,” “some,” etc., is irrelevant, as in this example from the Oxford English Dictionary:

“In an ever more brutal, if technically sleek, world where the skies are filled with killer drones” (New York Magazine, Nov. 2, 2015).

A similar usage combines the adverbs “ever” + “so” to modify an adjective, resulting in an adjectival phrase. Here the sense of the adverbial modifier is “extremely” or “very.”

Merriam-Webster online has these examples: “I’m ever so glad that you got better” … “In the back seat was a Chinese American woman looking ever so chic and glamorous.”

Getting back to “ever more,” it’s also used by itself to modify a noun, as in “ever more Prussians” … “ever more engravings.” In this case, “more” is an adjective, and “ever more” is an adjectival phrase. A pair of examples found in the Oxford English Dictionary: “ever more gadgets in hand” … “ever more artists.”

No hyphens there either. But with an adjective other than “more,” that type of “ever” phrase usually has a hyphen. Some examples from the Cambridge Dictionary: “ever-decreasing profits” … “ever-increasing demand” … “an ever-present threat.”

(We should add that “ever more” and “ever so” can also be used with adverbs, resulting in adverbial phrases: “the price fell ever more steeply” … “he ran ever so quietly.”)

As for the term “evermore” (one word, no hyphen), it means “forever” or “always.” This example is from Merriam-Webster: “he promised to love her evermore, if only she would consent to be his wife.”

When “evermore,” the oldest of these terms, first appeared in Old English as æfre ma, it meant “for all future time,” according to the OED.

We’ve expanded the dictionary’s earliest citation, which is from King Alfred’s late ninth-century translation of Liber Regulae Pastoralis (Pastoral Care), a sixth-century Latin treatise by Pope Gregory:

Gif hwelc wif forlæt hiere ceorl, & nimð hire oderne, wenestu recce he hire æfre ma, ode mæg hio æfre eft cuman to him swa clænu swa hio ær was?

(If a wife leaves her husband and takes another man for herself, do you think her husband will evermore consider her, or can she ever return to him as pure as she e’er was?)

The earliest written use of the phrase “ever more,” as far as we can tell, is from Middle English, where it’s hyphenated. Here’s the OED citation:

“Pitous and Iust, and ever-more y-liche, Sooth of his word, benigne and honurable” (“Compassionate and just, and ever more constant, True to his word, kind and honorable”). From “The Squire’s Tale,” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (circa 1386).

And we found this early unhyphenated example: “Praye God that he will wyte [keep you] safe to worke fayth ī thyne herte / or else shalt thou remayne ever more faythelesse.” From William Tyndale’s A Compendious Introduccion, Prologe or Preface vn to the Pistle off Paul to the Romayns (1526).

And this is the earliest use we’ve found for “ever more” used adjectivally to modify a noun: “there is ever more paine in keeping, then in getting of mony.” From the essays of Montaigne, translated from French by John Florio (1613).

We’ll end with the early use of “ever so” to mean “very” or “extremely” or, in the words of the OED, “in any conceivable degree.”

The dictionary cites a Nov. 5, 1686, letter by Gilbert Burnet, a Scottish historian and Anglican bishop of Salisbury, written from Florence during a trip to Italy:

“When it hath rained ever so little … the Carts go deep, and are hardly drawn” (from An Account of What Seemed Most Remarkable in Travelling Through Switzerland, Italy, Some Parts of Germany, &c. in the Years 1685 and 1686, by Burnet, published in 1687).

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On ‘as such’ and its ‘as-suchness’  

Q: I’m accustomed to seeing “as such” refer back to a specific word or phrase. Lately, I’ve noticed it where the referent is unspecified or absent. Example: “He broke his leg, and as such he missed work.” I’m curious about the history of this term and its changing usage.

A: Yes, “as such” traditionally refers to a word or phrase already mentioned. But the referent is often obscure in a colloquial use of “as such” that’s almost as old as the original.

Traditionally, “as such” means “in itself” (intelligence as such won’t make you rich), “in that capacity” (a judge as such deserves respect), or “in its exact meaning” (she wasn’t a vegetarian as such).

However, the phrase has been used colloquially for three centuries to mean “consequently,” “subsequently,” or “thereupon,” a usage that’s not recognized by standard dictionaries.

The principal definition of “as such” in the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference based on historical evidence, is “as being what the name or description implies; in that capacity.”

The earliest example in the OED is from an essay by Richard Steele in The Spectator (April 17, 1711): “When she observed Will. irrevocably her Slave, she began to use him as such.”

(An earlier, longer version of the phrase, “as it is such” or “as they are such,” appeared in The History of England, 1670, by John Milton: “True fortitude glories not in the feats of War, as they are such, but as they serve to end War soonest by a victorious Peace.”)

The colloquial sense of “as such” was first recorded a decade after the phrase appeared in The Spectator. As the OED explains, the original sense “passes contextually into: ‘Accordingly, consequently, thereupon.’ ” The dictionary describes the usage as “colloquial or informal.”

The first colloquial Oxford citation, which we’ve edited and expanded, is from a Feb. 25, 1721, entry in the church warden’s accounts for a parish in Salisbury, England:

“he [the curate] had chosen the said William Clemens to be his parish Clerk … And bid the Congregation to take notice thereof and accept him—as such Witness Henry Biggs, F. Barber [and others].” From Churchwardens’ Accounts of S. Edmund & S. Thomas, Sarum (1896), edited by Henry James Fowle Swayne.

The next two Oxford citations are from letters written in England in the early 1800s and published in The Correspondence of William Fowler of Winterton, in the County of Lincoln (1907), edited by Joseph Thomas Fowler:

“I very much longed to hear from you … and as such I did not the least esteem it for its having been delayed for the reasons assigned” (from an 1800 letter by John King).

“H. R. H. Princess Augusta … motioned for me to come to her Highness. As such she addressed me in the most pleasant manner possible” (from an 1814 letter by William Fowler).

Although “as such” in those colloquial examples doesn’t refer to a specific word or phrase mentioned previously, it does concern an earlier occurrence or situation. But as we’ve said, the colloquial usage isn’t recognized by standard dictionaries. And we find it vague and sometimes confusing.

We’ll end with the noun “as-suchness,” a derivative of “as such” that’s defined in the OED as the “absolute existence or possession of qualities, independently of all other things whatever.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from A Pluralistic Universe (1909), by the American philosopher and psychologist William James. In this passage, the “it” at the beginning refers to “Bradley’s Absolute,” the British philosopher F. H. Bradley’s concept of ultimate reality:

“It is us, and all other appearances, but none of us as such, for in it we are all ‘transmuted,’ and its own as-suchness is of another denomination altogether.”

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A wussy pronunciation

Q: A post of yours says “wuss” was first recorded in 1976. However, I just found this example in A Tangled Web (1931), by L. L. Montgomery: “If he’s a fool—and wuss—is that any reason why you should be?”

A: The “wuss” in that passage from A Tangled Web is a dialectal pronunciation of “worse.” If it were spelled the usual way, Big Sam Dark would be telling Little Sam Dark, “If he’s a fool—and worse—is that any reason why you should be?”

The Oxford English Dictionary describes the “wuss” pronunciation of the adjective, noun, and adverb “worse” as “colloquial or regional.” The OED has examples that date back to the mid-19th century. Here are a few:

“That’s wuss than a day’s work, that is.” From Munby, Man of Two Worlds: The Life and Diaries of Arthur J. Munby (1862), by Derek Hudson. Munby was a British poet, barrister, and civil servant.

“She’ll tell you that, wuss luck, I’ve got in co. with some bad uns.” From The Seven Curses of London (1869), by the British journalist and social critic James Greenwood.

“Nobody’s none the wuss for me knowin’ about ’em.” From A Child of the Jago (1896), by the British writer and journalist Arthur Morrison.

As we say in a 2020 post, the earliest examples in the Oxford English Dictionary for the use of “wuss” to mean a weak or ineffectual person are from a 20th-century collection of college slang:

“Come on you wuss, hit a basket” and “John’s a wuss.” From “Campus Slang,” a Nov. 6, 1976, typescript of slang terms collected by Connie C. Eble, a linguist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Eble had asked her students to contribute current slang terms on index cards.

When “wussy” showed up in print the following year, it was an adjective meaning effeminate: “Soccer! … What kind of wussy sport is that!” From the Harvard Crimson, Sept. 12, 1977.

The OED says “wussy” originated with the addition of the suffix “-y” to the noun “wuss.” And it suggests that “wuss” may have originally been a blend of “wimp” and “pussy” used to mean a cat.

However, the evidence we’ve found indicates that “wussy” originated as a rhyming term for “pussy,” and that “wuss” is simply a short form of “wussy.” In fact, as a rhyming term “wussy” showed up in English dozens of years before the first OED sighting of “wimp” used to mean a weak or ineffectual person (1920).

You can read more about the history of these terms in our 2020 post as well as in a post that we wrote in 2016.

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Beholden to a schedule?

Q: I keep hearing “beholden” used in terms of having to go by a schedule, and even caught myself doing it once. Is this usage becoming more common and considered correct?

A: Traditionally, “beholden” has meant obligated or indebted to someone or something, especially for a gift or favor.

Although “beholden” has also been used for figurative debts or obligations, standard dictionaries don’t recognize its use in the sense of restricted to or bound by something, such as a schedule.

You’re right, however, that the sense of bound by is out there and has appeared in some major publications. This use of “beholden” may very well make its way into standard dictionaries, but it’s not there yet. Here’s the story.

When the verb “behold” appeared in Old English writing as bihaldan, it meant “to hold by, keep, observe, regard, look,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Here’s an expanded OED example from the Blickling Homilies, believed written in the late 10th century, of “behold” used in the sense of to look upon someone or something, the usual modern sense:

englas hie georne beheoldan of þæm dæge þe hie wiston þæt heo seo eadige maria geeacnod wæs of þæm halgan gasten.

(The angels earnestly beheld her from the day they knew that the blessed Mary had been conceived by the Holy Spirit.)

Note that in Old English, the past tense of “behold” was beheoldan (“beholden”), a verb form that was later replaced by “beheld.”

In Middle English, “beholden” became a past participle, and later a predicate adjective.

In this adjectival use, which first appeared in the late 14th century, “beholden” was used with a form of the verb “be” (as in “I am beholden,” “he was beholden,” etc.) and came to mean obligated or indebted.

The two earliest OED citations are from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a chivalric romance written around 1390:

“I am derely to yow biholde” (“I am dearly beholden to you”) … “I am hyȝly bihalden, & euer-more wylle Be seruaunt to your-seluen” (“I am highly beholden and evermore will be servant to yourself”).

As for the modern use of “beholden,” Merriam-Webster online says it describes “people who are obligated to others (often for a favor or gift), as well as people or things that are in figurative debt due to aid or inspiration, as in ‘many contemporary books and films are beholden to old Arthurian legends.’ ”

The OED has this 19th-century figurative example, which we’ve expanded, from Modern English (1873), by the American philologist Fitzedward Hall:

 “As to ourselves, a student must be exceedingly inobservant, not to have perceived how deeply we are beholden to the happy daring of translators for the amplitude and variety of our diction, and for the flexibility of our constructions.”

Finally, here are a few examples we’ve found for the as yet unrecognized sense of “beholden” that you’ve asked about—the use of the adjective to mean restricted to or bound by a schedule:

“He maintains the same workout routine he had in his prime, and he still rises at 4 a.m., restless and beholden to a schedule he no longer has to keep” (a comment about the boxer Joe Frazier from a review of Thrilla in Manila, a documentary about his third match with Muhammad Ali, Sports Illustrated, April 22, 2009).

Motown mitigated some of the risk by making Broadway the final stop. It wasn’t beholden to a schedule that would keep it there if things went south, and producer Kevin McCollum made the right (if tough) call to cut losses and wrap up the show early” (Forbes, July 31, 2016).

“But anytime they left the city—which they frequently did—traveling was a challenge, as they usually took the train and were beholden to a schedule” (from an article about a carless Manhattan couple, New York Times, Feb. 1, 2018).

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Like hell, like mad, like stink

Q: What is the origin of the phrase “like stink” (as in “run like stink”)? I know what it means, but not why it means that.

