Category: Etymology

Q: Is “wellness” a real word or just another cutesy whatever?

A: Yes, “wellness” is a real word, though quite a few people (perhaps including you) think it’s a not-so-cutesy whatever.

When the noun entered English in the 1600s (yes, hundreds of years ago), it meant the “state of being well or in good health,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

However, the status of the word has been a bit iffy from the beginning.

Although it was formed, like “illness,” by adding the suffix “-ness” to an adjective, the OED describes “wellness” as “rather a nonce-wd. than of settled status like illness.” (A nonce word is one that’s made up for a specific occasion but not expected to last.)

The dictionary’s earliest published reference is from a 1654 entry in the diary of Sir Archibald Johnston, Lord Wariston: “I … blessed God … for my daughter’s wealnesse.”

The first citation with the modern spelling is from a letter, written around 1655, by Dorothy Osborne to her husband, Sir William Temple: “You … never send me any of the new phrases of the town. … Pray what is meant by wellness and unwellness?”

The OED has written examples from the mid-1600s until the early 1900s of “wellness” used in the sense of good health. But the word seems to have fallen out of favor in the first half of the 20th century.

In the 1950s, Halbert L. Dunn, chief of the National Office of Vital Statistics, resurrected “wellness” in a new sense: health care intended to prevent illness rather than cure it, according to the linguist Ben Zimmer.

In an On Language column in the New York Times Magazine two years ago, Zimmer described the revival of “wellness” in its new garb:

Dunn wrote a series of papers and collected them in a 1961 book, High-Level Wellness, but his views didn’t catch on until a follower, John W. Travis, opened the Wellness Resource Center in Mill Valley, Calif., in 1975.

The center and its concept of wellness got national attention when it was featured in the April 1976 issue of Prevention magazine and a Dan Rather segment on 60 Minutes in 1979.

Zimmer notes that language commentators belittled the new usage at first. In 1988, for example, 68 percent of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language disapproved of it, and a critical note was included in the 1992 edition.

“But carping over wellness faded away in the ’90s as the term gained a foothold in everyday use,” Zimmer writes, adding that American Heritage dropped the usage note in its 2000 edition.

Like it or not, the word “wellness” is alive and well today.

“A word that once sounded strange and unnecessary, even to its original boosters, has become tacitly accepted as part of our lexicon of health,” Zimmer writes. “Well, well, well.”

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Q: Terminology changes, or perhaps it doesn’t. My wife has Alzheimer’s disease. When I began caring for her in 2000, I was called a “caretaker,” but now I’m a “caregiver.” When did it change, or did it?

A: We’re so sorry to hear about your wife. This has been a long haul for you, hasn’t it? We’ve both cared for elderly parents, and we know it’s not easy.

You raise an interesting question about what to call a person who looks after someone.

It’s ironic that “give” and “take” are opposites, while “caregiver” and “caretaker” mean the same thing. Such people not only give care to others, but they take care of them.

As you note, “caretaker” is the older term. It was first recorded in the mid-19th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines it as “one who takes care of a thing, place, or person; one put in charge of anything.”

The OED’s first citation for its use in writing is from The Real “Souter Johnny,” a pamphlet published by Matthew Porteous in Glasgow in 1858:

“The souter’s wife … was servant to Gilbert Brown … and … acted as nurse and care-taker to Agnes his daughter.”

(The Agnes mentioned here was the mother of the poet Robert Burns, who immortalized the souter [shoemaker] John Davidson in his long poem Tam o’ Shanter, 1790.)

The newer term “caregiver” originated in the US more than a century later. The OED defines it as “a person, typically either a professional or close relative, who looks after a child, elderly person, invalid, etc.”

The dictionary’s first citation is from the title of a book by Richard A. Mackey, The Meaning of Mental Illness to Caregivers and Mental Health Agents, published in 1966 as a volume in the Catholic University of America Studies in Social Work.

But “caregiver” was still a new word in London in 1988, as shown by this quote from the Independent: “The term nanny tends to be avoided, and substitutes range from babysitter to … the latest, ‘caregiver.’ ”

And we can’t resist quoting the OED’s third example, from a 2000 issue of the Daily Monitor, a newspaper in Kampala, Uganda: “Sociologists will tell you that in cultures where women are valued for traditional roles of mother and caregiver, hips are in.”

A little googling on our part indicates that those in the social services community prefer the term “caregiver” over “caretaker.”

Perhaps that’s because a “caretaker” can also be someone who takes care of property, in which case there’s not much personal “caring” involved.

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Q: I was dictating a letter on my iPhone the other day and Siri didn’t capitalize “God.” That led me to thinking. Should “God” always be capitalized? (By the way, I dictated this to Siri and she capitalized God the first time but not the second. Interesting.)

A: In modern usage, the term “God” is generally capitalized when it refers to the Supreme Being in a monotheistic religion like Christianity, Judaism, or Islam.

In fact, The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.) and other usage guides recommend capitalizing the proper names of deities in both monotheistic and polytheistic religions: “God,” “Allah,” “Jehovah,” “Jesus,” “Shiva,” “Yahweh,” “Jupiter,” and so on.

Many people also capitalize the pronouns that refer to specific deities, but all the usage guides we checked recommend lowercasing these pronouns: “The pilgrims prayed to God that he would bless their journey.”

The term “god” is usually lowercased when it’s used in a general or figurative sense: “My puppy treats me like a god” or “The gods are looking favorably on us.”

And it’s lowercased when part of words like “godchild,” “godfather,” “godsend,” “godly,” and “goddamn.”

Interestingly, the word “God” wasn’t always capitalized when referring to the Supreme Being in Christianity and other monotheistic religions.

It’s lowercased dozens of times, for example, in the Vespasian Psalter, an Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscript from the eighth century that contains the Book of Psalms and other religious works.

In fact, published references in the Oxford English Dictionary for the use of “God” as a proper name for “the Creator and Ruler of the Universe” indicate that the word wasn’t generally capitalized until the 1500s.

The word “god,” which showed up in Old English in the early 700s, also appeared in Old Frisian and Old Saxon, according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology.

