Tag: Writing

Q: Some work colleagues and I were speculating where the expression “lily-livered,” meaning cowardly, came from. Do you know?

A: The use of the lily, especially the white Lilium candidum, to describe a coward dates from the Elizabethan age, but the usage may have roots in ancient Greece.

Shakespeare was apparently the first to use the expression “lily-livered” in writing. In fact, he uses it twice—in two plays believed written in the early 1600s:

“Go pricke thy face, and ouer-red thy feare / Thou Lilly-liuer’d Boy” (Macbeth).

“A lily-liuer’d, action-taking knaue, a whoreson” (King Lear).

Shakespeare is using “lily-livered” here as a metaphorical version of “white-livered,” which showed up in English a half-century earlier and meant “cowardly, feeble-spirited, pusillanimous,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The first OED citation for the original expression is from a 1546 collection of proverbs by the English writer John Heywood:

“Why thynke ye me so white lyuerd (quoth she?) / That I will be tong tied? Nay I warrant ye.” We’ve expanded the citation to include two full lines of verse.

The dictionary says the expression may ultimately come from an ancient Greek term for cowardly, λευκηπατίας, or leukēpatias, literally “white-livered.”

As Oxford explains, the usage reflects the belief in ancient and medieval times “that a light-coloured liver was considered deficient in bile or choler, and hence lacking in vigour, spirit, or courage.”

In medieval physiology, as we wrote in 2009, the four humors (or fluids) of the body were blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile), and melancholy (black bile).

These supposedly determined one’s temperament as well as physical and mental health. Imbalances among the humors were blamed for pain and disease.

A temperament governed by blood was buoyant, by phlegm was sluggish, by choler was quick-tempered, and by melancholy was dejected, according to this system.

In “Some Meanings of the Liver,” a paper published in the March 1979 issue of the journal Gastroenterology, Sherman Mellinkoff writes that ancient doctors believed “too much bile caused anger or depression; too little, timidity or cowardice.” Bile, or gall, is produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder.

As Merriam-Webster Online notes, “In the Middle Ages the study of anatomy, or the cutting up and examining of human corpses, was illegal. Most of what was thought about the body thus was based on the theory of humors.”

“The humor, or body fluid, that was supposed to control anger, spirit, and courage was bile, produced by the liver. A person who lacked courage was supposed to have a white liver, because it had no yellow bile to color it. Thus a cowardly person was called white-livered or, more poetically, lily-livered.”

Interestingly, Shakespeare’s use of “pigeon-livered” around 1600 in Hamlet (“I am pidgion liuerd, and lack gall”) reflects the old belief that the pigeon had a mild disposition because of its lack of a gallbladder.

We’ll end with an excerpt from Barchester Towers (1857), the second of six novels in Anthony Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire. Here Archdeacon Grantly urges his father-in-law, Mr. Harding, to stand up to Mr. Slope, the Bishop’s chaplain:

“You owe it to us all to resist him in this, even if you have no solicitude for yourself. But surely, for your own sake, you will not be so lily-livered as to fall into this trap which he has baited for you and let him take the very bread out of your mouth without a struggle.”

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Q: Why is an ability to grow plants called “a green thumb” in the US and “green fingers” in the UK?

A: Both expressions showed up in writing in the 20th century, “green fingers” first and “green thumb” a few decades later, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Similarly, “green fingered” appeared first, followed by “green thumbed.”

We’ve found “thumb” and “fingers” examples in both American and British writing, but a good gardener generally has “a green thumb” in the US and “green fingers” in the UK, according to the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus.

We think the written evidence clearly indicates that the original expression was “green fingers,” though F. E. L. Priestley, a language scholar at the University of Toronto, has suggested that “a green thumb” may have come first.

In A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional Language (2006), Eric Partridge quotes Priestley, one of his correspondents, as saying, “I think the original was ‘a green thumb,’ probably by analogy with the miller’s ‘golden thumb’ (as in Chaucer).”

