Category: Etymology

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English English language Etymology Expression Football Language Usage Word origin Writing

Matriculating down the field

Q: When I hear football sportscasters state that Team 1 has “matriculated” the football down the field, I (perhaps smugly) question whether the sportscasters have ever matriculated themselves.

A: Standard dictionaries define “matriculate” as to enroll or be enrolled at a college or university, but at least one of the dictionaries, Merriam-Webster, has the American football sense on its radar.

M-W discusses the new usage in its “Words We’re Watching” feature, which concerns “words we are increasingly seeing in use but that have not yet met our criteria for entry.”

“So how did we get from enrolling in higher education to football?” the dictionary asks. “We have, it seems, one man to thank: Hank Stram.”

Stram, coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, apparently coined the usage on Jan. 11, 1970, at Super Bowl IV in New Orleans, where the Chiefs beat the Minnesota Vikings 23 to 7.

In this video from the game, Stram uses several colorful expressions, including “Let’s keep matriculating the ball down the field, boys.”

“We of course do not know Hank Stram’s thoughts about the word matriculate,” M-W says. “It’s possible he believed his use was a simple and logical extension of the established one. It’s also possible he just liked how matriculate sounded and plunked it into a context he thought sounded good.”

Whatever his thinking, this colloquial use of “matriculate” is now common in football and means to advance the ball down the field, often methodically.

Here’s a recent example from a report of a game between the Chiefs and the Jacksonville Jaguars: “The Chiefs then matriculated the ball down the field with a 12-play, 86-yard drive” (CBS Sports, Oct. 7, 2025).

 As for the history, English borrowed “matriculate” in the 16th century from the post-classical Latin verb matriculare (to enroll) and noun matricula (an index or catalogue), according to the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference.

When “matriculate” first appeared in English in the 16th century, the OED says, it meant to “enter (a name) in the register of a university, college, etc.”

The earliest English citation is from a Jan. 19, 1557, report on a visit by representatives of Queen Mary I to the University of Cambridge to restore Roman orthodoxy after Protestant reforms under King Edward VI:

“It. vi scholers of Jesus Coll. matriculated” (“Item: six scholars of Jesus College matriculated”). A Collection of Letters, Statutes, and Other Documents From the Archives of the College of Corpus Christi, Cambridge (1838), edited by John Lamb.

(During the visit of the Queen’s representatives, many students and fellows were reexamined and registered again.)

In the 17th century, the verb took on the sense of “to be enrolled as a member of a university, college, etc.”

The first OED citation is from a sonnet by the English soldier-poet Richard Lovelace about the English poet John Hall:

“So that fair Cam [Cambridge] saw thee matriculate / At once a Tyro and a Graduate” (from “To the Genius of Mr. John Hall,” in Lucasta: Posthume Poems, 1659). The Posthume Poems were published two years after Lovelace’s death and three years after Hall’s.

This later OED example, from W. Somerset Maugham’s novel Of Human Bondage (1915), refers to Philip Carey’s brief experience at the University of Heidelberg: “He had matriculated at the university and attended one or two courses of lectures.”

We’ll end by returning to Hank Stram, the coach who’s credited with coining the football sense of “matriculate.” He expanded upon the usage in 2003 when he was inducted into the Football Hall of Fame:

“As I matriculate my way down the field of life, I will never forget this moment and you wonderful people who helped make this day possible.”

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On fawning and fawns

Q: My daughter and I were watching a DVD of the 1942 Disney film Bambi when I thought of this question: Is the verb “fawn” (to show affection or flatter) related to the noun “fawn” (a young deer)?

A: No, the words aren’t related. The verb comes from the Old English fægnian or fægenian (to rejoice or applaud) while the noun comes from the Old French faon or feon (a young animal).

In Old English, fægnian meant “to be delighted or glad, rejoice,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. In Middle English, the verb (spelled fayne, faine, fawn, etc.) took on its affectionate and flattering senses.

The earliest OED citation for the verb, which we’ve expanded here, is from an Old English translation of  De Consolatione Philosophiae, a sixth-century Latin treatise by the Roman philosopher Boethius:

“Ne sceal he na be hræ þor to ungemetlice fægnian ðæs folces worda” (“He must not fawn [rejoice] too immoderately at the people’s words”).

When the affectionate/flattering sense appeared in Middle English, the OED says, it originally referred to the efforts of an animal, especially a dog, “to show delight or fondness (by wagging the tail, whining, etc.).”

In its first recorded use, the dictionary says, the verb is implied in the gerund (“fawning”). The citation, from the anonymous Ancrene Riwle, or rules for anchoresses, dates from sometime before 1200.

This passage offers advice on how to respond to the “fawning” (uawenunge) of the Devil, who is referred to earlier as “Þene helle dogge” (“the hell hound”):

“Spet him amidde þe bearde to hoker ⁊ to schom, þet flikereð so mit þe, ⁊  fikeð mid dogge uawenunge” (“Spit on him amid the beard to scorn and to shame him, the one who so flatters thee and woos with doglike fawning”).

The first OED citation for the verb used explicitly in the sense of to show affection or flatter is from Piers Plowman (B text, 1377), an allegorical poem by William Langland.

In this passage, which we’ve expanded, wild animals are said to submit before the innocence and righteousness of saints and martyrs:

Ac þere ne was lyoun ne leopart þat on laundes wenten,
Noyther bere, ne bor ne other best wilde,
Þat ne fel to her feet and fauned with þe tailles.

(But there was no lion nor leopard that went on lands,
Neither bear, nor boar, nor other wild beast,
That did not fall at their feet and fawn with their tails.)

By the early 14th century, the verb was also being used in reference to human behavior, a sense the OED defines as “to affect a servile fondness; to court favour or notice by an abject demeanour.”

In this sense, “fawn” or “fawning” is often seen in constructions with “on,” “over,” and “upon.”

In the earliest citation, the dictionary says, the verb is implied. The passage, written around 1325, comes from a homily that warns against the temptations of the world, and refers to “fleishshes faunyng” (“fawning upon the flesh”):

“Fyth of other ne he fleo, that fleishshes faunyng furst foreode” (“He need not flee the assault of any other, who first withstood fawning upon the flesh”). From “Middelerd for Mon Wes Mad” (“Middle Earth for Man Was Made”), in The Harley Lyrics (4th edition, 1968), edited by George Leslie Brook.

The OED’s first explicit citation for human fawning is from a Middle English version of a treatise purportedly written by Aristotle for his pupil Alexander the Great. We’ve expanded it here:

“Smothe afore folk to fawnyn and to shyne, / And shewe two facys in Oon hood” (“Smooth [flattering] before people, to fawn and to shine, / And show two faces under one hood”).

The passage is from John Lydgate and Benedict Burgh’s Secrees of Old Philisoffres: A Version of the Secreta Secretorum (circa 1440), a translation from the Latin. Scholars believe Secreta Secretorum originated in Arabic in the 10th century, long after Aristotle (384–322 BC), and was translated into Latin in the 12th century.

After all the philosophical and theological examples above, we’ll end on a lighter note. In our “fawn” research, we came across this headline from the Aug. 14, 2025, issue of the Lodi News-Sentinel in Lodi, CA:

“Lost and fawned: Abandoned deer rescued by Lodi Animal Services.”

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‘All Sects, all Ages smack of this vice’

Q: What is the meaning of “smack” in a sentence like “it smacked of bigotry”?

A: When something “smacks of bigotry,” it has a trace or a suggestion of bigotry, a usage that dates back to the earliest days of English.

When the word “smack” was first recorded in Old English (spelled smæc), it was a noun meaning a taste or a flavor. When the verb appeared in Middle English, to “smack” meant to perceive by the sense of taste, but it could also be used figuratively in the sense of to experience or suggest something.

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots says the word ultimately comes from the prehistoric Germanic base smak- and the Proto-Indo-European base smeg-, both meaning to taste.

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, “smack” was originally a noun in Old English meaning “a taste or flavour; the distinctive or peculiar taste of something, or a special flavour distinguishable from this.”

The first OED citation is from a 10th-century glossary of Latin and Old English, where the Latin “Dulcis sapor, i. dulcis odor” (“Sweet taste, i.e, sweet smell”) is rendered in Old English as “swete smæc” (“sweet taste or flavor”). From Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies (2d ed, 1884), edited by Thomas Wright and Richard Paul Wülcker.

When the verb “smack” entered Middle English in the 14th century, Oxford says, it meant “to perceive by the sense of taste” and figuratively “to experience; to suspect.” In the dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded, it’s used figuratively to mean perceive or experience the sweetness of God:

“And uorzoþe huo þet hedde wel ytasted and ysmacked þe ilke zuetnesse þet god yefþ to his urendes he ssolde onworþi alle þe lostes and alle þe blissen of þise wordle” (“And forsooth whoever has tasted and smacked [experienced] the same sweetness that God gives to his friends, he should scorn all the desires and all the blessings of this world”).

From Ayenbite of Inwyt (“Remorse of Conscience”), a 1340 translation by Michel of Northgate of a French devotional guide, La Somme des Vices et des Vertus (1279), by Laurent du Bois.

In the late 14th century, Oxford says, the verb took on various meanings in reference to food, liquor, and other beverages: “To taste (well or ill); to have a (specified) taste or flavour; to taste or savour of something.” Here’s the earliest citation:

“Som bitter þinges … þat smakkeþ of aloye” (“Some bitter things … that smack [taste] of aloe”). From John Trevisa’s 1398 translation of De Proprietatibus Rerum (“On the Properties of Things”), an encyclopedic Latin work compiled by Bartholomew de Glanville in 1240.

The “taste” sense of “smack,” perhaps influenced by developments in other Germanic languages, may have led to the word’s use for sounds made when noisily eating, kissing, and hitting.

In the mid-16th century, the OED says, the verb “smack” came to mean “to open or separate (the lips) in such a way as to produce a sharp sound; to do this in connection with eating or drinking, esp. as a sign of keen relish or anticipation.”

The first Oxford example is from The Babees Book (1557), by Francis Seager, in a section entitled “How to Behave at One’s Own Dinner”: “Not smackynge thy lyppes, As comonly do hogges.”

The verb soon took on the sense of to kiss noisily: “To Smacke, kisse, suauiare” (from Manipulus Vocabulorum, an English-Latin dictionary compiled in 1570 by the English lexicographer Peter Levens).

In the early 17th century, “smack” took on the sense of “to partake or savour of, to be strongly suggestive or reminiscent of, something,” the OED says.

Here’s an example from Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure, believed written in 1603 or 1604: “All Sects, all Ages smack [partake] of this vice.” The vice here is sex outside of marriage.

It wasn’t until the 19th century that “smack” came to mean “to strike (a person, part of the body, etc.) with the open hand or with something having a flat surface; to slap,” Oxford says.

The first citation, which we’ve expanded here, is from a sketch by Charles Dickens about a London slum. It appeared first in the weekly Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle (Sept. 27, 1835), and later in Sketches by Boz (1836), Dickens’s first book:

“Mrs. A. smacks Mrs. B.’s child for ‘making faces.’ Mrs. B. forthwith throws cold water over Mrs. A.’s child for ‘calling names.’ ”

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‘Allude’ and its playful history

Q: The expression “as I alluded to earlier” has been rife amongst sports broadcasters and now seems to have spread beyond that sphere. Is the use of “allude” for a direct reference another case where popular misuse leads to acceptance?

A: The verb “allude” meant to suggest or hint when it first appeared in Middle English in the late 15th century. In the early 16th century, it took on the senses of to mention indirectly, fancifully, or figuratively. And a few decades later, it came to mean to use wordplay or to pun.

The fanciful, figurative and punning senses, which are now obsolete, reflect the Latin source of the term, alludere, which meant to make a playful comment. As you can see, the verb “allude” has been a work in progress from its earliest days. And it’s not at all surprising that it still is.

Yes, many people are using “allude” these days to mean refer directly, and some usage guides accept that sense of the word. But most standard dictionaries and style manuals still say “allude” means to refer indirectly or casually.

Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage recognize as standard English the use of “allude” to mean refer either directly or indirectly.

Fowler’s, edited by Jeremy Butterfield, says, “It has been claimed by some critics that to allude to someone or something can only properly mean to mention them ‘indirectly or covertly,’ i.e. without mentioning their name, unlike refer, which means to mention them directly, i.e. by name.”

“But in practice,” Fowler’s goes on to say, allude is often used to mean ‘refer,’ e.g. He had star quality, an element often alluded to in Arlene’s circle of show-biz friends—Gore Vidal, 1978 [from the post-apocalyptic novel Kalki].” The usage guide concludes: “This use is well established and perfectly acceptable.”

Merriam-Webster’s challenges the “false assumption” that “the ignorant and uneducated are responsible for the ‘direct’ sense,” and provides examples of its use by “speakers and writers of high cultivation.”

Here’s an early example: “He never alluded so directly to his story again” (from Edward Everett Hale’s short story “The Man Without a Country,” 1863).

The usage guide says the “direct” use of “allude” is “simply a logical extension from the indirect use, and indeed is an inevitable development” because the verb was often used ambiguously by established writers.

It cites a half-dozen examples in which “allude” is used in “contexts in which it is not possible to know for certain whether the word is to be taken in its ‘indirect’ sense or not.”

Here’s one from Edith Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence (1920): “it was against all the rules of their code that the mother and son should ever allude to what was uppermost in their thoughts.”

However, Merriam-Webster says the direct use of “allude” hasn’t “driven the old subtle sense out of the language.” It cites this example, which we’ve expanded here, from “Why I Write,” an essay by Joan Didion in The New York Times Book Review (Dec. 5, 1976):

“You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want with veils of subordinate clauses and qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions—with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating—but there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space.”

As for other views, Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed.) says “allude” means “to refer to (something) indirectly or by suggestion only.” It says the verb “is misused for refer when the indirect nature of a comment or suggestion is missing.”

And Pat, in her grammar and usage guide Woe Is I (4th ed.) says: “To allude is to mention indirectly or to hint at—to speak of something in a covert or roundabout way. Cyril suspected that the discussion of bad taste alluded to his loud pants. To refer to something is to mention directly. ‘They’re plaid!’ said Gussie, referring to Cyril’s trousers.” 

If there’s a 5th edition of Woe, Pat may recommend avoiding “allude” when there’s any  chance of ambiguity. There are many alternatives, including “refer,” “mention,” and “indicate” for the direct sense, and “suggest,” “hint,” and “imply” for the indirect sense.

And if you do use “allude,” make clear whether you mean refer directly or indirectly, as Didion did when she used it indirectly in her essay and Hale did when he used it directly in his short story cited above.

As for the etymology, “allude” is derived from the classical Latin alludere (“to play with, to make a playful or mocking allusion to, to jest”), according to the Oxford English Dictionary. When the verb first appeared in English in the 15th century, it meant “to suggest, hint, hint at.”

The OED’s earliest English citation, which uses “alluding” to mean “suggesting,” is from John Skelton’s late Middle English translation (circa 1487) of the 40-volume Bibliotheca Historica, written by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (Diodorus of Sicily) in the first century BC:

“Ne none so covenable a name in theire supposell vnto it can be appropried, as to call it ambrosia … alludyng by that worde enwarde dilectation” (“Nor can any name be more fitting, in their opinion, to call it than ‘ambrosia’ … alluding by that word an inner delight”).