Similar terms were common in other Germanic languages: got in Old High German, godh or gudh in Old Icelandic and guth in Gothic. All of these are believed to come from a proto-Germanic root reconstructed roughly as gudan.

Chambers speculates that the ultimate source of the word is an ancient Indo-European root, reconstructed as gheu or ghu, that means invoke, offer sacrifices, or pour.

Why pour? Because one poured libations while worshipping God.

One last point: Some people mistakenly believe that the word “God” is derived from the word “good.”

Although the words have the same spelling in Middle English, Chambers says, “the only association is in terms such as Good Friday, written god friday, in which god has the meaning of holy, sacred.”

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Q: Has the verb “suspend” morphed into a synonym for “terminate” when I wasn’t looking? Or can I hope that it is just sloppy usage on the part of former candidate Rick Santorum when he stated that he was suspending his campaign?

A: Many other people had the same reaction when Santorum announced last month that he was “suspending” his campaign. Till when? they quipped.

As it turned out, the campaign was dead, not held in suspended animation.

However, Santorum isn’t alone in using “suspend” this way. Unsuccessful political candidates often throw in the towel by saying they’re “suspending” their campaigns.

Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich ended their bids for the GOP presidential nomination the same way. And four years ago Hillary Clinton dropped out of the Democratic race with the same verb.

Why do many presidential candidates prefer to “suspend” their campaigns rather than “terminate” them? There are psychological, political, and financial reasons.

For example, suspending doesn’t sound quite so final as terminating.

And let’s not underestimate the power of wishful thinking. A candidate’s name may still be on the ballot in a few more primaries. Who knows? A miracle could happen at the convention.

In the meantime, debts have to be paid, some expenses have to be met, and a campaign that’s technically still alive can keep raising funds.

But despite the way politicians use the word, the verb “suspend” hasn’t changed its meaning in ordinary usage. It still means more or less what it has meant for 600 years: to temporarily stop or prohibit.

The word isn’t generally meant to imply forever after. The Oxford English Dictionary says that in its earliest sense, recorded around 1290, it meant “to debar, usually for a time, from the exercise of a function or enjoyment of a privilege; esp. to deprive (temporarily) of one’s office.”

Another usage from the same late 13th-century source is defined this way in the OED: “To put a stop to, usually for a time; esp. to bring to a (temporary) stop; to intermit the use or exercise of, put in abeyance.”

The word still has those meanings today, along with some others. For example, in the 15th through 17th centuries, these meanings came into use (all quotes are from the OED):

● “To bring about or entail the temporary cessation of.”

● “To stop or check the action or movement of (something) temporarily; to hold in suspense.”

● “To cause (a law or the like) to be for the time no longer in force; to abrogate or make inoperative temporarily.”

● “To bring about or entail the temporary cessation of” an event, condition, etc.

● “To cease (for a time) from the execution or performance of; to desist or refrain from, esp. temporarily.”

We aren’t counting the meanings that are irrelevant here—to “suspend” (defer or put aside) one’s disbelief or judgment, or to hang something up (like a chandelier).

But the sense of hanging is at the etymological root of “suspend.”

The verb came into English from Old French, but its ultimate source is the Latin suspendere, formed of the prefix sub– plus pendere (to hang). In Latin compounds, sub– (which can mean under, close to, up to, or toward) normally became sus– before a word starting with “p.”

So etymologically, to “suspend” something is to hang it up. And in common usage it generally implies doing so temporarily or for the time being. Standard dictionaries agree with the OED on this point.

By the way, a whole host of words have come down to us from the Latin verb pendere (besides hang, it also meant weigh or pay): “pending,” “append,” “appendix,” “depend,” “dispense,” “expense,” “impending,” “penchant,” “pendant,” “pendulous,” “pendulum,” “penthouse,” “perpendicular,” “spend,” and others.

With that, we’ll suspend our blogging for the day.

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Q: On a recent Leonard Lopate show, a caller said she was laughed at as a child for using “ept’” as the opposite of “inept.” Pat replied that “ept” was actually a word—a humorous invention. I don’t see “ept” in my dictionary, nor “ane,” nor “ert.”

A: No, you won’t find “ept” in standard dictionaries, but the Oxford English Dictionary has an entry for the adjective, with written examples dating back to the 1930s. The OED even includes the adverb “eptly” and the noun “eptitude.”

Oxford credits the New Yorker writer E. B. White with the first recorded use of “ept.” In a letter dated October 1938, he said, “I am much obliged … to you for your warm, courteous, and ept treatment of a rather weak, skinny subject.”

The dictionary says “ept” means adroit, appropriate, or effective. It describes the word as a back-formation and “deliberate antonym” of “inept.” A back-formation is a word formed by dropping part of an earlier word.

Although the OED doesn’t have entries for “ane” or “ert,” it does include them (as humorous antonyms for “inane” and “inert”) in its entry for “ept.”

Here’s the citation, from the Sept. 7, 1966, issue of Time magazine: “With the exception of one or two semantic twisters, I think it is a first-rate job—definitely ept, ane and ert.”

By the way, many listeners wrote Pat after her appearance on the WNYC show to point out that “inept” had a more conventional antonym: “adept.”

But interestingly, these two words weren’t always opposites. In fact, “adept” didn’t even exist when “inept” showed up in the first decade of the 1600s. And when it did appear, “adept” had an entirely different meaning from its usual one today.

When “inept” first showed up, according to the OED, it had several meanings: not adapted; unsuited, or unfit; without aptitude; absurd; wanting in reason or judgment; silly or foolish.

It can be traced to the Latin ineptus, which the OED defines as “unsuited, absurd, foolish.” The Latin word is composed of the negative prefix in- plus the noun aptus, meaning a general tendency.

The Latin aptus is the source of our adjective “apt,” which came into English in the 14th century meaning suited or fit. Only later did “apt” come to mean inclined or disposed, as in “Children are apt to fidget.”

We don’t want to get lost in a labyrinth of classical etymology, but we should note here that aptus is the past participle of the verb apere (to fasten, attach, or bind). We’ll get back to apere in a moment.

As for “adept,” it’s derived from the Latin adeptus, composed of the prefix ad– plus apisci (to get), which is derived in turn from the verb that’s at the root of “inept”—apere, to fasten. Bingo: a classical connection between “adept” and “inept.”

