Tag: Word origin

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Usage Word origin

You better believe it

Q: I’m Australian, and an American friend often says things like “I better not forget it” instead of “I’d better not forget it.” Is this correct? Is it a case of US usage differing from UK/Australian usage?

A: The idiomatic phrase “had better” (as in “I had better study” or “We’d better go”) is a venerable usage with roots far back in Old English.

The shortened form “better” (as in “I better study” or “We better go”) dates from the 1830s and is used informally in both British and American English.

In fact, Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.) says it’s not unheard of in your neck of the woods: “In practice this use of an unsupported better is much more common in North America, Australia, and NZ than in Britain.”

Using “better” by itself is fine except in formal English. “In a wide range of informal circumstances (but never in formal contexts) the had or ’d can be dispensed with,” Fowler’s says.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage calls “had better” a standard English idiom and agrees with Fowler’s that “better,” when used alone in this sense, “is not found in very formal surroundings.”

The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest citation for the construction without “had” is from a pseudonymous letter to a newspaper by “Major Jack Downing”:

“My clothes had got so shabby, I thought I better hire out a few days and get slicked up a little.” (The letter was published in a book in 1834 but was written in 1831.)

The OED says the abbreviated usage originated in the US, and labels it a colloquialism. But Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) lists it without reservations.

The Merriam-Webster’s editors give the example “you better hurry,” and says “better” in this sense is a “verbal auxiliary.”

It should be noted that even the full phrase, “had better,” was criticized by some in the 19th century on the ground that it was illogical and couldn’t be parsed.

An 1897 issue of the Ohio Educational Monthly says many teachers found “had better” and other idioms “very difficult to dispose of grammatically.”

“Because some teachers do not understand how to dispose of them, they teach that they are incorrect,” the monthly adds. “They insist upon changing ‘had better’ to ‘would better.’ ”

In other words, the schoolmasters condemned what they couldn’t understand, and offered a replacement that was even harder to justify.

Even the poet Robert Browning disgraced himself here. In early editions of his dramatic poem Pippa Passes, first published in 1841, the final scene has the line “I had better not.” In later editions, Browning changed the line to “I would better not.”

According to William J. Rolfe and Heloise E. Hersey, who edited an 1886 edition of Select Poems of Robert Browning, the poet took a dislike to “the good old English form ‘had better.’ ”

Why? Because he mistook the “I’d” in “I’d better” as a contraction of “I would” instead of “I had.”

Browning once explained in a letter that he was repudiating “the slovenly I had for I’d, instead of the proper I would,” on the advice of his friend Walter Savage Landor, who hotly criticized many well-known English idioms.

As Rolfe and Hersey write in a footnote: “This is essentially the familiar grammar-monger’s objection to had better, had rather, had as lief, etc., that they ‘cannot be parsed’—which is true of many another well-established idiom, and merely shows that the ‘parsers’ have something yet to learn.”

A look at the history of “had better” helps to illuminate its meaning.

The idiom was first recorded in writing in the 10th century, according to the OED.

The original form was “were better,” and it was used with object (or, more properly at that time, dative) pronouns: “him,” “me,” “us,” and so on.

As the OED explains, the phrase me were betere meant “it would be more advantageous for me,” and him wære betere meant “it would be better for him.”

The OED’s earliest example in writing is from a collection known as the Blickling Homilies (971): “Him wære betere thæt he næfre geboren nære.” (“Better it were for him never to have been born.”)

During the Middle English period, the pronouns began changing into the nominative (“he were better,” “I were better,” etc).

And finally, beginning in the 16th century, “were better” gave way to the modern “had better.” As the OED says, “I had better = I should have or hold it better, to do, etc.”

Oxford’s earliest example is from Nicholas Udall’s Thersytes, a farce that some scholars date to 1537: “They had better haue sette me an errande at Rome.”

The OED also cites this line from a letter written by Sir John Harington in the early 1600s: “Who livethe for ease had better live awaie [from Court].”

Historical note: Harington was a courtier to Elizabeth I, and one of his claims to fame is that he designed Britain’s first flushable toilet, which he installed in his manor house in Somerset. He included an image in a work he wrote on the subject.

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Usage Word origin

Invasion of the brainworms

Q: During the college football bowls, an advertiser proclaimed that “by the end of this game, you or your company can have its own [x].” That sentence is now a worm in my brain. Should “its” have been “your”? Help!

A: When a compound subject is joined by “or” or “nor,” the verb agrees with the part that’s closer (“Cookies or cake is fine” … “Cake or cookies are fine”).

The same is true of any accompanying possessive pronoun (“Cookies or cake has its uses” … “Cake or cookies have their uses”). Take your cue from the part of the subject that’s nearer the verb.

But correct or not, this rule of subject-verb agreement can lead to extremely awkward sentences.

If the problem is that one part of the subject is singular and the other plural (as in the examples above), it often pays to put the plural part last: “Cake or cookies have their uses.”

This solution won’t give anybody a brainworm, because despite the “or” there’s a notion of plurality in that kind of sentence.

To use another example, it may be correct to write, “Neither they nor she has paid her tab.” But it sounds better to turn the subject around: “Neither she nor they have paid their tab.”

The problem isn’t as easy to fix when a compound consists of a “you” and an “it.” Technically, that advertiser was correct: “By the end of this game, you or your company can have its own [x].” But ouch!

And turning the subject around doesn’t help: “your company or you can have your own [x].” Ouch again!

Any sentence that leaves a worm in your brain should be recast, even if it’s written by the rules. There’s always a better way.

For example, the advertiser could have said, “ By the end of this game, you or your company can have an all new, one-of-a kind [x].”

Speaking of brainworms, you don’t hear the usage much nowadays, except in zoology, where the term “brainworm” refers to a parasitic roundworm that infects the brains of deer, moose, and other large hoofed animals.

However, the term has been used figuratively since the early 1600s to describe an imaginative worm infecting the brain, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Here’s an example from Antiquity Revived, a 1693 religious tract: “Which undutiful and turbulent Allegation has not seldom created such a restless Brain-worm in the noddles of the multitude.”

The latest OED citation for the figurative use is from Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, a 2007 book in which Oliver Sacks discusses the earworms set off by movie, TV, and advertising music:

“This is not coincidental, for such music is designed, in the terms of the music industry, to ‘hook’ the listener, to be ‘catchy’ or ‘sticky,’ to bore its way, like an earwig, into the ear or mind; hence the term ‘earworms’—though one might be inclined to call them ‘brainworms’ instead.”

We hope this helps you get rid of that brainworm of yours.

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Spelling Usage Word origin

Why “won’t” isn’t “willn’t”

Q: I was having a conversation with one of my co-workers about “won’t” and grabbed my office copy of Woe Is I to resolve the issue, only to find (or fail to find) that the use of this word is not explained in the book. Can you render an opinion as to its acceptability?

A: “Won’t” is a perfectly acceptable contraction of “will” and “not.” However, it’s an odd bird that’s been condemned at times for not looking quite like other contractions.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage describes it as “one of the most irregular looking of the negative contractions that came into popular use during the 17th century.” Others include “don’t,” “han’t,” “shan’t,” and “an’t” (an early form of “ain’t”).

Why, you may ask, do we contract “will” and “not” as “won’t” instead of “willn’t”? Here’s Merriam-Webster’s explanation:

“Won’t was shortened from early wonnot, which in turn was formed from woll (or wol), a variant form of will, and not.”

The M-W editors give early examples of “won’t” from several Restoration comedies, beginning with Thomas Shadwell’s The Sullen Lovers (1668): “No, no, that won’t do.” 

By the way, the verb “will” has been spelled all sorts of ways since first showing up as wyllan around 1,000 in Aelfric’s Grammar, an Old English introduction to Latin grammar.

The Oxford English Dictionary has many Middle English examples of the wole or wol spelling dating back to the 1200s.

So etymologically, there’s a case to be made for contracting “will” and “not” as “won’t.” Nevertheless, some language commentators have grumbled about the usage.

Joseph Addison, for example, complained in a 1711 issue of the Spectator that “won’t” and other contractions had “untuned our language, and clogged it with consonants.”

“Won’t,” in particular, “seems to have been under something of a cloud, as far as the right-thinkers were concerned, for more than a century afterward,” Merriam-Webster’s says.

“This did not, of course, interfere with its employment,” the usage guide adds.

It was popular enough, M-W says, “to enjoy the distinction of being damned in the same breadth as ain’t in an address delivered before Newburyport (Mass.) Female High School in December 1846.”

Both “won’t” and “ain’t” were condemned by the Newburyport speaker as “absolutely vulgar.”

“How won’t eventually escaped the odium that still clings to ain’t is a mystery,” M-W Usage says, “but today it is entirely acceptable.”

Of course a few sticklers still feel that all contractions aren’t quite quite. Well, we beg to differ. As we’ve written on the blog, contractions are impeccably good English.

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Expression Linguistics Phrase origin Usage Word origin

Zero-sum games

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Linguistics Usage Word origin

A noun for being upside down

Q: Why is there no word that describes the state of being upside down?

A: There’s a hyphenated word that may be what you’re looking for. It’s a noun, “upside-downism” (what else?), and the Oxford English Dictionary has exactly one citation for its use.

The word appeared in a book called The Oxonian in Iceland (1861), a travel book by Frederick Metcalfe about a trip taken in the summer of 1860.

We’ll expand the OED citation to provide some context. Here’s Metcalfe, describing a horseback ride through a volcanic region known as a “hraun” (Icelandic for “lava”):

“It was a ruin indeed, the abomination of desolation; as if the elements of some earlier world had melted with fervent heat; and as they cooled had burst asunder and been hurled by the Demons of Misrule and Upside-downism into a disjointed maze of confusion worse confounded.”