In the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (circa 1386), Geoffrey Chaucer writes that the miller “hadde a thombe of gold.” Scholars have debated whether the reference is to the grain-colored thumb of the miller or his heavy Midas touch in weighing the flour.

In early editions of his slang dictionary, which was first published in 1961, Partridge says the expression to “have green fingers” was coined by C. H. Middleton, the host of “In Your Garden,” a popular BBC radio program in the 1930s and ’40s.

But as newly discovered written evidence indicated that the expression predated the radio show, later editions of the slang dictionary, edited by Paul Beale, say that “perhaps the phrase was merely popularized by Mr. Middleton.”

Our guess is that the influence of Middleton’s BBC show may have encouraged the use of the “green fingers” idiom in the UK. However, we haven’t seen any reasonable theories of why Americans prefer “green thumb.”

As we’ve said before on the blog, idioms are peculiar to a people, place, or community, and they don’t have to make literal sense. However, we doubt that Chaucer’s “thombe of gold” has anything to do with the American usage. We’ve seen no evidence to support it.

The earliest OED citation for “green fingers” is from The Misses Make-Believe, a 1906 novel by the Scottish-born writer Mary Stuart Boyd: “What old wives call ‘green fingers’: those magic digits that appear to ensure the growth of everything they plant.”

The dictionary defines “green fingers” as a “skill or success in making plants grow, esp. in to have green fingers.” The first example of the verb phrase is from Congo Song, a 1943 novel by the South African writer Stuart Cloete:

“Some men have green fingers. Plants like them. They can make things grow because they love them.”

The first Oxford citation for “green thumb” is from the July 9, 1937, issue of the Ironwood (MI) Daily Globe:

“Besides being green-eyed, Miss Dvorak has what is known as ‘the green thumb.’ That’s horticultural slang for being a successful gardener with instinctive understanding of growing things.”

The dictionary’s earliest example for “green-fingered” is from Colour in My Garden, a 1918 book by the American gardening writer Louise Beebe Wilder:

“Under the care of our green-fingered grandmothers gardens throve and were full of hearty, wholesome colour.” (In addition to “green-fingered,” Wilder uses the British spelling of “color.”)

The first Oxford citation for “green-thumbed” is from the June 6, 1937, Washington Post: “He is, I think, the ‘green-thumbed’ type of gardener, who has lived and loved his flowers and has learned from them and from the soil.”

We’ve seen many theories for why the word “green” is used in both “green thumb” and “green fingers.” The most common are that one’s thumbs or other fingers are stained green by handling mossy flowerpots or by pinching old blooms when deadheading.

Although the two theories make sense, we’ve seen no evidence in early Oxford citations that the writers were using “green fingers” or “green thumb” literally.

We suspect that “green” here is being used loosely in a gardening sense, much as it’s used in an environmental sense in such expressions as “green movement” (1977), “green energy” (1980), “green-minded” (1984), “green economy” (1986), and so on.

We’ve written several times on the blog about “green,” including a post about the golfing expression “rub of the green,” an item about whether a tree can blush green, and a piece about the sexual use of the word.

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Q: I found your post about the months very interesting. So we got the names from the Romans. And, as far as I can tell, we got the days of the week from Teutonic gods. English seems to gather from everyone.

A: Yes, English is indeed a great gatherer, but the names for the days of the week ultimately come from Roman gods.

Most of the classical deities were replaced by corresponding Teutonic ones when the Latin days of the week were adopted by Germanic speakers.

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, “The Latin days of the week in imperial Rome were named after the planets, which in turn were named after gods.”

Each day took its name from the planets supposedly controlling its first hour under the Ptolemaic system. Ptolemy considered the Sun and the Moon to be planets.

“The planetary names, classical Latin diēs sōlis, diēs lunae, diēs martis, etc., came into common use in the Roman Empire, and were adopted in translated form by the Germanic peoples, including the Angles and Saxons (before they came to Britain),” the OED says.