In the early 16th century, the OED says, “allude” took on the sense of “to make an oblique or indirect reference to, to refer indirectly or in passing to.”

The dictionary’s first citation is from a 1531 letter by George Joye, an English Protestant writer living in exile in Antwerp. In the letter, Joye responds to charges of heresy made against him by John Ashwell, the prior of Newnham Abbey in Bedfordshire:

“Christe called his Gospel & holy worde the keye of knowlege or keyes in the plural noumber of the kingdom of heauen alluding vnto the double propertye that one keye hathe both to open and to shutte.”

In that same letter, Oxford says, Joye used “allude” in a sense closer to its Latin source: to “refer (something) fancifully or figuratively to; to compare (something) symbolically.” The dictionary’s first citation expands on Joye’s earlier comment about keys:

“The propertye of a keye is to open that which before was shitte thus doth Luce allude & agre his speach with the propertys of a keye” (“The property of a key is to open that which before was shut, thus doth [the Apostle] Luke allude and agree [symbolize and align] his words with the properties of a key”).

In the mid-16th century, the OED says, “allude” came to mean “to make a play on words; to pun.” The first citation is from The Castle of Knowledge (1556), by the mathematician Robert Recorde:

“There canne be no such allusion of woordes in the englyshe … except a man wold rather allude at the woordes, than expresse the sentence.”

As we’ve noted earlier, the figurative and punning senses of “allude” are now obsolete. However, the OED says the early 16th-century meaning “to make an oblique or indirect reference” evolved “(esp. in later use): to refer in any manner”—that is, to refer directly or indirectly.

We’ll end with a few words from Mrs. Wilfer in Our Mutual Friend (1864-65), Charles Dickens’s final completed novel:

“ ‘The mind,’ pursued Mrs Wilfer in an oratorical manner, ‘naturally reverts to Papa and Mamma—I here allude to my parents.’ ”

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A pub, yclept Ye Olde Watering Hole

Q: I saw this sentence the other day in Two Faced Murder, a 1946 mystery by Jean Leslie: “The professor is yclept Peter, and I hate to have him called Pete.” What’s with “yclept” here?

A: The word “yclept” is an old adjective that means named, called, or by the name of. So “the professor is yclept Peter” is an old-fashioned way of saying the professor is named Peter.

The Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference, labels “yclept” archaic, but several standard dictionaries include  it without a label—that is, as standard English.

Merriam-Webster online, for example, says the adjective may be old, “but it’s still got some presence in the living language.” M-W says “yclept appears (usually in playful contexts) in phrases like ‘We ventured to a pub, yclept Ye Olde Watering Hole.’ ”

The Old English ancestor of “yclept” was geclypod, past participle or participial adjective of the verb clypian, “to cry, call; to call on, appeal to (a person), for or after (a thing),” according to the OED.

Ultimately, these words are derived from kom (beside, near, by, with), a prehistoric base that’s been reconstructed by linguists, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

The earliest OED citation for the verb, which we’ve expanded here, is from a ninth-century Old English gloss, or translation, of the eighth-century Latin in the Vespasian Psalter. In this passage, cleopiu is the first person singular of clypian.

“dryhten gehereð me ðnne ic cleopiu to him” (“the Lord hears me when I call to him”). The Old English gloss was written between the lines of the Latin psalms.

The first Oxford citation for the participial adjective (spelled gicliopad) is from a manuscript, written around 1000, that contains an early Latin-Old English version of the Christian liturgy conducted at the Cathedral Church of Durham. Here we’ll translate both the Latin and the Old English:

“Dignus vocari apostolus” (“worthy to be called an apostle”), “wyrðe þætte ic se gicliopad erendwraca” (“may I be worthy to be called a messenger”). From Rituale Ecclesiae Dunelmensis (1840), edited by Joseph Stevenson.

In Old and Middle English, the prefixes “ge-,” “i-,” and “y-” were used to form past participles and participial adjectives. In the example above, “gi-” is apparently a scribe’s variant spelling of “ge-.”

This “i-” example in the OED, which we’ve expanded, is from The Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, an account of early British history written in Middle English sometime before 1300:

“Al þis was ȝwile icluped þe march of walis” (“All this was once called the March of Wales”). Oxford notes that in other scribal versions of the passage the term was written “ycleped, icleped, clepud, callyde, callyd.”

The dictionary’s earliest “y-” example is from Arthour & Merlin, an anonymous Middle English romance written around 1330: “Her ost was ycleped Blaire” (“Her host was called Blaire”).

The usage was common in Middle English, the dictionary says, but it was considered “a literary archaism” by the early Modern English of Elizabethan times and was “often used for the sake of quaintness or with serio-comic intention.”

The OED cites Love’s Labour’s Lost (1598), where Shakespeare uses “ycliped” comically in a letter from the long-winded Spaniard Don Adriano de Armado to Ferdinand, King of Navarre.

In explaining how he caught the fool Costard consorting with a country girl, Jaquenetta, in the king’s park, supposedly for men only, Armado writes, “Now for the ground Which? which I meane I walkt vpon, it is ycliped Thy Park.”

The word “yclept” in its various spellings was rarely seen in the 16th and 17th centuries, but had a burst of popularity in the 18th and 19th before falling out of favor in the 20th, according to Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books.

Although it’s not common now, “yclept” does appear every once in a while. In the Jean Leslie novel you noticed, Two Faced Murder, Professor Peter Ponsonby and his fiancée, Mara Mallery, are asked to search for a missing faculty wife. Maura uses “yclept” in introducing Peter to another faculty member.

We’ll end with a more recent appearance, one we especially like. Here’s the opening of “My Man Bertie,” a review by Christopher Buckley of Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (2013), by Sebastia Faulks:

“What, ho? A new Jeeves and Wooster novel? Steady on. Your faithful reviewer may not be the brightest bulb in the old marquee, but dash it, isn’t this anno dom 2013, and didn’t ‘the Master’—yclept Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (‘Plum’ to his chums)—shove off across the old Rio Styx back in 1975?”

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Are you getting antsy?

Q: A recent BuzzFeed headline suggested that Travis Kelce proposed to Taylor Swift sooner than he intended because she was “antsy.” Now I’m antsy about learning the history of “antsy.”

A: In the Aug. 27, 2025, article on BuzzFeed, Ed Kelce, the father of the football player, is quoted as saying his son “was going to put it off” for a couple of weeks, but the singer “was getting maybe a little antsy” to be engaged.

As for the history of “antsy,” a possible early version (spelled “ancey”) appeared in the first half of the 19th century, but it’s uncertain that the two terms are related, even though both apparently have the same meaning—restlessly impatient or agitated.

The Dictionary of American Regional English begins its “antsy” entry with this early example: “Minard’s talking and Peake’s scribbling were enough to drive anyone ancey” (Papers of Bishop Jackson Kemper, 1838).

However, the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference, says it’s “unclear” whether “ancey” and “antsy,” though used “apparently with the same sense,” should be “interpreted as showing the same word.”

The OED suggests that the story of “antsy” actually began nearly a century later with the appearance of the expression “to have ants in one’s pants and variants.”

The dictionary defines the expression as “to fidget constantly; to be restlessly impatient or eager,” noting that in early use the fidgeting involved sexual feelings, as in the first Oxford citation:

“Some of the boys around town sure got ants in their pants over her” (from Torch Song: A Play in Prologue and Three Acts, by Kenyon Nicholson).

Here’s a later OED example where someone is turned on by music: “This guy gets so worked up when he hears swing that he can’t sit still but jumps around as if he had ants in his pants” (Pic magazine, March 9, 1938).

As for “antsy” (spelled the usual way), it apparently appeared for the first time in the phrase “antsy-pantsy,” which was derived from the longer expression. The earliest example we’ve found is from The Long Death, a 1937 murder mystery by George Dyer:

“I dope it out that the gunman in the front got through writing, and began to get antsy-pantsy to go on with the kidnapping where he’d left off.” (He had been writing a “snatch note” demanding “20 grand.”)

The oldest example we’ve seen for “antsy” used by itself is in Green’s Dictionary of Slang: “The psychologist could look at his Van Gogh and get antsy all by himself” (from One Cried Murder, a 1945 mystery novel by Jean Leslie).

And this is the latest citation in the OED: “The hours of telly exposure made me oddly antsy and anxious” (from Time Out New York, Jan. 1, 2009).

Finally, the combinations of “ants” and “pants” reminds us of an antsy mnemonic used to remember the difference between stalactites and stalagmites: “When the mites go up the tites go down.”

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The short and the long

Q: I think you can say, “The new bits last longer than the old bits,” but you can’t say, “The new bits last shorter than the old bits.” Why is that?

A: The words “short” and “long” are sometimes antonyms and sometimes not, often depending on whether they’re adjectives or adverbs.

As adjectives, they’re usually antonyms, so one could describe a drill bit as “short,” “shorter,” or “shortest” as well as “long,” “longer,” or “longest.”

But as adverbs, “short” and “long” generally aren’t opposites. For example, “short” can mean soon (“I’ll be there shortly”), abruptly or quickly (“He stopped short”), and unprepared (“He was caught short”).

And the adverb “long” can refer to a specific period (“He worked all summer long”), a significant distance (“Do you have to travel long to get there?”), and beyond a certain time (“I can’t stay longer”).

So it’s not unusual that only one of the adverbs works with the verb “last,” as in your example—something can “last longer” but it can’t “last shorter.”

In fact, the adjectives “short” and “long” aren’t always opposites either. “Short,” for example, can mean insufficiently supplied (“She was short of cash”), abrupt or curt (“He was short with her and she was even shorter in replying”), and quick or efficient (“They made short work of it”).

And “long” can mean speculative (“It was a long guess”), a specific length (“The rug was six feet long”), at great odds (“She took a long chance when she married me”), and a specific duration (“The speech was two hours long”).

But in the financial sense, the two adverbs can still be antonyms: when you “sell short” you think an asset’s price will fall in value over time, and when you “sell long” you think it will rise in value.

And of course “short” and “long” have various other senses as nouns and verbs, such as  “shorts” (short pants or underpants), an electrical “short” (short circuit), to “short” out,  and to “long” (feel a strong desire) for someone or something.

As for their etymologies, “short” and “long” both appeared in Old English as adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs. The first citations in the Oxford English Dictionary are for the adjectives (sceortne and langne), words inherited from prehistoric Germanic.

The OED’s first “short” citation, which uses the term in the distance sense, is from the Old English Boethius, a late ninth- or early tenth-century translation of De Consolatione Philosophiae (“The Consolation of Philosophy”), a sixth-century Latin treatise by the Roman philosopher Boethius:

“Forþy hi habbað swa sceortne ymbhwyrft” (“Therefor they [some stars] have so short a circuit”). The passage refers to the ancient belief that the stars and other celestial bodies traveled around a stationary earth.

The first “long” example is from Daniel, an anonymous poem based loosely on the biblical Book of Daniel. This passage refers to the journey of the ancient Israelites into exile in Babylonia after the army of King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in the sixth century BC:

“Gelæddon eac on langne sið Israela cyn, on eastwegas to Babilonia” (“They [Nebuchadnezzar’s troops] led the people of Israel on a long journey over the eastward roads to Babylonia”).

We should mention here that the title of our post, “the short and the long,” is an early version of the more common expression “the long and the short.”

When “the short and (the) long” first appeared in the 15th century, the OED says, it referred to “all that can or need be said; the summation, total, substance, or essence of the subject under discussion; the upshot.”

The dictionary’s first citation is from “The Merchant and His Son,” an anonymous poem written sometime before 1500: “Y wolde have the [thee] a man of lawe, thys ys the schorte and longe.” From Remains of Early Popular Poetry of England (1864), edited by William Carew Hazlitt.

And here’s a better known example from Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, probably written in the late 16th century: “He loves your wife; there’s the short and the long.” (Nym, a servant of Falstaff, is speaking here to the husband of Mistress Page.)

The OED says the reverse expression, “the long and (the) short of (it, etc.),” had a similar meaning when it appeared in the 17th century: “But to the purpose here’s the long and short ont” (from Sir Gregory Nonsence His Newes From No Place, 1622, by John Taylor).

Finally, here’s the dictionary’s latest example of the usage: “The long and the short of it will be that for weeks on end everybody will be offended with everybody else to the point that no one will be speaking to anyone.” From His Current Woman (2002), Bill Johnston’s translation of Inne Rozkosze (“Other Pleasures”), a novel by the Polish writer Jerzy Pilch.

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Why ‘learn by heart,’ not ‘by brain’?

Q: Why do we refer to memorizing as “learning by heart”? Wouldn’t “learning by brain” make more sense?

A: The expression “learn by heart” reflects an ancient belief that the heart, not the brain, is the human body’s organ of sensation and cognition.

That sense of “heart,” now sometimes called the cardiocentric hypothesis, was common in early Germanic languages, including Old English, and much earlier Egyptian, Chinese, and Greek.

More to the point, the ancient Egyptians believed that the heart recorded one’s good and bad deeds, and that the gods weighed one’s heart after death to determine whether the soul would enter the afterlife or be destroyed.

In Middle Egyptian, spoken from roughly 2000 to 1350 BC, the heart hieroglyph, transliterated as ib, looks like a jar with two handles, perhaps representing arteries and veins.

It usually meant the mind, but ib was also used in reference to the heart as an anatomical organ.

As the Egyptologist James P. Allen explains, the heart “was not only the center of physical activity but also the seat of thought and emotion” (Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, 3d ed., 2014).

In texts with ib, he writes, “the translation ‘mind’ usually makes better sense than the literal ‘heart.’ ”

To refer to the anatomical organ, he says, Egyptians usually combined ib with hat, the hieroglyph for the forepart of a lion, forming the compound glyph haty, representing the organ at the front of the chest. Various phonetic symbols could be added.

However, Allen adds that ib and haty were sometimes interchangeable. Here’s an example of ib and hat in the compound term haty, with two phonetic symbols:

In ancient Chinese, the pictograph 心 (xin) originally referred solely to the anatomical organ, but by the late fourth century BC it meant the mind as well, and is often translated by sinologists as “heart-mind.”

This is an early example of the mind sense of xin from the Mencius, an anthology of conversations and anecdotes attributed to the Confucian philosopher Mencius (circa 371-289 BC):

“心之官則思，思則得之，不思則不得也” (Xīn zhī guān zé sī, sī zé dé zhī, bù sī zé bùdé, “To the mind belongs the office of thinking. By thinking, it gets the right view of things; by neglecting to think, it fails to do this”). Translated by the 19th-century Scottish linguist and sinologist James Legge.

Around the same time, the Greek philosopher Aristotle described the heart (καρδίᾳ, kardia) as the organ of sensation. In this passage, he uses the genitive καρδίας:

“καὶ ἡ μὲν αἴσθησις καὶ ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως ἐν τῷ μέσῳ τοῦ σώματος τῆς καρδίας οὔσης” (“the seat and source of sensation is the region of the heart”). From A. L. Peck’s 1968 bilingual version of Aristotle’s treatise Περὶ τῶν Ζῴων Μερών (Perì tôn Zōíōn Merôn, On the Parts of Animals).

When the word “heart” first appeared in Old English (spelled heorte, hearte, etc.), it referred to both the organ that pumps blood and the organ of mental activity—or as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, “the bodily organ considered or imagined as the seat of feeling, understanding, and thought.”

