Tag: Word origin

Q: Here in Colorado all the TV stations are following a devastating wildfire in the town of Superior. But like Ogden Nash’s language-obsessed Professor Twist, I’m wondering why we have the comparatives “superior” and “inferior,” but not an in-between one like “medior.”

A: True, there’s no comparative adjective “medior” along the lines of “superior” and “inferior.” The closest adjective we can think of would be “mediocre” (middling, average), but it’s not a comparative like the “-ior” adjectives—and no, we don’t recommend “mediocrer.” (We’ll have something to say later about Professor Twist.)

There are English words formed with “medio-,” a combining element derived from the classical Latin medius (middle), but they’re not comparatives. And they’re used only in botany, zoology, and medicine (as in “mediodorsal,” “mediocarpal,” etc.).

If a comparative “medior” did exist, it would be a blend of “medio-” and the suffix “-ior.” But evidently English, sensible language that it is, doesn’t need a word that would mean “more average.”

When we examine comparative adjectives like “superior,” we’re looking at a very simple kind of word. Sometimes there’s no real stem, just a prefix (“super-”) and a suffix (“-ior”).

Words like this have been simple from the beginning. The English suffix “-ior” represents the “Latin -ior of comparatives,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

So, for example, the classical Latin adjective superior, from which the English word was borrowed, was the comparative form of superus (upper), derived from super (above).

Similar formations are “inferior,” “interior,” “exterior,” “senior,” “junior,” and “ulterior.” That last one, unlike the others, doesn’t have an opposite.

We’ve already given the Latin etymology of “superior,” which was first recorded in English some time before 1393. Here are the sources of the others, along with the earliest dates given in the OED:

• “inferior” (probably 1387): from the Latin adjective inferior (lower), the comparative form of inferus (low).
• “interior” (1490): from the Latin adjective interior (inner), comparative of the preposition and adverb inter (among, between, etc.).
• “exterior” (before 1538): from the Latin adjective exterior (outer), comparative of exter and exterus (outside, outward), derived from ex (out of).  A related English prefix, “extra-”  (situated outside of), is from the Latin preposition and adverb extra (beyond, outside of).
• “junior” (1606): from the Latin junior (younger), the comparative form of juvenis (young).
• “senior” (probably 1397): from the Latin senior (older), the comparative form of senex (old).
• “ulterior” (1646): from the Latin ulterior (more distant), comparative of an unrecorded Latin adjective reconstructed as ulter (distant), a relative of ultra (beyond), which is the source of our English prefix “ultra-.”

The “-ior” suffix in English, the OED says, was formerly spelled “-iour,” equivalent to the French -ieur, seen in supérieur, inférieur, intérieur, extérieur, and ultérieur.

As for the pronunciation of “-ior” comparatives, Oxford says the “primary stress is usually attracted to the syllable immediately preceding this suffix and vowels may be reduced accordingly.”

For instance, the word “super” is stressed on the first syllable, but in the comparative “superior,” the stress is on the second. In addition, the sound of the vowel “e” in “super” changes in “superior.”

Getting back to your question, one can indeed obsess too much about language, like Professor Twist in Ogden Nash’s poem “The Purist.”

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist,
Trustees exclaimed, “He never bungles!”
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
“You mean,” he said, “a crocodile.”

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Q: Some readers may enjoy your take on the difference between “different” and “disparate.” This sentence from a recent New York Times does not sit well with me: “Two similarly titled papers with markedly disparate conclusions illustrate the range of disagreement on this subject.”

A: We think the use of “disparate” can be justified in that Oct. 20, 2021, opinion column by Thomas B. Edsall.

He discusses two scholarly papers that concluded for “markedly disparate” reasons that conservatives were on the whole happier than liberals. (As Edsall writer later, that’s questionable.)

“Disparate” is generally a much stronger word than “different.” Traditionally, it means that there are no common grounds for comparison. And that seems to be true of the two papers’ explanations for the so-called happiness gap between conservatives and liberals.

We won’t attempt to summarize the explanations, since this isn’t a blog about politics or sociology; we’ll simply say that they don’t lend themselves to comparison. Their reasons aren’t merely “different” in the simplest sense of that word (like apples and oranges, which are both fruits). And they aren’t opposites, since things that are opposite are correlated—that is, they have a relationship.

The Oxford English Dictionary notes that in logic “disparate” applies to “things or concepts having no obvious common ground or genus in which they are correlated.”

The dictionary adds that “disparate” is “distinguished from contrary, since contrary things are at least correlated in pairs, e.g. good and bad.” And it’s “also distinguished from disjunct, since disjunct concepts may all be reduced to a common kind.”

The OED is an etymological dictionary based on historical evidence, and its entry for “disparate” may be outdated (it has no examples later than 1883). Nevertheless, its principal definition—“essentially different or diverse in kind”— largely agrees with those in most current standard dictionaries. Here’s a representative sampling, from two British and two American sources:

Lexico: “Essentially different in kind; not allowing comparison … Containing elements very different from one another.”

Collins: “Disparate things are clearly different from each other in quality or type … A disparate thing is made up of very different elements.”

American Heritage: “Fundamentally distinct or different in kind; entirely dissimilar … Containing or composed of dissimilar or opposing elements.”

Merriam-Webster: “markedly distinct in quality or character … containing or made up of fundamentally different and often incongruous elements.”

M-W adds in a synonym note that “different may imply little more than separateness but it may also imply contrast or contrariness,” as in “different foods.” But “disparate emphasizes incongruity or incompatibility,” as in “disparate notions of freedom.”