(Makes the eruption sound like a moral failing on the part of the volcano, doesn’t it?)

The OED doesn’t define “upside-downism,” but it describes it as a derivative of “upside down,” which has had an appropriately topsy-turvy history since it entered English in the 1300s.

For many centuries, “upside down” was exclusively an adverb (as in “turned upside down”). The adjective, usually hyphenated (as in “upside-down cake”), came along in the
mid-19th century.

When originally recorded, the Middle English adverb was up so doun (or up swa doun in northern dialects), and it apparently meant something like “up as if down.”

It first appeared in writing around 1340 in a Northumbrian religious poem, The Pricke of Conscience, which the OED attributes to the Oxford-educated mystic and hermit Richard Rolle:

“Tharfor it es ryght and resoune, / That they be turned up-swa-doune.” (We’ve converted the letter thorn to “th” throughout.)

The term appeared in another 14th-century poem, a verse rendition of The Seven Sages of Rome, an ancient Eastern collection of tales found in many languages and probably about 2,500 years old.

Here’s the couplet: “The cradel and the child thai found / Up so doun upon the ground.”

As the OED says, “The use of so is peculiar, the only appropriate sense being that of ‘as if.’ ”

At any rate, the “so” eventually disappeared. The OED explains that the compound was “frequently reduced to upsa-, upse-, and subsequently altered to upset and upside down, in the endeavour to make the phrase more intelligible.”

During the 15th and 16th centuries there were many versions of the term, including “opsadoun,” “upsedoun,” “up set doune,” “upset downe,” “upsydowne,” “vpsyde downe,” and others.

By the early 17th century, the modern spelling “upside down” had become established.

You didn’t ask, but the playful interjection “upsy-daisy,” which we’ve written about on our blog, is no relation—apart from the presence of “up.”

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Usage Word origin

“Like” minded

Q: During the apocalyptic talk about the Mayan calendar, I wrote, “Planet Earth will not blow up like Krypton or be smashed by Planet X.” Is “like” OK here? (Krypton, the home planet of Superman, blew up just after little Kal-el left.)

A: The passage you wrote is fine as it is. In the sentence “Planet Earth will not blow up like Krypton or be smashed by Planet X,” the words “like” and “by” are prepositions. The underlined parts, “like Krypton” and “by Planet X,” are prepositional phrases.

This represents the traditionally correct use of “like”—as a preposition. The problem you’re thinking of is the use of “like” as a conjunction, a usage many sticklers frown on.

“Like” is used as a conjunction when it introduces a clause, as in “like Krypton did.” (A clause, you probably know, contains a verb and its subject.) A stickler would insist on “as” instead: “as Krypton did” (or “as did Krypton”).

However, the English in your original example is impeccable, even if you regard the verb “did” as implied but not expressed.

But what if you had included the verb (“like Krypton did”)? Here we part company with the sticklers, because even then we’d give you a passing grade.

You’re not writing elevated, formal prose. And as we’ve said before on our blog, the use of “like” as a conjunction is no crime in less than formal writing.

In fact, it represents a return to the past, before the 19th-century prohibition against the conjunctive “like” came along. And you don’t have to take our word for it.

Here’s what Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) has to say in a usage note:

“Like has been used as a conjunction since the 14th century. In the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries it was used in serious literature, but not often; in the 17th and 18th centuries it grew more frequent but less literary. It became markedly more frequent in literary use again in the 19th century.”

It wasn’t until the mid-19th century, according to Merriam-Webster’s, that the usage came under fire. The dictionary’s conclusion:

“There is no doubt that, after 600 years of use, conjunctive like is firmly established. It has been used by many prestigious literary figures of the past, though perhaps not in their most elevated works; in modern use it may be found in literature, journalism, and scholarly writing. While the present objection to it is perhaps more heated than rational, someone writing in a formal prose style may well prefer to use as, as if, such as, or an entirely different construction instead.”

By the way, you might like to see a posting of ours about the use of “like” for “such as.” (Yes, it’s OK.)

And if you’re still “like”-minded, you might look at an article that Pat wrote for the New York Times Magazine about the use of “like” to quote or paraphrase people, as in “She’s like, what unusual taste you have.”

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Linguistics Usage Word origin

Lex appeal: Does size matter?

Q: How many words do most native English speakers know? Do Brits know more than Americans? How many do language mavens know? How about Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, etc.? And what about age or educational level?

A: We’re afraid this will disappoint you. Many of your questions are impossible to answer. And even if we could contrive numbers for you, they wouldn’t be very meaningful.

We had a post on our blog a few years ago about the difficulty of counting words and comparing the lexicons of different languages.

The linguists Robert P. Stockwell and Donka Minkova, who discuss this in their book English Words: History and Structure (2001), write:

“A question which everyone wonders about, and often asks of instructors, is ‘How many words does English have?’ And even more commonly, ‘How many words does the typical educated person know, approximately?’ There are no verifiable answers to these questions.”

They do say that Shakespeare is known to have used about 30,000 different words in his plays, and that “a really well-educated adult” may have a vocabulary of up to 100,000 words—“but this is a wildly unverifiable estimate.”

As for the size of the lexicon, they conclude: “Nobody knows how many words English has.”

The linguist David Crystal said more or less the same thing in a 1987 article in the journal English Today:

 “How many words are there in English? And how many of these words does a native speaker know? These apparently simple little questions turn out to be surprisingly complicated. In answer to the first, estimates have been given ranging from half a million to over 2 million. In answer to the second, the estimates have been as low as 10,000 and over ten times that number.”

We can tell you that the biggest English dictionaries have about half a million words, but that’s no help because dictionaries are selective.

The editors at Oxford Dictionaries Online and Merriam-Webster’s Online discuss the difficulties of counting the number of words in English.

The principal problem in coming up with a number is which words to count. Are “do” and “does” two separate words? How about “doing,” “doer,” “don’t,” and “undo”? What about “cat” and “cats,” not to mention “catlike,” “catty,” and “anti-cat”?

That 30,000-word estimate for Shakespeare, as Stockwell and Minkova say, would drop to “about 21,000 if you count play, plays, playing, played as a single word,” and do the same in similar cases.

Do features like prefixes (“anti-,” “re-,” “un-,” etc.) and suffixes (“-ly,” “-er,” “-ing”) swell the number of possible words we count? Is a word with two meanings (say, “cleave”) counted as one word or two? Should we count symbols, acronyms, initialisms, spelled-out numbers? The questions go on and on.

We’ve also found varying statements about the number of words the average person knows or uses.

In their book Theory of Language (1999), the linguists Steven Weisler and Slavoljub P. Milekic estimate that “an average-educated English-speaking adult knows more than 50,000 words.”

But they say a person’s “lexical capacity” is larger. As current events and new technology create the need for new language, the authors write, “English-speakers are free to make up new words and to create new uses of existing words at the spur of the moment.”

You ask about age and educational level and how they affect vocabulary. Here’s what the British language writer Michael Quinion says on his website World Wide Words:

“It’s common to see figures for vocabulary quoted such as 10,000-12,000 words for a 16-year-old, and 20,000-25,000 for a college graduate. These seem not to have much research to back them up.”

So much for vocabulary size. But how many of those tens of thousands of words do we actually use? According to the Collins Corpus, an analytical database of English, “around 90% of English speech and writing is made up of approximately 3,500 words.”

That doesn’t sound like a lot, but let’s call it a day. We’ve run out of our daily quota of words.

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Politics Usage Word origin

Gramm-ology: “Sequester”

Q: My friend and I are having difficulty figuring out how the government selected the word “sequester” for the current fiscal crisis. Any ideas on this?

A: Let’s begin with a little history.

When the verb “sequester” showed up in English in the late 14th century, it meant to set aside or separate, and it still has that meaning.

The word, which first appeared in the Wycliffe Bible, was adapted from the Late Latin term sequestrare (to place in safekeeping), according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology.

The noun “sequester” also showed up in the late 14th century and the noun “sequestration” followed in the mid-15th century.

Over the years, the verb (as well as the nouns) has taken on many different senses related to setting aside or separating: to excommunicate or isolate someone, to confiscate something, to seize the possessions of a debtor, to set apart property in dispute, to isolate a jury, and so on.

In the sense you’re asking about, the term refers to budget sequestration, a process for controlling the size of the federal budget by setting spending limits and enforcing them with automatic cuts.

The term “budget sequestration” was first used in the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act of 1985. Senators Phil Gramm, Warren Rudman, and Ernest Hollings were the main sponsors.

The measure provided for “sequesters” (automatic spending cuts) if the federal deficit exceeded targets.

The term was later used in the Budget Control Act of 2011 and in the Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012.

How, you ask, did the word “sequester” come to be used in this sense?

Tracey Samuelson, a reporter on public radio, quotes former Senator Gramm, one of the sponsors of the 1985 legislation, as saying, “To me, sequester conjured up taking something off the table, withholding something.”

Gramm, a Texas Republican, said Congress had also considered the word “impoundment” before settling on “sequester,” according to Samuelson’s American Public Media report.

“It’s always helpful if when you invent a term, if it already conjures up what you’re trying to say,” he said, adding, “If a sequester is what you got to do to get people’s attention, I would do it.”

So, did Gramm coin the usage? Not exactly, according to Samuelson’s report. Gramm said the former House majority leader Jim Wright, a Texas Democrat, had suggested this use of the term “sequester” to him.  