When the adjective “adept” came into English in the mid-17th century, the OED says, it described someone or something “that has attained knowledge of the secrets of alchemy, magic, and the occult.”

The word often appeared in the phrase “adept philosopher,” meaning one skilled in alchemy, magic, or the occult.

It was first recorded in Thomas Vaughan’s Magia Adamica (1650), a book on magic: “I knew a Gentleman, who meeting with a Philosopher Adept, and receiving so much Courtesie as to be admitted to Discourse, attended his first Instructions passing well.”

The adjective led to a noun usage; originally an “adept” was a person with skills in those occult arts.

By the end of the 17th century, the adjective “adept” had taken on the more general sense it has now: very skilled at something. And the noun “adept” followed suit, coming to mean a skilled person.

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Q: What is your feeling about a “matrix organization” vs. a “matrixed organization”? Is either one correct?

A: Well, you won’t find them in standard dictionaries, but they’re alive and well online. Both terms get about the same number of hits in Google searches, somewhat under half a million.

More to the point, you can find entries for “matrix organization” (not “matrixed organization”) in the Oxford English Dictionary and in online business dictionaries.

That’s reason enough to go with “matrix organization,” assuming your audience is familiar with the term. We hadn’t heard of it until your question popped up in our inbox.

The OED defines the term as a business structure “in which project teams are formed of staff drawn from separate departments or functions within the organization.”

In a matrix organization, the dictionary says, “two or more lines of reporting, responsibility, or communication run through the same individual.”

The OED adds that such an organization, where the same person has two or more bosses, is “often used to supplement a traditional hierarchical structure.”

An online reference site, BusinessDirectory.com, explains that a matrix organization draws “employees from different functional disciplines for assignment to a team without removing them from their respective positions.”

The term “matrix organization,” according to BusinessDirectory.com, “gets its name from its resemblance to a table (matrix) where every element is included in a row as well as a column.”

The website says the structure was developed by NASA and its suppliers, but the earliest OED citations for the usage make no reference to the agency.

The OED’s earliest citation for the use of “matrix” in this management sense (but without the word “organization”) is from a 1959 anthology of articles on business structure.

The first citation that uses the actual term “matrix organization” is from the 1964 summer issue of Business Horizons, a journal of the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University:

“The concept of a matrix organization entails an organizational system designed as a ‘web of relationships’ rather than a line and staff relationship of work performance.”

In other words, this matrix isn’t much like the cyberpunk simulated reality that Keanu Reeves challenges in the sci-fi Matrix movies.

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Q: The word “general” in the title “solicitor general” is an adjective, not a noun. So are the Supreme Court justices using incorrect English when they address the solicitor general as “general”? What do you guys think?

A: When an attorney general, a solicitor general, a surgeon general, an inspector general, a comptroller general, and a postmaster general sit down together, there isn’t a general among them.

The gathering consists of an attorney, a solicitor, a surgeon, an inspector, a comptroller, and a postmaster. In their titles, the adjective “general” isn’t used in the military sense.

In conversation, according to protocol guides, these officials should be addressed by name, as “Mr. Smith” (or “Ms.” or “Mrs.” or “Dr.,” etc.), or as Mr. Solicitor General, Madam Attorney General, and so on—but not as “General.”

Yet many people insist on calling them generals—especially the attorneys general and solicitors general. This used to annoy Janet Reno no end. The former attorney general preferred to be addressed as “Ms. Reno.”

But Elena Kagan, when she was solicitor general, wanted to be called “general.” In a posting a couple of years ago, we quoted her as saying “the justices have been calling men SGs ‘general’ for years and years and years; the first woman SG should be called the same thing.”

So are justices on the Supreme Court using poor English when they address the solicitor general (or attorney general) as “general”? Technically, perhaps. But the justices have the authority to rule on proper usage in their own courtroom.

Bryan A. Garner, in Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage, says the justices’ use of “general as a faux title appears to have been popularized by William Rehnquist, who was otherwise known as a stickler for grammar.”

Garner says Rehnquist used the term this way as early as 1980, during oral arguments in Fedorenko v. US, a case in which the court held that people who assisted in Nazi persecutions were not eligible for US visas.

While Justice Rehnquist was addressing the solicitor general as “general,” Garner says, “the Chief Justice in that era, Warren Burger, fastidiously addressed the Solicitor General as ‘Mr. Solicitor General.’ ”

When Rehnquist became chief justice, according to Garner, he continued to use “general” as a title, “undoubtedly helping to spread this linguistic innovation.”

“Lamentably,” Garner writes, “the practice has continued with Rehnquist’s successor and has been adopted by other members of the Court as well.”

He notes that even the court’s official “transcript references to the Solicitor General now simply state ‘General Clement,’ ‘General Kneedler,’ and ‘General Kagan.’ ” (Not surprisingly, Justice Kagan now refers to the Solicitor General as “general.”)

As for the future, Garner says: “Sticklers will abstain. Others will blithely persist. And the militarization of high legal offices will march forward.”

He isn’t alone in lamenting this usage. Michael E. Herz, a law professor at Cardozo School of Law-Yeshiva University, has written a paper arguing that addressing a solicitor general or an attorney general as “general” is “flatly incorrect by the standards of history, grammar, lexicology and protocol.”

“Notwithstanding the popularity of ‘come here, gorgeous,’ it is grammatically incorrect to call someone by an adjective,” Herz says.

He adds that “historically, ‘general’ refers not to rank or command but to the breadth of attorneyship.” (The Oxford English Dictionary says that “general” in the title of an office holder means “having superior rank and comprehensive command or control.”)

“According to the standard text on protocol,” Herz writes, “a letter should begin ‘Dear Mr. Solicitor General’ or ‘Dear Mr. Doe,’ and in conversation the SG should be referred to simply as ‘Mr. Doe.’ ”

(The “standard text” he refers to is Protocol: The Complete Handbook of Diplomatic, Official and Social Usage, by Mary Jane McCaffree and Pauline Innis.)

Interestingly, as we note in our earlier Kagan posting, the word “general” was once the less important part of the military title, according to the language sleuth Dave Wilton.