The OED notes: “semantic developments that are widespread among other early Germanic languages include: courage; the heart as seat of life, of feeling, of thought, or of the will; centre; inner part; most important part.”

The dictionary adds that this sense of “heart” in early Germanic languages may have been influenced by the perception of the heart in classical and post-classical Latin as the “seat of thought, intelligence, will, emotion, or character.”

The earliest OED citation for the mental sense of “heart” is from a ninth-century Old English gloss, or translation, written between the lines of the eighth-century Latin in the Vespasian Psalter:

“ne forleort hie efter lustum heortan heara” (“[God] did not forsake them to the lusts of their hearts”). Psalm 80:13.

The negative particle ne in the interlinear Old English gloss changes the meaning of the original Latin: “Dimisi eos secundum desideria cordis eorum” (“I [God] let them go in accordance with the desires of their hearts”).

A scribe had inserted the Old English above the Latin in the manuscript. The gloss of the Vespasian Psalter is considered the oldest surviving portion of the Bible in English.

The earliest OED citation for “heart” in its anatomical sense is from Bald’s Leechbook, an Anglo-Saxon medical text written around the mid-ninth century: “Se maga biþ neah þære heortan & þære gelodr” (“The stomach is near the heart and the liver”).

As for the phrase “by heart” in an expression like “learn by heart,” the usage first appeared in the Middle English of the 14th century.

The OED defines “by heart” as “from memory; so as to be able to repeat or write out correctly and without assistance what has been learnt; by rote (often without proper understanding or reflection).”

The dictionary says the phrase frequently appears “with get, have, know, learn,” but in the earliest Oxford citation it’s used with “rehearse” in the archaic sense of to recite from memory:

“He was so myȝty of mynde þat he rehersed two þowsand names arewe by herte” (“He was so mighty of mind that he recited two thousand names in a row by heart”). From Polychronicon,  John Trevisa’s translation, sometime before 1387, of an earlier 14th-century work by Ranulf Higden.

In contemporary standard dictionaries, the primary meaning of the noun “heart” is the organ that pumps blood, but the word has many modern senses derived from the ancient belief that the heart was the seat of perception and cognition.

The primary definition in Merriam-Webster online is “a hollow muscular organ of vertebrate animals that by its rhythmic contraction acts as a force pump maintaining the circulation of the blood.”

However, the M-W entry includes many other modern senses of words and phrases that recall the ancient belief. Here are some of them, along with the dictionary’s examples:

Personality (“a cold heart”), compassion (“a leader with heart”), love (“won her heart”), courage (“never lost heart”), innermost character (“knew it in his heart”), in essence (“a romantic at heart”), with deep concern (“took the criticism to heart”), and, of course, by rote or from memory (“knows the poem by heart”).

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A tidy history of ‘spick and span’

Q: In the phrase “spick and span,” the word “spick” seems to be bound to “span.” It doesn’t stand on its own. Is there a concept for words that are bound to a phrase and meaningless alone?

A: We wrote a post in 2010 (recently updated) about words that are predictably paired with another. For example, “ulterior” is often paired with “motive.” Similar pairs are “bitter + end,” “heated + argument,” “slippery + slope,” and many more.

Sometimes the predictable pairs are joined by a conjunction, as with “flotsam and jetsam,” “rhyme or reason,” “rack and ruin,” “sackcloth and ashes,” “odds and ends,” and so on.

Sir Ernest Gowers, who edited the second edition of Fowlers Modern English Usage (1965), has a term for this latter category—“Siamese twins.” These are words, he says, that “convey a single meaning” when linked by “and” or “or.”

Some twins, Gowers writes, can make sense when separated (like “leaps and bounds”). But some can’t, often because the separate words have become obsolete or dialectal in their original meanings, so they’ve disappeared from common usage. Among the “indivisible” twins, he mentions our old friend “spick and span.”

So the answer to your question is yes: There is a concept for words that are bound in a phrase but meaningless alone. And “spick and span” is a good example. The original meanings of the words have died out but they survive in the phrase. Here’s the story.

The expression “spick and span” (often hyphenated or spelled “spic-and-span”) dates from the early 1600s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. But the tale began centuries before that, most likely with early Scandinavian words for a nail (spik) and a chip of wood (spánn).

In Old Norse, as the OED says, spánnýr meant brand new. It combined the noun spánn (chip of wood) with nýr (new), so literally it meant new as a fresh chip or shaving of wood.

In the late 13th or early 14th century, the Old Norse spánnýr entered English as “span-new,” meaning “quite or perfectly new,” the OED says. It especially referred to new clothes, as in the dictionary’s earliest citation:

“Þe cok bigan of him to rewe, and bouthe him cloþes, al spannewe” (“The cook began to pity him, and bought him clothes, all span-new”). From an anonymous Middle English romance, The Lay of Havelok the Dane, dated from the 1280s to circa 1300.

The noun “spick” came into the expression a few centuries later in the 1500s, Oxford says, when the earlier “span-new” underwent an “emphatic extension” and became “spick and span new.”

In the OED definition, “spick and span new” has a slightly different set of meanings from “span-new.” The notion of cleanliness slips in, and “spick and span new” refers to something “absolutely or perfectly new; brand-new; perfectly fresh or unworn.”

This is the dictionary’s earliest example: “They were all in goodly gilt armours, and braue purple cassocks apon them, spicke, and spanne newe.” From Thomas North’s 1579 translation of a French version of Plutarch’s Lives, written in second-century Greek.

As for the etymology of “spick,” Oxford says it was a noun, a variant of “spike,” which had been around since the mid-1300s when it meant a sharp piece of metal or wood used for fastening. Thus early on it could mean a nail or an especially large nail (the modern sense of “spike”).

Etymologists suggest that “spick” came into Middle English from either the Swedish and Norwegian spik (nail) or from other Germanic sources. But ultimately it came from a prehistoric root that’s been reconstructed as spei– (sharp point), according to The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. 

Interestingly, “spick and span new,” as Oxford notes, is similar in form and meaning to the Flemish and Dutch compound spiksplinternieuw (“spick-splinter-new”). And John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins suggests that the “spick” element in the English expression was added in imitation of the Dutch. The image is roughly “new as a newly forged nail or a fresh splinter of wood.”

Over time, it appears that the “new” element was taken for granted, and by the early 17th century the shortened expression “spick and span” was being used, though the definition did not change. Like “spick and span new,” it first meant “absolutely or perfectly new; brand-new; perfectly fresh or unworn.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from the playwright Thomas Tomkis’s comedy Albumazar, first performed in 1614 and published in 1615: “Of a starke Clowne I shall appeare speck and span Gentleman.”

And here’s a later OED example, which we’ve expanded for context, from The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Nov. 15, 1665):

“it was horrible foule weather; and my Lady Batten walking through the dirty lane with new spicke and span white shoes, she dropped one of her galoshes in the dirt, where it stuck, and she forced to go home without one, at which she was horribly vexed.”

Finally, the idea of newness became weaker in the expression, and “spick and span” in the sense we use it today appeared in the mid-19th century. The definition, the OED says, became “particularly neat, trim, or smart; suggestive of something quite new or unaffected by wear.” Here we’ve expanded the dictionary’s earliest example:

“and in front you behold young Benvenuto, spick and span in his very best clothes and silk stockings, looking—as Benvenuto never did in his life.” From comments about a portrait of Benvenuto Cellini in “A Pictorial Rhapsody,” William Makepeace Thackeray’s review of an exhibition at the Royal Academy (Fraser’s Magazine, July 1840).

A late 19th-century example shows just how much notions of neatness and tidiness had replaced newness in the expression. The OED citation is from the Irish novelist Charlotte Ridell’s Daisies and Buttercups (1882): “this spick and span old house.”

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Liwans, porticos, and palaces

Q: I am reading Ben-Hur (1880) by Lew Wallace and I have come across a word, “lewen,” that I cannot find in any dictionary. It appears to be an architectural feature in this example: “The arches of the lewens rested on clustered columns.”

A: The word “lewen” in Ben-Hur is Lew Wallace’s rendering of ليوان, an Arab word of Persian origin, typically spelled “liwan” in English and pronounced lee-WAHN. In your example, it’s a vaulted hall open on one side, such as a portico in a palace.

“In classical Persian and Arabic texts the term usually refers to a palace building or some formal part of a palace, such as a platform, balcony or portico,” according to The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture (2009), edited by Jonathan M. Bloom and Sheila S. Blair.

But among modern archeologists and art historians, Grove says, the term is used solely for a “vaulted hall with walls on three sides and completely open on the fourth”—a portico, in other words.

The encyclopedia adds that the basic form of the liwan “can be traced back to Mesopotamia and Iran during the time of the Parthians and Sassanian,” two ancient pre-Islamic Persian empires.

In Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, the open side of the liwan usually faces a courtyard. And that’s the way it’s used in your example and many others in the novel.

For readers unfamiliar with the book, it features the stories of Jesus and Judah Ben-Hur, a fictional Jewish prince who is enslaved by the Romans and becomes a Christian.

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A ‘bad boy’ can be a good thing

Q: I’m perplexed by the use of “bad boy” to refer to an object. For example, a tool: “This bad boy is very useful.” Can you shed light on this usage?

A: The phrase “bad boy” has been used since the mid-19th century to describe a rebellious man, but in the mid-20th century it also came to mean something effective or impressive, such as a car, a tool, a musical instrument, or other object.

When the term refers to a man, the Oxford English Dictionary explains, “bad boy” is used “with (humorous) allusion to the noun phrase bad boy in the general sense ‘ill-behaved male child.’ ”

The dictionary defines the use of “bad boy” for an adult as “a man who does not conform to expected or approved standards of conduct; a rebel,” and has this for its earliest example:

“We of New York who do duty so constantly in the British Press as the model ‘bad boys’ of Christendom’ ” (from The New York Times, March 9, 1860).

The OED says “bad girl” has been used since the mid-1800s to mean “a woman who defies expected or approved standards of conduct, esp. one who behaves in a wild, rebellious, or sexually provocative manner.”

The earliest Oxford example of the term used for a woman is from an Iowa newspaper: “The suspected ‘bad girl’ went before Mayor Morrison” (Daily Express and Herald, Dubuque, Feb. 14, 1855). The OED has no examples for “bad girl” used to mean an impressive object.

The dictionary says the use of “bad boy” for “something considered extremely effective or impressive” is “chiefly U.S.” and appeared “originally in African American usage.”

The earliest Oxford citation refers to a 1969 student occupation of buildings at Howard University. In this passage, “bad boys” are “wolf tickets” (threats or bluffs)—specifically, court orders that were eventually enforced when the students called the school’s bluff:

“The administration has been selling (wolf) tickets with their TRO’s (Temporary Restraining Orders) all year; and the students just cashed in one of those bad boys!” The parentheses are part of the quotation, from the Baltimore Afro-American, May 10, 1969.

The dictionary’s latest citation for “bad boy” used to mean an object refers to a snare drum: “The story is exactly the same with the matching 6×13 snare. Big sound, impeccable sensitivity, and maximum tuning versatility. No muffling or fine-tuning required with this bad boy” (Modern Drummer, February 2021).

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And now, let us digress

Q: I couldn’t find anything on the verb “gress,” yet it forms the root of many often used words today.  How about a take on the apparently outdated verb and its offspring?

A: As far as we can tell, English has never had a verb spelled “gress,” though the noun “grease” was occasionally written as “gresse” and the verb as “greese.”

The “gress” element you find in many English words, (“aggression,” “digress,” “progression,” “transgressive,” and so on) ultimately comes from the Latin gress-, participial stem of gradi (to step or walk).

So etymologically speaking, “aggression” means stepping toward another in a hostile way, “digress” to step apart, “progression” a stepping forward, “transgressive” stepping beyond a boundary, “ingress” a stepping in, “egress” a stepping out.

Similarly, many English words include the element “grade,” which is also derived from the Latin gradi, present infinitive form of the verb gradior (to step or walk).

So, a “grade school” is made up of several “grades,” or steps, while students take a step up when they “graduate.” And a “centigrade” thermometer has 100 grades, or steps, from the freezing to the boiling points of water.

The word elements “gress” and “grade” are “morphemes,” linguistic forms that cannot be broken up into smaller meaningful units.

“Gress” is a “bound morpheme,” one that has meaning only when attached to other elements, like prefixes or suffixes, while “grade” is a “free morpheme,” one that can stand alone and make sense.

Here are a few early examples from the Oxford English Dictionary for various English words with “gress” and “grade” morphemes derived from the Latin terms for stepping:

  • “In oure progresse to outward werkis.” From The Reule of Crysten Religioun, composed around 1443 by Reginald Pecock, published and edited in 1927 by William Cabell Greet.
  • “Digresse or go a little out of the pathe, digredior.” From Abcedarium Anglo Latinum (1552), an English-Latin dictionary by Richard Huloet.
  • “Aggression, an aggression, assault, incounter, or first setting on.” From A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611), by Randle Cotgrave.
  • “Hou sone þat god hem may degrade” (“How soon that God may degrade them”). From “Song of Yesterday” (c. 1325), published in Early English Poems and Lives of Saints With Those of the Wicked Birds Pilate and Judas (1862), edited by Frederick J. Furnivall.
  • “Master Edmund, that was my rewlere at Oxforth, berar her-of, kan tell yow, or ellys any oder gradwat” (“Master Edmund, who was my tutor at Oxford, bearer of [the letter] hereof, can tell you, or else any other graduate”). From a 1479 letter published in the Paston Letters (2004–2005), edited by Norman Davis, Richard Beadle, and Colin Richmond.

In case you’re interested, we’ll end with an expanded 15th-century “grease” citation from the OED with the verb spelled “greese” and the noun “gresse.”

The following passage is from a list of decrees issued in 1462 by the office of deacons at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Coventry:

“Hys Fellowe schall greese ye bellys [bellows] and Fynde gresse therto wan they nede.” From a transcript of the document included in a letter written on June 14, 1834, to British Magazine and Monthly Register of Religious and Ecclesiastical Information (Sept. 1, 1834).

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When ‘jealousy’ met ‘envy’

Q: I once heard that “jealousy” is a feeling about someone we think we have a right to (such as an intimate partner) and “envy” is a feeling about something we want but are not entitled to. Your thoughts?

A: Typically, we’re “jealous” when we fear losing something or someone important to us, like a spouse or a lover, to someone else. And we’re “envious” when we want something that someone else has. However, “jealous” is often used to mean “envious,” a usage that dates back to the 14th century.

Standard dictionaries now include both senses for the adjective “jealous” and the noun “jealousy,” and some have usage notes that go into more detail. Here’s Merriam-Webster’s usage note, which we’ve broken into paragraphs:

Jealousy vs. Envy

Depending on who you ask, jealousy and envy are either exact synonyms, totally different words, or near-synonyms with some degree of semantic overlap and some differences. It is difficult to make the case, based on the evidence of usage that we have, for either of the first two possibilities.

Both jealousy and envy are often used to indicate that a person is covetous of something that someone else has, but jealousy carries the particular sense of “zealous vigilance” and tends to be applied more exclusively to feelings of protectiveness regarding one’s own advantages or attachments. In the domain of romance, it is more commonly found than envy.

If you were to say “your salt-shaker collection fills me with jealousy,” most people would take it to mean much the same thing as “your salt-shaker collection fills me with envy.” But if someone made a flirtatious comment to your partner, you would likely say that it caused you jealousy, not envy.