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Expression Phrase origin Usage Word origin

An arm and a leg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Usage Word origin

Is “to” part of the infinitive?

Q: In your recent article for Smithsonian magazine, you defend the split infinitive by saying “to” isn’t actually part of the infinitive. Huh? Says who? Not any standard – or even nonstandard – grammar book or authority I’ve ever seen, heard of, or read. Here’s the standard definition of an infinitive, from Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition: “An infinitive is a verbal consisting of to followed by the verb.”

A: Sorry, but you’ve been misled, and the late John Warriner, a teacher and textbook author, was misinformed, as we’ll explain. His is absolutely NOT the “standard” definition of an infinitive.

The infinitive is the uninflected or basic form of a verb, and “to” is not part of it. When “to” appears with an infinitive, it is generally referred to as an “infinitive marker” or “infinitive particle”; it is not part of the verb and is not always used.

“To” is not there, for example, when the infinitive is used with modal verbs (sometimes called modal auxiliaries or secondary auxiliaries). The modal verbs are “can,” “could,” “may,” “might,” “shall,” “should,” “will,” “would,” and “must.”

Examples, “I must go,” “he should read,” “they can eat,” and so on. In modal constructions, infinitives (”go,” “read,” and “eat” in the examples) do not require “to.”

You don’t have to take our word for this. We can cite a great many authorities. Here are only a few.

(1) Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.), edited by the language scholar and lexicographer R. W. Burchfield, likewise describes two uses of the infinitive: (a) “the to-infinitive,” in which “to” is described as a “particle,” and (b) “the bare or simple or plain infinitive.”

The bare infinitive, Fowler’s says, “is often optionally used after the verbs dare, help, and need.” (Examples of infinitives used this way would be, “Does he dare go?” “We helped them move,” “You need not come.” Here, “go,” “move,” and “come” are infinitives.)

Fowler’s adds: “But its use after modal verbs (can, may, must, shall, etc.) and after comparatives and superlatives (better, had better, best, had best, rather than, etc.) is much more significant.” (For example, in constructions like “we had better eat,” and “rather than eat later,” the verb “eat” is an infinitive.)

Fowler’s also mentions these other common uses of the bare infinitive:

(a) At the head of a clause, as in “Try as I might, I couldn’t … etc.” Here, “try” is an infinitive.

(b) After “let” plus its object, as in “Let him enjoy his ignorance.” Here, “enjoy” is an infinitive.

(c) After “is” and “was,” as in “All they want to do is hide in the kitchen.” Here, “hide” is an infinitive.

(d) After “why” and “why not,” as in “Why not ask Robert?” Here, “ask” is an infinitive.

Some other sources:

(2) The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language says the infinitive (as well as the imperative and the subjunctive) “consists simply of the lexical base, the plain base without any suffix or other modification.” (Examples of imperative and subjunctive forms of “run,” respectively would be: “Run as fast as you can!” and “I suggest you run.”)

The Cambridge Grammar, written by the linguists Geoffrey Pullum and Rodney Huddleston, goes on to explain that the marker “to” is “not part of the verb.”

 “The traditional practice for citation of verbs is to cite them with the infinitival marker to, as in ‘to be,’ ‘to take,’ and so on,” Cambridge continues. “That is an unsatisfactory convention, because the to is not part of the verb itself.”

The word “to” here “is not a (morphological) prefix but a quite separate (syntactic) word,” Pullum and Huddleston say, adding:

“This is evident from the fact that it can stand alone in elliptical constructions (as in I haven’t read it yet, but I hope to shortly), need not be repeated in coordination (as seen in I want to go out and get some exercise), and can be separated from the verb by an adverb, as seen in the so-called ‘split infinitive construction,’ I’m trying to gradually improve my game.”

(3) The Oxford English Grammar, written by the linguist Sidney Greenbaum, says the infinitive “has two major uses: (a) bare infinitive (without to) follows a modal auxiliary, [as in] ‘I must write that message’; (b) to-infinitive is the main verb in infinitive clauses [as in] ‘I’d like to write something on process theology.’ ”

Even dictionaries don’t use Warriner’s definition. Witness:

(4) The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.), definition of “infinitive”: “A verb form that functions as a substantive while retaining certain verbal characteristics, such as modification by adverbs, and that in English may be preceded by to, as in To go willingly is to show strength or We want him to work harder, or may also occur without to, as in She had them read the letter or We may finish today.”

(5) Merriam-Webster’s International, Unabridged Third Edition, definition of “infinitive”: “an infinite verb form normally identical in English with the first person singular that performs certain functions of a noun and at the same time displays certain characteristics (as association with objects and adverbial modifiers) of a verb and is used with to (as in ‘to err is human’; ‘I asked him to go’) except with auxiliary and certain other verbs (as in ‘he can see’; ‘let me go’; ‘no one saw him leave’).

(6 ) The Oxford English Dictionary has an extensive discussion of the historical development of “to” with the infinitive in Old and Middle English. Later it has this: “The simple infinitive, without to, remains: 1. after the auxiliaries of tense, mood, periphrasis, shall, will; may, can; do; and the quasi-auxiliaries, must, (and sometimes) need, dare: 2. after some vbs. of causing, etc.; make, bid, let, have, in sense B. 15a; 3. after some vbs. of perception, see, hear, feel, and some tenses of know, observe, notice, perceive, etc., in sense B. 15b; 4. after had liefer, rather, better, sooner, as lief, as soon, as good, as well, etc.: see have v. 21, rather adv. 8d, and the other words.

“The infinitive with to may be dependent on an adj., a n., or a vb., or it may stand independently. To an adj. it stands in adverbial relation: ready to fight = ready for fighting; to a n. it stands in adjectival or sometimes adverbial relation: a day to remember = a memorable day; to a vb. it may stand in an adverbial or substantival relation: to proceed to work = to proceed to working; to like to work = to like working.”

When this preposition was first used in English as an infinitive marker (tó in Old English), it did have a prepositional flavor. “I prepared to eat” sounded to the medieval ear something like “I prepared for eating”; “he fails to think” sounded something like “he fails in thinking”; “we strive to please” sounded something like “we strive toward pleasing.” As the OED says, “it expressed motion, direction, inclination, purpose, etc., toward the act or condition expressed by the infinitive; as in ‘he came to help (i.e. to the help of) his friends,’ … ‘he prepared to depart (i.e. for departure).’ ”

There once was a sense of motion, of moving toward accomplishing something (represented by the infinitive), if that makes any sense.

But as the OED says: “in process of time this obvious sense of the prep. became weakened and generalized, so that tó became at last the ordinary link expressing any prepositional relation in which an infinitive stands to a preceding verb, adjective, or substantive.” [Here the italicized tó represents the Old English word.]

As we’ve written on our blog, a great many people misunderstand infinitives because they aren’t familiar with their many uses.

In that post, we cite the clause “I saw her fall,” with the verb “fall” in the infinitive. In English, this is a very common pattern: one verb followed by a second in the infinitive. It’s often the case when the first verb is one involving sensory perception (“see,” “feel,” “hear”).

Here are a few examples of the kinds of verbs that are often paired with infinitives (the infinitives are underlined):

“I helped her walk” … “They saw us go” … “We felt it move” … “He heard her cry” … “You need not worry” … “Dare we ask?” … “I would rather die” … “We will let it rest” … “Let there be light.”

In addition, the auxiliary “do” is often used with an infinitive to form a question: “Do you smoke?” … “Did they drive?”

And as we’ve said, the modal auxiliary verbs (“can,” “may,” “must,” etc.) take infinitives as their complements: “She may smoke” [or “May she smoke?”] … “We must leave” [or “Must we leave?”].

In all of these cases, the second verb is in the infinitive. But many people don’t recognize these verb forms as infinitives because they expect infinitives to be preceded by “to.” As you can see, that’s often not the case.

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language and more.

Subscribe to the blog by email

Enter your email address to subscribe to the blog by email. If you’re a subscriber and not getting posts, please subscribe again.

Categories
English English language Etymology Linguistics Usage Word origin

Meteoric language

Q: I’m putting together a planetarium exhibition on meteorites. My background documents often say pieces of a meteorite were “recovered” after falling to earth. Can we “recover” something we never had? I’d appreciate your help.

A: We checked all the many meanings of “recover” in the Oxford English Dictionary, and when used in reference to physical objects, it generally means to regain or reacquire something lost.

An old meaning of the verb “cover,” now obsolete, was to get or acquire. And the original, 14th-century meaning of “recover” (literally, “cover again”) was to win back ground lost in battle.

But etymology aside, astronomers and geologists use the word in a different sense. They quite routinely use “recover,” “recovered,” and “recovery” in writing about meteorite fragments found on earth, even though nobody had physical possession of them beforehand.

Though this use of “recover” might seem questionable, at least in the strictly literal sense of the word, we think it’s perfectly reasonable in a scientific context, like an exhibition at a planetarium.

As it happens, the OED does recognize “recover” as a technical term in astronomy. But it has a more celestial meaning than the earthbound one we’re talking about. It refers only to the observation of objects in space.

The OED defines this “recover” as meaning “to observe (an astronomical object, esp. a periodic comet) following an extended period during which it has not been visible or observed.”

The OED’s first citation for this sense of the word is from a 1901 issue of a scientific journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: “Professor Howe … recovered the comet on May 27, after its perihelion passage.”

This more recent citation is from a 2006 issue of the Guardian: “The dim comet was lost again until … it was recovered tracing a 5.4 year orbit about the Sun.”

But we think you’re safe using “recover” in reference to meteorites that have fallen to earth. Though the OED hasn’t yet recorded this sense of the word, scientists routinely use it that way, which is a pretty good argument in its favor.