The first general officer, he writes on his website, Wordorigins.org, was a “capteyn generall, an officer who had authority over the other captains, or commanders, in an army; in other words, the commander-in-chief.”

“This term dates to 1514 and is a lift from the French, who used the rank captain général,” Wilton says. “By 1576, the captain was being dropped from the title and superior officers were simply being addressed as general.”

In that earlier posting we also quoted the linguist Mark Liberman as suggesting that addressing an attorney general as “general” may have been “common practice at the state level, in some parts of the U.S., for a long time.”

Writing on the Language Log, Liberman notes that the judge in the Scopes trial in 1925 addressed the Tennessee attorney general as “general”—and out of courtesy addressed the other lawyers as “colonel.”

Many centuries ago, the title wasn’t “attorney general” but “general attorney.” So where did the “general” come from?

As the OED explains, “The designation began in England, where this officer was at first merely the king’s attorney … called from the reign of Edward IV, ‘the king’s general attorney,’ to distinguish him from those appointed to act on special occasions, or in particular courts. The descriptive designation seems to have grown into a title during the 16th c.”

These days, in both England and the US, “attorney general” is “the title of the first ministerial law-officer of the government,” the OED says.

In case you’re interested, we’ve also written on the blog about the use of honorifics (like “Mr.”) in titles and forms of address, including postings in 2008 and 2012.

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Q: I worked on my daughter for 20 years to distinguish “nauseous” and “nauseated.” Finally, after graduating from med school, she spoke correctly. Now, a new issue: in teaching her med students, should she insist they get it right?

A: We assume you passed on to your daughter the traditional view—that “nauseous” means sickening while “nauseated” means sickened.

But the distinction between these two words is becoming less distinct year by year. In fact, it was even less so when they entered English hundreds of years ago.

In a posting we ran on our blog in 2006, we said: “If someone is sick to his stomach, he’s nauseated. If something is sickening, it’s nauseous. Never say, ‘I’m nauseous.’ Even if it’s true, why admit it?”

But in the six years since we wrote that post, the sands of English usage have been shifting. So your daughter might want to pause before correcting anyone.

These are interesting words with a tangled history.

The root word here, “nausea,” ultimately comes from ancient Greece, in which nausie (in Ionic Greek) and nautia (in Attic Greek) meant seasickness, sickness, disgust, or loathing. The word passed into Latin, in which nausea means seasickness.

The seasickness angle is significant, since the Greek nausie and nautia were derived from nautes (sailor), which in turn came from naus (ship).

All these words share an ancestor, a prehistoric Indo-European word reconstructed as nau (“boat”), according to The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

Through Greek and later Latin, that Indo-European root is the distant ancestor of such seafaring English words “nautical,” “nautilus,” “navy,” “naval,” “navigation,” and of course “nausea,” according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology.

“Nausea” came into English from Latin in the early to mid-1400s, and while the Latin word meant seasickness, the English word had a more general meaning.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines this early meaning as “a feeling of sickness with an inclination to vomit; an occurrence of such a feeling.” (It was later used to mean seasickness too.)

In the 17th century, the OED says, “nausea” came to have figurative meanings like “strong disgust, loathing, or aversion,” or “a feeling of this.”

These are still the meanings the noun “nausea” has today. But the adjectives are another matter.

The earlier of the adjectives, “nauseous,” was first recorded in 1613, according to the OED, and it originally meant “inclined to sickness or nausea; squeamish.”

That, of course, is a somewhat milder version of the meaning that makes you sick: about to throw up.

The original sense of “nauseous” has since become obsolete. But before it died out, it overlapped with another, first recorded in 1618, defined by the OED as “causing nausea,” and “in later use: esp. offensive or unpleasant to taste or smell.”

Later in the 1600s, figurative meanings of “nauseous” came along, and it was used to mean nasty, repellant, loathsome, disgusting, repulsive, or offensive.

In the late 19th century, however, two senses of “nauseous” similar to the early ones showed up in the US: “affected with nausea; having an unsettled stomach,” and “disgusted, affected with distaste or loathing.”

The OED’s earliest citation for this usage is from 1885, and the numerous examples continue into the year 2000.

A representative example is this one from a 1949 issue of the Saturday Review: “After taking dramamine, not only did the woman’s hives clear up, but she discovered that her usual trolley ride back home no longer made her nauseous.”

Meanwhile, “nauseated” was undergoing some changes of its own.

When it was first used, in the 17th century, “nauseated” meant “causing nausea, cloying, rank,” the OED says. In other words, it meant pretty much what sticklers now insist “nauseous” should mean.

The OED’s first citation for the use of the word in writing is from Richard Allestree’s book The Gentlemans Calling (1660): “Forsaking all the unsatisfying nauseated pleasures of Luxury.”

The meaning later shifted to “suffering from or characterized by nausea,” as in this citation from the works of Sir Charles H. Williams, written sometime before 1759: “The nauseated reader, no longer cou’d brook The hoarse cuckow note.”

And that has been the meaning of “nauseated” ever since—or has it?

As you can see, “nauseous” and “nauseated” have had bumpy rides. Where do they stand today?

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage says flatly, “Any handbook that tells you that nauseous cannot mean ‘nauseated’ is out of touch with the contemporary language. In current use it seldom means anything else.”

Standard dictionaries agree—though not all of them state the case so strongly.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) gives “nauseous” two meanings: “1. causing nausea or disgust: nauseating. 2. affected with nausea or disgust.”

And in a usage note M-W adds: “Those who insist that nauseous can properly be used only in sense 1 and that in sense 2 it is an error for nauseated are mistaken. Current evidence shows these facts: nauseous is most frequently used to mean physically affected with nausea, usually after a linking verb such as feel or become; figurative use is quite a bit less frequent. Use of nauseous in sense 1 is much more often figurative than literal, and this use appears to be losing ground to nauseating.”

In case you think the people at Merriam-Webster’s are out on a limb, here’s what the newly revised American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) says on the subject (we’ll add paragraph breaks for readability):

“Traditional usage lore has insisted that nauseous should be used only to mean ‘causing nausea’ and that it is incorrect to use it to mean ‘feeling sick to one’s stomach.’ Back in 1965, the Usage Panel was in step with this thinking, with 88 percent rejecting the ‘feeling sick’ meaning of nauseous.