As for the etymology, the OED says that “disparate” came into English in the early 17th century from the Latin disparatus (“separated, divided”), past participle of the verb disparare (“to separate, divide”). The Latin verb was formed from the prefix dis- (in the sense of “in twain, in different directions, apart”) and the verb parare (“to make ready, prepare, provide, contrive, etc.”).

In English use, the dictionary adds, “disparate” is “apparently often associated with Latin dispar unequal, unlike, different.” However, only one of the ten standard dictionaries we consult, Webster’s New World College Dictionary (5th ed.), includes “unequal” among its definitions. That sense of “disparate” seems to be found mostly in legal language, as in “disparate treatment,” a phrase often used in discrimination cases.

The OED’s earliest example of the adjective in written English is from a sermon delivered on Nov. 5, 1608, by John King, Bishop of London: “Two disperate species and sorts of men.”

And this is the latest citation: “The questions are so utterly disparate as not to be reducible to the same argument” (Frederic Harrison, writing in The Pall Mall Gazette, Nov. 3, 1883).

A noun form, used chiefly in the plural, was recorded a couple of decades earlier than the adjective. The OED defines “disparates” as “disparate things, words, or concepts; things so unlike that they cannot be compared with each other.”

Oxford’s earliest example is from Timothy Bright’s A Treatise of Melancholie (1586): “Contrary faculties, or such as we call disparates in logicke.”

Like “disparate,” the much older adjective “different” has its roots in Latin. And as we’ll explain, it’s often used today in ways that overlap “disparate.”

It can be traced ultimately to the classical Latin verb differre (to differ), derived from ferre (to bear or carry) plus dif-, a prefix used instead of dis- before a verb beginning with “f.”

To the Romans, the OED says, differre had many meanings: “to carry away in different directions, to scatter, disperse, to separate, to bewilder, distract, to spread abroad, publish, to postpone, defer, to keep (someone) waiting,” as well as “to be different, to disagree.”

The earliest sense of “different” that’s still used in modern English, according to the dictionary, is “unlike in nature, form, or quality; not of the same kind; dissimilar,” a sense not unlike “disparate.” This use of “different” was first recorded in the late 14th century and is still quite common now.

Two other uses of “different” are also current today: (1) “distinct; separate; other” (mid-16th century), used in reference to “two or more separate people or things of the same type, rather than two or more things which differ in nature, form, or quality”; and (2) “out of the ordinary, unusual; other than is expected; novel” (mid-19th century).

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Q: The other day one of my students asked me why a segment of a journey is called a “leg.” I didn’t have an answer. Could it be because distance was once measured in leagues, and someone misheard “league” as “leg”?

A: Many English words have literal meanings as well as figurative ones fashioned from them. The noun “leg” originally referred to one of the two long limbs that we stand or walk on, but it has taken on many metaphorical senses over the years.

For example, it may refer to something that covers a human leg (like a pants leg, 1558), or functions as a human leg (a furniture leg, 1616), or serves as a part of something else (a leg of a relay race, 1933). And in the plural, it may describe something popular with staying power (a show with legs, 1930). The dates are for the earliest citations of the senses in the Oxford English Dictionary.

When “leg” is used in the journey sense, according to the OED, it refers to “a part or section of something,” specifically “a distinct stage or stretch.” The dictionary’s earliest written example uses the term nautically for “the course and distance sailed on a single tack”:

“The Swash was under what Mrs. Budd might have called her ‘attacking’ canvas, and was close by the wind, looking on a good leg well up the harbor” (Graham’s Magazine, December 1846).

When English borrowed the word “leg” from early Scandinavian languages (lägger in Old Swedish, leggr in Old Icelandic, leg in Old Danish), it meant “the lower limb of the human body, or the part of the lower limb between the hip and the ankle,” the OED says.

The dictionary’s earliest example, which we’ve expanded, is from Layamon’s Brut, a chronicle of Britain written in Middle English sometime before 1200:

“hii ȝogede hire harmes and greiþede ham-seolue breost wiþ breost bones þar crakede hii soten hire legges þe kempes weren stronge” (“They yoked their arms and crushed themselves breast to breast. Their bones cracked. They thrust out their legs. The warriors struggled fiercely”).

In the struggle, the Trojan warrior Corineus defeats the giant Gogmagog. The clash ends a battle between a group of giants and a Trojan force led by Brutus of Troy, a legendary founder of Britain.

So how did English speakers refer to their legs before the word “leg” appeared in the 12th century? The Anglo-Saxons used the word “shank” (sceanca, scanca, or scance in Old English), a noun that could mean the whole leg or just the lower part, from the knee to the ankle.

The earliest example we’ve seen for “shank” used to mean a leg is from Old English Martyrology, a collection of the lives of saints and other religious figures, written in the second half of the ninth century:

This passage is from the life of St. Victor Maurus, a Christian Moor said to have been tortured and beheaded in 303 on orders of the Roman Emperor Maximian (circa 250-310). Victor is speaking here to the guards taking him to his execution:

“cwæð he to þæm þe hine lædon secgað ge maximiane þæm casere þæt he bið to geare dead ond him beoð þa scancan forbrocen hæfdon ær þon he sy bebyrged” (“Then he said to those who were escorting him, tell Emperor Maximian that he will be dead within a year, and that his legs will be crushed before he will be buried”). Maximian retired to a life of luxury in 305, but he hanged himself five years later after being defeated in a rebellion against Emperor Constantine.

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Q: I’m wondering about the use of the expression “don’t badger me” to mean don’t bother me, a usage that may have a different connotation in Madison, home of the University of Wisconsin Badgers.

A: As you may suspect, the verb “badger,” meaning to pester, comes from the noun “badger,” for the mammal that’s fierce when attacked. The pestering sense of the verb is probably derived from the human baiting of badgers as a blood sport.