As for the etymology, English borrowed the oldest of the terms, “jealous,” from the Old French gelos, but the ultimate source is the ancient Greek ζῆλος (zelos, meaning zeal, jealousy, pride, etc.). In fact, ζῆλος has given us both “zeal” and “jealousy,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

When “jealous” first appeared in early Middle English, Oxford says, it described in biblical language a divine love that “will tolerate no unfaithfulness or defection in the beloved object.”

The earliest OED citation is from the anonymous Ancrene Riwle, or Rules for Anchoresses, dated sometime before 1200:

“Vnder stond ancre … hwas spuse þu art. & hu heis gelus. of alle þine lates” (“Understand, anchoress … whose spouse thou art, and how he is jealous of all thine behaviors”).

Oxford says the adjective soon came to mean “apprehensive of being displaced in the love or good-will of someone; distrustful of the faithfulness of wife, husband, or lover.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation, which we’ve expanded, is from The Owl and the Nightingale, an anonymous Middle English poem believed written in the late 12th or early 13th century:

“He was so gelus of his wive, / That he ne mijte for his live / I-so that man with hire speke” (“He was so jealous of his wife / That he could not, to save his life, / Bear to see a man speak with her”).

When the noun “jealousy” appeared in the early 14th century, the OED says. it meant “fear of being supplanted in the affection, or distrust of the fidelity, of a beloved person, esp. a wife, husband, or lover.”

The earliest OED citation is from Handlyng Synne (1303), a devotional work by the English historian and poet Robert Mannyng:

“But where þe wyfe haþ gelousye, / Þer beþ wrdys grete and hye” (“But where the wife hath jealousy, / there be-eth words great [angry] and high [heated]”).

In the late 14th century, the adjective “jealous” took on its envious sense, which Oxford defines as “feeling ill-will towards another on account of some advantage or superiority which he or she possesses or may possess.”

The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded, is from the early Prologue A of The Legend of Good Women (circa 1385), by Chaucer. In this passage, Chaucer defends himself in the “court of love” against accusations that his work has offended women:

“For in your court is many a losengeour, / And many a queynte totelere accusour, / That tabouren in your eres many a thing / For hate, or for Ielous imagining, / And for to han with yow som daliaunce. Envye (I prey to god yeve hir mischaunce!) / Is lavender in the grete court alway.”

(“For in your court is many a flatterer, / And many a clever whispering accuser, / That drum in your ears many a thing / For hate, or for jealous [envious] imagining, / And for to have with you some dalliance. / Envy (I pray to God give her mischance!) / Is laundress [spreader of dirty laundry] in the great court always.”)

The next OED citation describes Jason, the hero of Greek mythology: “Alle were Ialouse of him, But Iason [Jason] neuer thought on none of them.” From The Historie of Jason (1477), William Caxton’s translation of Histoire de Jason (1460), by Raoul Le Fèvre.

[As we’ve written on the blog, the letter “j” did not exist in the 15th century, but a “j”-like “i” with a tail was sometimes used in titles as a swash, or ornamental, form of “i.” At the time, the letter “i” could be pronounced as either the modern vowel “i” or consonant “j.”]

When the noun “envy” first appeared in the late 13th century, Oxford says, it meant “the feeling of mortification and ill-will occasioned by the contemplation of superior advantages possessed by another.”

English borrowed the term from the Old French envie, but the ultimate source is Latin, the noun  invidia (envy or spite) and the verb invidere (to look at maliciously or to envy).

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from “The Fall and Passion” (circa 1280), an anonymous poem that describes Satan’s envy over Adam’s privileged position in the Garden of Eden, a position Satan might have had if not for his fall:

“To him þe deuil had envie, þat he in his stid schold be broȝte” (“To him [Adam] the devil had envy, that he in his stead should be brought [to Eden]”). From Early English Poems and Lives of Saints (1862), edited by Frederick J. Furnivall.

The first OED citaton for the adjective “envious” is from The Man of Law’s Tale in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (circa 1386). Here’s an expanded version:

“O Sathan, envious syn thilke day / That thou were chaced from oure heritage” (“O Satan, envious since the same day / That thou were banished from our heritage”).

As for the verb “envy,” the dictionary’s first example is from The Wife of Bath’s Prologue in The Canterbury Tales: “I nyl nat enuye no virginitee” (“I will not envy no virginity”).

And her actions, as we learn, speak even louder than her words.

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Why not ‘ceiling’ of the mouth?

Q: Why do we say “roof of the mouth” rather than “ceiling”? A friend asked me this and I had no idea but I thought maybe you would.

A: The noun “roof” appeared in English hundreds of years earlier than “ceiling,” and its use for the upper part of the mouth was firmly established well before “ceiling” arrived in Middle English.

Interestingly, in Old English “roof” meant the upper interior surface of a room as well as the upper exterior surface of a building. Both senses were recorded in the 10th century.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the inside sense of “roof” (hrof in Old English) as “the interior overhead surface of a room or other covered part of a house, building, etc.; the ceiling. Also: the upper internal surface of a cave or other structure.”

The earliest OED example is in a glossary of the mid-10th century in which lacunar (Latin for ceiling or paneled ceiling) is defined as hrof, hushefen (“house heaven”), or heofenhrof (“heaven’s roof”). From The Latin-Old English Glossary in MS Cotton Cleopatra AIII (1951), by William Garlington Stryker.

The dictionary’s next example is from The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, written around 990 by the Benedictine Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham:

“Se hrof eac swilce hæfde mislice heahnysse; on sumre stowe hine man mihte mid heafde geræcan, on sumre mid handa earfoðlice” (“The roof also was of various heights: in one place a man might reach it with his head, in another barely with his hand”).

The dictionary defines the outside sense of “roof” as “the external upper covering of a house or other building; the framing structure on top of a building supporting this. Also: a rooftop.”

The OED’s earliest citation (using the plural hrofum) is from an Old English gloss, or translation, inserted in the late 10th century between the lines of Latin in the Lindisfarne Gospels, dating from the early 8th century:

“þætte in eare sprecend gie woeron in cottum aboden bið on hrofum” (“what you have spoken in the ear [whispered] in bedchambers shall be proclaimed from rooftops,” Luke 12:3).

The OED defines the sense of “roof” you’re asking about as an extended or figurative use of “roof” for “the upper surface of the oral cavity; the palate.” The first citation is from an Old English gloss added in the 11th century to the margins of a 10th-century Latin grammar:

“goma uel hrof þæs muðes” (“palate or roof of the mouth”). From the Antwerp part of the Antwerp-London Glossaries. The manuscript, split into two, includes glosses from the margins of Excerptiones Prisciani (Excerpts From Priscian). Priscian was a Latin grammarian of the early 6th century.

As for “ceiling,” the OED says that when the noun first appeared in the late 14th century it referred to “the wooden lining of the roof or walls of a room: panelling; wainscoting.” Here’s the dictionary’s first citation for this now obsolete sense:

“Þe celynge with-inne was siluer plat & with red gold ful wel yguld” (“the ceiling within was silver plate and with red gold full well gilded”). From Sir Ferumbras (circa 1380), a medieval romance about a Saracen knight.

Today, “ceiling” means the upper lining of a room and “roof” usually means the upper covering of a building. And as we’ve said, for close to a thousand years “roof” has also meant the upper interior of the mouth.

But “roof” is still sometimes used in an another “inside” sense—as in the highest part of a cave, tunnel, mine or other underground space, and the underside of an overhanging ledge.

We’ll end with a modern example that the OED found in Postcards From the Ledge: Collected Mountaineering Writings of Greg Child (1998). In this passage, the Australian mountaineer encounters a storm of snow pellets after climbing around the roof of a ledge:

“In the afternoon, as Greg climbs around a small roof and launches up a groove, a cloud appears out of nowhere and spills a deluge of graupel.”

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Tales of the drawing room

Q: Your recent post about “repair” refers to guests who “repaired to the drawing room.” That made me wonder about the origin of “drawing room.” I doubt it was ever a room set aside for sketching portraits.

A: The term “drawing room” began life as a shortening of “withdrawing-room,” a room for people to withdraw or retire to.

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, “drawing room” originally referred to “any private room or chamber to which people may withdraw, usually attached to a more public room.”

The dictionary’s earliest “drawing room” citation, which we’ve expanded, is an entry made April 30, 1635, in an account of expenses for work at Althorp House in Northamptonshire, England:

“To Leeson 1 day cutting bragetts [brackets] for the drawinge room.” From The Washingtons: A Tale of a Country Parish in the 17th Century, Based on Authentic Documents (1860), by John Nassau Simpkinson.

Later, the OED says, “drawing room” came to mean a room “reserved for the reception and entertainment of guests.”

“From the late 18th to the early 20th century,” the OED explains, “it was conventional in polite society for ladies at a dinner party to withdraw to the drawing room following dinner, while the gentlemen remained for a period at the dining room table before joining them.”

The dictionary cites an early example of that usage in James Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1791). Here Boswell describes a dinner at the home of Sir Joshua Reynolds on April 25, 1778: “We went to the drawing-room, where was a considerable increase of company.”

The first Oxford citation for the original term, “withdrawing-room,” is from Ram-Alley; or, Merrie-Trickes (1611), a comedy by by Lording Barry: “IIe waite in the with-drawing roome, Vntill you call.”

(The dictionary describes Barry as a playwright and a pirate. We’ll add theater owner, privateer, and ship owner. He also sailed with Sir Walter Raleigh on a 1517 expedition to Guyana in search of the mythical city of El Dorado.)

The OED notes that an even earlier term, “withdrawing chamber,” appeared in the late 14th century. The earliest citation combines the Middle English “withdrawyng chambre” with Anglo-Norman French in this passage from the official records of the English Parliament:

“Triours des Petitions … tendront lour place en la Chapelle de la Withdrawyng Chambre” (“The examiners of the petitions … shall have their meeting in the chapel of the withdrawing chamber” (from the Rolls of Parliament, 1392-3).

Getting back to “drawing room,” here’s an example we’ve found in Jane Austen’s 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice, featuring one of our favorite fictional battle-axes, Lady Catherine de Bourgh:

“When the ladies returned to the drawing-room, there was little to be done but to hear Lady Catherine talk, which she did without any intermission till coffee came in, delivering her opinion on every subject in so decisive a manner as proved that she was not used to have her judgment controverted.”

Drawing rooms began falling out of favor in the early 20th century, as did sitting rooms, morning rooms, etc., according to an OED citation from Discovery magazine, July 1933:

“The sitting-rooms, parlour, drawing-room, morning room, study, library, ballroom and so on have all been kaleidoscoped into the living room.”

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On the banks of the Ohio

Q: This kind of construction always puzzles me: “He built his home on the banks of the Ohio River.” Can the plural “banks” refer to the land on just one side of a river?

A: Both the singular “bank” and the plural “banks” have been used for hundreds of years to mean the entire raised area of land along a river, lake, sea, or other water body. The singular, often modified by an adjective like “left” or “west,” is also used for a specific side or part of the raised area.

When the word “bank” first appeared in English in the 12th century, it meant “a raised shelf or ridge of ground; a long, high mound with steeply sloping sides; one side or slope of such a ridge or mound,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded here, is from a Middle English homily that compares straightening a crooked life to leveling the banks (“bannkess”) and filling the hollows (“græfess”) of uneven land:

“Whær se iss all unnsmeþe ȝet. Þurrh bannkess. & þurrh græfess … Þær shulenn beon ridinngess nu” (“Wherever it is all unsmooth yet, through banks and through hollows … there shall be clearings now”). From the Ormulum (circa 1175), a collection of early Middle English homilies.

In the early 14th century, the noun “bank” came to mean “the sloping, vertical, or overhanging edge of a river or other watercourse; (also more broadly) the land running immediately alongside a river or other watercourse,” the OED says.

The first Oxford example is from the Latin episcopal register of Richard de Kellawe, Bishop of Durham, England. In this passage, which refers to the apportionment of water, the Middle English word “bank” (sometimes spelled with a final “e” or an apostrophe to show its omission) is mixed in with the Latin:

“Et eadem aqua mensurari debet a le mainflod, quando eadem aqua ita fluit ut sit plena de bank’ en bank’ ” (“And the same water should be measured at high water, when the same water flows in such a way that it is full from bank to bank”). From Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense: The Register of Richard de Kellawe, Lord Palatine and Bishop of Durham, 1311–1316, edited by Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy in 1875.

Around the same time, the noun “bank” came to mean “the sea coast or shore,” the OED says, and was used “also in plural in same sense.” We suspect that this use of the plural “banks” for a seacoast may have led to the usage you’re asking about.

The noun “bank” is singular in the dictionary’s earliest coastal citation: “Sur la ripe est vn ceroyne, On the bank is a meremayde.” From a Middle English guide to French conversation (c. 1350), cited in “Nominale Sive Verbale,” edited by Walter William Skeat, published in Transactions of the Philological Society, November 1906.

The noun is plural in the next Oxford citation: “They had a syght of the bankys of Normandy.” From Morte Darthur, Thomas Mallory’s Middle English prose version of the legendary tales of King Arthur, written sometime before 1470.

And here’s an example we’ve found for the plural “banks” used in referring to a cottage on the River Great Ouse in Buckinghamshire. This passage is from the English poet William Cowper’s “A Poetical Epistle to Lady Austen” (1781):

And you, though you must needs prefer
The fairer scenes of sweet Sancerre,

Are come from distant Loire, to choose
A cottage on the banks of Ouse.

Finally, a stanza from “Banks of the Ohio,” an anonymous 19th-century folk song about a woman slain on a riverbank, as sung by Pete Seeger:

Then only say, that you’ll be mine,
In no other arms you’ll find!
Down beside where the waters flow
On the banks of the Ohio.

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Some ‘after’ thoughts

Q: Have you ever looked into “after” in the context of “What y’after?” I can’t see any relationship between the “behind” and the “pursuing” meanings of the word.

A: Both of those meanings of “after” (“behind” and “in pursuit of”) are very old and date back to Anglo-Saxon days.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the first sense as “behind something in place or position; in the rear; further back.” It cites an account of the Revolt of the Earls, the last serious act of resistance against William I and the Norman Conquest.

In this passage from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 1076, Ralph de Gael, one of the earls, has fled his castle to find reinforcements while his wife, Emma, stays behind (æfter in Old English) to defend it:

“Rawulf … wæs fægen þæt he to scypum ætfleah, & his wif belaf æfter in þam castele” (“Ralph … was glad that he escaped to the ships, and his wife remained after in the castle”).

Emma ultimately negotiated terms under which she and her husband lost their lands, but she and her followers were allowed to escape.

The OED defines the pursuing sense of “after” as “in pursuit of, following with the intent to catch (a person or thing in motion); in the direction of.”

This Old English example is from the Benedictine Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham’s Catholic Homilies, written in the late 10th century:

“Pharao bæt he bæt folc swa freolice forlet, and tengde æfter mid eallum his here, and offerde hí æt dære Readan sæ” (“Pharaoh with all his army pressed after the people [the Israelites] that he so freely let go and overtook them at the Red Sea”).

Those two senses of “after” aren’t as different as you think. Both refer to being behind, but one is trying to catch up to or obtain what’s ahead.