“This attitude persisted for decades but has since begun to give way. In our 1988 survey, 72 percent of the Panel thought that a roller coaster should be said to makes its riders nauseated rather than nauseous. By the 1999 survey, the Panel’s attitude had changed dramatically—61 percent of the Panel approved of the sentence Roller coasters make me nauseous.

“This change might have been inevitable once people began to think that nauseous did not properly mean ‘causing nausea,’ as traditional lore would have it. Even in our 1988 survey, this was the case, as 88 percent preferred nauseating in the sentence The children looked a little green from too many candy apples and nauseating (not nauseous) rides. The 1999 results for this same example were not significantly different.

“Since there is abundant evidence for the ‘feeling sick’ use of nauseous, the word presents a classic example of a word whose traditional, ‘correct’ usage is being supplanted by a newer, ‘incorrect’ one. In other words, what was once considered an error is becoming standard practice.

“Nauseous is now far more common than nauseated in describing the sick feeling. While nauseated remains for some the only ’correct’ word in this use, it is more apt to be interpreted metaphorically. We were left nauseous by the movie suggests that it made us ill. We were left nauseated by the movie implies that we were repulsed by the images.”

We could go on ad nauseam, citing Collins, Macmillan, Cambridge, and other online  dictionaries, but we’ll stop here and answer one more question: what do we think about all this?

We think it’s OK to use “nauseous” for feeling sick, though we don’t do it ourselves and we wouldn’t recommend it for formal writing. However, some holdouts would disagree. If you don’t want to get on their wrong side, use “nauseating” for sickening and “feeling sick” (or “feeling queasy”) when you’re about to throw up.

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Q: Can “maintain” and “retain” be used interchangeably? If not, please explain the differences and give some examples. I’m writing from Iran and find your blog very helpful.

A: These words aren’t interchangeable, though they do overlap a bit in their meanings, and they have an etymological relative in common.

To “retain” is to keep in one’s possession; to hire; to remember or keep in mind; or keep in one’s service or pay.

To “maintain” is to preserve or keep in an existing state; support or provide for; uphold or defend; affirm or assert; or adhere or conform to.

These definitions are derived from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.).

The clue to what these words have in common is the word element “-tain.” This element doesn’t exist as a separate word in English, but if it did it would mean “hold” or “keep.”

The “-tain” in words like “maintain” and “retain” developed from the Latin tenere (to hold), according to the Oxford English Dictionary. It came into English words that were adopted from French, in which tenir means to hold.

English has many such words besides the two you ask about, including “contain,” “detain,” “pertain,” and “sustain.”

Sometimes this word element (spelled “ten-”) appears at the beginning of a word having to do with holding, as in “tenant,” “tenacious,” and “tenable.”

As for the two verbs you asked about, English adapted “maintain” from the Anglo-Norman maintenir in the early 1300s, when it meant  to support or assist. And English got “retain” from the Anglo-Norman retener in the early 1400s, when it meant to restrain, prevent, or hinder.

Note: After reading this post, a reader comments, “Perhaps it is just the teacher in me, but I view retain with more negative connotations than maintain. Retain is holding back, while maintain is holding up. (I know this isn’t always the case.) Example: If a student cannot maintain her grades, I will be forced to retain her.”

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Q: For the past few years, the media has referred to the president as “Mr. Obama.” This strikes me as wrong and even disrespectful. Even Phil McGraw is “Dr. Phil,” not “Mr. McGraw.” What’s your opinion?

A: First of all, this mistering of a president is nothing new.

Here’s an example from an April 18, 1861, article in the New York Times from New Orleans: “Mr. LINCOLN’s war proclamation was received with no astonishment.”

There’s nothing wrong or disrespectful about this usage, but it’s by no means universal.

The media—that is, the world of mass communications—is a big place that includes TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, news websites, and the blogosphere.

The news organizations populating this world follow many different style guides, but they generally refer to the occupant of the Oval Office as “President So-and-So” when first mentioned.

They differ, however, over how to refer to the president on second or third or whatever reference.

The Associated Press, for example, uses only his last name while the New York Times mixes things up and uses “the president,” “Mr. So-and-So,” or “President So-and-So.”

As for the courtesy title “mister,” it began life in the 1500s as a variant of “master,” a much older term that first showed up in the early days of Old English, when it was written as mægster.

The ultimate source of “mister” and “master,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is magister, Latin for master, chief, teacher, and a few other things.

When “master” first showed up in English in the writings of King Alfred, the ninth-century ruler of the West Saxons and Anglo-Saxons, it meant a man who had authority over others.

Over the years, it has taken on many other meanings, including an employer (early Old English), a teacher (early Old English), a courtesy title (Old English), a skilled workman (circa 1300), a manager of a shop (c. 1400), a male head of a household (1536), a captain of a merchant vessel (mid-1900s), and so on.

The abbreviated title “Mr.” showed up in the 1400s, according to OED citations, initially a shortened form of “Master” and later short for “Mister.”

“Until the latter half of the 17th cent.,” the OED says, “the title was often written in the full form master, but there is reason for believing that from the 16th cent. it was, at least in rapid or careless speech, treated proclitically, with consequent alteration of the vowel of the first syllable.”

In other words, as “master” began being treated proclitically (that is, as a prefix-like term connected to a name following it), this sense of the word evolved into “mister.”

“Eventually the word came to have the weakened pronunciation whenever it was used as a prefixed title,” the OED adds, “and it became customary always to employ the abbreviated spelling for this use, and only for this.”

As for Dr. Phil, enough said.

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Q: I was listening to a trailer for a BBC Radio 4 broadcast about the reconstruction of the Globe Theatre when a novel usage caught my attention. The speaker referred to an “apocryphal” moment in which she realized she wanted to be involved in the project. Have you noticed a shift in the meaning of “apocryphal”?

A: No, we hadn’t noticed, at least not until we got your question.

A bit of googling, though, suggests that quite a few other people are using (or, rather, misusing) the adjective “apocryphal” to describe a sudden insight or inspiration or perception.