A: “Like stink” has been used colloquially in British English since the early 20th century to mean furiously or intensely. It’s similar to “like hell,” “like mad,” and “like crazy,” intensifiers of a type that dates back to the early 16th century.

The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest “like stink” example, which we’ve expanded, is from a play set in the trenches of a British Army infantry company during World War I:

“If you see a Minnie coming—that’s a big trench mortar shell, you know—short for Minnywerfe—you see ’em come right out of the Boche trenches, right up in the air, then down, down, down; and you have to judge it and run like stink sometimes.”

(From Journey’s End, by the English playwright R. C. Sherriff. Laurence Olivier starred in the play when it first opened at the Apollo Theatre in London on Dec. 9, 1928.)

The word “like” is used similarly in American as well as British English in many other colloquial expressions that indicate doing something intensely: “run like blazes,” “fight like the dickens,” “write like a house on fire,” and so on.

As the OED explains, “like” is “now typically analysed as a preposition” when used “in proverbial similes,” specifically “in phrases describing an action carried out rapidly, with great vigour or energy, or without restraint or limitation.”

In these colloquial phrases, according to the dictionary, “the complement of like is taken as expressive of vigour, energy, etc., rather than being obviously similative.” You might say that they look like similes and act like adverbs.

The usage dates from at least the early 1500s, as in this OED example about somebody who devours food without restraint, leaving little for his companions to eat:

“One doth another tell / Se how he fedeth, lyke the deuyll of hell / Our parte he eteth nought good shall we tast” (from Egloges, a collection of eclogues, or short poems, written around 1530 by the Anglican priest and poet Alexander Barclay).

The dictionary has two older examples in which “as” is used instead of “like.” The oldest is from The Romance of William of Palerne (circa 1350), an anonymous Middle English translation of Guillaume de Palerme, a French tale written around 1200.

In the part of the tale cited, the Holy Roman Emperor wonders where his daughter is. When told that she isn’t in her chamber, he goes to see for himself and “driues in at þat dore as a deuel of helle” (“rushes in through the door as a devil of hell”).

Finally, we should mention that the energetic sense of “stink” may perhaps have been influenced by the use of the word in the early 19th century for a commotion or a fuss. The first Oxford example for the earlier sense is from a glossary of underworld slang:

“When any robbery of moment has been committed, which causes much alarm, or of which much is said in the daily papers, the family people will say, there is a great stink about it” (New and Comprehensive Vocabulary of the Flash Language, 1812, by James Hardy Vaux).

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Oh, dear! Oh, deer!

Q: I’ve just begun The Age of Deer, a book by Erika Howsare that explores the connections between deer and humans. Are the words “dear” and “deer” also related, or merely two different words with the same pronunciation?

A: The short answer is that “dear” and “deer” may very well be etymologically related, not just homonyms, but the evidence isn’t conclusive.

In Old English, the language spoken from roughly 450 to 1150, the noun “deer” (spelled dior or deor, and occasionally dear) meant something like “beast” and referred to wild animals in general, especially four-legged ones. The usual word for the animals with antlered males was heort or heorot, ancestor of “hart.”

Meanwhile, the adjective “dear” came in two versions: deore (beloved or valuable) and deor (brave, ferocious, savage, or wild, an obsolete sense apparently associated with the noun “deer”).

Linguists have disagreed over whether deore and deor were two separate adjectives or one adjective with two senses. If Old English had just one adjective, then the modern words “dear” and “deer” would probably be related.

The Oxford English Dictionary says both deore and deor come from prehistoric Germanic, an ancient language reconstructed by linguists, but it adds that deor is “of uncertain etymology.”

However, the linguist Anatoly Lieberman argues in a May 19, 2021, post on the blog of Oxford University Press, publisher of the OED, that the two terms come from the same ancient source:

“Some good authorities hesitatingly (very hesitatingly!) admit that Old English dēor(e) and dēor are two senses of the same word. In my opinion, both their hesitation and the common statement ‘origin unknown,’ applied to dēor ‘savage, fierce,’ are groundless.”

Liberman says, “it is probably reasonable to assume that the most ancient meaning of the adjective dear was ‘requiring a strong effort’; hence ‘fierce, wild; hard to obtain; costly; precious,’ and of course ‘dear,’ whether ‘expensive’ or ‘priceless.’ ”

“According to what we know about the Old Germanic ethos,” he adds, “monsters and heroes were believed to be endowed with similar qualities, but what was ‘noble, valorous, praiseworthy’ in the hero was ‘ferocious, deadly’ in his enemy.”

If Lieberman is right—and we hesitantly agree with him—then “dear” and “deer” are related.

In the first OED citation for the noun “deer,” it’s spelled dear and means a large beast: “Se camal þæt micla dear” (“The camel that great deer”). From an interlinear Old English gloss, or translation, of the Latin in the Lindisfarne Gospels, Luke 18:25.

Here’s a full version of the verse, in Early Modern English, from the King James Version: “For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

The dictionary’s earliest example for the noun “deer” used in its modern sense (as the horned animal that’s often hunted) is from Layamon’s Brut, a chronicle of Britain written in Middle English sometime before 1200: “To huntien after deoren.”

The OED notes an earlier Old English passage that mentions hrana (reindeer) among a large group of wild animals: “syx hund. Þa deor” (“those 600 hundred deer”).

As for the adjective “dear,” the dictionary says the affectionate sense gradually evolved in Old English from “esteemed” to “beloved,” but “the  passage of the one notion into the other is too gradual to admit of their separation.”

The OED’s first citation (with “dear” describing Jesus) is from Juliana, an Old English poem by Cynewulf about the martyrdom of Saint Juliana of Nicomedia. In this passage, Juliana asks all of humankind to pray for her:

“meotud bidde þæt me heofona helm helpe gefremme, meahta waldend, on þam miclan dæge, fæder, frofre gæst, in þa frecnan tid, dæda demend, ond se deora sunu” (“pray to the creator that the guardian of heaven, the wielder of powers, the father, the holy spirit, the judge of deeds, and his dear son may help me in that time of terror, on that greatest of days”).

Moving on to the costly sense of the adjective, the first OED citation, which we’ve expanded here, is from an entry for the year 1044 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

“On ðisum gere wæs swyðe mycel hunger ofer eall Englaland and corn swa dyre swa nan man ær ne gemunde  swa þæt se sester hwætes eode to LX pen” (“In this year there was very great hunger over all England and corn [grain] so dear as no man remembered before so that a sester [a dry measure] of wheat went for 60 pence”).

Over the years, the adjective has taken on many other uses, including to fondly or respectfully address someone (circa 1250), to mean scarce (before 1330), to address the recipient of a letter (c. 1402), and to describe money that can be borrowed only at a high interest rate (1878).

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Footing the bill

Q: How did “foot” come to be used in “He’ll foot the bill”? And doesn’t it sound awkward to say “He footed the bill”?

A: The use of the verb “foot” in the expression “foot the bill” ultimately comes from the use of “foot” as a noun for the lower part of something—in this case, the total at the bottom of a bill.

When “foot” first appeared in Old English, it referred (as it does now) to the part of the leg below the ankle. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the epic poem Beowulf, dating back to as early as 725:

“Sona hæfde unlyfigendes eal gefeormod fet ond folma” (“Soon he’d devoured the lifeless body, feet and hands”). The passage describes the monster Grendel eating one of his victims.

The noun “foot” soon took on the additional sense of something resembling a foot. The OED’s first citation for this meaning, which we’ve expanded here, is from an Old English riddle that refers to the base of an inkhorn (an inkwell made from an antler) as a foot, spelled fot:

“nu ic blace swelge wuda ⁊ wætre … befæðme þæt mec on fealleð ufan þær ic stonde eorpes nathwæt hæbbe anne fot” (“now I swallow the black wood and water.  … I embrace within me the unknown darkness that falls on me from above. Where I stand on something unknown, I have one foot”). From the Exeter Book, “Riddle 93.”

In the early 15th century, the OED says, the noun “foot” took on the sense of “the sum or total of a column of numbers in an account, typically recorded directly below the final entry in the column.”

The dictionary’s first citation is from a 1433 financial report in the records of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York, a merchant guild:

“First, the saide maister and constables hafe resayved [have received] in mone tolde [money counted], iiijli. ijs. xd., as it profes be [proves by] the fote [foot] of accounte of the yere past” (from The York Mercers and Merchant Adventurers 1356–1917, a 1918 work by the British historian Maud Sellers).

A similar use of “foot” as a verb appeared in the late 15th century, according to the OED, which defines the term as “to add up (a column of numbers, or an account, bill, etc., having this) and enter the sum at the bottom.”

The earliest Oxford citation, with “footed” spelled “futit,” is from a record of judicial proceedings in Scotland: “The tyme that his compt [account] wes futit.” From The Acts of the Lords of Council in Civil Causes, 1478–95 (edited by Thomas Thomson, 1839).

The sense of “foot” you’re asking about showed up in the early 19th century. Oxford defines it as “to pay or settle (a bill, esp. one which is large or unreasonable, or which has been run up by another party).”

The first OED citation, which we’ve expanded, is from A Pedestrious Tour, of Four Thousand Miles, Through the Western States and Territories, During the Winter and Spring of 1818, an 1819 memoir of a walking tour by Estwick Evans, a New England lawyer and writer:

“My dogs, knowing no law but that of nature, and having forgotten my lecture to them upon theft, helped themselves to the first repast presented, leaving their master to foot their bills.” (The dogs were later killed by wolves in the Michigan Territory as Evans was on his way to Detroit.)

As for “footed,” it may sound awkward, but it’s the only past tense and past participle listed in the standard dictionaries we regularly consult.

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Mixed marriage: two ways to wed

Q: Should one officiate a wedding or officiate at a wedding? Or is either fine? Using it as a transitive verb sounds odd to me.

A: The verb “officiate” has been used both transitively (with a direct object, as in “officiate the wedding”) and intransitively (without the object, as in “officiate at the wedding”) since it appeared in the 17th century. But the intransitive usage was long considered the traditional form, and was much more common until the late 20th century.

Today, dictionaries of American English recognize both the transitive and intransitive uses of “officiate” as standard. Dictionaries of British English recognize only the intransitive usage.

The transitive usage is especially popular in the US in reference to officiating in sports and in marriages performed by friends or relatives ordained online.

Merriam-Webster.com, an American dictionary, has nearly identical definitions for “officiate” used intransitively and transitively in senses related to performing a ceremony, serving in an official capacity, or acting as an official at a sporting contest.

M-W has “officiate at a wedding” as an intransitive example, and has these transitive examples: “Two referees officiated the hockey game” … “The bishop officiated the memorial Mass.”

The verb is defined similarly in the Oxford New American Dictionary and Dictionary.com, an updated online dictionary based mainly on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary. (American Heritage describes the transitive sense as a usage problem, but bases that view on a 1997 survey of the AH usage panel and may not reflect recent developments in American English.)

A search with Google’s Ngram Viewer, which compares words and phrases in digitized books, shows that both senses are now equally popular in American English. The intransitive use doesn’t register at all in a search of British English.

Getting back to your question, the transitive usage also sounds unnatural to us, and we don’t use it. But as language commentators, we accept the view of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage:

“Let us assure you that officiate can be used transitively to mean ‘to carry out (an official duty or function),’ ‘to serve as a leader or celebrant of (a ceremony),’ or ‘to administer the rules of (a game or sport) esp. as a referee or umpire.’ ”

As for the verb’s etymology, English adopted “officiate” in the early 17th century from two post-classical Latin terms: officiat-, the past participial stem of officiari (to perform a function), and officiare (to officiate, say mass, to serve a church, and so on), according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

When the term first appeared in English, it was transitive and meant “to perform the duties of (an office, position, or place),” the OED says. Its first citation is from The Historie and Lives of the Kings of England (1615), by the English lawyer and historian  William Martyn:

“Because the Emperour intended to giue vnto her for her Dowrie, the Provinces of the Low Countries … his desire was, that forthwith shee might be sent thether to officiate the Protectorship of them in his absence.”