The dictionary adds that “the names Mars, Mercurius, etc., being understood as names of Roman gods, were translated using the names of the Germanic gods supposed to correspond to these.”

Here’s a brief history of the English days of the week:

Sunnandæg (Old English for Sunday) comes from the Latin diēs sōlis (day of the sun).

Monandæg (OE for Monday or moon’s day), from diēs lunae (day of the moon).

Tywesdæg (day of Tiw, war and sky god in the Germanic pantheon), from diēs martis (day of Mars).

Wodnesdæg (day of Woden, highest god in the Germanic pantheon), from diēs mercuriī (day of Mercury).

Þunresdæg (day of Thor, god of thunder), from diēs Iovis (day of Jupiter).

Frigedæig (day of Frig, goddess of wisdom and wife of Woden), from diēs Veneris (day of Venus).

Sæternesdæg (day of Saturn), from diēs sāturnī.

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Q: I keep hearing “gamut” misused, as in “run the gambit,” which doesn’t make sense. What’s the deal with people confusing these two words?

A: Yes, “run the gambit” is on the loose, but “run the gamut” is much more popular in the Corpus of Contemporary American English, the British National Corpus, and News on the Web, a database from online newspapers and magazines.

The original idiomatic expression, “run the gamut,” which means to extend over an entire range, showed up in English nearly three centuries ago.

The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from The Courtier, Robert Samber’s 1724 translation of a 16th-century etiquette book by the Italian writer Baldassare Castiglione:

“When they talk with any one, after a Pause, [they] renew their Discourse in such a Tone as if they were running over the Gamut.”

The next example is from Flim-Flams! (1805), a novel by Isaac D’Israeli, father of the British statesman Benjamin Disraeli:

“He runs through the whole gamut of the heart, from bass to treble.”

Those two early citations reflect the musical origins of the expression. As an etymology note at Merriam-Webster Online explains, the term comes from a musical scale developed in the 11th century by the musician and monk Guido d’Arezzo:

“Guido called the first line of his bass staff gamma and the first note in his scale ut, which meant that gamma ut was the term for a note written on the first staff line. In time, gamma ut underwent a shortening to gamut but climbed the scale of meaning. It expanded to cover all the notes of Guido’s scale, then all the notes in the range of an instrument, and, eventually, an entire range of any sort.”

The first English example for the noun “gamut” in the OED is from a treatise on counterpoint, written sometime before 1445, by the English composer Lionel Power:

“Gamut hathe 3 acordis: re, mi, sol be proprechaunt; re a 12, mi a 13, sol a 15.”

The dictionary notes that “run the gamut” has the rare musical sense of to “perform all the notes of the scale, or all the notes within the compass of a particular singer or instrument,” but adds that the usual, more expansive meaning of the expression is “to experience, display, or perform the complete range of something.”

When the word “gambit” showed up in English in the 17th century, according to the OED, it referred in chess to “a game, or sequence of moves, involving a sacrifice to launch an attack or gain some other advantage.”

When used in chess now, the dictionary says, the term usually refers to “an opening in which a player offers a sacrifice, typically of a pawn, for the sake of a compensating advantage.”

The earliest citation in the dictionary is from The Royall Game of Chesse-Play, Francis Beale’s 1656 translation of a work by the Italian chess writer Gioachino Greco: “Illustrated with almost an hundred Gambetts.”

In the mid-19th century, Oxford says, the term “gambit” took on two expanded senses: (1) a “remark intended to initiate or change the direction of a conversation” and (2) a “plan, stratagem, or ploy that is calculated to gain an advantage, esp. at the outset of a contest, negotiation, etc.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation for the first sense is from the Jan. 1, 1853, issue of Punch: “Would you think I … played Knight’s gambit, or rather opening, if I ventured the colloquial critique—‘very fine oysters!’ ”

The earliest example for the second sense is from Memoirs of the Court and Cabinet of George III (1855), by the Duke of Buckingham:

“The dashing gambit which his opponent directed, was neither evaded with caution nor defended with skill.”