For example, we found this example in a 1977 issue of the British magazine New Scientist:

“Analysis of the photographs suggested the fall of several kilogrammes of meteorites at a point some 150 km east of Edmonton. … A 2.1-kg freshly fallen meteorite was recovered only 500 metres from the predicted impact point.”

Scientists use “recover” even when the meteorites weren’t seen falling beforehand. That’s the case in this passage from Paul W. Hodge’s book Meteorite Craters and Impact Structures of the Earth (1994):

“The Haviland crater itself was not discovered until about 1925, when H. H. Nininger visited the Kimberley farm to recover the meteorites.”

Finally, Robert T. Dodd’s book Meteorites: A Petrologic-chemical Synthesis (1981) has this note about the naming of meteorites:

“A newly fallen or newly discovered meteorite is named for a locality or permanent geographic feature that is near its point of recovery. … The many meteorites recovered from Antarctica raise a serious problem of terminology.”

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Usage Word origin

Closeted language

Q: I was speaking to my grandmother about getting less-than-desirable presents for Christmas and she said, “We used to put them in the chifen robe.” When I asked about the term, she said it referred to a closet where her mother stored unwanted gifts to be regifted. I’m not sure of the spelling, but I’d appreciate any information you can provide.

A: The term your grandmother used is usually spelled “chifforobe.” It combines two different terms—“chiffonier” and “wardrobe.”

Words like this are sometimes called portmanteau words, which we’ve written about before on our blog. They get their name from their resemblance to a portmanteau, a case that has two hinged compartments.

The Oxford English Dictionary says “chifforobe” originated in the US and means “a piece of furniture incorporating a wardrobe and a chest of drawers.”

It was first recorded, according to OED citations, in a 1908 Sears, Roebuck & Company catalog that carried this entry: “The chifforobes as illustrated on this page are a modern invention, having been in use only a short time.”

The word is sometimes rendered as “chiffing robe,” and your grandma’s version, “chifen robe,” isn’t unusual either.

The OED cites this example from Carson McCullers’s novella The Ballad of the Sad Café (1953): “The room was furnished with a large ‘chiffen robe.’ ”

Like chifforobes, both chiffoniers and wardrobes are free-standings cupboards devoted to storage, much like large dressers but with extras.

Now that homes have built-in closets, we see less of words like “chiffonier” and “wardrobe,” which were once common household terms.

The OED defines a “chiffonier” as “a piece of furniture, consisting of a small cupboard with the top made so as to form a sideboard.”

The word comes from French, in which chiffonnier or chiffonnière originally meant a “rag-gatherer,” the OED says. (In French, chiffon means rag.)

By transference, chiffonnier was later used in French to mean “a piece of furniture with drawers in which women put away their needlework, cuttings of cloth, etc.,” says the OED, quoting the French lexicographer Émile Littré.

The use of “chiffonier” in English, the OED says, was first recorded in 1806 in reference to the furniture.

In the 1850s, in conscious imitation of the French, it was also used in English to mean a rag-picker.

The word was sometimes spelled “sheffonier,” which the OED says “represents the common pronunciation.”

The other half of your grandmother’s word—“wardrobe’’—is much older than “chiffonier” and may date from the 1300s.

It comes from the Old French word warderobe, a variant of garderobe, a locked room for safeguarding clothing, armor, and other valuables.

When “wardrobe” came into our language during the Middle English period, it originally meant a separate room for storing clothing and armor—similar to a dressing room.

As far as we can tell, the word didn’t mean a movable cupboard until the late 1700s.

The term “wardrobe” is used this way twice on the title page of The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterers Guide (1788), a book of furniture designs by George Hepplewhite. The term is also used this way in four of the engravings, printed in 1787.

(The book was written by Hepplewhite’s widow, Alice, who ran the enterprise as A. Hepplewhite & Company after his death in 1786.)

Each wardrobe in the engravings is described as about four feet wide and seven feet tall, shaped more or less like a refrigerator.

Each has tall doors on top and three to four drawers on the bottom. Behind the doors are five slide-out shelves for folded clothes.

Finally, in case you’re interested, we once wrote a posting on the blog about the verbs “gift” and “regift”:

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Usage Word origin

Indian territory

Q: I came across a website that says the use of the word “Indian” for a Native American is derived from the Spanish phrase Gente de Dios. Whaddya think?

A: Didn’t your mother tell you not to believe everything you see on the Web?

The website of La Prensa, a weekly newspaper for Latinos in the Midwest, does indeed say the term “Indian” is derived from that Spanish phrase for People of God.

A “Latino History” page on the site says Gente de Dios was later shorted to en Dios, then endios, and finally “Indian.”

“Yes, ‘Indian’—they were called Indians,” La Prensa adds, “not because they were thought to live in India but because they were children of God.”

As you suspect, that etymology is nonsense—or as one would say in Spanish, una tontería.

The truth, as you were undoubtedly taught in school, is that Christopher Columbus did indeed think he’d reached India when he landed in the Americas and that he referred to the natives as “Indians” in Spanish.

In the diary of his first voyage to the Americas, which Columbus wrote in 15th-century Spanish, he repeatedly referred to the indigenous population as indios and yndios.

Here’s a modern Spanish version of the diary in which he describes the islands he visited in the region as estas islas de India (these islands of India).

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, the use of the term “Indian” for the indigenous people of the Americas is the result of “Columbus’s assumption that, on reaching America, he had reached the east coast of India.”

The word “Indian” in this sense first showed up in English, according to OED citations, in the mid-16th century.

The earliest reference in the OED is from A Treatyse of the Newe India With Other New Founde Landes and Islandes (1553).

Here’s the citation from Richard Eden’s translation of a work by the German cartographer Sebastian Münster: “They saw certayn Indians gatheringe shel fyshes by the sea bankes.”

Not surprisingly, the adjective “Indian” in reference to the people of India entered English a lot earlier—in the late 1300s, and the noun “Indian” in that sense first showed up around 1400, according to OED citations.

Although English adapted the adjective and noun “Indian” from the Anglo-Norman and Middle French indien, the dictionary notes, the geographic name “India” is a direct borrowing from Latin and showed up centuries earlier.

The OED has two Early Old English citations from History Against the Pagans, a work by Paulus Orosius, a church historian who lived in the late 4th and early 5th centuries.

We won’t go through La Prensa’s “Latin History” page point by point, but we should note one other questionable statement: “Christopher Columbus, by the way, was not his real name—it was Cristóbal Colón.”

Columbus, who made four voyages to the New World under the auspices of the Spanish Crown, was born Cristoforo Colombo on Oct. 31, 1451, in the Republic of Genoa, now part of modern Italy.

“Christopher Columbus” is an Anglicized version of his name in Latin, Christophorus Columbus. Cristóbal Colón is the Spanish version of his name and Cristóvão Colombo is the Portuguese version.

Columbus was a man of the world who spoke all those languages. We imagine that he referred to himself by the name used in whichever language he was speaking.

In his diary, for example, Columbus writes his name in the Spanish of his time: almirante don x’val Colón (almirante is Spanish for “admiral” and “x” is short for Cristo, or “Christ”).

Columbus, by the way, didn’t invent the use of “x” as an abbreviation for “Christ.” This convention is more than a thousand years old, as we’ve written on our blog.

In a posting six years ago, we noted that the practice grew out of Greek, in which “Christ” begins with the letter “chi,” or “X.” In Greek letters it’s spelled ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ.

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Usage Word origin

Our how many-eth beer?

Q: How come we don’t say “many-eth” in English? Example: “This is the how many-eth beer we’ve had?”

A: That’s the kind of question we ask ourselves after having a few too many Becks. And if we don’t know how many we’ve had, we’ve probably had too many.

In sober—that is, standard—English, we’d say something like “How much beer have we had” or “How many beers have we had?” Yet for some reason we don’t use “many-eth” to ask questions like this.

The “-th” suffix is used in its numerical sense with ordinal numbers, like “fifth,” “eleventh,” and “thirty-fourth,” as well as looser ordinals like “nth,” “zillionth,” “umpteenth,” and so on.

When an ordinal number is derived from a cardinal number ending in “y,” the “y” becomes “i” and the “-th” ending becomes “-eth.” For example, “twenty” becomes “twentieth,” and “fifty” becomes “fiftieth.”

The Oxford English Dictionary says the “-th” ending has been used this way since Anglo-Saxon days. The “th” sound was represented then by the Old English letters thorn or eth.

The OED says the “-th” suffix is ultimately derived from –tos, an ancient Indo-European superlative ending.

The “-th” ending is also used to form nouns from verbs (“growth,” “stealth,” and so on) and from adjectives (“health,” “truth,” etc.).

In addition, the “-eth” ending was used to form many third person singular verbs that are now considered archaic: “goeth,” “sendeth,” and so on. But as the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology notes, this ending is still used as a literary device: The Iceman Cometh.

Like “umpteen,” the adjective “many” refers to a large but indefinite number.  We say “umpteenth,” so why then don’t we say “many-eth”? Well, for whatever reason, it’s not considered idiomatic English.

Despite that, we’ve found lots of examples of the usage on the Web, including many from writers whose English is otherwise beyond reproach.

Here’s an example from a review of a concert in which Joshua Bell is the soloist in a performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto: “Here he was, playing it for the … how many-eth time?”

Does “many-eth” have a future? Who knows? If enough people use it for enough time, “many-eth” may become standard English some day. Not yet, though.