The European badger (Meles meles) was common in Anglo-Saxon England, but it wasn’t called a “badger” until the early Modern English of the 16th century, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary.

In Old English and Middle English, the word for the animal was a term of Celtic origin, spelled broc, brok, brock, etc. (In The Tale of Mr. Tod, a children’s book by Beatrix Potter, a badger named Tommy Brock is the arch enemy of Mr. Tod, a fox.)

So how did the animal come to be called a “badger”? The OED says the name probably comes the noun “badge” and is “so called with reference to the white mark borne like a badge on its forehead.” The word “badge” originally referred to a heraldic symbol worn to identify a knight and his retainers.

The earliest OED citation for the noun “badger,” which we’ve expanded, refers to the “propertyes … of a bauson or a badger” and cites “a whyte rase [slash] or a ball in the foreheed.” (From The Book of Husbandry, 1523, by John Fitzherbert.) The word “bauson” is an archaic, French-inspired term for a badger.

The verb appeared more than two and a half centuries later. The dictionary defines it as “to bait, hound; to subject to persistent harassment or persecution; to pester, bother.”

The OED says the meaning is “probably with allusion to baiting or drawing of badgers by humans,” though it notes “the supposed tenacity of a badger in biting until its teeth met.”

The dictionary’s first citation for the verb, which we’ve also expanded, is from a critical description of the Académie Française, the official authority on the French language:

“Paris is the only place where it can support any kind of consequence; though, even there, sorely badgered by the wits of the capital, who, expecting neither favour nor friendship, point all their epigrammatical batteries against their members.” (From Paris in Miniature, 1782, Joseph P. Macmahon’s translation of Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s Le Tableau de Paris.)

The OED includes a mid-19th-century naturalist’s explanation of the verb: “A ‘brock’ … led such a persecuted life, that to ‘badger’ a man came to be the strongest possible term for irritating, persecuting, and injuring him in every way.” (From Sketches and Anecdotes of Animal Life, 1855, by the Rev. John George Wood.)

We’ll end with a picture of Bucky the Badger, the fierce-faced mascot of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Badgers:

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Q: When a friend, a fourth-generation Maine islander, likes something, he says, “Well, that’s not too rusty.” I always assumed it was just him, but I recently reread Huckleberry Finn, where a hungover duo is “looking pretty rusty.” Is this an Americanism or does it go farther back? I’ve always thought of rusty as strictly having to do with old iron.

A: English speakers have used “rusty” figuratively since the Middle Ages to describe the appearance, morals, refinement, or fitness of people. And we still often use the adjective in figurative senses derived from its original use for the coating on oxidized iron and its alloys.

For example, if your knowledge or skill is impaired by lack of practice, you might say your tennis or typing or constitutional law or Mandarin is rusty. Something that’s the color of rusting metal—hair, leaves, fur, a sunset—may be described as rusty. And a hoarse or grating voice is sometimes said to be rusty.

The noun “rust,” as you may imagine, is very old. When it showed up in early Old English writing, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it meant a “red, orange, or yellowish-brown substance which forms progressively as a flaking, permeable coating on the surface of iron and its alloys as a result of oxidation, esp. through exposure to air and moisture.”

The dictionary’s earliest example is from an eighth-century Latin-Old English glossary: “Erugo, rust” (Corpus Glossary, MS 144, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge).

The OED’s next citation is from a Latin-Old English version of Matthew 6:19 in the Lindisfarne Gospels: “In terra ubi aerugo et tinea demolitur: in eorðo ðer uel huer rust & mohða g[e]freten bið uel gespilled bið” (OE translation: “On earth where rust and moth corrode or devour”). The manuscript was written in Latin around 700. A scribe added an Old English gloss, or translation, in the 900s.

The adjective “rusty” also showed up in Anglo-Saxon times. It’s written as rustega in the dictionary’s earliest Old English example: “Þa wurdon Ianes dura fæste betyned & his loca rustega, swa hie næfre ær næron” (“Then the gates of Janus were shut fast and their locks became rusty as never before”). In ancient times, the doors at the Temple of Janus in the Roman Forum were closed in times of peace and opened in wartime.

Getting back to your question, “rusty” began taking on figurative senses in the 1300s, when the term could mean physically decrepit or morally corrupt. The OED’s earliest citation for the decrepit sense is from Chaucer’s Middle English translation of an Old French allegorical poem:

“Ful hidous was she forto sene / Ful foule and Rusty was she” (“Full hideous was she to the sight / Full foul and rusty was she”). From Fragment A of The Romaunt of the Rose, a translation, believed done by Chaucer in the 1360s, of the first part of Le Roman de la Rose (circa 1230), by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun.

The dictionary’s earliest citation for the morally corrupt sense of “rusty” is from William Langland’s Piers Plowman (1378). In the allegorical poem, Piers says he won’t hire “Robert þe Ribaudour [the tale-teller] for his Rousti wordes.”

Over the years, “rusty” has been used figuratively to describe many other things, including something that’s rust colored (late 1300s), writing that’s rough or unsophisticated (c. 1425), a grating sound or hoarse voice (c. 1430), someone lacking polish or refinement (1456), physical or mental impairment because of age or inactivity (perhaps 1507), something that’s old-fashioned or obsolete (1549), and knowledge or accomplishment impaired by disuse (1575).

Some of those senses are rare or obsolete today, but contemporary standard dictionaries say “rusty” can now refer to something that’s rust-colored, to knowledge or skill impaired by lack of recent practice, to someone who’s stiff with age or inactivity, and to a hoarse or croaking voice.