As for “run the gambit,” the misuse has been around for dozens of years. The earliest example we’ve found is from Fuad: King of Egypt, a 1936 biography by the Indian author Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah:

“Zaghlul was the popular idol, and anyone who was even faintly critical of his activities must perforce run the gambit of mob disapproval.”

And here’s a double whammy from the official record of an April 1, 1959, hearing about freight car shortages, held by a US Senate subcommittee in Kansas City, Kansas:

“All the cars that go out to my district, the main industry of which is lumber, have to run the gambit in California, or they have to run the gambit in Washington.” (The speaker, Rep. Charles O. Porter, an Oregon Democrat, addressed the Freight Car Shortage Subcommittee of the Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee.)

This excerpt from a 1947 book in the Foreign Relations of the United States series, the State Department’s official record of major American foreign policy decisions, describes Soviet policies toward the West:

“The zigs and zags have run the gambit from out and out revolutionary hostility to the Popular Front with Social Democrats during the 30’s, the pact with Hitler, Big Power unity, parliamentary ‘cooperation’ and now back to anti-parliamentary, anti-imperialist revolutionary hostility and noncooperation.”

We’ve found hundreds of more recent examples for “run the gambit,” including these:

“Food offerings run the gambit from Wisconsin classics like cheese curds and pretzel sticks to salmon and sirloin” (from the Aug 10, 2017, issue of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).

“Let’s run the gambit of possible outcomes, which not surprisingly range from ‘everyone dies’ to “everyone dies’ ” (from a Jan. 20, 2017, item on Huffington Post).

“Villa options run the gambit from deluxe pads to rustic fincas” (from the July, 18, 2015, issue of the Guardian).

“Wedding flowers are an expression of individual taste and run the gambit from lush exotics to simple handmade arrangements” (from the Feb. 15, 2015, Hartford Courant).

“The Forest Service has closed 886,000 acres of forests to the public because of the infiltration of pot growers, who run the gambit from ‘flower children” caught in a ’60s time warp to dangerous organized criminals” (from the Nov. 2, 1988, Christian Science Monitor).

Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed.) says, “Misusing gambit for gamut is an increasingly common malapropism,” but Bryan A. Garner, the author, lists it at only the lowest stage in his five-stage language-change index.

The term “malapropism” refers to the unintentionally comic misuse of a word, especially by confusing it with a similar-sounding one. The misuse of “gambit” for “gamut” may also be called an “eggcorn,” mistaking a word or phrase for a similar-sounding one.

In Origins of the Specious, our book about language myths and misunderstandings, we discuss malapropisms and eggcorns, as well as spoonerisms and mondegreens, two other kinds of language bloopers. A 2011 post on our blog includes an excerpt from Origins about such misuses.

A 2005 entry by the linguist Ben Zimmer on the Eggcorn Database cites “run the gambit” and includes several more examples.

The database also has a 2005 contribution by the linguist Arnold Zwicky on the variation “run the gamete.” A “gamete” (1878) is a male or female reproductive cell.

Interestingly, “run the gamete” is almost as popular as “run the gambit” in general online searches, and one of the examples we’ve found even uses the expression correctly:

“Hotels run the gamete” is a Nov. 3, 2005, headline in USA Today about Caribbean procreation vacations that include romantic dinners, spa treatments, and island potions said to increase the chances of a pregnancy.

Finally, here’s a comment about “run the gambit” from The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style:

“As is often the case with idioms, the original meanings of the words composing them can be lost, obscured, or confused. In this case, the uncommon word gamut is sometimes confused with the word gambit.”