The dictionary says “officiate” soon took on the sense of performing a religious service or rite such as marriage, the use you’re asking about. The first Oxford citation for this sense uses “officiate” transitively, with a direct object preceding the verb:

“Deacons had the charge to … helpe the Priest in diuine Seruice (a place officiated now by our Parish Clerkes).” From Ancient Funerall Monuments (1631), by the English poet and antiquary John Weever.

The intransitive use of this particular sense of “officiate” appeared a decade later: “There were many Parish Churches … as doth appeare by Epiphanius … who … tells us also who officiated in the same, as Presbyters.” From The Historie of Episcopacie (1642), by the Anglican clergyman and historian Peter Heylyn.

As we’ve said, the intransitive usage was predominant until the transitive form was revived in the late 20th century. Here’s a recent transitive example from a headline in Entertainment Weekly (Jan. 2, 2024): “Susan will officiate Gerry and Theresa’s ‘Golden Wedding.’ ”

And here’s an example from the website of  the Universal Life Church, which offers “Fast, Free, & Easy” ordinations to people who want to marry friends or relatives: “Get Ordained Online, Officiate A Wedding.”

The OED defines the sports sense of the verb “officiate” as “to act as a referee, umpire, or other official in a match or game.” The dictionary says the sports usage first appeared in the late 19th century.

The earliest Oxford citation is from a London newspaper that uses the term intransitively: “Mr. Walker officiated as referee, and Messrs. Davies and Bryan as umpires” (The Times, Sept. 15, 1884).

The transitive use of “officiate” in sports appeared a century later. The dictionary’s first example is from The Washington Post, May 24, 1978 (we’ve corrected the date):

“There was considerable comment when referee-in-chief Scotty Morrison selected Van Hellmond, Newell and Bob Myers to officiate the finals, passing up more senior referees.”

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The earliest English writing

Q: You often quote examples of writing from Anglo-Saxon times to illustrate the history of a usage. What is the earliest example of English writing that you know of?

A: You’ve asked what seems to be a simple question, but the answer is complicated. It depends on what you consider writing and how you determine the date.

The earliest version of the language, Old English, developed in England in the fifth century from the dialects spoken by Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—migrants from what is now Germany and Scandinavia.

Old English was originally written with runes, characters in futhark, an ancient Germanic alphabet. Latin letters introduced by Christian missionaries began replacing the runes in the eighth century, but some runes were still being used well into Middle English, the language spoken from around 1100 to 1500.

The earliest surviving examples of Old English are very short runic inscriptions on metal, wood, bone, or stone. A runic inscription runs down the right side of this fifth-century gold pendant found by a farmer in 1984 at Undley Common near Lakenheath in Suffolk:

The pendant, now in the British Museum, shows a helmeted head above a wolf. The runic letters ᚷ‍ᚫᚷ‍ᚩᚷ‍ᚫ ᛗᚫᚷᚫ ᛗᛖᛞᚢ (gaegogae mægæ medu) run along the right edge. As the museum explains, the message may be read as “howling she-wolf” (a reference to the wolf image) and “reward to a relative” (a translation of the runic letters).

The pendant—technically a bracteate, or thin coin of precious metal—is believed to have been produced in the late fifth century, but it’s uncertain whether it originated in England or was brought there by the settlers.

The dating of the pendant is somewhat uncertain, according to Daphne Nash Briggs, an authority on ancient coins at the University of Oxford:

“It is thought, on stylistic grounds, to have been made around AD 475, and I accept this dating whilst bearing in mind that bracteates are stubbornly difficult to date precisely, and it could in principle have been made a generation earlier.” (From “An Emphatic Statement: The Undley-A Gold Bracteate and Its Message in Fifth-Century East Anglia,” a paper by Nash Briggs in Wonders Lost and Found, 2020, edited by Nicholas Sekunda.)

The earliest surviving examples of Old English writing on parchment are from Latin-English glossaries, according to a history of Old English in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED cites several examples from the Glossaire d’Épinal, written in England around 700 and now at the Bibliothèque Municipale in Épinal, France: “anser goos (i.e. ‘goose’)” … “lepus, leporis hara (i.e. ‘hare’)” … “nimbus storm (i.e. ‘storm’)” … “olor suan (i.e. ‘swan’).”

The British Library notes that “the earliest substantial example of English is the lawcode of King Æthelberht of Kent (reigned c. 589–616), but that work survives in just one manuscript (the Textus Roffensis), made in the 1120s.”

Here’s how the manuscript begins: “Þis syndon þa domas þe æðelbirht cyning asette on aGVSTinus dæge” (“These are the laws that King Æthelberht established in the days of Augustine”).

“Cædmon’s Hymn,” which is considered the earliest documented poem in Old English, is said to have been composed in the seventh century by an illiterate cow herder, according to the Anglo-Saxon monk Bede.

It first appeared in writing in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (“Ecclesiastical History of the English People”), a church history written in Latin around 731.

In the next few years, scribes inserted Old English versions of the poem in two copies of the Latin manuscript, now known as the Moore Bede (734–737) and the St. Petersburg Bede (732-746).

Here’s a lightly edited version of the hymn in the Moore Bede (MS Kk.5.16 at the Cambridge University Library):

“Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard / metudæs maecti end his modgidanc / uerc uuldurfadur sue he uundra gihuaes / eci dryctin or astelidæ” (“Now we must praise the heavenly kingdom’s guardian, / the creator’s might and his conception, / the creation of the glorious father, thus each of the wonders / that he ordained at the beginning”).

The epic poem Beowulf, the first great work of English literature, is believed to have been written around 725, but the oldest surviving manuscript (Cotton MS Vitellius A XV at the British Library) dates from around the year 1000.

We’ll end with the last few lines of the poem, a farewell to Beowulf by his subjects after their king is mortally wounded in battle, his body burned on a pyre, the ashes buried in a barrow:

“cwædon þæt he wære wyruldcyning, / manna mildust ⁊ monðwærust / eodum liðost, ⁊ lofgeornost” (“Of all the world’s kings, they said, / he was the kindest and the gentlest of men, / the most gracious to his people and the most worthy of fame”).

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Left for dead

Q: I’m curious when the phrase “left for dead” became common usage. Why is the phrase not “left to die”? I saw the “for dead” version recently in an article and I began wondering.

A: The expression “leave for dead” first appeared in Anglo-Saxon times and has been used regularly since then to mean abandon someone or something almost dead or certain to die.

The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary, which we’ve expanded here, is from a passage concerning St. Paul in The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, First Series, written around 990 by the Benedictine Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham:

“Æne he wæs gestæned oð deað, swa ðæt þa ehteras hine for deadne leton, ac ðæs on merigen he aras, and ferde ymbe his bodunge” (“Once he was stoned unto death, so much so that the persecutors left him for dead, but on the morrow he arose and went about his preaching”). In Old English, “hine for deadne leton” is literally “him for dead left.”

As the OED explains, the preposition “for” is being used here “with an adjective as complement.” This use of “for,” the dictionary adds, is now found chiefly in “set expressions, as in to give a person up for lost, to leave a person for dead, to take for granted, etc.”

In early Old English, the preposition “for” began being used similarly with a noun to mean “with a view to; with the object or purpose of; as preparatory to,” according to the OED.

Here’s a citation from the Gospel of John, 11:4, in the West Saxon Gospels: “Nys þeos untrumnys na for deaðe, ac for Godes wuldre” (“This sickness is not for death, but for the glory of God”). Jesus is speaking about the ailing Lazarus.

Getting back to your question, one could say “left to die” as well as “left for dead.” Both have been common for centuries. In fact, “left to die” is slightly more popular, according to Google’s Ngram viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books.

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Did you warsh behind your ears?

Q:  Can you suss the pronunciation of “wash”?  I’m from central Illinois and I forced myself as an adult to pronounce it “wawsh” instead of the colloquial “warsh.”

A: In American English, the word “wash” is usually pronounced “wawsh” or “wahsh” (wɔʃ or wɑʃ in the International Phonetic Alphabet), according to the Oxford English Dictionary. However, a lot of Americans pronounce it with an “r” before the “sh,” a usage that may be dying out.

The Dictionary of American Regional English describes the dialectal “warsh” or “worsh” pronunciation (wɑrš or wɔrš in DARE’s phonemic system) as widespread in the US but especially frequent in the Midland, a belt that extends roughly from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina across the country to Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska.

The earliest recorded example in the regional dictionary is from the late 19th century, though the pronunciation almost certainly appeared in speech before that. Here’s an expanded version of the citation from “Rubáiyát of Doc Sifers,” a poem about a doctor in Indiana, by James Whitcomb Riley (The Century Magazine, November 1897):

He orders Euby then to split some wood, and take and build
A fire in kitchen-stove, and git a young spring-chicken killed;
And jes whirled in and th’owed his hat and coat there on the bed,
And warshed his hands and sailed in that-air kitchen, Euby said.

DARE has examples from Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. The latest, a 2003 report from Iowa in the dictionary’s own files, uses “wersh” for the pronunciation spelling of the term: “My sister-in-law says ‘I’m going to do the ‘wersh’ (wash as in laundry).”

Pat, who grew up in Iowa, remembers childhood admonitions like “Go warsh your hands” and “Did you warsh behind your ears?”

Interestingly, the dialectal pronunciation of “wash” with an “r” was first recorded in southern England, not in the American Midland. Here’s the earliest example we’ve found:

“I’ve a yeard em zay he don’t make nort of a leg o’ mutton, and half a peck o’ cider to warsh-n down way” (one of two examples in “The Dialect of West Somerset,” a paper by the philologist Frederick Thomas Elworthy, read at a meeting of the Philological Society in London, Jan. 15, 1875).

We’ve seen no evidence that immigrants from southern England brought the usage to the US Midland, but linguists have found indications that  Scotch-Irish immigrants from Ulster may have been the source of the usage.

The authors of the book Pittsburgh Speech and Pittsburghese (2015) maintain that the dialect spoken by the Scotch-Irish, the first Europeans to settle in southwestern Pennsylvania in large numbers, spread from Pennsylvania across the Midland region.

“The English they spoke became the substrate founder dialect for the area (as for much of the U.S. Midland),” write Barbara Johnstone, Daniel Baumgardt, Maeve Eberhardt, and Scott Kiesling. “Although we have very limited evidence about Scotch-Irish phonology, words and morphosyntactic patterns that are indisputably Scotch-Irish are still prevalent in the area.”

The authors refer to the “r” in “warsh” as an “intrusive” or “epenthetic” (inserted) letter before “ʃ” (the IPA symbol for the “sh” digraph, technically a voiceless postalveolar fricative), and say the usage is declining in American English.

“Epenthetic /r/ was once fairly widespread in the U.S. Midwest and the South,” they write, “but it is becoming less common, as it seems to be in southwestern Pennsylvania, as well.”

As for the word “wash,” it first appeared in Old English, the language spoken from around 450 to 1150, as a verb spelled wæscan, wacsan, waxan, wacxan, or waxsan, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The Anglo-Saxon versions of “wash,” the dictionary notes, were nearly always used in the sense of cleaning things, not people. A different verb, þwean, was used for washing the human body (the þ, or thorn, at the beginning of þwean was pronounced as “th”).

The OED’s earliest “wash” example, which we’ve expanded here, is from a collection of  Anglo-Saxon charters: “hi sculan waxan sceap and sciran” (“they shall wash and shear the sheep”). From Diplomatarium Anglicum Aevi Saxonici (1865), by Benjamin Thorpe.

The first Oxford citation for the verb “wash” used for people is from a late Old English version of the Gospel of Matthew, 27:24: “þa genam he water, and weosc hys handa beforan þam folce” (“he [Pilate] took water and washed his hands before the people”). From the Hatton Gospels, written around 1160 in the West Saxon dialect.

The earliest OED example for the noun “wash” in the sense of the cleaning of clothes is from an interlinear gloss, or translation, of the Latin vestimentorum ablutio as the Old English reafa wæsc (“garment wash”). From “De Consuetudine Monachorum” (“Concerning the Habit of the Monks”), an article in Anglia, a German journal of English linguistics, Nov. 27, 2009.

However, that sense of the noun doesn’t appear again in the dictionary until the early 18th century: “Wearing Linen from the Wash” (London Gazette, 1704).