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Usage Word origin

The full story

Q: Your piece on the use of “full” in reference to eating mentioned in passing the use of “full” to describe, among other things, a sail filled with wind. This got me thinking about the link between “full” and “fill.” Would you comment on it?

A: The words “full” and “fill” have an ancestral connection that not only predates English but is older than written language.

Far back in prehistory, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the ancestor of “fill” was derived from the ancestor of “full.” So etymologically, to “fill” is to “make full.”

As John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins explains, a prehistoric Germanic adjective that linguists have reconstructed as fullaz (full) was the source of a corresponding verb, fulljan (fill).

These words eventually developed into the English “full” and “fill” along with their equivalents in German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, and Norwegian.

But the story goes back even beyond the early Germanic languages, which are only one branch of the Indo-European family tree.

The ultimate source, as Ayto notes, is an Indo-European root reconstructed as ple-.

This root, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, by Calvert Watkins, has given us “derivatives referring to abundance and multitude.”

The ple- root has descendants not only in the Germanic languages—in which the “p” sound became “f”—but also in Latin and Greek.

English inherited words having to do with abundance and multitude from both directions.

From the Germanic direction, in addition to “full” and “fill,” English has the word “folk” (people), from the prehistoric Germanic word folkam.

On the classical side, the ple- root is the source of the Latin words plenus (full), plere (to fill) and plus (more), as well as the Greek polus (many), pleres (full), plethein (to be full), and pleon (more).

And from this direction, according to Watkins, English acquired “plenary,” “plenitude,” “plenty,” “replenish,” “plural,” “plus,” “nonplus,” “pluperfect,” “surplus,” “hoi polloi,” “plebian,” “plethora,” “accomplish,” “complement,” “complete,” “compliment,” “comply, “deplete,” “expletive,” “implement,” “replete,” “supply,” and the prefix “poly-,” among others.

In case you’re curious about “fulfill,” etymologically it means to “fill full” though that sense of the word is now defunct.

The OED says that when “fulfill” entered Old English as fullfyllan more than a thousand years ago, it meant “to fill to the full, fill up, make full.”

In case you haven’t had your fill yet, we had a brief post back in 2007 about whether to use the word element “full” or “ful” as a prefix or a suffix.

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Usage Word origin

“Want” adds

Q: Why do we say or write things like “I want to thank you for your wonderful lecture the other night” or “I wanted to let you know that the blouse you like is in stock again”? I find myself doing it when I’m in a business situation. What’s with this “want” business?

A: In our opinion, starting a statement like that with “I want to …” (or the even more deferential “I just want to …”) is an example of tentativeness or excessive politeness.

We’ve written on our blog about a similar mannerism, the use of “I would like …” (or “I’d like …”) instead of “I want ….”

As we said in that May 18, 2009, post, people tell a waiter “I would like the braised sirloin tips with artichoke hearts” because it sounds more indirect, hence more polite and less demanding, than “I want the braised sirloin tips with artichoke hearts.”

Some grammarians use the term “tentative volition” to describe this less demanding way of demanding something.

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language discusses the use of “would” in a sentence like “I would like to see him tomorrow” (vs. “I want to see him tomorrow”).

The authors, Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, say that “would” often “introduces a rather vague element of tentativeness, diffidence, extra politeness, or the like.”

Huddleston and Pullum go on to describe “would like” as “more or less a fixed phrase, contrasting as a whole with want.”

We think people insert things like “I wanted to …” and “I’d like to …” in sentences when they’re nervous, overly deferential, addressing someone of importance (such as a valued customer), or unsure of their own authority.

There’s nothing grammatically wrong in all this. It’s more of a psycholinguistic issue.

Etymologically, to “want” something is to lack it, the meaning of the word when it entered English in the early 1200s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The sense of desiring something “is a secondary extension” of the original meaning, according to John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins.

English adapted “want” from the Old Norse vanta (to be lacking), but Ayto says the ultimate source is the prehistoric Germanic root wan- (lacking), which is also the source of the English word “wane.”

The adjective “wanton” is another relative. As Ayto explains: “Someone who is wanton is etymologically ‘lacking in proper upbringing or discipline.’ ”

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Linguistics Phrase origin Usage Word origin

Where is “put” in “stay put”?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where, you ask, is put?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Usage Word origin

Look, readers!

Q: I’ve noticed a lot of television commentators starting their comments with the word “look.” Is this something new? What’s the grammatical term to describe this?

A: What you’re describing is an idiomatic use of “look” that’s intended to get someone’s attention. And it’s nothing new. The Oxford English Dictionary says “look” has been “used to bespeak attention” for more than a thousand years.

The verb “look” is used here in the imperative—that is, as a command. But it isn’t meant literally (to direct one’s sight). Here it’s used figuratively in the same way English speakers have also used “see,” “behold,” and “lo.”

According to Oxford, the word often appears as part of a phrase, “look you,” meaning “mind this,” which “in representations of vulgar speech” is written as “look’ee.”

Another such phrase, “look here,” is described as “a brusque mode of address prefacing an order, expostulation, reprimand, etc.” This phrase is often written as “look-a-here” or, in regional American usage, “looky.”

The OED has many examples of all of these attention-getting usages. The earliest is from the Benedictine monk and scholar Ælfric of Eynsham, who used loca nu (Old English for “look now” or “behold”) around the year 1000.

And the usage has been common ever since. Many of the OED’s citations are from written speech in plays, stories, or novels.

In the early 1600s, Shakespeare used “looke you” and “looke thee heere” in two of his plays. Later in the century, the Duke of Buckingham, George Villiers, used “look you now” and “look you, Sir” several times in his play The Rehearsal (1672).

In the early 18th century, Richard Steele used similar constructions in his writings in the Tatler: “Look ye, said I, I must not rashly give my Judgment” (1709), and “Look’ee, Jack, I have heard thee sometimes talk like an Oracle” (1710).

Charles Dickens used such phrases in at least two of his novels: “Now, look here my man … I’ll have no feelings here” (Great Expectations, 1861); and “Now, lookee here, my dear” (Our Mutual Friend, 1865).

American examples are plentiful too. This OED citation is from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876): “look-a-here—maybe that whack done for him!”

The use of “look” by itself is more familiar to us today, as in these 20th-century examples:

“Look, my Bill doesn’t include any blanket condemnation of unofficial strikes” (from the former BBC journal The Listener, 1949).

“Look, we don’t have to sit here. We could go down to the beach” (from George Sims’s novel Hunters Point, 1973).

So the commentators you mention are merely continuing a long tradition. People who constantly begin sentences with “Look” can get on one’s nerves. But an occasional example here or there isn’t out of line.

Note: We had a posting on the blog a couple of years ago about the use of “look” as a quasi-transitive verb in an expression like “Never look a gift horse in the mouth.” 

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Usage Word origin

Should we dis “disassociate”?

Q: “Dissociate” or “disassociate”? The New Yorker used the latter, and I think it stinks. But what do I know?

A: A search of the New Yorker’s archive finds that writers for the magazine have used each word, with a slight preference for the shorter version.

Is one correct? Well, these verbs mean the same thing and are considered variants of one another, but some usage guides say “dissociate” is better.

For example, Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.) says “disassociate” is “a common but now widely condemned variant (first recorded in 1603), of dissociate.”

Another guide, Garners Modern American Usage (3rd ed.), calls “dissociate” the “preferred term” and labels “disassociate” a “needless variant.”

Though Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) doesn’t condemn “disassociate,” the dictionary defines it in terms of the other verb: “to detach from association” or “dissociate.”

And “dissociate,” M-W says, means “to separate from association or union with another,” as in “attempts to dissociate herself from her past.”

As mentioned above, “disassociate” was first recorded in writing in 1603. The now favored variant, “dissociate,” followed soon afterward.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the verb “dissociate” appeared in 1623 in a dictionary that defined it as meaning “to separate.” So it must have been in use for some time before that.

An adjectival form (“dissociate”) was recorded in 1548; another adjective (“dissociated”) and a noun (“dissociation”) were both recorded in 1611.

Regardless of the chronology, the two verbs are defined similarly in the OED.

“Dissociate,” Oxford says, means “to cut off from association or society; to sever, disunite, sunder.” And “disassociate” means “to free or detach from association; to dissociate, sever.”

Ultimately, the Latin root of both is sociare (to join together or associate), and both have the negative Latin prefix dis-.

As the OED says, “dissociate” is from the Latin dissociare (to separate from fellowship). “Disassociate” was modeled after the 16th-century French verb désassocier.

Since both verbs have been in use for some 500 years, we can’t see why one is preferred over the other. But perhaps people feel shorter is better, and we often feel that way ourselves. “Dissociate” does save a syllable.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage has an opinion here, as it does on most things:

“Dissociate and disassociate share the sense ‘to separate from association or union with another,’ and either word may be used in that sense. Dissociate is recommended by a number of commentators on the ground that it is shorter, which it is by a grand total of two letters—not the firmest ground for decision.”

M-W’s conclusion: “Both words are in current good use, but dissociate is used more often. That may be grounds for your decision.”

PS: In case you’re wondering about the verb “dis” in the title of this post, we had an item on the blog some time ago about the usage.

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Usage Word origin

Homophobia, past and present

Q: Whenever there’s an insensitive, insulting, inhumane, or vulgar comment about homosexuals, the press describes it as homophobia. However, “homophobia” would seem to be the irrational fear of homosexuals, not the hatred of them.

A: It’s true that the noun “phobia” principally means an exaggerated or irrational fear. But when “-phobia” is a word element that’s part of another noun, it can also mean hatred of something, not just fear of it.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “homophobia” in its usual contemporary sense as “fear or hatred of homosexuals and homosexuality.”