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Q: What are your thoughts about “gravitas” and its overuse in recent election cycles?

A: This pompous word for “seriousness” or “solemnity” sounds ancient, but “gravitas” has only been an English word since the late 19th century. As you’ve noticed, though, it’s become ubiquitous lately.

In fact, “gravitas” has been worked to death. You might say that among certain classes of writers, “gravitas” carries a lot of weight. It seems especially popular in criticism (literary, artistic, etc.) as well as in writing about politics and culture.

A search with Google’s Ngram viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books, shows that its use has shot up steeply since the mid-1980s, charting an almost vertical climb.

But there are signs that the word is showing some wear. In the last couple of years, the chart shows, its use has leveled off and may have peaked.

What’s more, writers have started giving it modifiers—“epic gravitas,” “monumental gravitas,” “enormous gravitas,” “great gravitas,” “tremendous gravitas”—as if mere “gravitas” alone is losing its cachet. Our suspicion is that “gravitas” will eventually sink of its own weight.

The word as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary means “weighty dignity; reverend seriousness; serious or solemn conduct or demeanour befitting a ceremony, an office, etc.; staidness.” But by the mid-20th century it was used more widely to mean “seriousness or sobriety (of conduct, bearing, speech, temperament, etc.); opposed to levity and gaiety.”

And it doesn’t always refer to people and their behavior. Here’s the current definition in Merriam-Webster: “high seriousness (as in a person’s bearing or in the treatment of a subject).”

As for its etymology, the noun was borrowed in the late 1800s from the Latin gravitas, which primarily meant weight in its physical sense, but was also used figuratively to mean weightiness or seriousness. The noun comes from the Latin adjective gravis (heavy, important).

It’s interesting that the word “gravity” itself, which came into English in 1509, first meant seriousness or solemnity. It was “introduced in figurative senses, corresponding generally to the English senses of the adjective [grave],” the OED says. “The primary physical sense of the Latin word came into English first in the 17th cent.”

Similarly, when “gravitas” first appeared in English writing in the late 19th century (usually italicized), it had the figurative rather than the literal meaning of its Latin ancestor.

Initially, English speakers may have used “gravitas” as a substitute for the serious meaning of “gravity,” which by then was commonly used in its scientific sense.

In its earliest uses, both American and British, “gravitas” referred to a character trait admired by the Romans.

The oldest use we’ve found is from a humorous poem: “The gravitas that marked a Roman / Methinks will never find a home in / Our versatile and jovial Harry” (from The Epitome, 1887, an annual publication by students at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA).

The next appeared in London: “He is a man exceptionally endowed with that gravitas which the Romans used so much to desiderate in character” (St James’s Gazette, March 18, 1897).

And this early 20th-century example is from an American magazine: “But many of these have what President Roosevelt has not—namely, that noble old Roman virtue, gravitas” (Current Literature, November 1904).

The OED’s earliest citation is mid-1920s British: “He never sheds a certain Roman gravitas” (The Manchester Guardian Weekly, Oct. 20, 1924).

And we found this example from that same year in an Australian newspaper’s eulogy for a headmaster: “When, indeed, did anyone … embody such gravitas, such dignity, such fortitude, such independence, such justice, such contempt for all that is unworthy and dishonourable? Temperamentally he was more an antique Roman than an Englishman” (The Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, Queensland, Dec. 30, 1924).

Only since the mid-20th century has “gravitas” been applied to serious things and ideas rather than to people. These two OED citations illustrate the wider use of the term:

“A certain gravitas in the atmosphere of the Scottish universities” (The Spectator, May 30, 1958) … “Its leading articles, and even its news coverage, will have a superb Victorian gravitas” (The Times, London, Aug. 2, 1961).

The noun, which is almost never italicized today, is only the latest in a long list of English words derived from the Latin adjective gravis and its prehistoric source—an ancient Indo-European root reconstructed as gwerə– (heavy).

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (2nd ed.), by Calvert Watkins, says the root gwerə– produced not only the Latin gravis but also the Sanskrit element guru- (heavy, venerable), the Greek words βαρύς (barus, heavy) and βάρος (baros, weight), the Latin brutus (heavy, cumbersome), and the Celtic elements brig-o- (strength) and brig-a- (strife).

These eventually gave English the words “grief,” “grieve,” “gravid,” “guru,” “aggravate,” “aggrieve,” “baritone,” “barium,” “isobar,” “brio,” “brigade,” “brigand,” and “brigantine,” in addition to “gravity,” “gravitas,” and the adjective “grave.”

And by the way, the noun “grave,” for a burial place, has entirely different origins. Its prehistoric source is an Indo-European root reconstructed as ghrebh- (dig, bury, scratch), according to Watkins. Ancient Germanic descendants of this root ultimately gave English not only the noun “grave” but also “engrave,” “gravure,” “groove,” the adjective “graven,” and the verb “grub.”

Thus the two English words “grave,” both of which have an air or solemnity, came into the language from different directions.

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Q: I came across the following passage in the The New Yorker from a 1949 diary entry by Patricia Highsmith:  “I came home in a silent, pent fury.”  It made me wonder if “spent” and “pent” are related—a letting go and a holding in. Thoughts?

A: No, “spent,” the past tense and past participle of the verb “spend,” isn’t etymologically related to the adjective “pent” (more commonly “pent-up”), which originated as the past participle of the verb “pen” (to enclose or confine).

The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology says “spend” is ultimately derived from the classical Latin verb expendere (to weigh out or pay out). In Old English, it was aspendan (to spend, spend entirely, squander) or more frequently forspendan (to spend utterly, spend away, exhaust with spending).