We came across a book on cancer research, for example, that describes an inspired technological breakthrough in treatment as “truly an apocryphal moment.”

You’re not the only person to raise an eyebrow at that BBC Radio 4 broadcast on April 22, 2012, of The Reunion. In the broadcast, the host Sue MacGregor reunited five people involved in the reconstruction of the theater.

We noticed several comments online by BBC listeners who wondered whether Claire van Kampen, the woman speaking, might have meant “apocalyptic,” not “apocryphal.” But we find that unlikely after listening to the comments by van Kampen, the new Globe’s first music director.

In the broadcast, she describes the moment that inspired her to join the project. She was visiting the site with her husband, the actor Mark Rylance, and felt disappointed at how little progress had been made:

“And then suddenly it—it was one of those apocryphal moments. The moon came out from behind the clouds. And it shone directly on this—this place. And then we heard St. Paul’s chime and we thought, ‘No, no, this—this is going to be magical. And we—we really want to be involved.’ ”

Our guess is that she (like others who misuse the term) was under the mistaken impression that “apocryphal,” which means inauthentic, erroneous, or fictitious, could be used to describe an epiphany.

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, defines epiphany as “a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something”  or “an intuitive grasp of reality through something usually simple and striking.”

We couldn’t find a single standard dictionary that includes insightful, inspirational, or perceptive as a sense of “apocryphal.”

When the adjective showed up in English in the late 16th century, it referred to a statement or story or other piece of writing.

By the early 17th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it was being used to refer to the “the Jewish and early Christian uncanonical literature”—that is the Apocrypha, the etymological parent of the adjective.

Around the same time, “apocryphal” took on its modern meaning of unreal, counterfeit, or sham. The earliest OED citation for this sense is from Ben Jonson’s 1612 comedy The Alchemist: “A whoresonne, vpstart, Apocryphall Captayne.”

So will the inspirational sense of “apocryphal” that you noticed catch on? We haven’t had an epiphany, but we don’t think so.

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Q: I hope you can shed light on something that has bugged me ever since I noticed it. Here in the UK, rivers are referred to as the “River Thames,” “River Avon,” and so on, whereas in the US they are referred to as the “Potomac River,” “Mississippi River,” etc. Is there a reason why?

A: Once upon a time, river names in English usually included the word “of.” So instead of “River Jordan” (in modern British usage) or “Jordan River” (in American usage), you would have found “River of Jordan” (written something like “rywere of Iordane”).

Many of the Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest citations for names of rivers, dating from the late 1300s, include “of.” Chaucer in 1395, for example, wrote of “the ryuer of Gysen.”

This practice of including “of” in river names, the OED says, wasn’t the only way of naming rivers, but it was “the predominant style before the late 17th cent.”

At that point, “of” began to drop out of river names, and British and American practices started to diverge.

In proper names, the word “river” commonly came first in Britain, but last in the American Colonies. In other words, most English speakers simply dropped “of,” but Americans reversed the word order as well.

While “river” has occasionally appeared at the end in British writing, this was “uncommon,” the OED says. Most of Oxford’s citations for “river” in last place are from the mid-1600s and after, and most are from North American sources.

As things now stand, the OED explains, the word “river” appears first “chiefly in British English referring to British rivers and certain other major, historically important rivers, as the Nile, Rhine, Ganges, etc.”

In North American usage, however, “river” comes at the end except sometimes in “certain other major, historically important rivers” like the ones mentioned above.

But we haven’t addressed the question “Why?” Why does usage differ in Britain and America? Why did the Colonists prefer “James River” and “Charles River” to the reverse?

We can’t answer that. But certainly the style adopted by the Colonists wasn’t unknown in the mother country.

The earliest OED citation with “river” following a proper noun is from about 1460, in a poem by John Lydgate mentioning the “Rodamus Ryuer.” And as late as 1612, the historian and cartographer John Speed mentions the “Thames Riuer.”

All we can say is that somehow a usage that was uncommon in England was transported to the New World and took hold.

As for earlier etymology, “river” can be traced to the Latin riparius (of a riverbank), from ripa (bank). It has more distant ancestors in the Greek ereipein (to plunge down) and in an ancient Indo-European root reconstructed as reip.

Interestingly, as John Ayto writes in his Dictionary of Word Origins, “A heavily disguised English relative is arrived, which etymologically denotes ‘come to the shore.’ ”

“River” entered the language by way of Anglo-Norman and French, first appearing in written English around 1300, the OED says. But the word was part of people’s names as far back as the 11th century.

The OED says it is “attested earlier in surnames, as Gozelinus Riuere (1086; 1084 as Gozelinus de Lariuera), Walter de la Rivere (c1150), Johannes de la Riviere (1166), Willelmus de la Rivere (1200), etc.”

However, Oxford adds, “the early examples certainly, and the later probably, reflect the Anglo-Norman rather than the Middle English word.”

If you’d like to read more about rivers, we had a posting in 2011 about selling someone down the river, and one in 2010 about the differing US and UK pronunciations of Thames.

Finally, all this river talk may have left you wondering about the name “Riviera,” which we now use for the Mediterranean coasts of southeastern France and northwestern Italy. That name, first recorded in the 18th century, comes from an archaic use of “river” to mean a coast or seaboard.

Time to book a vacation!

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Q: I wonder if you know where the new, slightly sarcastic, tic “Really? Really?” comes from.  I hear it mainly from young people, so it’s likely from some pop-culture source I don’t touch.

A: We hear the single sarcastic “Really?” quite a bit, but we haven’t noticed the repetitive usage. It doesn’t surprise us, though. In modern English, “really” has multiple uses—and some corresponding overuses.

For example, “really” is used nearly to death as an intensifier—that is, to be emphatic: “He’s really angry.” And when a single “really” isn’t intense enough, it’s doubled : “He’s really, really angry.”

(We’ve written before on the blog about the repeating of words for emphasis, a practice that’s been common for centuries.)

Other common uses of “really” express doubt (“I look good in orange? Really?”) or surprise (“I won the raffle? Really?”). And again, when a single “really” isn’t sufficiently doubtful or surprising, it’s doubled: “Really? Really?”