The word “after” has developed many other meanings over the years—as  an adverb, adjective, conjunction, and preposition—but those two Old English senses are alive and well in modern English, as you’ve noticed.

You can find both in contemporary dictionaries. American Heritage has this example for the preposition used in the “behind” sense: “Z comes after Y in the alphabet,” and these examples for it used in the “pursuing” sense: “seek after fame; go after big money.”

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Unpacking ‘emotional baggage’

Q: I am trying to find the source of the expression “emotional baggage,” but references seem few and far between. Any pointing in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

A: As far as we can tell, the expression first appeared in the early 20th century, though the noun “baggage” had been used earlier in a similar way with other modifiers.

The Oxford English Dictionary says “baggage” has been used figuratively since the late 19th century to mean “beliefs, knowledge, experiences, or habits conceived of as something one carries around; (in later use) esp. characteristics of this type which are considered undesirable or inappropriate in a new situation.”

The dictionary adds that the noun appears “frequently with modifying word, as cultural baggage, emotional baggage, intellectual baggage, etc.” The earliest OED citation has “intellectual” as the modifier:

“His instructors practically impelled him to temporarily divest himself of his intellectual baggage, but … what the student acquired as a child would rarely … be absolutely lost” (The Times, London, Jan. 9, 1886).

The earliest example we’ve found for “emotional baggage” is from The House of Defence (1906), a novel by E. F. Benson:

“But all the emotional baggage, that she had consistently thrown away all her life, seemed to her to be coming back now, returned to her by some dreadful dead-letter office.”

The OED’s only example for “emotional baggage” is from a much later book: “Babies … have not yet accumulated all the ‘emotional baggage’ which some adults carry around” (Teach Yourself Aromatherapy, 1996, by Denise Whichello Brown).

Although the expression is quite common now, we know of only one standard dictionary that has an entry for it.

Collins online defines it as “the feelings you have about your past and the things that have happened to you, which often have a negative effect on your behaviour and attitudes.”

However, several other standard dictionaries have definitions for “baggage” used in a similar sense, and include “emotional baggage” examples.

Dictionary.com, for instance, has this example: “neurotic conflicts that arise from struggling with too much emotional baggage.”

Since the late 20th century, the verb “unpack” has been used with “emotional baggage” in the sense of to clear up unresolved emotional issues.

Here’s an example: “5 Steps to Unpacking Your Emotional Baggage” (a headline from Psychology Today, Aug. 1, 2022).

In fact, the verb “unpack” has been used in similar constructions since the early 17th century.

The OED says “unpack” is used this way in “figurative and in figurative contexts, esp. with reference to the releasing of one’s emotions.”

The earliest Oxford citation is from the 1604 second quarto of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In this expanded passage, Hamlet laments that he hasn’t yet avenged the murder of his father:

Why what an Asse am I, this is most braue,
That I the sonne of a deere [father] murthered,
Prompted to my reuenge by heauen and hell,
Must like a whore vnpacke my hart with words.

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Donjons, dungeons, and dragons

Q: I recently came across the use of “donjon” for an inner tower of a castle. I assume the word is somehow related to “dungeon.”

A: Yes, both English words, “donjon” and “dungeon,” are derived from an Anglo-Norman term for a keep, or fortified tower, in the inner court of a castle.

In fact, they were once variants of the same word. Today “donjon” refers to the tower, while “dungeon” means an underground prison in the tower or a similar place.

Here’s how they developed.

The Anglo-Norman word (spelled donjun, dongon, dongoun, etc.) ultimately comes from the classical Latin domnus, a shortened form of dominus (lord), according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

When “donjon” first appeared in Middle English writing in the 14th century, it had both meanings—the tower as well as the underground prison.

Here’s the OED’s tower definition:

“A large fortified tower, esp. the great tower or keep of a castle, typically located in the innermost court or bailey, and used as a secure place of refuge, retreat, or imprisonment.”

The OED’s earliest citation for this tower sense, with the term spelled “donioun,” is from a mythical Middle English tale in which the Roman poet Virgil uses black magic to put a man made of brass atop a castle keep:

“Þer biside on o donioun / He kest a man of cler latoun” (“there not far away upon a donjon, he cast a man of bright brass”). From The Seven Sages of Rome, Middle English stories written around 1330.

The dictionary defines the prison sense of “donjon” as “a (small) secure cell, underground chamber, or pit for the confinement of prisoners, esp. in the keep of a castle.”

Oxford’s first citation for this sense is from a medieval homily in which a pilgrim’s soul is imprisoned by Satan, then rescued by St. James and the Virgin Mary:

“His sawel es broht til a donjoun, / Thar it wit outen end sal lend” (“His soul is brought to a dungeon, there without end it shall dwell”). From Northern Homily: Pilgrim of St. James, dated at sometime before 1400, but believed composed around 1300.

The words “donjon” and “dungeon” eventually diverged, as the different spellings took on their different meanings in early modern English.

Finally, the OED notes that the term is now used in fantasy role-playing games, especially Dungeons & Dragons, to mean “any enclosed environment, most typically a complex of underground vaults, tunnels, etc., in which players seek rewards and face dangers.”

The OED’s earliest role-playing example, which we’ve expanded, is from the original 1974 D&D rules, written by the game’s designers, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson:

“A good dungeon will have no less than a dozen levels down, with offshoot levels in addition, and new levels under construction so that players will never grow tired of it.”

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Let us repair to the boudoir

Q: How did the verb “repair” come to mean to move to another place as well as to fix something?

A: The verbs “repair” (to fix) and “repair” (to go) are two distinct words that have evolved from two different Latin terms.

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, the mending sense ultimately comes from the classical Latin reparare (to put back in order) while the going sense ultimately comes from the post-classical Latin repatriare (to return to one’s country).

Middle English borrowed the two terms in various spellings, meanings, and forms from Anglo-Norman, Middle French, and Old French.

The OED’s earliest English citation for “repair” to mean “go, proceed, set out, make one’s way” is from Sir Tristrem, a Middle English romance believed written sometime before 1300. Here’s an expanded version:

“Tristrem þouȝt repaire, / Hou so it euer be / To bide: ‘Þat cuntre will y se, / What auentour so be tide’ ” (“Tristrem thought to repair [to proceed], / Howsoever it might be / To abide [endure the giant Beliagog]: / ‘What country will I see, / What adventure so betide?’ ”).

The dictionary’s first example for “repair” used to mean “restore (a damaged, worn, or faulty object or structure) to good or proper condition” is from a Middle English translation of a Latin chronicle of world history:

“At þe repayrynge of Seynt Petres chirche, he wente to wiþ a mattok and opened first þe erþe” (“At the repairing of Saint Peter’s Church, he went forth with a mattock [an ax-like digging tool] and opened first the earth”). From Polychronicon, John Trevisa’s translation, dated sometime before 1387, of an earlier 14th-century work by Ranulf Higden.

Standard dictionaries now recognize both the fixing and going senses of “repair,” but the going sense (as in “Let us repair to the boudoir”) is now considered old- fashioned and sometimes used humorously.

Merriam-Webster online, for example, describes the use of “repair” to mean “go to (a place)” as “old-fashioned + formal,” and has this example: “After dinner, the guests repaired to the drawing room for coffee.”

The dictionary adds that the going sense is “sometimes used humorously,” and has this example: “Shall we repair to the coffee shop?”

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Channeling the talking heads of yore

Q: Where does the expression “talking head” originate from? And why has it become so pejorative?

A: When the term first appeared in the mid-19th century, it referred to mythical robotic talking heads purportedly created by medieval scientists.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the original sense of the term as “a legendary automaton resembling a human head, supposed to have been able to speak and answer questions put to it.”

The dictionary’s earliest “talking head” citation, which we’ve expanded, refers to a brass head supposedly created by the polymath, philosopher, scientist, and Franciscan friar Roger Bacon in the 13th century:

“Roger Bacon, having succeeded in making a talking head, was so wearied, says the chronicler, with its perpetual tittle-tattle that he dashed it to pieces” (from The Examiner, a London literary weekly, Sept. 16, 1848).

In The Honorable Historie of Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay (1594), a play by Robert Greene, Bacon describes his supposed plan to create an artificial talking head with the help of infernal forces:

“What art can work, the frolic friar knows; / And therefore will I turn my magic books, / And strain out necromancy to the deep. / I have contrived and framed a head of brass (I made [the demon] Belcephon hammer out the stuff).”

However, Bacon falls asleep before the head begins to speak, and his helper, the poor scholar Miles, belatedly awakes him: “Master, master, up! Hell’s broken loose; your Head speaks; and there’s such a thunder and lightning, that I warrant all Oxford is up in arms.”

By the time Bacon gets up, the head has fallen to the floor and broken, and he laments his loss: “My life, my fame, my glory, all are past.”

As it turns out, the idea of a talking head dates back to ancient Greece, where it was a popular theme in mythology. The most famous example is the legend of Orpheus, a Thracian bard whose severed head continued to sing mournful songs after his death.

Getting back to reality, the modern sense of “talking head” as “a speaker on television who addresses the camera and is viewed in close-up,” appeared in the mid-20th century, according to citations in the OED.

The literal “talking head” here is the televised head and shoulders of the person talking. The dictionary’s first example is from an Ohio newspaper:

“It’s easy to come up with just ‘talking heads’ on the TV screen. We have to fight this all the time” (The Middletown Journal, June 5, 1964).

Why, as you’ve noticed, is the term “talking head” often used in a derogatory way, as in the citation above?

Oxford Reference, an Oxford University Press website, suggests that “talking head” is “often used in a pejorative sense because the use of such commentators in a visual medium suggests an over-reliance on ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing.’ ”

We’d add that the TV talking heads may be viewed negatively as people reading scripts, often written by others, rather than expressing thoughts of their own.

Incidentally, as we’ve noted elsewhere, a TV talking head is sometimes called a “gob on a stick” in British English.

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On and off the cuff

Q: Where does the expression “off the cuff” come from?

A: The use of “off the cuff” to mean without preparation apparently comes from notes jotted on one’s shirt cuffs.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the colloquial usage originated in the US and means “extempore, on the spur of the moment, unrehearsed.”

As the dictionary explains, the phrase “off the cuff” signifies “as if from notes made on the shirt-cuff.”

The earliest examples we’ve seen come from the days of silent film, with the first one tracked down by Fred Shapiro, editor of one of our favorite references, The New Yale Book of Quotations:

“Horkheimer’s pictures were the kind that were ‘shot off the cuff’ ” (San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 4, 1922).

The passage refers to E. D. Horkheimer. He and his brother, H. M. Horkheimer, founded the Balboa Amusement Producing Co. in Long Beach, CA, turning out silent films from 1913 to 1918.

The language researcher Pascal Tréguer found the next published example in an article by the screenwriter Alfred A. Cohn (The Film Daily, New York, Oct. 7, 1928):

“With the coming of the ‘talkie’ script,” Cohn writes, the director “no longer ‘shoots ’em off the cuff.’ ”

Cohn wrote the screenplay for The Jazz Singer (1927), the first feature-length film with some synchronized singing and speech.

On his website word histories, Tréguer also cites an incident in which Jack Cohn, a film producer and co-founder of Columbia Pictures, is said to have dashed off an idea for a movie title on one of his shirt cuffs during a golf tournament:

“Somebody said Jack Cohn had ‘stymied’ and Jack wrote it on his cuff as a good title for a future Columbia release” (The Film Daily, March 25, 1928). In golf, “stymied” refers to an obsolete rule about one ball blocking another on a green.

When the noun “cuff” first showed up in the 14th century, it referred to a mitten or a glove, a usage that the OED says is now obsolete.

The dictionary’s earliest citation, with “cuffs” spelled “coffus,” is from William Langland’s allegorical poem Piers Plowman (circa 1378):

“He caste on his cloþes, i-clouted and i-hole, His cokeres and his coffus, for colde of his nayles” (“He threw on his clothes, full of patches and holes, his socks and his mittens, for the cold of his nails”).

In the 16th century, Oxford says, “cuff” took on its modern sense of “an ornamental part at the bottom of a sleeve, consisting of a fold of the sleeve itself turned back, a band of linen, lace, etc. sewed on, or the like.”

The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded here, is from a 1522 will in Testamenta Eboracensia [Testaments of York], a collection of wills registered in York:

“I gif to Laurence Foster  my velvett  jacket, to make his childer [children] patlettes [collars] and cuyfifes [cuffs].” (A “patlet” is an old term for a collar, ruff, neckerchief, or other neckwear.)

In the 20th century, “cuff” took on an additional meaning, “the turn-up on a trouser leg,” a usage the OED describes as “chiefly U.S.”

The dictionary’s first example is from a 1911 catalogue of T. Eaton Company Ltd., a now-defunct chain of Canadian department stores: “Trousers have belt loops, cuff bottoms and full width.”

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On criticizing and critiquing

Q: I see the verb “critique” used all the time in place of what I believe is the correct word—“criticize.” I thought “critique” meant to analyze the pros and cons, not to express disapproval.

A: Yes, the verb “critique” does indeed mean to analyze or evaluate, though it’s sometimes used in the sense of “criticize”—to find fault with.

Standard dictionaries don’t recognize the fault-finding sense, but the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference, notes that the verb “critique” is used “(sometimes) to express a harsh or unfavourable opinion of (a person or thing).”

Interestingly, “criticize” once meant to analyze as well as find fault with, but the analytical sense is now obsolete. The OED says both “criticize” and “critique” ultimately come from ancient Greek terms having to do with literary criticism.

The verb “criticize” is derived from the noun “critic,” which ultimately comes from the Greek κριτικός, a literary critic. (The OED notes that κριτικός, an adjective meaning able to discern, is used substantively here as a noun meaning a literary critic.)

The verb “critique” is derived from the noun “critique,” which ultimately comes from ἡ κριτική (short for ἡ κριτικὴ τέχνη, the critical art).

When the noun “critic” (source of “criticize”) first appeared in early modern English in the late 16th century, Oxford says, it meant “a person who analyses, evaluates, and comments on literary texts; spec. a person skilled in textual or biblical criticism.”

The dictionary’s first citation is from A Defence of the Gouernment Established in the Church of Englande for Ecclesiasticall Matters (1587), by John Bridges, Dean of Salisbury and later Bishop of Oxford:

“You woulde haue sayde, hee had beene Longinus the Critike (or one that giues his iudgement against euery body) and a Censor (or Master Controller) of the Romayne eloquence.”

When “criticize” first appeared in the early 17th century, the OED says, it had two senses:

(1) “to pass judgement on a person or thing; esp. to express a harsh or unfavourable opinion,” and (2) “to analyse, evaluate, and comment on something, esp. a literary text or other creative work; to subject something to critical analysis.” Oxford labels the second sense obsolete.

Both meanings of “criticize” were first used in the same work. Here are Oxford’s earliest examples of the two senses, from Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621):

(1) “Goe now censure, criticize, scoffe and raile.” (2) “If a rigid censurer should criticize on this which I haue writ, he should not find three faults as Scaliger in Terence, but 300.”

(The second citation refers to the Renaissance scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger’s comment in Poetices Libri Septem [Seven Books of Poetics, 1561] that ancient scholars found three faults in Terence’s plays, but the faults were theirs, not his: “illis potius quam ei sunt oneri” [“they are burdens to them rather than to him”].)