The adjective “homophobic” is defined by the OED as “pertaining to, characterized by, or exhibiting homophobia; hostile towards homosexuals.” And “homophobe” is “a homophobic person”—that is, someone hostile toward gay men or lesbians.

All three terms are relatively new in the sense you’re talking about, judging from the OED’s citations for their first appearances in print: “homophobia” in 1969; “homophobic” and “homophobe” in 1971.

However, the word “homophobia” is much older in another sense: fear of men. The first Oxford citation for this sense is from the June 5,1920, issue of Chambers’s Journal:

“Her salient characteristic was a contempt for the male sex as represented in the human biped …. The seeds of homophobia had been sown early.”

In a search of Google Books, we found a 1908 article in The Alienist and Neurologist, a quarterly medical journal, with what appears to be an even earlier citation for “homophobia” in this sense (juxtaposed with “gynephobia”).

In  an article entitled “La Phobie du Regard” (the fear of being looked at), C. H. Hughes describes a medical case and then adds, “In Beards’ neurasthenia or cerebrasthenia this phobie du regard would appear as homophobia and gynephobia.”

(Hughes is apparently referring to George Miller Beard, a 19th-century American neurologist who popularized the term “neurasthenia.”)

We also found an interesting later example of “homophobia” used to mean hatred of men. It comes  from The New Adventures of Ellery Queen, a 1940 story collection by Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee (a k a Ellery Queen):

“Mr. Ellery Queen paled, and choking, set down his weapons. When he had first encountered the lovely Miss Paris, Hollywood’s reigning goddess of gossip, Miss Paris had been suffering from homophobia, or morbid fear of men.”

Now let’s return to your question about the modern use of the word “homophobia” to mean hatred or fear of homosexuals or homosexuality.

A precursor was “’homoerotophobia,” a term used by Wainwright Churchill in Homosexual Behavior Among Males (1967). Churchill, a clinical psychologist, described it as a cultural fear of same-sex sexuality.

Another clinical psychologist, George Weinberg, has said he coined the use of the term “homophobia” in its contemporary sense in the mid-1960s.

In an interview with Gay Today, Weinberg says he used the term in a speech in 1965. However, he didn’t use it in print until 1971, when his book Society and the Healthy Homosexual appeared.

In a prologue to the interview, Gay Today claims inaccurately that the OED credits Weinberg with coining the use of the term “homophobia” in this sense.

In fact, the OED’s first written citation for the term used in its newer sense is from the Oct. 31, 1969, issue of Time magazine:

“Such homophobia is based on understandable instincts among straight people, but it also involves innumerable misconceptions and oversimplifications.”

The noun “phobia” in English—as in “I have a phobia of spiders”—is defined this way in the OED: “a fear, horror, strong dislike, or aversion; esp. an extreme or irrational fear or dread aroused by a particular object or circumstance.”

The noun came into English in the 1780s and was adapted from Latin and Greek compounds that had –phobia as an element, according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology.

As Chambers explains, the Romans borrowed the word element –phobia from the Greeks. In Greek, the noun phobos means fear and the verb phobein means frighten or put to flight. A related Greek verb, phebesthai, means to flee in terror.

The first such classical compound to come into English, according to the OED, was “hydrophobia,” which was borrowed from Latin in the 16th century. (Chambers says an early erroneous spelling, “ydroforbia,” appeared in 1392.)

“Hydrophobia” literally means a fear or a morbid dread of water, but since its earliest appearance it has also meant rabies. As the OED explains, this is because “an aversion to water or other liquids, and difficulty in swallowing them,” are symptoms of the disease when transmitted to humans.

“Hydrophobia,” the OED says, “is probably the model for subsequent English formations” ending in “-phobia.” Such words became “very abundant” in the 19th century, Oxford says.

Here are some examples, and the dates when they were first recorded in OED citations:

“Anglophobia” (coined by Thomas Jefferson, 1793), “pyrophobia” (fear of fire, 1858), “agoraphobia” (fear of crowds or of leaving home, 1871), “claustrophobia” (1879), and “gynophobia” (fear of woman, sometimes spelled “gynephobia,” 1886).

Also, “acrophobia” (fear of heights, 1888), “xenophobia” (aversion to foreigners, 1909), “triskaidekaphobia” (fear of the number thirteen, 1911), and “arachnophobia” (fear of spiders, 1925).

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Phrase origin Slang Usage Word origin

Are you bored to flinders?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Pronunciation Usage Word origin

We’re on safari

Q: I have a memory of my mother pronouncing “safari” as suh-FAIR-ee instead of suh-FAR-ee. Is this a correct pronunciation? Where does it come from?

A: Either pronunciation of “safari” is correct. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) gives both as standard.

Merriam-Webster’s says the second vowel can be pronounced like the vowel in “mop” or in “ash.” So you can be justified in using either.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.), on the other hand, gives only one pronunciation, with the second vowel pronounced like the broad “a” in “father.”

English borrowed the word “safari” in the 19th century from Swahili, in which it means journey or expedition, the Oxford English Dictionary says.

The Swahili word, Oxford adds, ultimately comes from Arabic, where the noun safar means a journey or tour and the verb safara means to travel, depart, or go on a journey.

In English, “safari” originally meant “a party or caravan undertaking an extensive cross-country expedition on foot for hunting or scientific research, typically in an African country (originally in East Africa),” the OED explains.

Later, the word came to mean other kinds of forays, including “a party travelling, usually in vehicles, into unspoiled or wild areas for tourism or game viewing.” And many extended meanings of the term developed later.

The word was first recorded in English by the explorer Sir Richard F. Burton in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London in 1859:

“These Safari are neither starved like the trading parties of Wanyamwezi nor pampered like those directed by the Arabs.”

This later example is from an 1871 journal entry by the explorer and missionary David Livingstone: “A safari, under Hassani and Ebed, arrived with news of great mortality by cholera … at Zanzibar.”

A historical note: This was the ailing Dr. Livingstone who had lost contact with the rest of the world and was eventually tracked down by the journalist Henry Morton Stanley after a two-year search. Stanley later claimed to have greeted him with the words “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Usage Word origin

How credible is “incredible”?

Q: When somebody tries to sell me a car and says, “Our prices are incredibly low,” he’s literally telling me that I shouldn’t believe him. Wouldn’t it make more sense to say, “Our prices are credibly low”?

A: The adjective “incredible” meant not credible when it entered English in the early 1400s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

And the adverb “incredibly” meant in an incredible manner—that is, not credibly—when it showed up around 1500.

The two words still have those clearly negative meanings today, but people began using them loosely—“in a weakened sense,” as the OED says—almost from the start.

In this sense, Oxford says, the adjective means, among other things, exceedingly great, and the adverb means exceedingly, extremely, and so on.

Those car dealers you mention are using “incredibly” to mean exceedingly or extremely or (we’d add) astonishingly.

The two words are derived from the Latin incredibilis (unbelievable), made up of the negative prefix –in and credibilis (worthy to be believed). The ultimate Latin source is the verb credere (to believe).

Here’s how The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) defines the two modern meanings of “incredible”:

“1. So implausible as to elicit disbelief; unbelievable: gave an incredible explanation of the cause of the accident.

“2. Astonishing, extraordinary, or extreme: dressed with incredible speed.”

The OED’s earliest citation for the adjective is from John Lydgate’s Hystorye, Sege, and Destruccyon of Troye (1412-1420).

In his Middle English poem, Lydgate describes as “incredible” (that is, not credible) an account of the Greeks put to flight during the Trojan War.

The dictionary’s first citation for the adjective used in its looser sense is from The Revelation of the Monk of Evesham (1482): “An inestymable and incredibulle swetenes of ioyfull conforte.”

The earliest OED citation for the adverb is from The Three Kings’ Sons (circa 1500), an English translation of a work by the French calligrapher David Aubert: “He had seen hem do in armes that day yncredibly.” The adverb here seems to be used in the looser sense.

An even clearer example of the adverb used loosely is from The Itinerary of John Leland, written sometime before 1552. In writing of his travels, the English poet and antiquary describes a church “adorned it with Gould and Sylver incredibly.”

We’ll end with the OED’s most recent example for the adverb used in its looser sense.

We’ve gone to the original to expand on this citation from English Traits, an 1856 book in which Ralph Waldo Emerson describes a meeting with Thomas Carlyle in Scotland:

“He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this moment; recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by the great booksellers for puffing. Hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted now, no books are bought, and the booksellers are on the eve of bankruptcy.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Phrase origin Politics Usage Word origin

Wigs, bigwigs, and big Whigs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Politics Pronunciation Usage Word origin

Inaugural pronunciations

Q: Please comment on the pronunciation of “inauguration” as
in-aw-guh-RAY-shun. When did this pronunciation become so ubiquitous, even among NPR news readers? Is it “wrong”?

A: Times change, and the pronunciation of “inauguration” is a good example.

When we discussed this subject three years ago on our blog, we said the only pronunciations of “inaugurate,” “inauguration,” and “inaugural” we’d ever heard had a “y” sound in the third syllable: in-AW-gyuh-rate … in-aw-gyuh-RAY-shun … in-AW-gyuh-rel.

And we said those were the only pronunciations given in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.).

But we also noted that one dictionary, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), included the non-“y” pronunciations as equal variants: in-AW-guh-rate … in-aw-guh-RAY-shun … in-AW-guh-rel. (As we said in 2010, that last one sounds to us like “doggerel.”)