And, of course, there’s the sarcastic usage (“You have a 200 IQ? Really?”). We’re a bit surprised, however, that you’re hearing a doubling here. It seems to us that a second “Really?” would lessen the sarcasm.

The word “really” has other uses as well, of course. It can be used to express protest or dismay: “Really now! Five dollars for coffee?”

And it still retains its original, literal sense, in which it means in reality or in fact. In fact (if you’ll pardon the repetition), the word has had quite a history.

When it was first recorded in English in the 1400s, “really” had a strictly literal meaning—as the adverbial form of the adjective “real”—and it often had religious significance.

Here’s how the Oxford English Dictionary defines the original word: “In reality; in a real manner. Also: in fact, actually.”

The word is still used this way, but in its early days it was frequently used “with reference to the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist,” the OED says.

Here, for example, is an early usage dated about 1450. It’s from a Middle English prose translation of a religious poem by Guillaume de Deguileville, The Pilgrimage of the Lyf of the Manhode (The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man):

“With inne this bred al the souereyn good is put … bodiliche and rialliche, presentliche and verreyliche.” (“Within this bread all the sovereign good is put … bodily and really, presently and verily.”)

The religious historian John Foxe also used the word in a doctrinal sense in his multi-volume Actes and Monuments (1563), shorter editions of which were popularly known as The Book of Martyrs.

In a passage about the Roman Catholic persecution of a Protestant who was burned at the stake in 1410, Foxe writes: “He held this opinion, that it was not the body of Christe really, the whiche was sacramentally vsed in the churche.”

This literal sense of “really”—both religious and otherwise—was later joined by another.

In the mid-16th century, the OED says, people began using it to mean truly, indeed or positively. And somewhat later it was used in the same sense as an intensifier to mean very or thoroughly.

Among the OED’s citations for this sense of the word is a quotation from Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722): “This last Bill was really frightful.” (The “bill” was a weekly tally of the dead.)

A less grim, and more modern, example comes from a 2003 issue of the New York Post: “I have a really big scoop for you.”

In the early 17th century another use of “really” came along—the one expressing dismay or protest.

Here’s an early example, from Aphra Behn’s comedy The Roundheads (1682): “Really, Madam, I shou’d be glad to know by what other Title you wou’d be distinguish’d?”

A more recent OED citation is from John Braithwaite’s novel Never Sleep Three in a Bed (1969): “Being hauled out of mud-holes by horses was bad enough. But oxen, really!”

Finally we come to the “really” that’s usually framed as a question, though it’s more like a sideways statement of skepticism, doubt, or surprise. This one cropped up in the mid-18th century.

The Oxford English Dictionary’s first citation for this sense of the word comes from Samuel Richardson’s novel The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753):

“ ‘The Count of Belvedere. He was more earnest in his favour—’ ‘Really?’ ‘Yes, really—than I thought he ought to be.’ ”

This is the “really” that’s doubled in the sarcastic usage you ask about: “Really? Really?”

As we said, this repetitive usage is new to us, but we’re not really surprised!

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Q: I disagree that “flammable” and “inflammable” mean the same thing. “Flammable” means consisting of materials that will burn if lit. “Inflammable” means can be lit. Example: “In normal humidity, the grasses of Secaucus, NJ, are flammable, but not inflammable. When it’s dry, they’re inflammable.” I always try to maintain distinctions.

A: We believe in maintaining distinctions too—where distinctions exist. But “inflammable” and “flammable” have identical meanings. We can’t find any dictionary definitions that would support your case.

We’ve written about this on our blog, but that was a while ago. We wrote about it more recently in our book Origins of the Specious.

In Origins, we note that some people insist “inflammable” means not burnable, but is misused to mean burnable. Others say it does indeed mean burnable, but it’s merely a puffed-up, redundant version of “flammable.” Here’s an excerpt from the book:

“For the record, ‘inflammable’ does mean ‘burnable.’ And it’s meant that since at least 1605, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. ‘Flammable,’ the new kid on the block, didn’t appear in print until more than three hundred years later.

“The cause of all the confusion is the ‘in’ at the beginning of ‘inflammable.’ It turns out that the prefix in– can make a word negative (as in words like ‘incapable,’ ‘inflexible,’ ‘incompetent’), or it can add emphasis (‘invaluable,’ ‘inflame,’ ‘intense’), or it can mean ‘within’ (‘incoming,’ ‘inbreeding,’ ‘infighting’). The in– of ‘inflammable’ is of the emphatic type—it’s called an intensive or an intensifier. The word ‘inflammable’ comes from the Latin inflammare, meaning to inflame. The upstart ‘flammable’ was coined in the early nineteenth century, but for decades it was rarely used. So how did ‘flammable’ eventually catch fire?

“We can thank the National Fire Protection Association for this one. In the 1920s it called for using ‘flammable’ instead of ‘inflammable,’ which it considered confusing because of that in- at the beginning. Insurers and other fire-safety advocates soon joined the cause. In 1959, the British Standards Institution took up the torch: ‘In order to avoid any possible ambiguity, it is the Institution’s policy to encourage the use of the terms ‘flammable’ and ‘non-flammable’ rather than ‘inflammable’ and ‘noninflammable.’ ”

“Which word should a careful writer use today? Well, history may be on the side of ‘inflammable,’ but common sense wins here. If you want to be sure you’re understood—say, the next time you see a smoker about to light up near a gas pump—go with ‘flammable.’ ”

We’ll grant you this—if “flammable” had been the original word, and if the prefix had been ADDED as in intensifier (yielding a word that meant extra flammable), then the distinction you talk about might make sense.

Unfortunately, the history of the development of these words doesn’t bear out such an interpretation.

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Q: We recently went to a service at Arlington National Cemetery, where ashes were placed into an above-ground niche in the Columbarium. The verb “inter” doesn’t seem to work here (the niche isn’t in the earth). What is the correct word?

A: The verb “inter” does indeed have earthly roots. It’s ultimately derived from the medieval Latin interrare—the prefix in- plus terra (earth).

But in English, the verb “inter” and the noun “interment” can properly be used in connection with burial in any kind of tomb—mausoleum, crypt, or columbarium niche.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) defines “inter” this way: “To place in a grave or tomb; bury.” And Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) has “to deposit (a dead body) in the earth or in a tomb.”