Although the term “gambit” has expanded significantly from its original chess usage, American Heritage concludes, “the phrase run the gambit is a mistake.” We’ll add that “run the gamete” is too, despite that procreative exception.

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Q: Why do September, October, November, and December come from Latin numbers, but the rest of the months aren’t numerical?

A: We inherited the names for our months from the Romans, who used numerals for some and other designations for the rest. In fact, the Romans sometimes went back and forth, switching from a number to another term and vice versa.

For example, mēnsis Quintilis (“fifth month”) was renamed mēnsis Iulius (“month of Julius”) for Julius Caesar, while mēnsis Sextilis (“sixth month”) was renamed mēnsis Augustus for Augustus Caesar, as Matthew Bunson notes in the Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire (2002).

Caligula changed mēnsis September to mēnsis Germanicus to honor his father, according to the Roman historian Suetonius, but the month went back to its numerical name after the emperor’s death.

And Nero renamed several months, including mēnsis Neroneus for mēnsis Aprīlis, but again, the new names didn’t stick, Suetonius writes in De Vita Caesarum (“On the Lives of the Caesars”).

You didn’t ask, but some readers are probably wondering why September, October, November, and December are our ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth months, while the words mean seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth in Latin.

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, the “ancient Roman calendar (dating from around the mid 8th cent. B.C.) had ten months.”

The original months were Mārtius, Aprīlis, Māius, Iūnius, Quintīlis, Sextīlis, September, Octōber, November, and December.

Around the year 713 BC, according to the OED, Iānuārius and Februārius were added to the end.

But in 153 BC, the dictionary says, “the beginning of the year was moved to 1 January, when the Roman consuls were elected,” throwing the original meanings of the numerical months out of sync with the calendar.

“This new ordering of the months remained when the Julian calendar was introduced in 45 B.C. and in the Gregorian calendar widely used today,” the OED adds.

As for those non-numerical months, Mārtius was named for Mars, the Roman god of war, according to the OED. Aprīlis is “of uncertain origin; perhaps [from] Etruscan.” Māius was named for Maia, the ancient Roman goddess of fertility and spring, and Iūnius for Juno, the goddess of marriage.

Of the two later additions, Iānuārius was named for Janus, the god of beginnings, while Februārius comes from februa, Latin for means of purification (the Roman festival of purification was held on the fifteenth day of February).

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Q: Is it just me, or is the term “supremacist” mispronounced as “supremist” more often than not these days? It’s driving me nuts. I was about to punch a wall, but decided to write you instead.

A: The word “supremacist” has only two standard pronunciations, suh-PREM-a-cist or soo-PREM-a-cist, according to the 10 dictionaries we’ve checked. However, people are indeed using a shorter word, “supremist,” in writing as well as speech.

Although you won’t find “supremist” in standard dictionaries, it’s been used in the same sense as “supremacist” since the late 1800s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

(In fact, “supremist” showed up back in the 1600s with a different meaning—someone who assumes supreme authority—but the OED says that sense is now obsolete or rare.)

It turns out that “supremacist” and “supremist” appeared in writing around the same time in phrases that referred to people who believed whites were superior to others.

The earliest Oxford example for “supremacist” is from the April 5, 1896, issue of the Daily Picayune in New Orleans:

“The combine are determined to register the negroes, and the white supremacists are equally determined that they shall not.”

And the dictionary’s earliest racial citation for “supremist” is from the April 6, 1896, issue of the Daily Inter Ocean, a Chicago newspaper:

“The ‘white supremists,’ or regular Democrats, say that the negroes shall not register.”

The racial sense of “supremacist” and “supremist” probably showed up even earlier in speech, but the use of quotation marks around “white supremists” suggests that it may have been less common than “white supremacists.”

The OED explains that “supremist” was formed by adding the suffix “-ist” to the adjective “supreme,” while “supremacist” was the result of adding the suffix to the noun “supremacy.”

Both “supremacist” and “supremist” are ultimately derived from suprēmus, classical Latin for highest in position, topmost, culminating, and so on.