But apparently the flatter pronunciations are taking hold. Since we wrote that post, a fifth edition of American Heritage has been published, and that dictionary now accepts the pronunciations minus the “y” sound.

A pronunciation can’t be considered “wrong” if even one standard dictionary accepts it. And certainly the evidence of two dictionaries means the “y”-less pronunciations of “inaugurate,” “inauguration,” and “inaugural” are now entrenched in standard English.

We still believe that most people pronounce “inauguration” and its derivatives with a “y” sound. But the people have a choice!

Inaugurations, of course, augur new beginnings. In 2011 we wrote about the etymology of “augur,” the word at the root of “inauguration.”

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Linguistics Phrase origin Usage Word origin

English lit or British lit?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Usage Word origin

We hope you’re not bored

Q: At the risk of being thought priggish, but prompted by your discussion of the proper prepositions for use with “squeamish,” what are your thoughts on the current popularity of the phrase “bored of”? Example: “I’m bored of this—let’s change the channel.”

A: When a preposition follows “bored,” it has traditionally been “with” or “by.” So the traditional construction would be “I’m bored with this” or “I’m bored by this.”

However, the phrase “bored of” is common now and some dictionaries have begun to treat it as standard English. Three dictionaries (Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, and Dictionary.com) include “bored of” without comment (that is, as standard) in their examples for the adjective “bored.”

In fact, Cambridge includes this separate “bored of” subentry in its entry for the adjective: “bored of   She was getting bored of listening to the same thing every day.”

Nevertheless, two other standard dictionaries, the Oxford Dictionary of English and the New Oxford American Dictionary, have identical usage notes that suggest “bored of” isn’t quite standard yet: 

“The traditional constructions for bored are bored by or bored with. The construction bored of emerged more recently, and is extremely common, especially in informal language. Although it is perfectly logical by analogy with constructions such as tired of, it is not fully accepted in standard English.”

The phrases “bored with” and “bored by” are still more popular, but “bored of” is a close third, according to a search with Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books.

The verb “bore,” the noun “bore,” and the adjective “bored” used in the tedious sense showed up in English in the 18th and 19th centuries, according to published references in the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED describes the etymologies of these three words as unknown.

John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins says the noun (meaning tiresomeness) suddenly appeared “on the scene as a sort of buzzword of the 1760s, from no known source.”

Ayto adds that “the explanation most commonly offered for its origin” is that the word “bore” that refers to tedium is derived from the much older word “bore” that refers to making  a hole.

The newer word, according to this theory, refers to being pierced with ennui, an explanation that Ayto describes as “not terribly convincing.”

Getting  back to your question, here are a couple of 18th-century examples from the OED in which “bored” is used with  prepositions:

“I pity my Newmarket friends, who are to be bored by these Frenchmen,” from a letter written in 1768 by the Earl of Carlisle.

“I have bored you sadly with this catastrophe,” from a letter written in 1774 by the first Lord Malmesbury.

No prepositions other than “with” or “by” appear in any of the OED’s citations.

The earliest example we’ve seen for “bored of,” the latecomer, is from a theater review in a Canadian newspaper:

“She has known nothing but extravagance, knows nothing of the value of money, and yet she admits to her household and the sycophantic smart set who surround her that she is ‘bored of it all’ ” (The Evening Record, Windsor, Ontario, Nov. 16, 1909).

Fowler’s Modern English Usage (4th ed.), edited by Jeremy Butterfield, says in its “bored” entry: “The normal constructions are with with or with by.” However, Fowler’s notes the use of “bored of,” in speech and online:

“A tendency has emerged in recent years, especially in non-standard English in Britain and abroad, to construe the verb with of, especially in conversation and on blogs, by analogy with tired of. The construction should be avoided in writing.”

Well, “bored of” may not be widely accepted as standard yet, but we suspect that it’s here to stay—in writing as well as in speech.

[Note: This post was updated on Feb. 13, 2024, and Nov. 14, 2013.]

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language and more.

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Phrase origin Politics Usage Word origin

Hear Pat live today on WNYC

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

Categories
English English language Etymology Grammar Linguistics Phrase origin Usage Word origin

Meantime, back at the ranch

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

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

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

So all of these sentences are correct:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Usage Word origin

Can a fruit be a vegetable?

Q: You pushed one of my buttons when you made the claim that squash is a fruit, not a vegetable. I hear the same thing about tomatoes, usually accompanied by some level of know-it-all smugness. Simply put, the words “fruit” and “vegetable” are not mutually exclusive.

A: You’re right, and we’ve fixed our posting, which discusses whether the “squash” that means to crush is related to the “squash” that one eats.

As you say, something can be a fruit in the botanical sense as well as a vegetable in the culinary sense. It all depends on whether one is using the vocabulary of the kitchen or of the garden.

In the garden, a fruit is the edible reproductive part of a seed plant, while a vegetable is any edible part of a plant.

In the kitchen, a fruit is any edible part of a plant with a sweet flavor, while a vegetable is any edible part of a plant that’s spicy, salty, or otherwise pungent.

Interestingly, the word “fruit” referred to edible “vegetable products in general” when it entered English in the 12th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The earliest OED citation is from the Lambeth Homilies, a collection of sermons dating from around 1175: “Me saweth sed on ane time and gedereth thet frut on other time.” (In this and subsequent quotations, we’ve changed the letters eth and thorn to “th.”)

It wasn’t until the 13th century that the word “fruit” took on its reproductive sense, which the OED defines as the “edible product of a plant or tree, consisting of the seed and its envelope.”

The earliest Oxford citation for this new meaning is from the Ancrene Riwle (circa 1225), which refers to a tree that “bereth swete frut.”

Although the Old French noun fruit is the immediate source of our English word, the term is ultimately derived from the Latin verb frui (to enjoy).

The noun “vegetable” (from the post-classical Latin vegetabilia) first showed up in English in the late 15th century, according to OED citations.

The word initially referred to “any living organism that is not an animal,” Oxford says, but it has come to mean “one belonging to the plant kingdom.”

The first OED citation is in a translation from around 1484 of Secretum Secretorium, a medieval treatise on, among other things, astrology, alchemy, and magic:

“Euiry thyng wantyng lyght of the nombyr of vegetabyllis is attribute to Saturne.”

Thanks for catching our mistake and keeping us on our toes. And thanks for giving us a chance to write about these sweet and savory edibles.

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Linguistics Pronunciation Spelling Usage Word origin

What kind of abbreviation is K-9?

Q: I’m curious about the term “K-9” that appears on the doors of LAPD patrol cars that carry dogs. Is there a proper term for this type of word shortening?

A: “K-9” is obviously an abbreviation, because it’s a short form of a longer word, “canine.” But what kind of abbreviation is it?

Two common kinds of abbreviations are the “acronym” and the “initialism,” which differ in the way they’re spoken.

Since acronyms are pronounced as words and initialisms are pronounced as letters, it would appear that “K-9” could be either one. It sounds just like “canine,” and just like the individual characters “K” and 9.”

But in our opinion, it’s technically neither acronym nor initialism.

An acronym, as we’ve written on our blog, is a word formed from elements of a longer word or phrase. But “canine” doesn’t include a “K” or a “9.”

And an initialism, as we’ve also written, is a series of letters formed from a longer word of phrase. But again, “K” and “9” aren’t part of the unabbreviated word.

We seem to be in a special category here. The “K” and the “9” merely echo sounds found in the word “canine” but don’t stand for anything resembling the longer word.

We’ve at times come across the term “pseudo-acronym,” and “K-9” might be one of those.

No dictionaries that we’ve found define “pseudo-acronym,” and there are conflicting definitions on websites. Here’s one from a paper on acronyms published by the US Department of Homeland Security:

“Pseudo-acronym: A catchall for variations and embellishments, such as creating an acronym from other acronyms (IT Acquisition Center—ITAC) or mixing abbreviations and acronyms (deoxyribonucleic acid—DNA) and ignoring words in a series just to make a pronounceable word (Princeton University Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials–PRISM), or pronouncing vowels that are not there (Guantanamo—GTMO, pronounced Gitmo) to coin a word.”

So, according to Homeland Security, you’d be on safe ground if you called “K-9” a pseudo-acronym. It’s definitely a variation or embellishment, and certainly the canines themselves won’t object.

By the way, we usually see “K-9” with a hyphen, but not always. The Los Angeles Police Department, for example, hyphenates the term on patrol cars, but usually drops the hyphen on the home page of its canine unit.

The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t have an entry for “K-9,” but it includes the term in a citation for the noun “superintelligence.”

A Sept. 7, 1950, article in the Olean (NY) Times Herald uses the term in describing military dogs: “Super-intelligence, willingness and reliability under gunfire are requirements for the K-9 Corps.”

We found a similar use of the term in the New York Times. A Jan. 31, 1943, article describes a demonstration at the Westminster Kennel Club’s dog show “by members of the K-9 Corps—dogs now at work with the Army and Coast Guard.”

The Army’s War Dog Program, started by the Quartermaster Corps on March 13, 1942, was popularly referred to as the “K-9 Corps.”

The K-9 Corps undoubtedly helped popularize the term, though the usage was around long before the War Dog Program began.

A search of Google Books, for example, found an 1876 issue of Hallberger’s Illustrated Magazine that refers to “the various ways of rendering ‘Canine Castle,’ such as ‘K-nine Castle,’ and, better still, ‘K.9 Castle.’ ”

(Canine Castle was a kennel in London owned by Bill George, a celebrated 19th-century breeder of bulldogs.)

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Politics Usage Word origin

A humbling victory?

Q: Amid the spate of post-election coverage, a lot of politicians have described their victories as “humbling” experiences. My dictionary doesn’t support this use of “humble.” Is the usage correct?