As for the noun “critique” (source of the verb “critique”), the OED says it first meant “a piece of writing or other review in which a text, creative work, subject, etc., is analysed or evaluated.”

The earliest example we’ve found is from The Nature of Truth (1641), by the English statesman and military officer Robert Greville, Second Baron Brooke. In the work, which originated as a letter to a friend, Greville says people should not be forced to worship against their beliefs:

“When ’twas first VVrot, ’twas intended but a Letter to a private Friend, (not a Critick;) and since its first writing, and sending, twas never so much as perused, much lesse, refined, by its Noble Author.”

The verb “critique” followed a century later, the OED says, when it meant “to analyse, evaluate, and comment on (a literary text, creative work, etc.).” The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded, is from a novel, narrated by a lapdog, that satirizes 18th-century culture:

“the worst ribaldry of Aristophanes, shall be critiqued and commented on by men, who turn up their noses at Gulliver or JosephAndrews” (from The History of Pompey the Little: or, the Life and Adventures of a Lap-Dog, 1752, by Francis Coventry).

In the 20th century, the OED says, the verb “critique” took on additional senses that include the one you’re asking about: “To make a critical assessment of (a person’s performance, actions, etc.); (sometimes) to express a harsh or unfavourable opinion of (a person or thing).”

The first Oxford example refers to making a critical assessment of students: “All student practice is critiqued in a constructive manner” (from The Journal of Higher Education, 1950).

Finally, here’s an OED example where the verb “critique” is being used clearly to mean find fault with: “He was by no means perfect, and this column has often critiqued his excesses” (from The Times, London, Feb. 1, 2016).

But as we noted above, standard dictionaries haven’t yet recognized this expanded usage.

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Why are clams happy?

Q: My wife asked me about the expression “happy as a clam,” and I had to admit I knew nothing about it. But I am sure you do.

A: English speakers have been using the “as happy as” formula for nearly four centuries to express exceptional happiness by comparing it to the feelings of various people and creatures perceived to be very happy.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes these expressions as “similative phrases, indicating a high level of happiness,” and has examples dating back to the early 17th century.

The OED’s examples include similes comparing happiness to that of a “king” (1633), a “god” (before 1766), a “lark” (1770), a “prince” (1776), a “pig in muck” (1828), a “clam” (1834), a “cherub” (1868), and a “bee” (1959).

One can understand the thinking behind nearly all of these expressions. The one exception is “as happy as a clam,” which the dictionary describes as “U.S. colloquial.”

The OED doesn’t discuss the history of the expression, but language sleuths have spent quite a bit of time trying to track down the origin of the usage.

The two most common theories are that “as happy as a clam” refers to the clam supposedly feeling safe when underwater during high tide or secure because of the protection of its snug shell.

John Russell Bartlett, in the first edition of his Dictionary of Americanisms (1848), includes only a longer version of the expression: “ ‘As happy as a clam at high water,’ is a very common expression in those parts of the coast of New England where clams are found.”

However, Bartlett suggests in his second edition (1859) that the shorter version may have come first: “Happy as a Clam is a common simile in New England, sometimes enlarged as ‘happy as a clam at high water.’ ’’

As far as we can tell, the shorter version did indeed appear first in writing, though a longer one may have existed earlier in speech.

The earliest example we’ve seen is from this description of a colonial planter in Harpe’s Head, a Legend of Kentucky (1833), a novel by the American writer James Hall:

“He was as happy as a clam. His horses thrived, and his corn yielded famously; and when his neighbors indignantly repeated their long catalogue of grievances, he quietly responded that King George had never done him any harm.”

The OED’s earliest citation, which we’ve expanded, appeared in the December 1834 issue of the short-lived undergraduate literary journal Harvardiana: “He could not even enjoy that peculiar degree of satisfaction, usually denoted by the phrase ‘as happy as a clam.’ ”

The “high water” version first showed up in “The Oakwood Letters,” a humor series published in several different newspapers in 1836. The earliest example we’ve seen is from the Boston Courier (Jan. 7, 1836):

“Dear Mrs. Butternut, I must leave off, for I can’t say any more, only that if I was once more safe at home, I should be happy as a clam at high water, as the sailors say.” (We’ve seen no indication that the expression was a nautical usage.)

The idea that the expression comes from a belief that the clam is happy because it feels secure in its shell appeared in the March 1838 issue of The Knickerbocker, a literary monthly in New York:

“ ‘Happy as a clam,’ is an old adage. It is not without meaning. Your clam enjoys the true otium cum dignitate [leisure with dignity]. Ensconced in his mail of proof [chain mail armor]—for defence purely, his disposition being no ways bellicose—he snugly nestleth in his mucid bed, revels in quiescent luxury, in the unctuous loam that surroundeth him.”

We’ll end with a sonnet by the 19th-century American poet John Godrey Saxe, who writes that a clam’s life is as hard as its shell:

“A Sonnet to a Clam”

Dum tacent clamant [Though silent they shout]
Inglorious friend! most confident I am
Thy life is one of very little ease;
Albeit men mock thee with their similes
And prate of being “happy as a clam!”
What though thy shell protects thy fragile head
From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea?
Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee,
While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed,
And bear thee off,—as foemen take their spoil,—
Far from thy friends and family to roam;
Forced, like a Hessian, from thy native home,
To meet destruction in a foreign broil!
Though thou art tender, yet thy humble bard
Declares, O clam! thy case is shocking hard!

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One of the best there is

Q: I first heard the expression “one of the best there is” in a game from 2011, and it’s been on my mind ever since. Shouldn’t it be “one of the best there are”? Please help!

A: The usual expression is “one of the best there is,” an expanded version of the singular noun phrase “one of the best,” which first appeared in the late 1400s.

The full expression appeared in the early 20th century, with “there is” (technically an “existential clause” showing that something exists) apparently added for emphasis.

Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks terms in digitized books, recognizes “one of the best there is” but not “one of the best there are,” indicating that the “are” version is seen rarely, if at all, in edited published writing.

The earliest example we’ve found for “one of the best” is from the English printer William Caxton’s late 15th-century translation of an Old French tale that dates from the 12th century:

“But of all Fraunce I am one of the best & truest knyght that be in it.” From The Right Plesaunt and Goodly Historie of the Foure Sonnes of Aymon (circa 1489), Caxton’s translation of of Quatre Fils Aymon.

And here’s an example from “A Gest [tale] of Robyn Hode,” an anonymous ballad about Robin Hood, written in the late 15th or early 16th century:

“Thou art one of the best sworde-men that euer yit sawe I.” From English & Scottish Popular Ballads (popularly known as the Child Ballads, 1888), edited by Francis James Child.

The longer expression, “one of the best there is,” first appeared at the turn of the 20th century. The earliest example we’ve found is from a description in a horticultural magazine of the Blenheim Orange melon, a muskmelon or cantaloupe:

“This Melon holds its own as one of the best, not only so far as flavour and size are concerned, but also in the matter of constitution; indeed, from this latter standpoint, I think it is absolutely one of the best there is, any sign of canker among the plants being very rare” (from The Garden, London, Aug. 24, 1901).

In the clause as a whole—“it is absolutely one of the best there is”—“there is” refers to “one,” and the entire noun phrase (“one of the best there is”) refers to the singular subject “it.” That’s why “there is,” not “there are,” is used here.

On the other hand, “there are” would be used in a clause with a plural subject—“they are absolutely three of the best there are.”

You may be confused because of the tricky use of “there” when it’s a dummy subject at the beginning of a sentence or clause in which the real subject follows.

As The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language explains, “Most clauses with there as subject have be as the verb, and these are called existential clauses.”

In such clauses, Cambridge says, “the dummy pronoun there” lacks “semantic content,” and is “simply the marker of a grammatical construction, serving to fill the subject position.” In other words, “there” in this case is a placeholder without meaning of its own.

When a statement begins with “there,” the verb can be either singular or plural, as in these examples from Pat’s grammar and usage book Woe Is I:

“ ‘There is [or there’s] a fly in my soup!’ said Mr. LaFong. ‘And there are lumps in the gravy!’ The choice can be tricky, because there is only a phantom subject. In the first example, the real subject is fly; in the second it’s lumps.”

As Pat writes, “The rule to remember is that the verb after there should agree with the following subject: there is (or there’s) when the real subject is singular, there are when it’s plural.”

However, she adds that when a compound subject follows “there,” you have a choice:

“ • You can follow the formal rule and use a plural verb: There are chicken, vegetables, and gravy in the soup.

 “ • You can make the verb agree with the closest noun: There’s [or There is] chicken, vegetables, and gravy in the soup.”

We follow those guidelines in our writing, but some respected writers do their own thing.

Shakespeare, for example, often uses “there is” along with plural subjects, as in this example from his history play Henry V, believed written around 1599: “there is throats to be cut, and works to be done.”

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Clawing back in the age of DOGE

Q: Where did the expression “claw back” (referring to money) come from? It seems to be a fairly recent usage.

A: The phrasal verb “claw back” is heard a lot now, especially as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency tries to get back money given out, but the usage isn’t quite as new as you think.

The term “claw back” has been used since the 1950s in the sense of to take back money, and the verb “claw” has been used by itself in a similar way since the mid-19th century.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines this meaning as “to regain gradually or with great effort; to take back (an allowance by additional taxation, etc.).”

The earliest citation in the OED for “claw back” used in the financial sense is from the Feb. 21, 1953, issue of the Economist. Here’s an expanded version:

“The Government would also make sure that, as in the case of Building Society dividends and interest payments, such tax relief was clawed back from surtax payers.”

The noun “clawback” (the retrieval of money already paid out) soon appeared. The first Oxford citation, which we’ve expanded, is from The Daily Telegraph (London), April 16, 1969:

“It is, however, necessary to adjust the claw-back for 1969–70 so as to reflect the fact that the 3s. extra on family allowances, which was paid for only half a year in 1968–69, will be paid for a full year in 1969–70.”

The first OED citation for “claw” used in reference to money is from Denis Duval, the unfinished last novel of William Makepeace Thackeray, published a few months after he died at the end of 1863.

Here’s an expanded version of the passage cited: “His hands were forever stretched out to claw other folks’ money towards himself” (originally published in The Cornhill Magazine, March-June, 1864).

When the verb “claw” first showed up in Old English in the late 10th century, it meant “to scratch or tear with claws,” according to the OED.

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from Aelfric’s Grammar, an introduction to Latin, written around 995 by the Benedictine abbot Ælfric of Eynsham: “Scalpo, ic clawe” (scalpo is Latin and ic clawe is Old English for “I scratch”).

In the mid-16th century, the OED says, the verb took on the sense of “to seize, grip, clutch, or pull with claws.”

The earliest citation is from “The Aged Louer Renounceth Loue,” an anonymous poem in Tottel’s Miscellany (1557), which is described in the Cambridge History of English Literature as the first printed anthology of English poetry:

“For age with stelyng [steely or implacable] steppes, Hath clawed [clutched] me with his cowche [crook].” The anthology, collected by the English publisher Richard Tottel, is also known as Songes and Sonettes Written by the Ryght Honorable Lord Henry Howard, late Earle of Surrey, Thomas Wyatt the Elder and Others.

The OED says the seize, grip, clutch, or pull sense of “claw” later came to be used figuratively—both by itself and in the phrase “claw back”—to mean regain funds slowly or with much effort, the sense you’re asking about.

We’ll end with a recent example of the phrase used figuratively in reference to Musk’s campaign to take back funds:

“From the start of the second Trump administration, Mr. Musk’s team has pushed agencies to claw back government funds for everything from teacher-training grants to H.I.V. prevention overseas” (The New York Times, April 5, 2025).

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Easter English English language Etymology Expression Language Linguistics Passover Religion Usage Word origin

On Passover and Easter

[Note: In recognition of the Passover and Easter holidays, we’re republishing  a post that originally ran on May 23, 2022.]

Q: Why do the words for Passover and Easter sound similar in different languages? They can’t have the same origin, can they?

A: Words for Passover and Easter are similar in many languages, especially European languages, because the lookalikes are derived from the Hebrew word for the Jewish holiday, פסח (Pesach).

So “Passover” is Pâque in French, Passah in German, Pasqua in Italian, Påske in Norwegian, Pascha in Polish, Pascua in Spanish, etc.

Similarly, “Easter” is Pâques in French, Pasqua in Italian, Påske in Norwegian, Pascua in Spanish, and so on.

Two notable exceptions are in English and German, where “Easter” and Ostern are believed to be derived from prehistoric words for “east” and “dawn,” and may have been influenced by an ancient Germanic goddess of the spring.

Among other European exceptions are those in some Slavic languages that refer to Easter with various terms meaning “Great Night” or “Great Day.”

The Hebrew word פסח was first recorded in the biblical account of the freeing of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt.

In the Book of Exodus, it’s a verb usually translated as to pass over and a noun for the ritual sacrifice of a lamb on the first Passover, the meal eaten from it, and God’s passing over the homes of the Israelites.

In Exodus 12:23, the clause “ופסח יהוה” means “and the Lord will pass over”—that is, skip or omit—the homes of the Israelites during the last of the Ten Plagues, the killing of Egypt’s firstborn.

In other verses of Exodus 12, the noun פסח refers to the sacrifice, the meal, and God’s passing over:

“פסח הוא ליהוה” (“a passover [sacrifice] to the Lord,” Ex. 12:11) … “ושחטו הפסח” (“and slaughter the Passover [sacrifice],” Ex. 12:21) … “זבח־פסח הוא ליהוה” (“a sacrifice to the Lord’s passover [passing over],” Ex. 12:27) … “זאת חקת הפסח” (“this is the rule of the Passover [meal],” Ex. 12:43).

The “pass over” sense of the verb פסח was first recorded in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament from the third century BC. Although that’s the usual way the verb is translated in English versions of Exodus, the Hebrew term has been translated several other ways over the years, such as take pity or protect.

The term first appeared in English in William Tyndale’s 1530 translation of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible: “And ye shall eate it in haste, for it is the Lordes passeouer” (Exodus 12:11).

The English term showed up a few years later in the same passage from Myles Coverdale’s 1535 translation of the New and Old Testaments: “and ye shal eate it with haist: for it is ye LORDES Passeouer.”

Most European languages refer to Easter with variations on pascha, post-classical Latin for “Passover.” (The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus took place during the seven days of Passover, according to the Christian Gospels.) The Latin pascha is a transliteration of πάσχα in Hellenistic Greek, which is in turn a rendering of פסחא, the Aramaic version of the Hebrew פסח.

In Old English, pasca (“pasch” in Modern English) could refer to either Easter or Passover, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary. Both usages appear in Byrhtferð’s Enchiridion (1011), a wide-ranging compilation of information on astronomy, mathematics, logic, grammar, rhetoric, and more:

  • “Pasca ys Ebreisc nama, and he getacnað oferfæreld” (“Pasca is the Hebrew name, and it signifies Passover”).
  • “He abæd æt þam mihtigan Drihtne … þæt he him mildelice gecydde hwær hyt rihtlicost wære þæt man þa Easterlican tide mid Godes rihte, þæne Pascan, healdan sceolde” (“He prayed to the mighty Lord … that He kindly make known to him where under God’s law one should rightly observe the Pasch, the Easter season”).

However, an early version of “Easter” had appeared centuries before in Old English. The oldest recorded example in the OED is from an early eighth-century Latin manuscript in which the Northumbrian monk Bede discusses the origin of Old English names for the months.