When the noun “wash” was first used for people, it referred to the washing away of stains on one’s honor or morality, as in the OED’s first two examples:

  • “The Blemish once received, no Wash is good For stains of Honor, but th’ Offenders blood” (from The Adventures of Five Hours, a 1663 comedy by the English playwright Samuel Tuke).
  • “A Baptism in Reserve, a Wash for all our Sins” (from a 1666 sermon by William Sancroft, dean of St. Paul’s and later Archbishop of Canterbury).

Finally, the first Oxford citation for the noun used in the sense of physically cleaning oneself is from The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1839), by Charles Dickens: “Mind you take care, young man, and get first wash.” (The passage refers to getting to a well first.)

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‘Dad wouldn’t have a bar of it’

Q: Can you shed any light on the origin of the (mainly) Australian phrase “wouldn’t have a bar of it,” especially what “bar” is doing in there?

A: The expression “not to stand [or “have” or “want”] a bar of something” first appeared in Australian English in the early 20th century, according to Green’s Dictionary of Slang.

The earliest example in the dictionary is from a Sydney newspaper: “He attributes most of his trouble to the fact that he is a married man and father of a grown-up family, but neither wife nor children will stand a bar of him at any price” (Truth, May 21, 1904).

This more recent example, which we’ve expanded, is from Tales of the Honey Badger (2015), a collection of short stories by the Australian rugby star Nick Cummins: “I grabbed a board and paddled straight out, knowing full well Dad wouldn’t have a bar of it.”

Green’s describes the usage as Australian and New Zealand slang meaning “to detest, to reject, to be intolerant of.” However, the dictionary doesn’t explain how “bar” came to be used in the expression.

The Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English and The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English also have entries for the usage, but no etymological information.

Three standard English dictionaries—Cambridge, Collins, and Oxford—have entries that label the expression “informal,” but again don’t discuss its history.

The Oxford English Dictionary, our go-to etymological reference, doesn’t have an entry for the expression. However, the OED entries for “bar” used as a verb and as a preposition offer possible clues to its use as a noun in “not to stand a bar of something.”

When “bar” first appeared in Middle English in the 12th century, it was a noun meaning “a stake or rod of iron or wood used to fasten a gate, door, hatch, etc.”

The first OED citation, which we’ve expanded, is from the Lambeth Homilies (circa 1175): “Det is he to-pruste pa stelene gate. and to brec pa irene barren of helle” (“He [Jesus] is the one who will thrust open the steel gate, and break the iron bars of hell”).

When the verb “bar” appeared in the 13th century, it meant “to make fast (a door, etc.) by a bar or bars fixed across it; to fasten up or close (a place) with bars.”

The earliest OED citation is from Cursor Mundi, an anonymous Middle English poem that the dictionary dates at sometime before 1300. In this passage, Lot secures the door of his home in Sodom to keep a mob outside from molesting two angels inside: “faste þe dores gon he bare” (“firmly he did bar the doors”).

In the 15th century, the verb “bar” came to mean “to exclude from consideration.” The earliest Oxford citation, which we’ve edited, uses the gerund form of the verb in referring to one piece of linen set aside from a sale:

“vj.xx yardes, barin one pese, of lynnen cloth” (“six score yards, barring one piece, of linen cloth”). From The Household Books of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, 1462-1471, 1481-1483 (1992), introduction by Anne Crawford.

[Note: Counting in the Middle English of the 15th century was often in scores written in superscript, and the letter “j” often replaced a final “i” in Roman numerals. In the number above, “vj” is six and the superscript xx  is a score, so “vj.xx” is six times 20, or 120.]

And now a numberless example from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, written in the late 16th century. After promising Bassanio to act properly, Gratiano adds, “Nay but I barre [exclude] to night, you shall not gage [judge] me / By what we doe to night.”

In the mid-17th century, “bar” came to be a preposition with the sense of “excluding from consideration” or “leaving out.” The first OED citation is from an epigram in Hesperides (1648), a poetry collection by Robert Herrick. Here’s the epigram in full:

“Last night thou didst invite me home to eate, And shew’st me there much plate, but little meate. Prithee, when next thou do’st invite, barre state [omitting formality], And give me meate, or give me else thy plate.”

Our guess is that the use of the verb to mean “exclude from consideration” and the preposition for “excluding from consideration” may have inspired the use of “bar” in “to not stand a bar of something.” However, we’ve seen no evidence to support this.

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Wanna look like a chumbolone?

Q: Have you come across the word “chumbolone”? It’s a new one for me. I found it on John Kass’s website. He was a columnist for the Chicago Tribune and now writes a lot of angry screeds about the state of everything.

A: It was unknown to us, too.

The rare slang term “chumbolone” was first recorded about a decade and a half ago at the federal trial of Anthony Dale, a former Chicago police officer accused of leaking information to the mob.

Here’s the relevant passage: “ ‘I  don’t wanna look like a ‘chumbolone,’ an idiot,’ said Doyle, using street slang” (from a report by Jeff Coen in the Chicago Tribune, Aug. 24, 2007).

In commenting on the trial later that day, the Tribune columnist John Kass had this expanded version of Doyle’s testimony about a conversation in code with the mobster Frank Calabrese:

“ ‘I gave him lip service,’ Doyle said. ‘I didn’t know what he was talking about. I don’t wanna look like a chumbolone, an idiot, stupid.’ ” (It’s “pronounced chum-buh-LOAN,” according to Kass.)

Doyle’s remarks appeared in some newspapers and broadcasts around the country, but the usage didn’t catch on. It’s not in standard dictionaries or in the Oxford English Dictionary, the leading authority on English etymology.

It’s also not in the Dictionary of American Regional English or the updated online edition of Green’s Dictionary of Slang, a three-volume reference compiled by the lexicographer Jonathon Green.

Although the term appears in a few smaller slang dictionaries that aren’t updated regularly, it’s rarely seen outside Chicago, and it’s not all that common in the city.

Most of the “chumbolone” examples we’ve found in searching digitized databases are from one writer, Kass, who has trademarked the term and uses it to sell merchandise on his website, such as this “No Chumbolone Zone Hat”:

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How unnatural is ‘preternatural’?

Q: Why do I see the word “preternatural” all the time, especially in The New York Times? I don’t see it elsewhere. What’s the story?  I had to look it up!

A: The adjective “preternatural” (extraordinary, unnatural, supernatural) dates from the late 16th century. It was quite common in the 1700s and 1800s, then gradually fell out of favor. It was relatively rare by the early 1900s, but rebounded somewhat at the end of the 20th century.

A search with Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books, indicates that the use of “preternatural” began rising in the 1990s. Although the usage appears often in The Times, as both an adjective and an adverb (“preternaturally”), it shows up in many other publications as well.

The term’s first appearance in The Times was in an editorial about the pleasures of journalism, published on March 24, 1860, nine years after the paper’s founding in 1851.

The editorial, entitled “An Oratorical Windfall,” says that despite the occasional weariness of recording commonplace events, journalism can offer “gleams of an almost preternatural absurdity which it is at once a pleasure and a wonder to pursue.”

And this recent use of “preternatural” is from an article in The Times on Dec. 12, 2023, about Shohei Ohtani, a pitcher and designated hitter for the Los Angeles Dodgers and his previous team, the Los Angeles Angels:

“For Angels fans, Ohtani brought more to the ballpark than just his preternatural, comic-book-like talent at swatting home runs and striking out batters.”

Here’s an adverbial example from a Times article on Jan. 2, 2024, about how the American skier Mikaela Shiffrin sees Taylor Swift’s career as a guide for navigating fame and adversity:

“That long-distance tutelage began when the preternaturally gifted Shiffrin, nurtured in the Colorado mountains and at a venerable Vermont ski academy, won three World Cup races and a world championship gold medal as a high school senior.”

As we’ve said, The Times isn’t the only publication to use “preternatural.” Here are a few recent examples from others:

“Martin Scorsese’s career-capping Killers of the Flower Moon likely never would have happened without David Grann, the New Yorker writer with a preternatural knack for unearthing astonishing, dramatic stories from history” (Slate, Oct. 22, 2023).

“Padres Expert Pleads Fans to Not Forget Juan Soto’s Preternatural Talent” (Sports Illustrated, April 29, 2023).

“15 preternatural podcasts to ring in spooky season” (The Boston Globe, Oct. 22, 2021).

As for its etymology, the Oxford English Dictionary says “preternatural” is based on the post-classical Latin praeternaturalis, formed from the classical Latin phrase praeter naturam (beyond or outside nature).

The term first appeared in the early modern English of the late 1500s. The earliest OED citation, which we’ve expanded, is from a letter by the Cambridge scholar Gabriel Harvey to the English poet Edmund Spenser about a 1580 earthquake in the Dover Straits, the narrowest part of the English Channel:

“an Earthquake might as well be supposed a Naturall Motion of the Earth, as a preternaturall, or supernaturall ominous worke of God” (from Three Proper and Witty Familiar Letters, 1580, published anonymously, apparently by Harvey).

A note in Merriam-Webster online about the history of the term says: “unusual things are sometimes considered positive and sometimes negative, and throughout its history preternatural has been used to refer to both exceptionally good things and unnaturally evil ones.”

“In its earliest documented uses in the 1500s, it tended to emphasize the strange, ominous, or foreboding, but by the 1700s, people were using it more benignly to refer to fascinating supernatural (or even heavenly) phenomena. Nowadays, people regularly use it to describe the remarkable abilities of exceptional humans.”

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When ‘like’ means ‘lack’

Q: I’m not sure if this is all over the South or only in Kentucky, but people here use “like” to mean “lack.” Just the other day I heard a baker say of her cupcakes in the oven, “They still like some time.” Do you have anything to say about this usage?

A: The use of “like” to mean “lack” is a Southern regionalism, not just a Kentucky usage.

The Dictionary of American Regional English describes “like” here as a “pronc-sp” of the verb “lack” in the South and South Midland regions. A “pronunciation spelling” is one that represents the pronunciation of a word more closely than its traditional spelling.

The dictionary’s earliest example, which we’ve edited slightly to conform to the original wording, is from an 1857 report of the usage in central North Carolina: “Like for lack” (Tarheel Talk, 1956, by Norman Ellsworth Eliason).

The next DARE citation, also edited, has two examples of the usage in northwestern Arkansas: “like, v. tr. To lack. ‘I like two dollars.’ ‘It liked two minutes of ten’ ” (Dialect Notes, 1905).

The two most recent DARE examples are from the 1980s. The first represents the speech of western Kentucky and the second, which is edited and expanded, illustrates the speech of northern Georgia:

  • “ ‘You would go to a rest home and leave me by myself?’ he asked, with a little whine. ‘I’ve a good mind to,’ she said. She measured an inch off her index finger. ‘I like about this much from it,’ she said” (from “The Ocean,” in Shiloh and Other Stories, 1982, by Bobbie Ann Mason).
  • “You need to understand that in Cold Sassy … We also say … like for lack, as in ‘Do you like much of bein’ th’ew?’ ” (from Cold Sassy Tree, a 1984 novel by Olive Ann Burns, set in the early 20th century.).

We wonder if this usage may have been influenced by the use of the verb “like” in the conditional to mean “want,” as in “I’d like three apples and four pears.”

We couldn’t find the usage in the Oxford English Dictionary, Green’s Dictionary of Slang, the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, or other references.

We’ve seen comments online by Southerners who say “lack” is sometimes spelled as well as pronounced “like” in the region. All the written examples we’ve seen are from language authorities or fiction writers describing the pronunciation.

However, we’ve made only a cursory search of social media for examples of people using “like” for “lack” in writing. A more thorough search may find such examples.

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A tale of tricky endings

Q: Can you please tell us the rules for using the suffixes “-tion,” “-sion,” and “-cion”? Very Interested, Busy and Confused Teachers.

A: English borrowed all three endings from French in the Middle Ages, but they ultimately come from the same word fragment in Latin. So etymologically they’re three different spellings of the same term.

However, the suffixes have evolved in English and are used in so many different ways, depending on placement and pronunciation, that we’d recommend consulting a dictionary when in doubt.