Getting back to your question, “supremacist” is overwhelmingly more popular than “supremist” today, according to searches of the Corpus of Contemporary American English, the British National Corpus, and News on the Web, a huge database of articles from online newspapers and magazines.

So “supremacist” is still supreme, despite your concerns, though people are indeed using “supremist.” Here are a few recent examples:

“White supremist supporter James Alex Fields Jr drove his car through the anti-racist crowd, injuring 19 people and killing Heather Heyer” (from an Aug. 17, 2017, item on the Mac Observer website).

“Antifa and white supremist rallies” (a headline in the Aug. 15, 2017, issue of the Washington Times).

“An avowed white supremist killed six people at a Sikh Temple in 2012” (from the Aug. 3, 2017, issue of the Houston Chronicle).

Is “supremist” legit? Well, it’s as old as “supremacist,” and the OED doesn’t describe it as nonstandard. But we wouldn’t use it. And we wouldn’t describe a word that hasn’t made it into standard dictionaries as standard.

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Q: Does the expression “last ditch” come from trench warfare during World War I?

A: It does indeed come from the excavated defensive positions used in warfare, but the fighting that inspired the phrase “last ditch” took place hundreds of years before World War I.

The usage can be traced back to William of Orange’s vow to fight to the death in the 17th century rather than see the Dutch Republic conquered by invading French and British forces.

William, the Dutch stadtholder, or steward, was the son of the previous stadtholder and Princess Mary, daughter of King Charles I of Britain. He later became King William III of Britain.

On July 5, 1672, an envoy from Charles II, then the ruling British monarch, met with William in southern Holland and offered to make him sovereign prince of Holland if he surrendered to the British and French.

If he refused, the envoy said, William would witness the death of the Dutch Republic.

The Oxford English Dictionary cites two versions of  William’s reply. The first is in Jure Divino, a 1706 poem by Daniel Defoe, but we prefer this one, written sometime before 1715, from Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time:

“There was a sure way never to see it lost, and that was to die in the last ditch.” (Burnet was a philosopher, historian, and Anglican bishop of Salisbury.)

The OED defines the noun phrase “last ditch” as “the innermost or only remaining defensive entrenchment, the last line of defence; often fig. and in figurative contexts.”

The dictionary defines the expression “to die in the last ditch” as “to die still fighting to defend something, to resist to the last.”

When the adjective “last-ditch” showed up in the late 19th century, according to the Oxford, it described “fighting, resistance, or opposition to the very last; maintained to the end.”

The first OED citation for the adjective is from Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan, General, United States Army (1888):

“It was said … the French intended to die to the last man before giving up that city. But this proved all fudge, as is usual with these ‘last ditch’ promises.”

In the 20th century, the adjective came to describe something done “at the last minute in an attempt to avert disaster; resulting from desperation.”

The earliest OED example for this new sense is from Death in the Desert: The Fifty Years’ War for the Great Southwest (1935), by Paul I. Wellman:

“It was a last-ditch law, dictated by the fear which death from the north had engendered in every Mexican heart.”

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Q: I’ve been thinking about “locked and loaded” since President Trump used it last week to warn North Korea. Why is it “locked and loaded” when the logic of it is “loaded and locked”? Where did this begin?

A: We think “locked and loaded” makes sense, especially when used literally on the firing range. But like many expressions, it’s strayed quite a bit when used figuratively.

We’ve seen a couple of early examples, one from the late 1700s and the other from the early 1800s, of “locked and loaded” used to describe firearms, but the expression may have been used in different ways.

In the first example, it apparently refers to a flintlock musket, loaded with ball and powder, and with its firing mechanism at half-cock, or locked.

Why was “locked” mentioned before “loaded”? Probably because the cock, or hammer, was locked first to prevent an accidental discharge while the weapon was being loaded from the muzzle, or open end, of the barrel.