In De Temporum Ratione (“The Reckoning of Time,” 725), Bede says the Old English Eostur-monath (“Easter-month”) is derived from Eostre, a goddess of the dawn celebrated by pagan Anglo-Saxons in Northumbria around the time of the vernal equinox or beginning of spring:

“Eostur-monath, qui nunc paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a dea illorum quae Eostre vocabatur, et cui in illo festa celebrabant, nomen habuit, a cujus nomine nunc paschale tempus cognominant, consueto antiquae observationis vocabulo gaudia novae solemnitatis vocantes” (“Easter-month, which is now taken to mean the Paschal month, was once named for a goddess called Eostre, who was celebrated with a festival that month and whose ancient name is now used for a joyful new rite”).

In its entry for “Easter,” the OED includes an extensive discussion of Bede’s etymology, but it notes that his “explanation is not confirmed by any other source, and the goddess has been suspected by some scholars to be an invention of Bede’s.” However, the dictionary adds that “it seems unlikely that Bede would have invented a fictitious pagan festival in order to account for a Christian one.”

The dictionary says the Old English term for the Christian holiday is probably derived from the same prehistoric Germanic source as “east,” which can be traced to an ancient Indo-European base with the probable meaning “to become light (in the morning).”

The first OED citation for an Old English version of “Easter” that refers to the holiday itself, not the month, is from a Latin-Old English glossary of the 10th century: “Phase, eastran” (Phase is a Latin term for “Easter”). From The Latin-Old English Glossary in MS Cotton Cleopatra AIII (1951), by William Garlington Stryker.

The dictionary’s next example is from De Temporibus Anni (“On the Seasons of the Year”), a 10th-century handbook by Ælfric of Eynsham: “On sumon geare bið se mona twelf siðon geniwod, fram ðære halgan eastertide oð eft eastron” (“In some years, the moon becomes new twelve times, from the holy Eastertide to Easter again”).

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Sex, gender, and sociology

Q: What explains the increasing use of “gender” in place of “sex” in sexual terminology? For me, prudishness doesn’t explain it.

A: The nouns “sex” and “gender” have been used interchangeably since the Middle Ages for either of the two primary biological forms of a species.

Although the two terms are still often used like that, they began to go their separate ways in the 20th century. Here’s the story.

English borrowed “sex” in the late 14th century from Middle French, but the ultimate source is classical Latin, where sexus referred to the “state of being male or female,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

When “sex” first appeared in English, the dictionary says, it meant “either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and many other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions.”

The earliest citation in the OED is from Genesis 6:19 in the Wycliffe Bible of the early 1380s. In this passage, the term is used for the sex of the animals in Noah’s ark:

“Of all þingez hauyng soule of eny flesch: two þou schalt brynge in to þe ark, þat male sex & female: lyuen with þe” (“Of all things living of any flesh, two thou shall bring into the ark, that of the male sex & female, to live with thee”).

When “gender” appeared in the mid-14th century, it was a term for a grammatical subclass of nouns and pronouns distinguished by their different inflections.

The earliest OED citation, which we’ve expanded here, is from the gender-bending legend of St. Theodora of Alexandria, who is said to have betrayed her husband and then done penance by dressing as a man and entering a monastery:

“Hire name, þat was femynyn / Of gendre, heo turned in to masculyn. / Theodora hire name was, parde, / But Theodorus heo hiht, seide heo” (“Her name, which was feminine of gender, she turned into masculine. Theoroda, her name was, by God, but Theodorus she was called, she said”).

From “De S. Theododra,” circa 1350, in Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden (Collected Old English Legends), 1878, edited by Carl Horstmann.

In the 15th century, the OED says, “gender” came to mean “males or females viewed as a group,” which the dictionary describes as the same sense as the original meaning of “sex.”

The earliest Oxford example is from the 1474 will of Thomas Stonor: “His heyres of the masculine gender of his body lawfully begoten” (from The Stonor Letters and Papers, 1919, edited by Charles Lethbridge Kingsford).

At the end of the 19th century, the noun “sex” took on an additional meaning—the sexual act—a sense the OED defines as “physical contact between individuals involving sexual stimulation; sexual activity or behaviour, spec. sexual intercourse, copulation.”

The dictionary suggests that the association of the noun “sex” with sexual relations ultimately altered the old senses of “sex” and “gender” for the principal biological forms of humans and other creatures.

In the 20th century, Oxford says, “sex came increasingly to mean sexual intercourse” and “gender began to replace it (in early use euphemistically) as the usual word for the biological grouping of males and females.”

The dictionary adds that the noun “gender” “is now often merged with or coloured by” a sense that developed in the mid-20th century in psychology and sociology:

“The state of being male or female as expressed by social or cultural distinctions and differences, rather than biological ones; the collective attributes or traits associated with a particular sex, or determined as a result of one’s sex. Also: a (male or female) group characterized in this way.”

The first Oxford citation for this new sense of “gender” is from “Sanity and Hazard in Childhood,” an article by Madison Bentley in The American Journal of Psychology, April 1945:

“In the grade-school years, too, gender (which is the socialized obverse of sex) is a fixed line of demarkation, the qualifying terms being ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine.’ ”

Despite the evolving meaning of “gender,” the entries for the term in some standard dictionaries include both the old biological and the new social senses.

Merriam-Webster, for example, has two definitions for “gender” used in the ways we’re discussing:

(1) “either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures.”

(2) “the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex.”

And a search with Google’s Ngram viewer, which compares terms in digitized books, suggests that “sex” and “gender” are still both being used in the old biological sense.

Merriam-Webster says in a usage guide that “among those who study gender and sexuality, a clear delineation between sex and gender is typically prescribed, with sex as the preferred term for biological forms, and gender limited to its meanings involving behavioral, cultural, and psychological traits.”

However, the dictionary adds, and we agree, that the “usage of sex and gender is by no means settled.”

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Befooled, besotted … beclowned?

Q: I recently saw this headline on The Hill: “Reuters beclowns itself, to Hamas’s benefit.” Beclown? This is my first exposure to the word. Any thoughts about it?

A: We’re not surprised that “beclown” is new to you. Although it’s been around for more than 400 years, the word isn’t all that common now and never has been.

Collins, the only standard dictionary that recognizes “beclown,” says the verb has two senses in British English, one archaic and the other standard:

“In British English (bɪˈklaʊn) verb (transitive) 1.  archaic to make a fool of (another), to make into a clown; 2. to clown around, make a fool of oneself.”

The collaborative dictionary Wiktionary defines “beclown” as “to make a fool of,” and cites examples where the fool can be oneself or others. Here’s one of each sense:

“to answer their arguments would be to play their game and beclown onself” (from The Irrelevant English Teacher, 1972, by J. Mitchell Morse) … “he suggested that I had ‘beclowned’ him” (The Virtual Marshall McLuhan, 2001, by Donald Theall).

Yes, the verb “beclown” is alive, but it’s barely breathing when compared with the expressions “make a fool of” and “clown around,” according to Google’s Ngram viewer, which tracks terms in digitized books.

The earliest (and only) citation for “beclown” in the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference, is from an early 17th-century satirical poem in which a group of women meet in a private room at a tavern and complain about their husbands.

The past participle “beclown’d” means “made a fool of” in this expanded version of the OED citation (from A Whole Crew of Kind Gossips All Met to Be Merry, 1609, by Samuel Rowlands):

“O wretch, O Lob [fool], who would be thus beclown’d? / I deserue better for two hundred pound. / Two hundred pound in Gold my Father gaue, / To match me with this miserable Knaue.”

The OED says the verb “beclown” combines the prefix “be-” (meaning “to make”) with the noun “clown,” similar to the use of the prefix in the verbs “befool” and “besot” (originally, to turn into a sot, or drunkard).

When the noun “clown” first appeared in the mid-16th century, the OED says, it referred to “a person from the countryside; a peasant, an agricultural labourer; spec. (disparaging) one considered to lack good manners, education, or intelligence.”

The dictionary’s first citation is from a long-running debate in broadside ballads involving the authors Thomas Churchyard, Thomas Camel, and others:

“We were here in quyet all, vntyll you came to towne: sence that we could not liue in reast, for suche a contrey clowne” (from A Playn and Fynall Confutacion of Cammells Corlyke Oblatracion [Camel’s cur-like scolding], 1552, by Churchyard).

The OED says the noun soon came to mean “a character in drama, or employed by a court or prominent household as an entertainer; spec. one with characteristics of a stereotypical peasant, whose ignorance, unsophisticated behaviour, or nonstandard speech is intended to amuse an audience.”

The first Oxford example, which we’ve expanded here, is from The Right, Excellent and Famous Historye of Promos and Cassandra (1578), a play by the English dramatist George Whetstone:

“For to work a Commedie kindly, grave olde men should instruct: yonge men should showe the imperfections of youth: Strumpets should be lascivious: Boyes unhappy: and Clownes should be disorderly.”

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A horse of a different choler

Q: I’ve read that the verb “curry” comes from the Old French correier and that the expression “curry favor” comes from a Middle French allegory about a horse named Fauvel. However, I can’t find correier or anything like it in the original text of the poem.

A: It’s more accurate to say that “curry favor” was inspired by (not “comes from”) the Roman de Fauvel, an anonymous 14th-century satirical poem, believed written by Gervais du Bus, about a horse fawned upon by the powerful in France.

There were several different words in early French that meant to “curry,” or groom, the coat of a horse, including correier and estriller in Old French (spoken from the 8th to 14th centuries), and torchier and estriler in Middle French (14th to 17th).

English borrowed the verb “curry” from correier, while the Roman de Fauvel uses the word torchier in the same sense.

In the satirical poem, the phrase torchier Fauvel (“to curry Fauvel”) is used as a metaphor for flattering and influencing him.

The earliest manuscript of the Roman de Fauvel (1310) is at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris (MS Bnf 146). In this example, people from around the world flock to see the horse:

“N’i a nul qui ne s’appareille / De torchier Fauvel doucement” (“There is no one who is not ready to curry Fauvel gently”).

And in this example torchier rhymes with escorchier: “De Fauvel que tant voi torchier / Doucement, sans lui escorchier” (“Of Fauvel, whom so many come to curry, gently, without scratching him”).

The word fauvel in Middle French is an adjective meaning fawn-colored and apparently refers to the horse’s coat, but the author indicates that he’s also using it as an acronym for six sins:

“De Fauvel descent Flaterie, / Qui du monde a la seignorie, / Et puis en descent Avarice, / Qui de torchier Fauvel n’est nice, / Vilanie et Varieté, / Et puis Envie et Lascheté. / Ces siex dames que j’ai nommees / Sont par FAUVEL signifies.”

(“From Fauvel comes Flattery, whose world is the nobility, and then comes Avarice, who is not too squeamish to curry Fauvel, Villainy and Varieté [fickleness], and then Envy and Lascheté [cowardice]. These six ladies that I have named signify FAUVEL.”)

To create the acronym FAUVEL, the author treats the “v” of Vilanie as a “u.” In medieval French and English, the letters “u” and “v” could each denote either the vowel or the consonant, though “v” tended to be used at the beginning of a word (as in vilanie).

The medievalist Arthur Långfors notes in his introduction to the Roman de Fauvel (1914) that the horse’s name is also composed of the Middle French faus and vel (“false” and “veil”).

In addition, the Oxford English Dictionary points out that a similar Old French term, favel, meant idle talk or cajolery, and was derived from the Latin fabella, a diminutive of fabula, or “fable.”

When the verb “curry” first appeared in Middle English in the late 13th century, it meant “to rub down or dress (a horse, ass, etc.) with a comb,” according to the dictionary.

The first OED citation is from The South English Legendary (circa 1290), a Middle English collection of lives of saints and other church figures. In this expanded passage, St. Francis of Assisi refers to his flesh as “Frere Asse” and speaks of it in the third person:

“Of ȝeomere þingue heo is i-fed ȝwane heo alles comez þar-to, / And selde heo is i-coureyd wel” (“On humble food he is fed whenever he comes to it, and seldom is he properly curried”).

When Middle English borrowed “favor” from Old French in the 14th century, the OED says, it referred to “propitious or friendly regard, goodwill, esp. on the part of a superior or a multitude.”

The dictionary’s first example, which we’ve expanded, is from a Psalter and commentary, dated sometime before 1340, by the English hermit and mystic Richard Rolle:

“Thai doe wickidly, to get thaim the fauour and lufredyn of this warld” (“They do wickedly to get themselves the favor and affection of the world”). From Psalm 24:3 in Rolle’s Psalter.

In the late 14th century, the verb “curry” took on the sense of flattering, which the OED defines as “to employ flattery or blandishment, so as to cajole or win favour.”

The earliest citation is from The Testament of Love (1388), by Thomas Usk: “Tho curreiden glosours, tho welcomeden flatterers” (“Those who curried the sycophants, those who welcomed the flatterers”).

Oxford says the verb soon came to mean “to ‘stroke down’ (a person) with flattery or blandishment.” The first citation is from Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede (circa 1394), a medieval poem satirizing friars:

“Whou þey curry kinges & her back claweþ” (“How they curry kings and scratch their backs”). The anonymous satire, written in the style of Piers Ploughman, the 14th-century religious allegory, has been attributed to various writers, including Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, author of the original Ploughman.

We assume the flattering sense of “curry” in English was influenced by the Middle French allegory Roman de Fauvel. In fact, “curry favor” was originally “curry favel” when the expression first appeared in Middle English in the 15th century.

The OED defines “curry favel” as “to use insincere flattery, or unworthy compliance with the humour of another, in order to gain personal advantage.”

The first citation, which we’ve expanded and edited, is from De Regimine Principum (On the Government of the Prince, 1411), by the poet and bureaucrat Thomas Hoccleve:

“The man that hath in pees or in werre Dispent with his lorde his bloode, but he hide / The trouthe, and cory favelle, he not the ner is His lordes grace” (“The man who hath in peace or war spilled his blood for his lord, but hides the truth, and curries favel, is not near his lord’s grace”).

The phrase “curry favor” finally appeared in the 16th century. It’s described by the OED as a “corruption of to curry favel” and by Merriam-Webster as an “alteration by folk etymology,” a popular but mistaken account of a word’s origin.

We’ll end with the earliest OED citation for the new form of the expression (spelled “courry fauour” here): “He thoght by this meanes to courry fauour with the worlde” (from a margin note to Matthew 8:20 in the Geneva Bible of 1557).

[Note: If the headline above got your attention, you might be interested in a 2012 post we wrote about the expression “a horse of another color,” an early version of the more common “a horse of a different color.”]

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A ‘heart-wrenching’ sorrow

Q: I almost never hear anybody say “heartrending” anymore. It appears to have been overthrown by “heart-wrenching,” which, I assume, is a conflation or hybridization with “gut-wrenching.” As is often the case, it seems that the incorrect usage is heard much more frequently than the correct one.

A: You’re right that the use of “heart-wrenching” has increased sharply in recent years, but the usage isn’t new. It’s been around for almost two centuries.

Here are the earliest examples we’ve found:

“The sluices of his tears were opened, and he burst out into sorrow, loud, vehement, and heart-wrenching.” From “The Brothers,” a story in Tales of Ireland (1834), by the Irish writer William Carleton.