But since you’ve asked for specific guidelines, we’ll pass along a usage note from Lexico, a defunct dictionary website with content from Oxford University Press. Although Lexico is gone, the usage note can still be seen in Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine digital archive:

Words ending in -sion-tion, and -cion

These endings are part of many everyday English nouns but people often have problems with their spelling. Here are some guidelines to help you choose the right one:

Words ending in -sion

  • If the ending is pronounced as in confusion, then it should be spelled -sion. Here are some examples:

collision; division; revision; persuasion; explosion; decision; seclusion.

  • When the ending comes after an -l, it’s always spelled -sion:

compulsion; revulsion; expulsion; emulsion; propulsion.

  • When the ending follows an -n or -r, it’s often spelled -sion, especially if the word is related to one that ends in -d or -se. For example: immersion (from immerse); comprehension (from comprehend). Here are some more examples:

aversion; conversion; apprehension; diversion; extension; version.

  • Nouns based on words that end in -ss or -mit always end in -sionpermission comes from permit and discussion comes from discuss. Here are some more examples:

commission; expression; aggression; admission; succession; impression; emission.

Words ending in -tion

  • If the ending is pronounced as in station, then it’s spelled -tion. For example:

addition; duration; nation; solution; ambition; edition; caution; position.

  • If the noun is related to a word ending in -ate, then the ending will be -ation, e.g. donation (from donate) or vacation (from vacate). Here are some more examples:

accommodation; location; creation; rotation; education; mediation.

  • If the ending comes after any consonant apart from -l, -n, or -r, then the ending is spelled -tion:

action; connection; reception; affection; interruption; description; collection; infection; deception.

  • After -n and -r, the ending can be -tion or -sion. It’s more likely to be -tion if the word’s related to another one that ends in –t or –tain, e.g. assertion (from assert) or retention (from retain) Here are some more examples:

exertion; distortion; abstention; invention.

Words ending in -cion

           There are just two common nouns that end in -cion: suspicion and coercion.

The Oxford English Dictionary refers to these terms as suffixes, even though the first letter is often part of the base. We’re using “ending” and “suffix” interchangeably here.

The OED says the usual function of the suffix is to form “a noun of action, equivalent to the native ending -ing” and with its “kindred uses.”

The OED says the three suffixes, plus “-xion” in variant spellings like “connexion” and “inflexion,” are ultimately derived from the classical Latin -tion-, a word fragment combining the -t of a past participial stem and the word-forming element -ion-.

“The Latin meaning was primarily ‘the state or condition of being (what the past participle imports),’ ” the dictionary says, adding, “But already in Latin -tiō was used for the action or process of relating, completing, suspending, etc., and also concretely or quasi-concretely, as in dictiō, the condition of being said.”

Middle English borrowed the suffix from the Old French -cion and the Middle French -tion, which were derived from the classical Latin word fragment.

In Middle English, spoken in England from abut 1100 to 1500, the ending could begin with “c,” “s,” “t,” or “x.” There are medieval versions of all four in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written from 1387 until the author’s death in 1400:

  • “He was so gentil of condicioun” (“The Knight’s Tale”).
  • “Youre inconstance is youre confusioun” (“The Summoner’s Tale”).
  • “Wher me was wo, that is no questioun” (“The Squire’s Tale”).
  • “Of his complexioun he was sangwyn” (“The General Prologue”).

We’ll end with an excerpt from “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” In the story, an ugly old woman helps save the life of a young knight and as payment demands he marry her. He responds in horror:

My love? quod he, nay, my dampnacioun!
Allas! that any of my nacioun
Sholde evere so foule disparaged be!

(“My love?” cried he, “nay, my damnation!
Alas! that any of my kindred
Should ever so fouly dishonored be.”)

Ultimately, the two have a long, happy marriage.

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On ‘giving’ and ‘giving back’

Q: Charitable giving is often characterized as “giving back,” which has a connotation of paying something owed.  My wife and I make substantial donations. I think of this as freely giving, not paying a debt.

A: We’ve also made quite a few charitable donations over the years, and done many hours of volunteer work. And like you, we see this as giving freely of our savings and our time rather than repaying a debt to society.

Merriam-Webster defines the phrasal verb “give back” in this sense as “to provide help or financial assistance to others in appreciation of one’s own success or good fortune,” and has this example: “The community had people with time to volunteer and give back.”

We’d add that the way charities now use the term strikes us as marketing jargon that conveys a sense of obligation to contribute, as well as guilt for not doing so.

A less promotional version of the usage dates back to the 19th century. The earliest example we’ve seen is from a speech given Dec. 27, 1877, by W. M. Brooks, president of Tabor College, at a meeting in Cedar Rapids of the State Teachers’ Association of Iowa:

“I believe in general it is true, both of private and State schools, that they are doing their work so faithfully as to give back to the community vastly more than enough to repay the outlay.” In that example, “give back” is used literally (“to repay the outlay”).

We especially like this example from “Problems of Property,” an article by George Iles in The Popular Science Monthly, July 1882:

“It used to be thought that the sons or grandsons of rich Americans could be relied upon to give back to the community their inherited wealth through demoralization and incompetence; but that reliance is proved baseless in a noteworthy proportion of cases in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.”

And here’s a turn-of-the-century example from “The University and the City,” a speech by Seth Low, president of Columbia University, given at the University of Rochester on Oct. 11, 1900:

“The cities can justify themselves, in thus absorbing the population of the land, only by demonstrating that they have the capacity to give, as well as to take. If they take the people out of the country, they must not only give to these individuals enlarged opportunity and greater happiness, but, through them and through their own sons, they must give back to the country in a thousand ways what they have taken from it.”

The sense of repaying an obligation is even clearer in a Jan. 27, 1964, speech by Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine at the Women’s National Press Club in Washington.

One reason she decided to seek the Republican nomination for President, she says, “is that women before me pioneered and smoothed the way for me to be the first woman to be elected to both the House and the Senate—and that I should give back in return that which had been given to me.”

The use of the term was relatively rare until the 1980s, according to a search for “give back to the community” in Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books.

Business executives began using the expression at the time in describing charitable contributions by their companies, as in this example from a business forum in The New York Times, Jan. 3, 1988:

“The challenge in business is to find a socially responsible niche where you can effectively give back to the community in which you operate and in which you have prospered” (M. Anthony Burns, chairman of Ryder Systems).

The term is now often used by businesses, public figures, charities, and volunteers in connection with the Giving Tuesday movement, begun in 2012 by the 92nd Street Y in New York and the United Nations Foundation:

“Giving Tuesday 2023: 27 brands giving back: Giving Tuesday is a day for people and businesses to give back after Black Friday and Cyber Monday—here’s how to participate this year” (from the website of NBC News, Nov. 28, 2023).

In looking into the usage, we found an article in which Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill, director of the Campus Free Expression Project of the Bipartisan Policy Center, says the “demand that wealthy should ‘give back’ is heard mostly from progressive or leftist voices.”

In “Giving vs. ‘Giving Back’ ” (Philanthropy Daily, Jan. 4, 2012), Merrill says the “Harvard political theorist John Rawls gave expression to this view in his highly influential A Theory of Justice (1971).”

However, Rawls doesn’t use the term “give back” in his book about distributive justice, the fair allocation of resources. And we’ve seen no indication that people using the expression are particularly progressive, leftist, or aware of his work.

We’ll end with a passage from the book Gratitude: Reflections on What We Owe to Our Country (1990), by William F. Buckley Jr. In discussing the impossibility of repaying our cultural inheritance, he gives several examples, including this one about our musical heritage:

“If you listen, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in May of every year, to four hundred musicians performing the St. Matthew Passion by J. S. Bach, it becomes numbingly plain that there is simply no way in which one can ‘repay’ the musical patrimony we have inherited.”

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Don’t sweat the small stuff

Q: Do you have information on the origin of the phrase “don’t  sweat the small stuff”? I didn’t find a convincing answer with Google search and ChatGPT. Any light you might be able to shed on the subject would be appreciated!

A: As far as we can tell, the slang expression “don’t sweat the small stuff” first appeared in the US in the 1950s.

The earliest example we’ve seen is from the student newspaper at Mercer University in Macon, GA: “Have a good time over the summer and don’t sweat the small stuff” (The Mercer Cluster, May 25, 1956).

The Oxford English Dictionary says “to sweat the small stuff” means “to worry about trivial, insignificant matters (usually in negative contexts); originally and chiefly imperative, in: don’t sweat the small stuff.”

The earliest OED citation is from an Oct. 23, 1979, article in The New York Times that cites Dr. Kenneth Greenspan, a specialist in stress-related disorders at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.

In opening a two‐day seminar at the college, the article says, “He quoted a friend’s prescription for dealing with stress. ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff,’ he said. ‘And try to remember it’s all small stuff.’ ”

In its entry for “to sweat the small stuff,” the OED refers readers to the earlier expression “don’t sweat it,” which the dictionary describes as US slang for “don’t worry.”

The earliest example of “don’t sweat it” that we’ve found is from a 1954 issue of Desmos, the journal of Delta Sigma Delta, an international dental fraternity: “Per usual, the seniors and juniors tell the sophomores, ‘don’t sweat it.’ ”

The earliest Oxford citation is from a 1963 issue of the journal American Speech: “Don’t sweat it means ‘don’t worry about it,’ ’’

We discuss “don’t sweat it” in a 2016 post that includes an earlier, similar usage in the Dec. 12, 1914, issue of Happy Days, a New York weekly newspaper:

“ ‘What’s the meeting for, anyway?’ said Paul Braddon. ‘Keep your shirt on, and don’t sweat it off,’ said Deacon Small.”

[Note:This post was updated on Feb. 14, 2024.]

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A tale of two suffixes

Q: I have a question about how suffixes are chosen. Specifically, why did the noun/verb “impact” turn into an adjective by adding “-ful” instead of “-ive”?

A: You’ll be surprised to hear that both “impactive” and “impactful” can be found in standard dictionaries.

Merriam-Webster, for example, defines “impactive” as “having an impact or marked effect,” and “impactful” as “having a forceful impact: producing a marked impression.” It treats both as standard English.

M-W has this “impactive” example (which we’ve expanded) from F. Scott Fitgerald’s 1934 novel Tender Is the Night: “Feeling the impactive scrutiny of strange faces, she took off her bath-robe and followed.”

And here’s the dictionary’s “impactful” example: “Fashion loves a big expansive gesture, but a small one can be pretty impactful, too” (from an article by Mark Holgate in Vogue, Oct. 30, 2017).

The two adjectives were originally formed by adding the suffixes “-ive” and “-ful” to the noun “impact,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The noun is believed to come from the Latin impactus, the participial stem of impingere (to impinge). The OED adds an asterisk to impactus, indicating that it’s “a word or form not actually found, but of which the existence is inferred.”

As it turns out, “impactive” showed up nearly a century before “impactful” appeared in the late 1930s, but the younger term is by far the more popular now, according to Google’s Ngram Viewer, which compares words and phrases in digitized books.

The earliest example we’ve found for “impactive” is from The League’s Convert, an 1847 play by Henry W. Pearson about a king’s daughter who falls in love with a populist leader.

In this passage, she appeals to her lover to make peace with her father: “With philanthropic eye, review our race / As an impactive body, whereof they, / The members, serving the prime good of all.”

However that early literary example seems to be an outlier. The other 19th-century examples we’ve found are in technical works that describe the force of something, such as weight or wind or waves, on various structures.

For instance, the Scottish structural engineer William Fairbairn writes that the weight and speed of trains are “severe tests of impactive force on every structure, whether beams or bridges” (On the Application of Cast and Wrought Iron to Building Purposes, 1854).

As for “impactful,” the earliest example cited by the OED is from The Commentator magazine (June 29, 1939): “The coronation of a pope, the non-stop European crisis—these and kindred events become right-of-way news on radio—more immediate and impactful than even the front page.”

That example also appears in a 2019 post of ours about “impactful,” a word criticized by some language commentators. Although it’s standard English, we think many other words have more impact—“powerful,” “persuasive,” “forceful,” and so on.

As for the suffixes, let’s begin with “-ive,” which the OED says is derived from –ivus, a Latin suffix that formed adjectives when added to the participial stem of verbs (act-ivus, active) or nouns (tempest-ivus, seasonable).