The Oxford English Dictionary also says the verb “inter,” dating back to the early 1300s, means “to deposit (a corpse) in the earth, or in a grave or tomb; to inhume, bury.”

And a tomb needn’t be under ground. Among the definitions of “tomb” in the OED is this one: “A monument erected to enclose or cover the body and preserve the memory of the dead; a sepulchral structure raised above the earth.”

As long as we’re defining terms, Merriam-Webster’s says “columbarium” can mean either “a structure of vaults lined with recesses for cinerary urns” or an individual recess in such a structure.

The word “columbarium” is more poetic than it sounds. It comes from Latin, in which columbarium means “dovecote” and columba means “dove.”

The point is that it would be quite normal to speak of cremated remains “interred” in a niche at Arlington National Cemetery’s Columbarium.

However, many people who are in the funeral business or operate cemeteries prefer different words for this. They often use the terms “inurn” (to put in an urn), “inurned,” and “inurnment.”

For example, a publication called “Administrative Guide to Information and Burial at Arlington National Cemetery” uses the terms “inurn” and “inurnment” for placement of urns into niches at the Columbarium.

On the other hand, the publication uses “inter” and “interment” for burials in the ground (of either caskets or cinerary urns).

The verb “inurn” may sound like industry jargon, but it’s actually been around for quite a while. In fact, the OED’s earliest written example is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

In the citation, which we’ve expanded upon, Hamlet asks the Ghost why the sepulcher “Wherein we saw thee quietly enurn’d, / Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws.”

The OED says “inurn” means “to put (the ashes of a cremated body) in an urn.” Hence, Oxford says, by transference it means “to entomb, bury, inter.”

The noun form of “inurn” (“inurnment”) didn’t show up until the mid-20th century and has an unpleasantly officious ring, in our opinion.

Here are the OED’s citations for “inurnment”:

1934: “Olivet Memorial Park provides every service for Entombments, Inurnments, Interments” (an ad cited in an article in the journal American Speech).

1948: “Normal disposal is by inhumement, entombment, inurnment or immurement, but many people … prefer insarcophagusment” (from Evelyn Waugh’s comic novel The Loved One).

In summary, the choice is up to you—“inter” or “inurn.” However, Shakespeare or no Shakespeare, we prefer “inter.”

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Q: I was listening to WNYC the other day when I heard Murray Weiss, an editor and investigative reporter, say the police fired “a fuselage of bullets” during the Sean Bell shooting. Dear me!

A: We think you heard incorrectly.

We listened to a podcast of Murray Weiss’s March 26 commentary on WNYC, in which he described the 2006 shooting of Sean Bell. What we heard Weiss say was “a fusillade of bullets,” not “a fuselage of bullets.”

So Weiss, who comments on crime at WNYC, quite properly used the word “fusillade” to describe a hail of bullets.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) defines “fusillade” this way: “1. A discharge from a number of firearms, fired simultaneously or in rapid succession. 2. A rapid outburst or barrage: a fusillade of insults.”

English adapted the word from the French verb fusiller (to shoot). A related English word is “fusilier,” an old term (like “musketeer”) for a soldier carrying a firearm.

But we’re glad you brought this up, because we’re always coming across the incorrect usage you thought you heard.

Either “fusillade” or “barrage” would be appropriate choices to describe heavy gunfire. But not “fuselage,” which means the body of an aircraft.

Yet many people—especially in speech, but sometimes in writing—conflate “fusillade” and “barrage” and come up with “fuselage.”

We even found “a fuselage of bullets” in a 2007 article in the Washington Post about a skirmish involving a Mexican drug smuggler and Border Patrol agents. (It was later corrected after complaints from readers.)

Crime writers, of both fiction and nonfiction, also need to use their dictionaries more often. Here are a few examples (we’re quoting only partial sentences):

“Kate ducked under a heavy fuselage of bullets” (from Lorenzo Carcaterra’s novel Midnight Angels, 2010).

“He was met not only by the cold winds whipping off the Hudson River but by a fuselage of bullets” (from Philip Carlo’s The Butcher: Anatomy of a Mafia Psychopath, 2009).

“A fuselage of bullets killed Donahue instantly” (from The Boston Mob Guide: Hit Men, Hoodlums and Hideouts, by Beverly Ford and Stephanie Schorow, 2011).

We suspect that spell-check programs could be to blame for some of the written usages. One more reminder that spell-checkers can’t read your mind (not as of this writing, anyway), or take context into account.

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Q: Having taken Latin for a number of years, I’m fastidious about using “per” in English. Yet I often see “as per” where I would use simply “per,” as in this sentence: “Per your instructions, I have enclosed an extra copy of my curriculum vitae.” I can’t think of an instance in which “as per” is correct. Can you?

A: “Per” is a very versatile preposition—in English as well as in Latin (where its meanings include through, all over, during, by means of, and for the sake of).

In English, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.), the word has these meanings:

“1. To, for, or by each; for every: Gasoline once cost 40 cents per gallon. 2. According to; by: Changes were made to the manuscript per the author’s instructions. 3. By means of; through.”

(An example of that rather archaic meaning in the third definition would be “Letters take a week per Pony Express.”)

As for your question, the short answer is yes. It’s not incorrect, as you suggest, to precede “per” with “as.” That second example from American Heritage could just as well read “as per the author’s instructions.”

In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary says that “per” is “usually preceded by as” in English when the meaning is “according to,” or “as stated, indicated, or directed by.”

One of the OED’s early citations is from a 16th-century treatise on accounting methods, James Peele’s The Pathe Way to Perfectnes, in th’ Accomptes of Debitour, and Creditour (1569):

“Readie monie by him paide oute for goodes … and alowed to him self as per his accompte receaued [account received].”

Tobias Smollett used the same construction in his novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771): “This pair of boots, bran new, cost me thirty shillings, as per receipt.”

And Oscar Wilde used “as per” in an 1884 business letter: “There are a few printer’s errors in my article on Dress, which … I would like to have corrected, as per enclosed.”

Finally, here’s an example from Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm’s 1911 satirical novel about undergraduate life at Oxford: “How many of you can be turned out, as per sample, in England?”

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