The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest example of an Anglo-Saxon version of “spend” is from the Old English Orosius, an anonymous ninth-century translation of a Latin history written in the fifth century. The citation is in the OED’s entry for the obsolete verb “aspend”:

“Hys gestréon béoð þus eall aspended” (“His wealth was thus all spent”). The manuscript is believed to have been written in the late 800s during the reign of King Alfred. The writer took many liberties in translating the Latin of Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII (History Against the Pagans in Seven Books), written in the early 400s by the Roman historian Paulus Orosius.

As for “pent,” Chambers describes it as a variant spelling of “penned,” the past participle of the verb “pen” (to confine someone or something). The verb, in turn, is derived from the noun “pen” (an enclosure), which is of uncertain origin but possibly Germanic.

The noun first appeared in Anglo-Saxon land charters, but it’s often hard to date the early examples because pen in Old English could mean an enclosure or a hill. The earliest OED example “positively identified” as an enclosure is from a 1227 copy of a 1061 land grant:

“Þonne adun onstream oð rean clif, þanon oð hæð pen suþewardne on þone holan stoc” (“then downstream to the cliff, thence to the heath pen and southward to the hollow place”). From Pre-Conquest Charter-Bounds of Devon and Cornwall (1994), by Della Hooke.

The verb “pen” apparently existed in Old English as pennian, but only a negative version has survived in writing, onpennian (to “open,” which etymologically is to un-pen).

The OED’s earliest onpennian example, which we’ve expanded, is from Pastoral Care, King Alfred’s late ninth-century translation of Liber Regulae Pastoralis, a sixth-century Latin treatise by Pope Gregory. The past participle onpennad is used here:

“Ðæt wæter, ðonne hit bið gepynd, hit miclað & uppað & fundað wið ðæs ðe hit ær from com, ðonne hit flowan ne mot ðider hit wolde. Ac gif sio pynding wierð onpennad, oððe sio wering wirð tobrocen, ðonne toflewð hit eall” (“The water, when it is dammed up and cannot flow where it wants, grows and rises and tries to go where it originally intended. But if the dam is opened, or the weir bursts, it all runs off”).

The dictionary’s first written citation for “pen” used as a verb meaning “to enclose, shut in, confine, or trap (a person or thing)” is in Middle English, from a sermon written sometime before 1200:

“Þe pit tineð his muð ouer þe man þe lið on fule synnen … gif ure ani is þus forswolgen and þus penned, clupe we to ure louerd ihesu crist” (“The pit closes its mouth over the man who lies down on foul sins … and if any of us are thus swallowed and penned, let us call upon Our Lord Jesus  Christ”). From Old English Homilies of the Twelfth Century (1873), edited by Richard Morris.

The OED’s earliest example for “pent” used as an adjective in the sense of “penned” is from a pseudo-Chaucerian text: “He nas nat alway in cloystre ypent” (“He was not always pent in a cloister”). From the Plowman’s Prologue, added to a 1542 edition of Chaucer’s works.

Finally, the dictionary’s first example for “pent-up” appeared a dozen years later: “Yea as a capon longe pent vp in the caue [cave] / Exiled haue I bene miserably.” From The Resurreccion of the Masse (1554), a collection of religious poems by Hughe Hilarie, thought by some scholars to be a pseudonym for John Bale, an English dramatist and Protestant polemicist.

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Q: I’m a mom with an almost 2-year-old son. One of his favorite games is peek-a-boo. With Halloween coming up, I wonder if there’s any connection between the “boo” to scare someone and the “boo” in “peek-a-boo.”

A: Yes, there is a connection between the “boo” used to scare people on Halloween and the “boo” in the children’s game “peekaboo,” a term now usually written without hyphens.

The word for the game is a compound made of the verb “peek,” the combining form “-a-,” and an exclamation (variously spelled over the years as “bo,” “boe,” “boh,” “boo,” and “bough”) intended to surprise or frighten someone.

The exclamation was spelled “bo” when it first appeared in writing in the 16th century (it was certainly used much earlier in speech). The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest citation, which we’ve expanded, is from an anonymous medieval tale of a blacksmith who fashions a woman at his forge. Here he asks her to speak and say “bo”:

“Speke now let me se, / And say ones bo / Than he toke her by the heed / And sayd dame art thou deed” (A Treatyse of the Smyth Whych That Forged Hym a New Dame, 1565). Scholars say the poem was composed around 1360; the OED’s 1565 citation is from the most complete copy known to exist.

The dictionary’s earliest example of the exclamation clearly used in its scary sense is from a long poem inspired by London’s plague of 1625: “When a child cryes boh / To fright his Nurse” (from Britain’s Remembrancer, 1628, by George Wither, an English pamphleteer, satirist, and poet).

And here’s an example with the usual modern spelling: “Boo is a word that’s used in the North of Scotland to frighten crying Children” (from The Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, 1692, by J. Curate, a pseudonym).

The OED defines the compound “peekaboo” as “a game played with a young child which involves hiding oneself, or one’s face, and suddenly reappearing, saying ‘peekaboo.’ ” However, the OED’s earliest written example uses the term figuratively. Here a wife dismisses her husband’s romantic overtures as child’s play:

“I’le lay my life this is my hus­bands dotage, I thought so, nay neuer play peeke-boe with me, I know you do nothing but studie how to anger me sir” (The Comicall Satyre of Every Man Out of His Humor, 1600, a play by Ben Jonson).

Undoubtedly, the term was used literally to mean the game itself in speech long before 1600. However, the dictionary’s first literal example in writing is from a 19th-century novel about an orphan girl who unravels the mystery of her parentage:

“Little Nina, grown more bold climbed up beside him, and poised upon one foot, her fat arm resting on his neck, played ‘peek-a-boo’ beneath the shade, screaming at every ‘peek,’ ‘I seen your eyes, I did’ ” (Darkness and Daylight, an 1864 novel by the American writer Mary Jane Holmes).