The dictionary says the suffix is generally used in English to form words based on Latin terms with -ivus suffixes or to “form words on Latin analogies, with the sense ‘having a tendency to, having the nature, character, or quality of, given to (some action).’ ”

As for the English suffix “-ful,” Oxford says it’s used to form “adjectives with the sense ‘full of, or (more generally) having or characterized by (what is expressed by the first element)’. Also combined with verbs with the sense ‘liable or tending to —.’ ”

The OED adds that the suffix is derived from the Old English adjective full (“containing or holding as much or as many as possible; having within its limits all it will hold; having no space empty; filled to capacity”).

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots says the Old English adjective ultimately comes from the reconstructed prehistoric Germanic root fulla (full) and the Proto-Indo-European pelə- (to fill).

The OED notes that “in Old English the adjective full, like its cognates in the other Germanic languages, was frequently used as a suffix in combination with a preceding noun.”

In modern English, “-ful” usually combines with nouns derived from Old English or other Germanic languages (“harmful,” “tearful,” “frightful,” “playful,” “skillful”). But it’s also seen with nouns from Romance languages or Latin (“beautiful,” “colorful,” “fateful,” “graceful,” “masterful,” “tactful”).

Why have both “-ful” and “-ive” joined with “impact” to give us the adjectives “impactful” and “impactive”? And why does the more popular, “impactful,” link a prefix derived from Old English to a noun believed to come from Latin?

Why not? English is a Germanic language with many borrowings from non-Germanic languages, especially Latin, either directly or indirectly by way of French. We’ve written several times about this, including a 2018 post, When English met Latin.

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English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Language Linguistics Phrase origin Punctuation Usage Word origin Writing

The first exclamation point!

Q: You wrote recently about the increasing use of exclamation points. When did this overused punctuation mark first appear and who was responsible for it?

A: The exclamation point or exclamation mark first appeared in Medieval Latin in the 14th century, but its parentage is somewhat uncertain.

It was originally called a puncto exclamativus (exclamation point) or puncto admirativus (admiration point), according to the British paleographer Malcolm B. Parkes.

In Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West (1993), Parkes notes that the Italian poet Iacopo Alpoleio da Urbisaglia claimed in 1360 to have invented the exclamation point:

“ego vero videns quod exclamativa vel admirativa clausula aliter soleat quam continuus vel interrogativus sermo enunciari, consuevi tales clausulas in fine notare per punctum planum et coma eidem puncto lateraliter superpositum.”

(“Indeed, seeing that the exclamatory or admirative clausula was otherwise accustomed to be enunciated in the same way as continuing or interrogative discourse, I acquired the habit of pointing the end of such clausulae by means of a clear punctus, and a coma placed to the side above that same punctus.”)

The translation is by Parkes, who found the citation in “Di un Ars Punctandi Erroneamente Attribuita a Francesco Petrarca” (“On a Punctuation Erroneously Attributed to Petrarch”), a 1909 paper by Franceso Novati for the Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere.

The passage cited by Novati is from “De Ratione Punctandi Secundum Magistrum Iacopum Alpoleium de Urbesalia in Forma Epistole ad Soctorem Quendam Salutatum” (“On the Method of Punctuation According to the Teacher James Alpoleius de Urbasalia in the Form of an Epistle to a Certain Teacher Salutatum”).

The first actual example of an exclamation point in Pause and Effect is from De Nobilitate Legum et Medicinae (“On the Nobility of Laws and Medicine”), a 1399 treatise by that “certain teacher” mentioned above, Coluccio Salutati, a Florentine scholar and statesman. The slanting exclamation point can be seen here, just after the word precor near the end of the second line:

This is the relevant passage in clearer Latin, with our English translation. It begins with the last three words of the first line:

“Ego temet et alios medicos obteso et rogo. repondete michi precor!” (“I am afraid and entreat you and other doctors, answer me, I pray!”).

As for the English terminology, the Oxford English Dictionary says the “punctuation mark (!) indicating an exclamation” was originally referred to as a “note of exclamation” or “note of admiration.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation uses both: “A note of Exclamation or Admiration, thus noted!” (from The Mysterie of Rhetorique Unvail’d, 1656, by the Anglican clergyman John Smith).

As far as we can tell, the term “exclamation point” first appeared in the early 18th century in a work by a British grammarian, classicist, and mathematician:

“! Exclamation-point is us’d in admiring, applauding, bewailing, &c.” (English Grammar Reformd Into a Small Compass and Easy Method for the Readier Learning and Better Understanding, 1737, by Solomon Lowe).

The term “exclamation mark” appeared a century later. The earliest example we’ve seen is from A Third Book for Reading and Spelling With Simple Rules and Instructions for Avoiding Common Errors (1837), by the American educator Samuel Worcester:

“How long do you stop at a comma? – at a semicolon? – at a colon? – at a period? – at an interrogation mark? – at an exclamation mark?”

The OED’s first example for “exclamation mark” is from A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), by the English lexicographer and grammarian Henry W. Fowler:

“Excessive use of exclamation marks is, like that of italics, one of the things that betray the uneducated or unpractised writer.”

In other words, the overuse of exclamation points that you mention in your question and that we discuss in our 2023 post is apparently nothing new.

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Wordle fancies: ‘bezel’ vs. ‘bevel’

Q: I recently encountered the word “bezel” while playing Wordle. When I looked it up, several definitions mentioned the word “bevel,” which I’m more familiar with. Do these two words come from similar places, or did they evolve separately to mean similar things?

A: We’ve seen no evidence that “bezel” and “bevel” are etymologically related. Although the two words have somewhat similar meanings, they’re believed to come from different Old French terms.

The Oxford English Dictionary says “bezel” is derived from the “Old French *besel, *bezel, in modern French biseaubizeau,” while it says “bevel” apparently comes from the “Old French *bevel, not found, but implied in the modern French beveaubeauveaubeuveau.”

(An asterisk in the OED “indicates a word or form not actually found, but of which the existence is inferred.”)

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots says “bezel” ultimately comes from the Proto-Indo-European root dwo- (two), while “bevel” ultimately comes from bat- (yawning), a presumed Latin prefix of unknown prehistoric origin.

(Proto-Indo-European, a prehistoric language reconstructed by linguists, is the ancestor of most European and some Asian languages.)

The OED says the noun “bezel” has three meanings: (1) “A slope, or a sloping edge or face: esp. that of a chisel or other cutting tool,” (2) “The oblique sides or faces of a cut gem,” and (3) “The groove and projecting flange or lip by which the crystal of a watch or the stone of a jewel is retained in its setting.”

The dictionary defines the noun “bevel” as “a slope from the right angle, an obtuse angle; a slope from the horizontal or vertical; a surface or part so sloping.” It defines the verb “bevel” as “to cut away or otherwise bring to a slope.”

A possible source of confusion may be a suggestion in the OED that readers compare “bezel” with the obsolete use of “bevel” to mean “a staggering blow.” We compared them and didn’t see a connection

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Bookworms, in etymology & entomology

Q: In Danger Calling, a 1931 mystery by Patricia Wentworth, it’s said that an obsessive bibliophile “will turn into one of those long, flat, grey unpleasant insects which live in the bindings of old books.” Are those insects the source of the word “bookworm”?

A: Yes, “bookworm” originated by joining “book” with “worm” used in its early sense of an insect that eats holes in the binding and paper of old manuscripts.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “worm” here as “the larva of an insect; a maggot, grub, or caterpillar, esp. one that feeds on and destroys flesh, fruit, leaves, cereals, textile fabrics, and the like” and used “with defining term prefixed, as book, canker, case,” etc.

The dictionary’s first citation for this sense of “worm” alone is from an Anglo-Saxon riddle about a book-eating moððe, or moth, a word that originally referred to the destructive larvae of various insects.

Here’s an expanded version of the dictionary’s excerpt from “Riddle 47” in the Exeter Book, an Old English manuscript believed to date from the 10th century. It’s followed by our translation:

Moððe word fræt. Me þæt þuhte wrætlicu wyrd, þa ic þæt wundor gefrægn, þæt se wyrm forswealg wera gied sumes, þeof in þystro, þrymfæstne cwide ond þæs strangan staþol. Stælgiest ne wæs wihte þy gleawra, þe he þam wordum swealg.

(A moth ate words. When I discovered this wonder, it seemed to me a remarkable fate, that the worm, a thief in the night, had eaten the words of a man, a brilliant saying and the deep thought behind it. Though the thieving stranger swallowed the words, it was no whit the wiser.)

One possible answer to the riddle could be “bookworm,” but an answer isn’t given in the surviving manuscripts, and we haven’t seen any recorded examples of an Old English version of “bookworm.”

When “bookworm” first appeared in English writing in the mid-16th century, it was a negative term for an indiscriminate reader whose face was always in a book, much as we’d now regard a smartphone addict.

The OED’s earliest example, which we’ve cut in some spots and expanded in others, is from The Praise of Folie, Thomas Chaloner’s 1549 translation of the 1509 Latin essay by Erasmus:

“those that take upon theim to write cunnyngly to the judgement of a fewe” suffer “many travailes, and beatyng of theyr braines” so “they maie have theyr writyng allowed at one or two of these blereied [blear-eyed] bokewormes hands.”

The OED’s next citation, which we’ve expanded, is from a letter by the Cambridge scholar Gabriel Harvey to the English poet Edmund Spenser.

In this passage, Harvey attacks Sir James Croft, a member of Queen Elizabeth I’s Privy Council, for being overly devoted to books and liquor, among other things:

“a morning book-worm, an afternoon malt-worm, a right juggler, as full of his sleights, wiles, fetches, casts of legerdemain, toys to mock apes withal, odd shifts and knavish practices as his skin can hold” (from Three Proper and Witty Familiar Letters, 1580, published anonymously, apparently by Harvey).

The use of the term for “any of various insects that damage books; spec. a maggot that is said to burrow through the paper and boards” appeared in the mid-17th century, according to OED citations.

As the dictionary explains, “A number of insects damage books in various ways, but the only ones that actually bore through the paper are the larvae of wood-boring beetles.”

The first Oxford example for “bookworm” used in reference to insects is from a satirical book about the manners of the English:

Book-worme is of all Creatures the longest lived.” From Ζωοτομ́iα; or, Observations on the Present Manners of the English (1654), by the Oxford scholar Richard Whitlock. (The title uses Greek letters to render the post-classical Latin zootomia, source of the English term “zootomy,” the study of the dissection or anatomy of animals.)

The negative sense of “bookworm” when used for people was undoubtedly reinforced by the figurative use of “worm” since Anglo-Saxon days for a contemptible person, a sense that first appeared in Old English in the Vespasian Psalter, an eighth-century illuminated manuscript:

“Ic soðlice eam wyrm & nales mon, edwit monna & aworpnes folces” (“I am truly a worm and not a man, the scorn of mankind and cast away by the people”). Psalm 21:7 in Vespasian, Psalm 22:6 in modern translations.

In fact, for hundreds of years “bookworm” was usually a negative term, according to OED citations and our own searches of digitized writing.

In The Fountaine of Selfe-Loue; or, Cynthias Reuels (1601), a satirical play by Ben Jonson, Hedon says to Anaides: “Heart, was there ever so prosperous an invention thus unluckily perverted and spoiled, by a whoreson book-worm, a candle-waster?”

The poet Alexander Pope, in a 1717 letter to his friends Teresa and Martha Blount, describes his arrival at the University of Oxford: “I wanted nothing but a black Gown and a Salary, to be as meer a Bookworm as any there.”

In A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Samuel Johnson cites Pope’s comment in defining “bookworm” as a “student too closely given to books; a reader without judgment.”

And in An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), Noah Webster defines “bookworm” as a “student closely attached to books, or addicted to study; also, a reader without judgment.”

But today “bookworm” is generally a positive term. Merriam-Webster.com, an online descendent of Noah Webster’s dictionary, defines it simply as “a person unusually devoted to reading and study.” Other standard dictionaries have similar definitions.