To fire a flintlock weapon, the hammer must be at full cock when the trigger is pulled. The cock holds a piece of flint that strikes the steel frizzen, creating a spark that falls into the pan, igniting powder and causing the weapon to fire, as in this illustration.

The earliest written example we’ve seen for “locked and loaded” is from a document in the archives of the New Brunswick Historical Society. It describes a dispute on Aug. 6 and 7, 1793, over the possession of a house and lot in what was then the British colony of Nova Scotia.

When a disputant “brought in two musquets and justice Hubbard asked him if the guns were well locked and loaded,” according to the document, he replied, “One of them is.” We assume “well locked” here meant “safely locked.”

The Wiktionary contributor who tracked down the 1793 example has suggested to us that “locked and loaded” may ultimately come from the language of gun crews on British warships. However, he hasn’t found evidence to support this.

It’s unclear in the second example whether “locked and loaded” is being used for a half-cocked or fully cocked pistol. In Lord Roldan, an 1836 novel by the Scottish writer Allan Cunningham, Davie Gellock, a young man posing as a commissioned officer, is asked to show his commission:

“Davie, snatching a pistol from his pocket, and cocking it at the same moment; ‘There is my commission, steel mounted, inlaid with gold, locked and loaded.’ ”

The next example we’ve seen, from a July 20, 1940, US War Department training manual for the M1 rifle, makes clear that the safety should be set, or locked, before the M1 is loaded.

“The instructor, after announcing the range and the position to be used, commands: 1. With dummy cartridges, lock and load; 2. Ready on the right; 3. Ready on the left; 4. Ready on the firing line; 5. Cease firing; 6. Unload. At the first command the rifles are locked and loaded. At the fourth command the safety on all rifles is set in the forward position. When the target is exposed, pupils take position rapidly and simulate firing 16 rounds, reloading from the belt.” (The M1 safety is off when set in the forward position, and on when pulled back.)

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “to lock and load” as “to prepare a firearm for firing by pulling back and ‘locking’ the bolt and loading the ammunition (frequently in imperative, as an order).”

The dictionary’s earliest example, from the Nov. 19, 1940, issue of the New York Times, uses the expression in the imperative: “Lieut. Col. Joseph T. Hart, range officer, boomed through his microphone, ‘Lock and Load.’ ”

The OED says the expression has also been used figuratively as “to ready oneself for action or confrontation.” The first figurative example is from the September 1990 issue of Snow Boarder: “He was locked and loaded in the starting gate, completely focused and obviously amped for his final run.”

Although “locked and Loaded” is the usual expression now, we’ve also found quite a few older examples for “loaded and locked,” as in this one from a Feb. 18, 1912, article in the Dallas Morning News about a rifle shoot: “Competitor stands at the order of trail, piece loaded and locked.”

And here’s one from the Sept. 15, 1911, article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about a rifle match in Essington, PA: “The men were to take their rifles and carry them at the position of trail arms, loaded and locked.”

But as we said at the beginning, we think the expression “locked and loaded” makes sense, especially on the firing line.

By the way, a linguist would refer to two words paired together in an idiomatic expression (like “locked and loaded,” “fish and chips,” “quick and dirty”) as a binomial pair or an irreversible binomial, as we say in a 2016 post.

Many factors determine the choice of which word comes first in the pair, such as meaning, rhythm, chronology, length, and vowel position.

We think “locked” comes before “loaded” because of chronology or rhythm, but a reader of the blog suggests that it’s because a word pronounced with the tongue in front often comes before one with the tongue in back.

We’ll end with a definition of the term from Soldier Talk, Frank A. Hailey’s 1982 book about military language:

“Lock and load. A firing range command for soldiers to place safety levers of weapons in the ‘save’ position and load ammunition. Soldiers frequently used the expression when in a group and a brawl or confrontation was imminent.”

[Note: This post was updated on Aug. 16, 2017.]

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