The word “boo” has had several other meanings since it first appeared (in the form of “bo”) as “an inarticulate spoken sound or exclamation, esp. one made abruptly in order to surprise or frighten,” according to citations in the OED.

The most common is “a sound used to express disdain, contempt, disapproval,” as in this Oxford example: “I’ve heard the folks laugh at that sign; And one crie boo: another chuckled” (from Poor Vulcan, 1778, a comic opera by the English composer and dramatist Charles Dibdin).

Similarly, the dictionary says, “peekaboo” has had a variety of senses since it first showed up in writing at the beginning of the 17th century.

The senses include clothes with a pattern of holes that let the wearer’s body be seen (1895 as an adjective; 1908 as a noun); a hairstyle that conceals one eye (1948, adjective; 1968, noun); and a fighting style in which the boxer protects his face with gloves, then suddenly delivers a surprise punch (1960, adjective).

Finally, here’s a recent example that we’ve found for “peekaboo” used in its original sense of a children’s game:

“Peekaboo is a game played over the world, crossing language and cultural barriers. Why is it so universal? Perhaps because it’s such a powerful learning tool” (from an April 17, 2014,  BBC feature, “Why all babies love peekaboo”).

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Q: At fashion shows, one who sews is invariably referred to as a “seamstress,” though men sometimes do the job. Similarly, one who helps a woman in childbirth is a “midwife” (feminine as in the French sage-femme), though some are men. Any thoughts?

A: The original term for someone who sews was “seamster” (spelled sæmestre, seamystre, semestr, etc., in Old English), and it referred to men as well as women for hundreds of years—until “seamstress” appeared in the 17th century.

As for “midwife,” it’s not a gendered term (unlike its French counterpart, sage-femme). When midwif appeared in Middle English, mid meant “with” and wif meant woman, as we note in a 2016 post. So etymologically “midwife” refers to someone (usually a woman, but not always) who is “with” a woman giving birth. We’ll have more to say about “midwife” later, but first a look at “seamstress.”

The Oxford English Dictionary describes “seamster” as “originally a designation of a woman, but in Old English already applicable to a man.” The earliest OED example, which we’ve expanded, is from a will, dated around 995, in which a woman named Wynflæd beqeathes two female slaves to her granddaughter Eadgyfe:

“Hio becweđ Eadgyfe ane crencestræn and ane semestran” (“She bequeathes to Eadgyfe a weaver and a seamster”). From Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici (1839-48), edited by John Mitchell Kemble. The term semestran is the accusative (direct object) of seamystre, and crencestræn is the accusative of crencestre.

The first OED citation for “seamstress,” which we’ve expanded, is from a 1643 treatise about the early days of the English Civil War of 1642-51: “a great masse of money and plate, was brought into the Guild-Hall, the Semstresse brought in her silver Thimble, the Chamber maid her Bodkin, the Cook his Spoones” (Twelve Several Treatises, 1661, by James Howell, a supporter of Charles I and Charles II).

Several gender-free nouns have shown up over the years for someone who sews, including “tailor” (1297), “sewer” (1399), “needleworker” (1611), and “sewist” (1867). The dates are the first appearances in the OED.

“Tailor” and “needleworker” refer to someone who sews for business, while “sewist” usually means someone who sews as a hobby. We’ve seen “sewer” used both ways, though some people are reluctant to use it because it’s spelled the same as the conduit for sewage. We wrote a post a few years ago on “sewer” versus “sewist.”

The two of us generally use gender-free occupational nouns (“actor,” “author,” “editor,” etc.) for men and women. But the goal of language is communicating. And we’re willing to make exceptions if the people we’re communicating with expect a gendered term.

So in discussing the winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress, we’d use “actress,” and in talking about a female sewer (pronounced SOH-er) for a fashion show, we’d use “seamstress,” the usual term for a woman who sews professionally.

However, language changes, and these usages may soon go the way of “authoress” and “editrix.” We wrote a post in 2018 about the history of “stewardess” and other “-ess” words.

As for “midwife,” the noun first appeared around 1300 in Middle English as a compound of the Old English mid and wif. The earliest citation in the OED is from a Middle English life, or story, of St. Edmund the Confessor:

“Þe mide-wyues him wolden habbe i-bured, ac þe moder seide euere nay” (“The midwives would have buried him, but the mother said ever nay”). From The Early South-English Legendary (1887), edited by Carl Horstmann, a collection of the lives of saints and other church figures.

Although a “midwife” is usually a woman who helps women give birth, the term has also been used since at least the 17th century in reference to men. The OED says the men were originally referred to as “man-midwives” and “were called on to help female midwives only in cases of difficult births.”

The man-midwives were barber-surgeons who used surgical instruments like forceps “in a desperate attempt to save the life of the birthing woman,” Deanna Pilkenton and Mavis N. Schornon write in “Midwifery: A Career for Men in Nursing,” a February 2008 article on the website of the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing.

The first OED citation for the term is from a play, The Whore of Babylon (1607), by the Elizabethan dramatist Thomas Dekker: “Why they are certaine men-midwiues, that neuer bring people to bed, but when they are sore in labour, that no body els can deliuer them.”

And here’s a description of a difficult 17th-century birth that we’ve found in Aristotle’s Masterpiece: Or, the Secrets of Generation, an anonymous 1694 sex manual:

“In case of Extremity, greater regard must be had than at other times; and first of all, the Situation of the Womb, and her posture of lying, must be cross the Bed, being held by such as have the strength to prevent her from slipping down, or moving her self in the operation of the Man-Midwife, or the Chyrurgeon [surgeon].”