However, the negative usage still shows up on occasion, as in this comment by the novelist Jojo Moyes in an interview with The New York Times (Feb. 9, 2023):

“I was an only child and a voracious reader. My grandmother called me a bookworm, and it wasn’t a compliment, as my weekly visits to her were usually spent with my nose buried between the pages.”

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Gob on a stick

Q: As a retiree, I often check out the website Ask a Manager to marvel at what goes on in the workplace these days. A post from a Brit described a job recruiter as a “typical gob on a stick.” I’m not familiar with the expression, but the poster was using it playfully, not snidely.

A: The slang expression “gob on a stick” is relatively new in British English, dating from the late 20th century, and hasn’t yet made its way into standard or slang dictionaries.

The word “gob” here is an old term for the mouth, so the expression literally means a “mouth on a stick.” It’s generally understood in the UK to be to someone who talks a lot, especially a broadcast “talking head.”

How did “gob” come to mean mouth? The usage likely originated in Celtic and migrated into English from Ireland and Scotland, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The original Celtic gob was “probably expressive” in origin, the dictionary says—in other words, it was pronounced with a gaping jaw and evoked the thing it described.

The usage originally appeared in “Scottish, English regional (northern), and Irish English,” the OED says, and now survives in slang, mostly British.

When “gob” first appeared in the 14th century, it was a noun that meant “a mass, lump, or heap,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The first citation is from the Wycliffe Bible of the early 1380s:

“Who heeng vp with thre fingris the gobbe of the erthe” (“Who held up the mass of the Earth with three fingers,” Isaiah 40:12). The passage is from the early version of the Wycliffe Bible. In the more scholarly later version, “gobbe” is “heuynesse” (heaviness or weight).

In the 16th century, “gob” came to mean a mouth or a slimy substance like phlegm. We’ll skip the phlegm and get to the mouth. The first OED citation, which we’ve expanded here, is from an anonymous Middle Scots poem about a brawl at a country fair:

“Quhair thair gobbis wer vngeird / Thay gat vpoun the gammis / Quhill bludy berkit wes thair beird” (“When their mouths were unguarded / They got upon the games / Until their beards were covered with blood”). From “Christis Kirk on Grene” (1568).

Here’s an example from a 16th-century flyting, a literary duel in which Scottish poets traded insults. In this passage, a kite (a bird of prey) is used figuratively to mean a person who preys on others:

“Meslie kyt, and þow flyt deill dryt in thy gob” (“Leprous kite, and thou spew devil’s dirt from thy mouth” (from “Flyting with Montgomerie,” before 1585, a poem by Patrick Hume of Polwarth about a flyting with Alexander Montgomerie.

And here’s a 17th-century OED citation from a list of dialectal words in northern England: “A Gob, an open or wide mouth” (“North Countrey Words,” in A Collection of English Words Not Generally Used, 1691, by the naturalist John Ray).

As for the modern slang usage you’re asking about, the expression “gob on a stick” apparently showed up in the 1990s. The earliest example we’ve found is from an article about the Scottish author, broadcaster, and journalist Muriel Gray:

“She’s more than a gob-on-a-stick. She has opinions” (from The Scotsman, Sept. 30, 1994).

Although the expression can be negative when used generally for a talkative person, it’s often used in a humorous, self-deprecating manner by broadcasters speaking of themselves.

A Dublin newspaper, for example, comments on a BBC broadcaster’s comically modest reference to himself: “Terry Wogan on BBC2: ‘I’m only a gob on a stick’ (some gob. some stick). ‘I’m not a barrister’ ” (from the Sunday Independent, Aug. 31, 1997).

We’ll end with the closing words of the British football commentator Simon Hill in his 2017 memoir, Just a Gob on a Stick: The Voice Behind the Mic:

“I’ve been very blessed, and if I don’t know where my real home is, I do know I feel at home when surrounded by football. Not a bad place to be, for someone who is still, and will always be, just a gob on a stick.”

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Speaking of the silent final ‘e’

Q: I’ve long been curious about words that are spelled alike except for a silent “e” at the end: “dot”-“dote,” “fat”-“fate,” “hat”-“hate,” “not”-“note,” “win”-“wine,” etc. I suppose their etymology must be different. Why is their orthography so similar?

A: Your supposition is correct! None of those pairs are related etymologically. Their orthographic similarities are coincidental.

The adjective “fat,” for example, is derived from the Old English fætt and the reconstructed prehistoric Germanic faitjan (to fatten), while “fate” comes from Latin fatum (“that which has been spoken”).

Pairs like this are quite common in English, a big, diverse language with many coincidental similarities. As we wrote in 2018, English is a Germanic language that has absorbed words from dozens of languages (the major source is Latin, either directly or indirectly by way of French).

As for that silent “e” at the end of the words you’re asking about, the usage evolved over the centuries to indicate the pronunciation of a preceding vowel that can have different sounds.

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, the “e” at the end of a word following a consonant “is almost invariably silent.” And when it’s found in this position, “it has a number of different orthographic functions.”

One of these functions, the OED says, is to indicate “that the vowel in the preceding syllable is (from a historical perspective) long, as in wine (compare win), paste (compare past), where this is not already indicated by a digraph spelling, as in e.g. soonmean.”

In some cases, the dictionary says, the “final e is retained in spelling where a vowel has since become short, as in infiniterapine.”

Oxford adds that the “silent final is usually omitted before suffixes beginning with a vowel.” So the “e” of “dote” and “hate” would be dropped in the gerunds “doting” and “hating.”

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English English language Etymology Expression Language Usage Word origin Writing

Some ‘randy’ thoughts

Q: I was looking up some Hindi words and noticed that “randi” is a derogatory term for a “woman of ill repute.” I assume it’s the source of the English word “randy,” probably as a result of Britain’s involvement in India.

A: English has borrowed many words from Hindi (“bungalow,” “cot,” “dinghy,” “loot,” “shampoo,” “thug,” and others), but “randy” isn’t one of them.

Simply because the Hindi word रंडी and the English word “randy” are pronounced similarly and both have sexual senses doesn’t mean they’re related etymologically.

Two words that are etymologically related are called “cognates,” while two words that seem to be related but aren’t (like रंडी and “randy”) are referred to as “false cognates.”

For instance, the anatomical “ear” and the “ear” of corn are false cognates derived from different Old English words. The first comes from ære (the organ of hearing) and the second from æhher (the seed-bearing head of cereal grasses).

We haven’t seen a single authoritative etymological reference that suggests the Hindi term रंडी in the source of the English adjective “randy.”

The Oxford English Dictionary, the most authoritative English etymological reference, says “randy” is probably derived from the verb “rant,” which used to have the variant spelling “rand.”

In addition to its sense of speaking wildly, the OED says, “rant”/“rand” once meant “to lead a riotous or dissolute life.”

That riotous or dissolute sense of “rant” is now obsolete, except in Scottish English, where “randy” first appeared, according to the dictionary.

The earliest OED citation for “rant” used in its riotous sense, which we’ve expanded, is from the 1623 Folio of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor:

“Look where my ranting host of the Garter comes: there is either liquor in his pate or money in his purse when he looks so merrily.”

The dictionary says “randy” first appeared in Scottish English with the sense of “having a rude, aggressive manner; loud-mouthed and coarsely spoken.”

The earliest citation is from a 1665 letter by the Earl of Argyll: “Profane randy beggars” (Letters From Archibald, Earl of Argyll, to John, Duke of Lauderdale, 1829, edited by George Sinclair and Charles K. Sharpe).

In the early 18th century, “randy” came to mean “boisterous, riotous, disorderly; wild, unruly, unmanageable” in Scottish English and regional English dialects.

The first OED citation is from “The Knight,” a 1723 poem by the Scottish writer William Meston: “A rambling, randy Errant Knight.”

In Scottish and regional English of the late 18th century, “randy” took on its usual modern sense of “lustful; eager for sexual gratification; sexually aroused.” The earliest OED example is from The Curate of Coventry (1771), a novel by the English writer John Potter:

“A pox on these old maids, they’re as randy as a he goat.” (The comment is by the local squire, who uses many colloquialisms. The author includes a footnote defining “randy” as “lascivious.”)

We’ve seen no evidence that “randy” comes from Hindi. By evidence, we mean something like its use in a letter from an English trader or the log of an English ship that visited India in the 17th or 18th century.

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English English language Etymology Expression Usage Word origin Writing

A note to our readers

Because of the holiday, we’re publishing our usual Monday post on Wednesday. In case you missed it, check out our Dec. 4, 2023 post about the origins of the terms “Hanukkah” and “Christmas.”

Merry Christmas,

Pat and Stewart

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English English language Etymology Expression Language Linguistics Usage Word origin Writing

Something wicked this way comes

Q: “Wicked,” which used to mean evil only a few decades ago, now also seems to mean cool, mischievous, or so bad it’s good. How did it get these polar opposite connotations?

A: This phenomenon you’re noticing is an example of the loss or reduction of meaning in a word, but the weakening of “wicked” isn’t a recent phenomenon—it dates back to Shakespeare.

When “wicked” appeared in the 12th century, the Oxford English Dictionary says, it referred to people “bad in moral character, disposition, or conduct; inclined or addicted to wilful wrongdoing; practising or disposed to practise evil; morally depraved.”

As if that’s not strong enough, the OED adds that “wicked” in its original sense is a “term of wide application, but always of strong reprobation, implying a high degree of evil quality.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation, which we’ve expanded, is from Layamon’s Brut, a chronicle of Britain written in Middle English sometime before 1200. In this passage, Rowena is about to poison her stepson, King Vortimer:

Herne ou ȝeo tock an; þes wickede wifman.
In hire bosome ȝeo bar bi-neoþe hire tyttes.
one ampulle; of hatter ifulled.

(Harken, take heed of this wicked woman.
In her bosom, she carried beneath her tits
an ampoule filled with poison.)

In the late 16th century, the OED says, the adjective took on a “weakened or lighter sense” that was “usually more or less jocular” and could mean “malicious; mischievous, sly.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation for the weakened sense is from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, believed to have been performed in 1599 but not published until the First Folio of 1623. In this expanded passage, Rosalind describes Cupid as wicked:

“No, that same wicked Bastard of Venus, that was begot of thought, conceiu’d of spleene, and borne of madnesse, that blinde rascally boy, that abuses euery ones eyes, because his owne are out, let him bee iudge, how deepe I am in loue.”

In the early 20th century, the OED says, “wicked” took on the sense of  “excellent, splendid; remarkable.” This expanded citation is from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920 novel This Sde of Paradise:

“ ‘Tell ’em to play “Admiration”!’ shouted Sloane. ‘You two order; Phoebe  and I are going to shake a wicked calf.’ ”

As we noted in a  2021 post, it’s not uncommon for the sense of a usage to weaken over time, a development that linguists might refer to as “semantic weakening,” “semantic bleaching,” “semantic loss,” or “semantic reduction.”

As for the word’s earlier etymology, the OED says “wicked” is apparently an expanded form of the now-obsolete adjective “wick,” which was apparently an adjectival use of the Old English noun wicca (wizard), the masculine version of wicce (witch).

We’ll end with a few wicked words from the Second Witch in Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

By the pricking of my Thumbes,
Something wicked this way comes:
Open Lockes, who euer knockes.

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English English language Etymology Expression Language Phrase origin Usage Word origin Writing

Dog days: Are you pooped?

Q: How did the expression “dog days” change from meaning the hottest time of the year to a period of sluggishness or stagnation?

A: When “dog days” first appeared in English in the 16th century, it referred to the hottest part of summer in the Northern hemisphere, a period once considered unhealthy and evil.

Because of the lethargy caused by the heat or fears of malignant influences, the term came to mean a period of stagnation and inactivity. Here’s the story.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes “dog days” as “the hottest part of the summer, associated in ancient times with the heliacal rising of the Dog Star in the Mediterranean area, and formerly considered to be the most unhealthy period of the year and a time of ill omen.”

The expression has its roots in Greek mythology, where Sirius is the name of the hunter Orion’s dog. In the Iliad (Book XXII), Homer refers to the star as κύν᾽ Ὠρίωνος (kun Orionos, Orion’s dog).

English borrowed the phrase from the post-classical Latin caniculares dies (dog days), which was borrowed in turn from the Hellenistic Greek κυνάδες ἡμέραι (kunades hemerai, dog days).