“Loosen’d from guilt by a heart-wrenching shock, I hastened home.” From “Arthur: A Dramatic Fable, in Three Acts,” by Thomas Aird, published in July 1835 in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.

(The Oxford English Dictionary cites a later printing of Aird’s fable in The Knickerbocker; or, New-York Monthly Magazine, July 1838.)

The term “heart-wrenching” is now recognized as standard by most of the online dictionaries we regularly consult. Merriam-Webster, for example, defines it as “very sad,” and has this example: “a heart-wrenching story.”

Cambridge and Collins include both the adjective “heart-wrenching” and adverb “heart-wrenchingly.” In defining the adjective, Dictionary.com defines “heart-wrenching” with a similar adjective, “heartbreaking.”

As for “heartrending” (sometimes hyphenated), it’s much older than “heart-wrenching,” but not necessarily more correct. And “heartbreaking” is even older and much more popular than either, according to a search with Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks terms in digitized books.

The earliest OED citation for “heartbreaking” is from “The Teares of the Muses,” a work in Complaints (1591), a poetry collection by Edmund Spenser: “Making your musick of hart-breaking mone [moan].”

The dictionary’s first “heartrending” example, which we’ve expanded, is from Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (1621), a prose romance by the English writer Lady Mary Wroth:

“At last he cry’d out these words: Pardon great Prince this sad interruption in my story, which I am forst to do, heart-rending sorrow making me euer doe so.”

Finally, “heart-wrenching” is not, as you put it, “a conflation or hybridization with ‘gut-wrenching.’ ” The term “gut-wrenching” didn’t appear until the late 20th century, long after “heart-wrenching” was recorded.

The OED’s first citation for “gut-wrenching” is from a book about Grant McConachie, a bush pilot and later CEO of Canadian Pacific Airlines:

“Others had made a perfect landing thirty feet in the air, which was followed by a terrific, gut-wrenching splash as they plopped in” (from Bush Pilot With a Briefcase, 1972, by Ronald A. Keith).

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The ambiguity of ‘disambiguity’

Q: I’ve been working on a project where one thing we’re looking at is “disambiguity.” But when I try looking up this word, not many results come back, preferring “unambiguity.” Should I worry about these prefixes?

A: The noun “disambiguity” has been around since at least the mid-20th century, but it hasn’t become common enough to make it into standard dictionaries or even the online Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference with over a half-million entries.

The earliest example we’ve found is from “The Dethronement of Queen Anne,” an article by C. G. Burke about the cult of high fidelity, published in the Saturday Review of Literature (June 24, 1950).

In this passage, Burke describes how a novice audiophile modifies a hi-fi system in a Queen Anne-style cabinet, comparing the before and after versions with the low-key Queen Anne of Great Britain and the assertive Catherine the Great of Russia:

“Queen Anne immediately discoursed with the flamboyant robustious disambiguity of the great Catherine, and our neophyte listened to cosmic intonations in a daze of wonderment for weeks.”

As we’ve said, some English speakers do use “disambiguity” as a noun meaning the removal of ambiguity. But it barely registers when compared with the standard English terms “disambiguation” and “unambiguity” on Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks terms in digitized books.

Although standard dictionaries don’t recognize “disambiguity,” the collaborative dictionary Wiktionary defines it as a “lack of ambiguity” or “disambiguation.”

If you want to use the term and feel your readers will understand it, go ahead.  The editors at the Saturday Review accepted it, apparently assuming their readers would understand.

If enough people use “disambiguity,” it will become standard one day. Ultimately, the users of English are the ones who decide what’s standard. That’s how language evolves.

As for the etymology, all these disambiguating words are derived from the noun “ambiguity,” which ultimately comes from the classical Latin ambiguitas, the ability to be understood in two or more ways.

The earliest English citation for “ambiguity” in the Oxford English Dictionary is from an early 14th-century entry in A Middle English Statute-Book (2012), edited by Claire Fennell:

“Ase fram nou forthward, suuch ambiguete sal ben forsmiten ant beo in certein” (“As from now forward, such ambiguity shall be struck down and become certain”).

When the adjective “ambiguous” showed up in the late 15th century, the OED says, it referred to language “having different possible meanings” or “open to more than one interpretation.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from John Skelton’s English translation (circa 1487) of Bibliotheca Historica, a 40-volume history written by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (Diodorus of Sicily) in the first century BC:

“He ansuerde vnder this forme derkely intryked with ambiguouse sence” (“He answered in this vaguely intricate way with ambiguous sense”).

The words here with a “dis-” prefix are relative newcomers. The oldest of them, the noun “disambiguation,” appeared in the early 19th century, according to the OED. The prefix here means “in a different direction”—that is, away from ambiguity.

Oxford defines the noun this way: “The removal of ambiguity (esp. in language); clarification; differentiation. Also: the result of this; the action or fact of telling things apart; discrimination; interpretation.”

The first citation is from Outline of a New System of Logic (1827), by George Bentham: “Disambiguation—where it is to fix the sense of an ambiguous term. This operation has been termed distinction by some Logicians.” (Bentham, a nephew of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, was a distinguished botanist as well as a pioneer in abstract logical science.)

Readers of the blog may be familiar with Wikipedia‘s “disambiguation” page, which defines the term as “the process of resolving conflicts that arise when a potential article title is ambiguous, most often because it refers to more than one subject covered by Wikipedia.”

The OED says the verb “disambiguate” appeared in the mid-20th century, meaning to “make (something) unambiguous; to render more easily distinguished or differentiated from something else.”

The first example cited is from a paper in the Journal of Philosophy, “What Do You Mean?” by Jerry A. Fodorthe (July 21, 1960): “One disambiguates an utterance by adding to the context of the utterance.”

We’ll end with the OED’s only “unambiguity” citation, which struck us as ambiguous. We’ve disambiguated it by expanding the passage, which comes from a June 24, 1842, entry in Provincial Letters (1844), by the Anglican clergyman George Stanley Faber:

“Its unambiguity is the more fully established, because the language is not that of a single individual but of many individuals who all apparently say the same thing in their own respectively different words.”

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Is coconut milk really milk?

[Note: This post was updated on Sept. 9, 2025.]

Q: For a number of years now there’s been controversy over the term “milk” being used for plant-based  products. However, I believe it has been used that way for centuries. Did “milk” originally refer to a process of drawing out fluid, and then to any fluid produced by that method?

A: The notion of plants producing “milk” has been around in English for more than a thousand years, though the animal sense came somewhat earlier.

Both senses appeared in Old English, but the earliest examples of “milk” from plants referred to the medicinal use of their milky juice or sap. It wasn’t until the 14th century that “milk” came to mean a culinary or drinkable liquid from plants.

If you go back far enough into prehistory, the word “milk” ultimately comes from melg-, an Indo-European root, reconstructed by linguists, that originally meant “to rub” and then became “to milk.”

Etymologists and historical linguists generally believe that the Indo-European base gave rise to meluk-ja-, the prehistoric Germanic root for “giving milk,” which led to the Old English verb melcan and noun meolc.

However, the Oxford English Dictionary notes that “the origin of the vowel [u] between l and k in the Germanic base [meluk-ja-] is problematic and has led some to suggest that the noun and the verb may not ultimately be cognate.”

In addition, The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots points out “the unexplained fact that no common Indo-European noun for milk can be reconstructed.”

We think it’s probable that both the noun and the verb “milk” do indeed ultimately come from the Proto-Indo-European root. We haven’t seen convincing evidence that contradicts this.

As for the English etymology, the noun appeared before the verb in Old English. It originally referred to the fluid secreted by mammary glands, but that sense soon widened to include the milky liquid from plants.

The OED’s earliest example, which we’ve expanded, is from an Old English translation (circa 900) of Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (“Ecclesiastical History of the English People”), an eighth-century Latin church history by the Anglo-Saxon monk Bede:

“He symle in þæm feowertiglecan fæstenne ær Eastrum æne siða in dæge gereorde, 7 elles ne peah nemne medmicel hlafes mid þinre meolc” (“He would always observe the forty-day fast before Easter, eating only once a day, and then only a small amount of bread with thin milk”).

The first OED citation for the milky liquid from plants (in the compound wyrtemeolc, plantmilk) is in an 11th-century Old English translation of Herbarium, a 4th-century Latin herbal, or book about plants and their medicinal uses:

“Wið weartan genim þysse ylcan wyrtemeolc & clufþungan wos, do to þære weartan” (“Against warts, take this same plant’s [spurge’s] milk and clover’s juice, apply to the warts”).

The passage is from an illustrated manuscript (Cotton MS Vitellius C III, f. 29v) at the British Library, which describes it as “an Old English translation of a text which used to be attributed to a 4th-century writer known as Pseudo-Apuleius, now recognised as several different Late Antique authors whose texts were subsequently combined.”

The earliest OED citation for the verb “milk” is from an 11th-century manuscript (Julius MS, 15 September, at the British Library) of the Old English Martyrology, a collection of the lives of saints and other church figures:

“Se geþyrsta mon meolcode ða hinde ond dranc þa meolc” (“The thirsty man milked the hind and drank the milk”).

In the 14th century, the term “almond milk” appeared and referred to “a milky liquid prepared from ground almonds, used as a drink and in cooking,” according to the OED. The dictionary’s first citation is from a Middle English recipe dated 1381:

“Seþ hem in almande mylk or in kyne mylke” (“Seethe them in almond milk or in cow’s milk”). From Diuersa Servicia (“Various Dishes” in Latin) in Curye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century (1985), edited by Constance Bartlett Hieatt and Sharon Butler.

In the mid-18th century, the word “milk” was used for “the drinkable watery liquid found in the hollow space inside the fruit of the coconut,” according to the OED. The dictionary’s earliest citation is from a travel book about 18th-century India:

“The milk of cocoa nuts” (from A Voyage to the East-Indies, With Observations on Various Parts There, 1757, by John Henry Grose, a writer employed by the East India Company, which controlled much of the Indian Subcontinent at the time).

In the mid-20th century, the OED says, “plant milk” came to mean “a synthetic milk substitute prepared from vegetable matter.” The dictionary has this citation from a British newspaper:

“It is estimated that the plantmilk which will soon be available to the general public will cost a few pence more than cows’ milk” (Oxford Mail, March 19, 1959).

A search with Google’s Ngram viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books, indicates that “coconut milk” is now the most popular of the plant-based terms, followed by almond, soy, oat, rice, and cashew milks.

Finally, here’s an image on the British Library’s website of a page from the Old English herbal mentioned earlier:

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‘Preventive’ or ‘preventative’?

Q: Which is correct? “Preventive” or “preventative”? I see both and the former seems better to me, the latter kind of clunky. Maybe they’re both acceptable and it’s a matter of style. What do you say?

A: Both “preventive” and “preventative” appeared in the 17th century, as adjectives as well as nouns, and were used interchangeably for about two centuries without comment.

In the 19th century, some language writers began criticizing “preventative.” Although most standard dictionaries now recognize both forms, some usage guides still prefer the shorter one.

Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed.), for example, calls “preventative” a “corrupt form,” but Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage says “both words have been around for over 300 years and both have had regular use by reputable writers.”

Here’s a “preventative” example from Anthony Trollope’s novel Dr. Thorne (1858): “Now there never had been much cordiality between the squire and Dr Fillgrave, though Mr Gresham had consented to take a preventative pill from his hands.”

Searches with Google’s Ngram viewer, which compares terms in digitized books, indicates that “preventive” is the preferred adjective (as in “preventive measures”) while “preventative” is the preferred noun (“a reliable preventative”).

As for the etymology, when the adjective “preventive” first appeared in the early 17th century, it meant that which “prevents or guards against the occurrence of something,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The earliest citation in the dictionary is from an essay in which the English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon argues that England should launch a preemptive war against Spain:

“Warres preuentiue vpon just feares, are true defensiues, as well as vpon actuall inuasions” (from Considerations Touching a Warre With Spaine, written in 1624 and published in 1629).

The noun “preventive” appeared two decades later and meant “a preventive or precautionary agent or measure; a means of prevention; a hindrance, an obstacle,” according to the OED.

The first Oxford example is from Reliquiae Wottonianae (1651), a posthumously published collection of lives, letters, poems, etc., by Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), an English diplomat and author: “a natural preventive to some evils.”

As for the longer term, “preventative” first appeared as an adjective in the mid-17th century and referred to that which “prevents or guards against the occurrence of something; precautionary.”

The earliest OED citation is from Parthenissa (1655), a romance by Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery: “All preventative thoughts of hostility were silenc’d.”

The longer noun appeared in the late 17th century and meant “an agent or measure that prevents the occurrence of something; a means of prevention; an obstacle, a hindrance.”

The first OED citation is from Πλανηλογια (Planilogia, Planning), a 1691 treatise about mental errors, by the Puritan Presbyterian minister and writer John Flavel: “The Remedies and Preventatives in this Case, are such as follow.”

Both adjectives now refer to keeping something undesirable such as illness or harm from occurring, while the two nouns now generally refer to a medicine or other treatment designed to prevent illness.

The earliest criticism of “preventative” that we’ve seen is from John Russell Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms (1848), which describes it as “a corruption sometimes met with for preventive both in England and America.”

Should you use “preventive” or “preventative”? The choice is up to you. They’ve both been around for centuries and used by respected writers, but “preventative” may raise a few eyebrows.

As Merriam-Webster’s usage guide puts it, use the longer term “if you decide you like the sound of the extra syllable and are willing to brave possible criticism.”

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English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Language Phrase origin Usage Writing

Calling ‘in,’ ‘out,’ or ‘off’ sick?

Q: Am I showing my age? Once upon a time, a couple of decades ago, when you were ill or had an emergency, you would “call in sick.” Now it’s  “calling out.” When did that happen?

A: People have been calling “in,” “out,” and “off” sick for dozens of years, but “call in sick” is the oldest and by far the most common expression for reporting one’s absence from work because of illness.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “call in sick” as “to contact one’s employer, school, etc., typically by telephone, to report one’s absence that day, esp. due to illness.” The OED’s earliest example is from the 1940s:

“This being a holiday weekend, employees in Treasury’s loans and currency section … were warned yesterday not to call in sick either today or Monday under any circumstances” (The Washington Post, July 3, 1943).

The dictionary’s first citation for “call off sick” is from a West Virginia newspaper: “Personnel who frequently call off sick … should be checked at their homes to ascertain the legitimacy of their absence” (Charleston Daily Mail, May 24, 1958).

The earliest OED example for “call out sick” is from a Massachusetts newspaper: “Bray said no one called out sick in the DPW at all this week … [due] to his demands that anyone out sick must have a doctor to certify illness” (Sentinel & Enterprise, Fitchburg, April 16, 1976).

A similar expression, “call off work,” has been around since the the mid-1960s and means “to report one’s absence from (work, school, etc.), typically by making a telephone call,” Oxford says.

The dictionary’s first citation is from a 1965 labor arbitration decision: “He would receive a final warning if he didn’t improve on the tardiness, absenteeism, and calling off work without notice” (from Labor Arbitration Awards, Vol. 65-2).

A search with Google’s Ngram Viewer, which compares words and phrases in digitized books, indicates that “call in sick” is clearly the most common of the four expressions.

We’ve seen suggestions online that “call out sick” may be especially popular in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, but we’ve seen no linguistic evidence to support this. The Dictionary of American Regional English doesn’t mention the usage.

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