The man-midwife of the 17th century, sometimes referred to as a “forceps man,” was “the predecessor of the obstetrician,” according to Pilkenton and Schornon:

“Female childbirth attendants, largely excluded from educational institutions (and thereby prohibited from using surgical instruments), would remain practicing empirical midwifery. Hence, midwifery and obstetrics would be divided along gender and philosophical lines for many years to come.”

Today, “women have overcome many barriers to practicing medicine and now make up a large proportion of obstetricians,” the authors say, but men now comprise only “a minuscule number” of midwives.

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Q: I know it is relatively new, but please fill me in on the origins of the literary term “faction.”

A: The genre known as “faction,” which in its meaning and etymology is a blend of “fact” and “fiction,” apparently got its name in 1930.

The earliest use we’ve found is in Hugo Gernsback’s essay “Science Fiction vs. Science Faction,” published in the fall 1930 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly, which he then owned.

In the text, Gernsback uses “faction” six times, italicizing it, and says he coined the word. Here’s how he introduces the term.

Jules Verne, he says, “knew how to use fact and combine it with fiction. In time to come, also, our authors will make a marked distinction between science fiction and science faction, if I may coin such a term.”

He later writes: “In sharp counter-distinction to science fiction, we also have science faction. By this term I mean science fiction in which there are so many scientific facts that the story, as far as the scientific part is concerned, is no longer fiction but becomes more or less a recounting of fact.”

The science fiction scholar Gary Westfahl has written that “Gernsback’s editorial could be read as the first manifesto on behalf of hard SF, in that Gernsback isolates, defines, and defends a type of SF where scientific accuracy is central” (from “ ‘The Closely Reasoned Technological Story’: The Critical History of Hard Science Fiction,” Science Fiction Studies, July 1993).

For the next 30 years, the term was confined to science fiction criticism, as far as we can tell. The earliest literary use of “faction” we’ve found outside science fiction is from The New York Times Book Review (April 2, 1961).

In this passage Lewis Nichols, writing the “In and Out of Books” column, reports on Ernest K. Gann’s upcoming project: “He’ll decide whether his investigations will go into fact or fiction, novel or documentary. At the present moment he’s thinking of trying something he calls ‘faction,’ which is a combo. He expects to give faction ‘a hell of a go,’ before perhaps settling for one part of it or the other.”

Later that same year, the usage appeared in an academic paper about the novels of James Joyce. After describing Ulysses and Finnegans Wake as “deeply autobiographical in their materials,” the author writes:

“The coincidence of ‘faction’ with fiction is, however, markedly high in all of Joyce’s writings” (from “James Joyce: Unfacts, Fiction, and Facts,” by William T. Noon, in PMLA, the journal of the Modern Language Association of America, June 1961).

A few years later, the term cropped up three times in a very different venue—a trade magazine The author apparently felt the context sufficiently explained the term. We’ll quote just one of the uses:

“Perhaps it is not faction, nor fiction, nor even fancy to believe in the near future we will have a German who gets up to put on his Italian suit, has ham for breakfast from the Netherlands, looks at his Luxembourg watch, kisses his Belgian wife goodbye amid the delightful aroma of French perfume, and then drives off to work in his English car … which is insured by an American insurance company!” (from “Insurance and the European Common Market: Faction, Fiction or Fancy?” by David L. Bickelhaupt, Journal of Risk and Insurance, March 1964).

Later in the 1960s, the term became somewhat more common in literary criticism. The two earliest uses cited in the Oxford English Dictionary are from the same year:

“This is the great work of faction of 1967—fiction based on fact, the novel form of our time” (a publisher’s note with Hugh Atkinson’s novel The Games) … “An Australian has tried his hand at writing a ‘faction’ (half fact, half fiction) novel” (The Courier-Mail, Brisbane, Dec. 30, 1967).

Those two 1967 citations illustrate each of the OED’s definitions—“faction” can mean the genre as a whole or a single work. The dictionary defines the word this way: “A literary and cinematic genre in which fictional narrative is developed from a basis of real events or characters; documentary fiction or drama; (also) a work in this genre.”

The OED, en etymological dictionary based on historical evidence, says the word was “formed within English, by blending” the nouns “fact” and “fiction.”

Standard dictionaries define the term similarly. Here’s American Heritage: “1. A form of literature or filmmaking that treats real people or events as if they were fictional or uses real people or events as essential elements in an otherwise fictional rendition. 2. A literary work or film that is a mix of fact and fiction.”

In 2017, we wrote about such phrases as “creative nonfiction,” “literary nonfiction,” and “narrative nonfiction.” In 2011, we discussed the word “fact,” and in 2008 we wrote about “fiction” and “nonfiction.”

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Q: I was driving in the Grand Rapids area the other day and noticed a sign for “bespoke homes.” I’d only heard “bespoke” used in British tailoring contexts and didn’t know it was imported. How long before we have bespoke hamburgers or bespoke Air Jordans?

A: Yes, the adjective “bespoke” is more common in the UK than in the US. And it usually refers to custom-made clothing. But the word is evolving—in American as well as British English. In fact, “bespoke burgers” and “bespoke running shoes” have already shown up in both the US and the UK.

Here are a few American examples we’ve found:

“Samsung’s Bespoke Appliances Bring Custom Color And Coordination To Your Home” (Forbes, May 13, 2021).

“How to Buy a Bespoke Shotgun. A custom-fitted shotgun is expensive, but if you can afford one, it will become a family legacy to be handed down from one generation to the next” (Outdoor Life, May 20, 2021).