A: To be “humble” is to be lowered. The word comes down to us from Latin, in which humilem means lowly or insignificant and humus means the ground or earth.

So one is “humbled,” or has a “humbling” experience, when reminded of one’s insignificance or lowliness.

And you’re right—we hear “humble” a lot at the end of election cycles. “Humble” is the opposite of proud, and many successful candidates say they’re “humbled” by the experience, or “proud yet humble” to find they’ve been elected.

This isn’t necessarily a misuse of the word “humble.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) defines the adjective “humble” this way:

“1. Marked by meekness or modesty in behavior, attitude, or spirit; not arrogant or prideful. 2. Showing deferential or submissive respect: a humble apology. 3. Low in rank, quality, or station; unpretentious or lowly: a humble cottage.”

So the use of “humble” by a victorious politician isn’t incorrect, if he means he’s proud of winning yet humbled by the responsibilities of office. But we have to say there’s something disingenuous about this “proud yet humble” formula.

It’s all too easy to call yourself “humble” when you’re on top. In fact, it’s really the loser who’s lowered or humbled, not the winner. But rarely does the loser say he’s been “humbled” by his loss. Such is politics.

The adjective “humble” has been around since about 1250, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. As we said, it means the opposite of proud or exalted—lowly, modest, unpretentious, of low esteem.

It’s often applied to people, as in phrases like “humble folk,” “humble suitor,” and “humble servant.” But it’s applied to things too, as in “humble thanks,” “my humble opinion,” “humble bed,” “humble origins,” “humble abode,” and so on.

The adjective gave rise to the verb “humble,” first recorded in the late 1300s.

The verb first meant “to render oneself humble” or “to assume a humble attitude,” as in bowing or doing obeisance, the OED says.

Later the verb came to mean “to render humble or meek in spirit” or “to cause to think more lowly of oneself,” the OED says.

An example is this passage from Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona (early 1590s): “Love’s a mighty Lord, / And hath so humbled me.”

Another meaning of the verb is “to lower in dignity, position, condition, or degree; to bring low, abase.”

The OED’s first citation for this sense of the word comes from William Caxton’s 1484 translation of Aesop’s Fables: “The prowde shall be allway humbled.”

Another example is from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (1594): “All humbled on your knees.”

If the word “humiliate” occurs to you here, there’s a reason. It has the same Latin ancestry as “humble”—the Latin humilis, which is also derived from humus.

“Humiliate,” first recorded in the 1500s, means to humble or make low, and originally also meant to abase or prostrate oneself.

The earlier noun “humility” (circa 1315) originally meant the quality of being humble, “the opposite of pride or haughtiness,” says the OED.

No winning candidate wants to appear haughty or full of pride—unless of course the pride is leavened by “humility” or a sense of being “humbled.”

But one point is worth making. You can’t feel humbled—that is, brought low—unless you have a rather high opinion of yourself in the first place. This reminds us of an anecdote.

In 1969, the Israeli politician Simcha Dinitz spoke to the New York Times about Golda Meir, who had just become Israel’s Prime Minister: “She is always telling people: ‘Don’t be so humble—you’re not that great.’ ”

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Usage Word origin

Thanks for collocating!

Q: I’m taking an online course in emergency management and I’ve come across the word “collocate” used to mean share, as in, “a Unified Command to collocate facilities.” When I looked the word up, however, this usage seems incorrect. Please educate me!

A: The Oxford English Dictionary defines the verb “collocate” as to set in a place, place side by side, or arrange.

The verb entered English in the 16th century (first recorded in 1548, according to the OED), but its ultimate source is the Latin col- (together) plus locare (to place).

Oxford says a specialized meaning in linguistics showed up in the mid-20th century: “To place (a word) with (another word) so as to form a collocation.”

A “collocation” is a group of two or more words that often appear together: “green” and “envy,” for example, or “blond” and “hair.”

The definitions in the two standard dictionaries we use the most—The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.)—agree with those in the OED.

It would appear that the language used in your emergency management course stretches the meaning a bit.

However, this isn’t all that unusual in the academic world, where educators often prefer a bureaucratic-sounding word like “collocate” to a simple one like “share.”

Thanks for sharing this—or, as the people teaching that course might say, collocating this!

[Note: We’ve written a new post that updates and expands on this item.]

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Usage Word origin

Hypercritical vs. hypocritical

Q: I was reading a posting on the religious blog Patheos about critics who are both “hypercritical” and “hypocritical,” which got me to thinking about those two words. They look like antonyms, but being “hypercritical” isn’t the opposite of being “hypocritical.” Are these terms related?

A: You’re right. The two adjectives aren’t antonyms. Someone who’s “hypercritical” is excessively critical while someone who’s “hypocritical” is insincere. But as that posting suggests, a “hypercritical” person can be “hypocritical.”

Are the words “hypercritical” and “hypocritical” related? Yes, if you go back far enough.

The English prefixes “hyper” and “hypo” are derived from the Greek prepositions hyper (over) and hypo (under). The “critical” part of these words ultimately comes from the classical Greek verb krinein (to judge, decide, etc.).

So someone who’s “hypercritical” is overly judgmental. But why, you’re probably wondering, is a “hypocritical” person insincere?

In ancient Greek, according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, hypokrinesthai meant to play a part, hypokrisis was acting on the stage, and hypokrites was an actor.

How did the classical terms hypo (under) and krinein (to judge) give the Greeks the terms for act, acting, and actor?

The etymology is fuzzy here, but one possibility is that the Greeks recognized that actors had to subordinate their own judgment to play a role.

Now how did hypokrisis, the Greek term for acting, give English “hypocrisy,” a negative word for professing beliefs you don’t really have?

It turns out that in classical times hypokrisis also had an unpleasant odor to it, according to Chambers. In addition to meaning acting, the term referred to pretense and dissimulation—that is, insincerity.

Check out our books about the English language

Categories
English English language Etymology Usage Word origin

Doing the math on “aftermath”

Q: We were watching the news the other morning when the title card on the screen said “Sandy Aftermath.” My husband turned to me and asked: “Does the ‘math’ in ‘aftermath’ have anything to do with mathematics?” Could you enlighten us?

A: The “math” that’s part of “aftermath” is an entirely different noun from the one in “mathematics.” In fact, they came into English from two different routes—one from old Germanic sources and the other from Latin.

“Aftermath” got its start as an agricultural term associated with mowing. You might say its literal meaning is “after-mowing.”

The word entered the language in the 15th century as a compound of the prefix “after-” plus the noun “math,” which once meant a mowing or the portion of a crop that’s been mowed.

This sense of “math” is very old, dating back to Old English and beyond, to ancient Germanic sources.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the Old Saxon word maddag meant mowing day, and the Old High German mada is ultimately from the same Germanic base that gave us the word “mow.”

When first recorded in writing in the late 1400s, the OED says, “aftermath” meant “a second crop or new growth of grass (or occas. another plant used as feed) after the first has been mown or harvested.”

This example from 1601 is a good illustration of its use: “The grasse will be so high growne, that a man may cut it down and have a plentifull after-math for hay.” (From Philemon Holland’s translation of Pliny’s Natural History.)

The agricultural sense of “aftermath” has survived into modern times, as illustrated by this citation from Heather Smith Thomas’s book Getting Started With Beef and Dairy Cattle (2005): “They can’t graze cornfield aftermath where herbicides or pesticides were used.”

But today “aftermath” is more familiar in its figurative sense, defined by the OED as “a period or state of affairs following a significant event, esp. when that event is destructive or harmful.”

The figurative usage dates back to the mid-17th century. The OED’s earliest citation is from Robert Fletcher’s 1656 translation of Martial’s Ex Otio Negotium: “Rash Lover speak what pleasure hath Thy Spring in such an Aftermath?”

Here’s another figurative example, from the writer David Hartley Coleridge’s Essays and Marginalia (1851): “The aftermath of the great rebellion.”

We know you’re still wondering about the other “math,” the one that’s about numbers. This “math,” first recorded in 1847, is an American short form of “mathematics.” The British shortened form, “maths,” was first recorded in 1911.

The long form, “mathematics,” was first recorded in the mid-16th century, according to the OED, and developed from the earlier adjective “mathematic,” which dates from the 1300s.

Originally, as the OED says, “mathematics” was a collective term for “geometry, arithmetic, and certain physical sciences involving geometrical reasoning, such as astronomy and optics.”

Later it came to mean “the science of space, number, quantity, and arrangement, whose methods involve logical reasoning and usually the use of symbolic notation, and which includes geometry, arithmetic, algebra, and analysis.” To most of us, that means numbers.

We owe “mathematics” to Latin (mathematica), which got it from Greek (mathematikos). The Greek is derived from the noun mathema (science, learning, knowledge) which is related to the verb manthanein (to learn). The word “polymath” (a person of great and varied learning) has a similar Greek etymology.

As John Ayto writes in his Dictionary of Word Origins, etymologically the word “mathematics” means “something learned.” He points out that “from earliest times the notion of ‘science’”—mathema in Greek—“was bound up with that of ‘numerical reasoning.’”

The ultimate source of the Greek mathematikos, according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, is an ancient Indo-European compound reconstructed as mens-dhe.

The first element means mind and the second means direct or toward, so the compound means “direct the mind (toward),” Chambers says.

This compound, the dictionary adds, has filtered down into many languages, including Sanskrit (medha, wisdom) and Avestan (mazda, memory). In case you’re wondering, Avestan is the language of Zoroastrian scripture.

Check out our books about the English language