When the phrase first appeared in English the 16th century, it referred to the hottest days of summer. The earliest OED example, which we’ve expanded, is from The Dictionary of Syr Thomas Eliot Knyght (1538):

“Canicula, a lyttell dogge or bytche. Also a sterre, wherof canicular or dogge days be named Dies caniculares.”

The dictionary says the phrase soon took on the figurative sense of “an evil time; a period in which malignant influences prevail.” The earliest citation for this sense is from a letter by a Protestant clergyman (and later martyr) to a fellow inmate at Newgate Prison in London:

“Neither that any giddy head in these dog-days might take an ensample [example] by you to dissent from Christ’s true church” (from a 1555 letter by John Philpot in The Examinations and Writings of John Philpot, 1842, edited by Robert Eden).

The OED says the evil figurative usage is seen “now (in weakened sense): a period of inactivity or decline.”

It’s not uncommon for the sense of a usage to strengthen or weaken over time, as we note in a 2021 post. A linguist might refer to weakening as “semantic loss” or “semantic reduction.”

It’s unclear when the weakened sense of “dog days” first appeared in English, though this Oxford citation may be an early sighting or a perhaps an indication of things to come:

“What then shall wee now expect in these dogge-dayes of the worlds declining age?” (Achitophel; or, the Picture of a Wicked Politician, 1629, three sermons by the philosopher and Anglican clergyman Nathanael Carpenter).

The dictionary’s first clear example of the weakened sense, which we’ve expanded, is from a July 12, 1992, article in The New York Times about mid-level bosses being laid off in troubled economic times:

“One possibly beneficial byproduct of the managerial dog days may be that it will prepare younger people for the job- and career-jumping likely to be their lot.”

And here’s the OED’s most recent example: “In the dog-days of The Beatles, one of Paul’s plans for holding it all together had been for the world’s most fabled band to just go out and play” (“The Beatles: Stoned, sloppy—shelved!” Mojo, February 2002).

Oxford notes that “the dog days have been variously reckoned, as depending on either the Greater Dog Star (Sirius) or the Lesser Dog Star (Procyon), and on either the heliacal rising or the cosmical rising (which occurs at an earlier date).”

The heliacal rising of a star occurs when it first becomes visible above the eastern horizon at dawn just before sunrise. The cosmical rising occurs when it rises in the morning at the same time as the sun.

“The timing of these risings depends on latitude, and they do not occur at all in most of southern hemisphere,” the OED says, adding that “very different dates have been assigned for the dog days,” with their beginning “ranging from 3 July to 15 August, and their duration varying from 30 to 61 days.”

In the Calendar of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, the dog days run from July 7 to Sept. 5. In current calendars, Oxford says, “they are often said to begin on 3 July and end on 11 August (i.e. the 40 days preceding the cosmical rising of Sirius at the latitude of Greenwich).”

The dictionary says the usage “arose from the pernicious qualities of the season being attributed to the ‘influence’ of the Dog Star; but it has long been popularly associated with the belief that at this season dogs are most liable to go mad.”

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Christmas English English language Etymology Expression Hanukkah Language Spelling Usage Word origin Writing

Happy Chanucha & Merry Xpes mæsse

Q: Why don’t we spell it “Honica” instead of “Hanukkah”? When a word is adopted into English from a non-Latin language, wouldn’t the change be toward the closest pronunciation? What else would influence the re-spelling?

A: The English name for Hanukkah has been spelled many ways over the years, just as the English name for Christmas has had many spellings.

The Oxford English Dictionary has these spellings for Hanukkah since it first  appeared in English in the 17th century: Chanucha, Chanuchah, Hanuca, Hanucka, Chanuca, Chanucah, Chanucca, Chanuccah, Chanuka, Chanukah, Chanukka, Chanukkah, Hanucah, Hanucca, Hanuccah, Hanucha, Hanuckah, Hanuka, Hanukah, Hanukka, Hanukkah, Khanukah, Khanukka, and Khanukkah.

The OED has even more spellings for Christmas since it showed up in Old English in the 10th century, but here’s a very abbreviated list: Cristesmæsse,  Xpes mæsse, Cristesmas, Crystesmasse, Kyrstemas, Kyrstemasse, Kyrstemaste, Kyrstemes, Cristmas, Crestmas, Crystmasse, Curstmas, Christmasse, Chrystmas, Christmass, and Christmas.

The two most common English spellings now for the Jewish holiday are “Hanukkah” and “Chanukah.” The only English spelling now for the Christian holiday is of course “Christmas,” though the short form “Xmas” is often seen and has been for hundreds of years. We’ll have more on “Christmas” and “Xmas” later in this post.

So why does the name for the Jewish holiday sometimes begin with “h” and sometimes with “ch,” and why does it sometimes have one “k” and sometimes two?

Those variations reflect the difficulty of rendering חנוכה, the Hebrew word for the holiday, in English. The letters ח (chet) and כ (kaf) are the problems, since they represent sounds not found in the English alphabet. (Hebrew is read right to left, so the ח is the first letter of חנוכה.)

In ancient times, the chet was likely pronounced as a throaty “h” (technically, a voiceless pharyngeal fricative), though it’s now usually pronounced like the “ch” in the German Bach, Scottish loch, and English interjection “yech” (a voiceless uvular or velar fricative).

The majority Ashkenazic Jews (those with roots in Eastern and Central Europe) generally use the newer pronunciation in speaking Hebrew. Sephardic Jews (those who  were expelled from Spain and Portugal in the late 15th century and settled in North Africa, the Middle East, southern Europe, and elsewhere) tend to use the older pronunciation.

As for the Hebrew letter kaf, it was apparently pronounced in ancient times as a doubled (or geminate) “k,” similar to the sound of the “kk” in the English word “bookkeeping.”

The kaf is usually pronounced now in Hebrew as a simple “k,” though the “kk” spelling in English has survived as a reminder of the word’s history.

Of the two usual English spellings of the holiday, “Hanukkah” is probably closer to the original Hebrew pronunciation while “Chanukah” is more like the modern Hebrew pronunciation.

Most of the 10 standard dictionaries we regularly consult list “Hanukkah” as the usual English spelling of the holiday and “Chanukah” as a common variant. Standard dictionaries indicate how a language is used now. A search with Google’s Ngram Viewer of digitized books confirms that “Hanukkah” is more popular than “Chanukah.”

As for the etymology, the Hebrew word for the holiday, חנוכה, literally means dedication; it’s derived from חנך (hanak), a verb meaning to dedicate. The holiday marks the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after the Jewish Maccabees wrested control of it from the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire in the second century BCE.

The OED says the Hebrew term was first recorded in the Babylonian Talmud, a collection of Jewish teaching believed to date from as early as the third century CE. In Shabbat 21a of the Talmud, rabbis discuss which wicks and oils can be used for Sabbath and Hanukkah lights. Here’s an excerpt; we’ll underline בחנוכה (b’hanukkah, “on Hanukkah”):

אמר רב הונא פתילות ושמנים שאמרו חכמים אין מדליקין בהן בשבת אין מדליקין בהן בחנוכה בין בשבת בין בחול

(“Rav Huna said: Those wicks and oils that the Sages said one may not use to light the lamp on Shabbat, one may not use to light the lamp on Hanukkah either—whether it falls on Shabbat or during the week.”)

The OED says the English term for the holiday is derived from both the Hebrew חנוכה and the Latin word for the holiday, chanuca. The dictionary’s earliest English example is from a translation of an Italian book about Jewish rituals:

“Of the Feast of Lights, called also Chanucha.” From The History of the Rites, Customes, and Manner of Life, of the Present Jews, Throughout the World (1650), Edmund Chilmead’s translation of a work by Leo Modena, a Venetian rabbi.

As for the various spellings of Christmas, the holiday marking the birth of Jesus, the earliest recorded example in the OED appeared in Old English as Cristesmæssan:

“Leohtgescot gelæste man be wite to Cristesmæssan and to candelmæssan and to eastron” (“The light fee should be paid at Christmas and at Candlemas and at Easter”). From Be Cristendome (“About Christianity”), a 10th-century homily by Wulfstan, Archbishop of York. The fee was for church candles.

The term is spelled Xpes mæsse (“Christ’s mass”) in the OED’s next example, an Old English entry for the year 1021 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

“And se eorl Rodbeard her oð Xpes mæsse forneal mid pam cynge wunode” (“And Earl Robert stayed here [in Westminster] with the king [William II, son of William the Conqueror] almost until Christmas”).

The “Xp” at the beginning of Xpes mæsse comes from the Greek letters Χ (chi) and ρ (rho), the first letters of the word for “Christ” in ancient Greek, ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ or χριστoς (christos, anointed one).

Medieval scribes commonly abbreviated  “Christ” as “X” or “Xp” in copying religious manuscripts, a practice that led to the use of “Xmas” as a shortening for “Christmas,” as we wrote in a 2006 post.

Although the Greek χ was rendered as “ch” in classical Latin, the use of the “ch-” digraph in English for “Christ” and its derivatives was an etymological latecomer.

As the OED explains, “The spelling with initial ch- is comparatively infrequent” until the 1500s. The earliest OED example is from a 16th-century description of King Henry II’s celebration of the holiday in 1166. Here’s an expanded version:

“And after his returne he went to Windsore, where he made his abode and kept his Christmas, and the greatest part of all the Nobles of the realme were there with him.” From A Chronicle at Large and Meere History of the Affayres of Englande and Kinges of the Same (1569), by Richard Grafton.

Nevertheless, “X-” spellings continued to be used in English, as in  “X’temmas” (1551), “Xtmasse” (1660), and finally “Xmas.” The OED’s first example for “Xmas,” which we’ve expanded, is from an Oct. 17, 1721, letter from an English landowner to a son away at school:

“I hope you will eat at Xmas some roast beef out of the old kitchen.” From John Buxton, Norfolk Gentleman and Architect: Letters to His Son 1719-1729, edited by Alan Mackley and published by The Norfolk Record Society in 2005.

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When ‘stopping’ means ‘staying’

Q: I’m an old movie buff who likes to research some of the forgotten usages in pre-1950 movies. One usage I’ve noticed is “stopping” at a hotel (or a friend’s home or whatever) where today we would say “staying.” When did this change?

A: The use of “stopping” for “staying” isn’t quite so dead as you think. It still shows up once in a while, as in this post by a British tourist on Tripadvisor (Aug. 14, 2022):

“Hey all, we’re stopping at the Hilton Capitol Hill & I’m a keen runner. Are there any running routes (park based maybe) near there?”

You’re right, though, that the usage isn’t all that common these days. We compared two expressions, “stopping at the Waldorf” and “staying at the Waldorf” using Google’s Ngram viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books.

The results indicate that the two expressions were pretty much equally popular from the 1890s to the 1940s, when the “staying” version became the overwhelming favorite.

In the mid-16th century the verb “stay” came to mean “to reside or sojourn in a place for a longer or shorter period; to sojourn or put up with a person as his guest,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The first OED example, which we’ve expanded, is from a letter written June 5, 1554, by the Earl of Bedford and Lord Fitzwaters about the voyage of Prince Philip, son of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, to England for his marriage to Queen Mary I:

“And from Villa Franca unto St. James’, being distant forty leagues, with all the speed he can conveniently make, where he stayeth about two days” (from England Under the Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, 1839, by Patrick Fraser Tytler).

In the early 19th century, the OED says, the verb “stop” came to mean “to remain, prolong one’s stay in a place; to stay (to dinner, at home, with a person).”

The dictionary’s first citation is from The Mysterious Husband (1801), a novel by Gabrielli, pseudonym of Elizabeth Meeke: “If your Honour and you, Madam, will stop to dinner with us.” Meeke was the stepsister of the novelist Fanny Burney.

In looking into your question, we came across an article in the Dec. 24, 1978, issue of The New York Times about Claudio Carlo Buttafava, general manager of the Savoy Hotel in London.

The headline, “Stopping at the Savoy,” was a pun on “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” the 1933 jazz standard composed by Edgar Sampson.

And since we’re still in a holiday spirit, we’ll end with this version by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.

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