“Bespoke Bathing: Say the words ‘carbon fiber’ and you’ve got an aficionado’s full attention. That’s no surprise, as this sleek material is used in supercars, aircraft and top-end sports equipment … and now tubs” (Brickell Magazine, Miami, Dec. 27, 2018).

“Decadent Dogs and Bespoke Burgers at Riley’s” (Hartford Courant, Nov. 17, 2014).

“Adidas Wants to Create Bespoke Running Shoes Using 3-D Printing” (Racked, Oct 7, 2015).

And now here are some British examples :

“Duchess of Cornwall shares her bespoke recipe for a Victoria Sponge—with a twist” (from a recipe for sponge cake in The Independent, Sept. 2, 2011).

“In recent years, there has been a growing trend in bespoke burgers, with themed restaurants cooking them to provide the ultimate laid-back dine out experience” (Somerset Live, a website covering news, entertainment and sports in Somerset, Dorset, and Wiltshire, Aug. 24, 2021).

“software experts dedicated to designing bespoke software for one-off applications” (Reading Evening Post, June 24, 1980).

“Adidas Futurecraft 3D Wants to Print You a Pair of Bespoke Running Shoes in Store” (an Oct. 7, 2015, post on the website ManyMiles).

“With over 40 models on display you’ll be sure to find a style to suit you. Standard Range and Bespoke.  Garden Sheds • Summer Houses • Gazebos • Garages • Greenhouses • Conservatories, etc.” (West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser, June, 17, 1999).

All of the 10 standard dictionaries we regularly consult define the adjective “bespoke” as meaning custom-made. Two of them, (American Heritage and Dictionary.com) say it refers especially to clothing, while two others (Collins and Longman) include websites and computer software along with clothes.

Most of the published examples the standard dictionaries provide describe clothing, but quite a few others suggest that the term has outgrown its apparel etymology.

Cambridge, for instance, cites “bespoke furniture” and Macmillan “bespoke software.” Merriam-Webster notes the online use of “a very bespoke approach” to high-end real estate.

Lexico, an online dictionary using the resources of Oxford University Press, has examples in both its US and UK editions for “bespoke kitchens,” “bespoke software systems,” “bespoke itineraries,” “bespoke leather sofas,” even “a bespoke craftsman boatbuilder.”

Though the use of “bespoke” for things other than clothing may seem odd to you, the earliest example for the usage in the Oxford English Dictionary refers to a commissioned play—one ordered in advance—for a performance by a touring theatrical troupe:

“At length the bespoke Play was to be enacted” (A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, 1755, an autobiography by the actress, playwright, and novelist). The book also uses “bespoke” as a verb meaning to commission: “the Gentleman bespoke a Play.”

As Merriam-Webster explains in an etymology note, “In the English language of yore, the verb bespeak had various meanings, including ‘to speak,’ ‘to accuse,’ and ‘to complain.’ In the 16th century, bespeak acquired another meaning—‘to order or arrange in advance.’

“It is from that sense that we get the adjective bespoke, referring to clothes and other things that are ordered before they are made,” M-W continues. “You are most likely to encounter this adjective in British contexts, such as the recent Reuters news story about a young pig in Northern England who was fitted with ‘bespoke miniature footwear’ (custom-made Wellington boots) to help it overcome a phobia of mud.”

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Q: During a baseball game on TV the other night, the announcer referred to putting a little extra “English” on the ball. Is this an Americanism? How do the English speak of putting spin on a ball?

A: We’ve seen several theories, most of them pretty far-fetched, for why Americans use the word “English” to describe the spin on a ball. The least unlikely in our opinion is that the usage may have been influenced by the spin, or “side,” favored by English players of billiards, pool, or snooker in the 19th century.

The Oxford English Dictionary, which is similarly cautious about the etymology, has this to say about the origin of the American usage: “Perhaps so named because English players introduced the technique to the U.S.”

The OED defines the usage as “U.S. Sport (originally Billiards). Spin imparted to a ball by striking it on one side rather than centrally so as to affect its course, esp. after an impact or bounce.” The dictionary says the word “English” here is a synonym for the British term “side.”

The earliest Oxford example for the American usage is from a humorous description of a billiards player who makes various gestures with his cue and body in useless attempts to put spin on the ball or move it in the right direction:

“Tricks at Billiards. … Immediately after shooting using his cue as a magic wand and flourishing it in the air above the table to give an increased ‘English’ to his ball” (Cleveland Daily Plain Dealer, Oct. 14, 1861). The quotation marks around “English” suggest that the usage was relatively new in writing, but perhaps heard in speech.

The next OED citation also uses the term humorously, but refers to putting actual spin on a ball. The passage, which we’ve expanded, describes a game of billiards in Paris:

“The cues were so crooked that in making a shot you had to allow for the curve or you would infallibly put the ‘English’ on the wrong side of the ball” (Innocents Abroad, 1869, by Mark Twain).

The British use of “side” in that sense appeared a few years before Americans used “English” for spin. This is Oxford’s earliest citation:

“I do not feel satisfied of any writer being able to convey in diagrams the amount of side to put on a ball for canons when the side stroke is required” (from Billiards, 1858, by Walter White).

Finally, we should mention that we wrote a post in 2012 about the British use of “side” as a slang term meaning insolence, arrogance, pride, pretentiousness, and so on.

Oxford’s earliest example for this sense of the word is from the Nov. 26, 1870, issue of Punch: “Swagger a bit, and put on ‘side’ in the streets of the gay Versailles.”

The dictionary describes the slang usage as “of uncertain origin,” but it notes a possible connection to the use of the term in billiards.

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