Category: Etymology

Q: How did earwigs get their name and is there any truth to the belief that they like to crawl into people’s ears to lay their eggs?

A: Before we get to the etymology, let’s clear up the entomology.

It’s a myth that earwigs lay their eggs in human ears. And it’s an even yuckier myth that they bore into human brains to lay their eggs, driving the poor hosts crazy.

Yes, earwigs like to hang out in moist, dark places, and ear canals fit that description.

But the entomologist May Berenbaum says she knows of only “one single reference in about ten centuries of literature to an earwig actually being found in an ear.” [See the note below.]

In The Earwig’s Tail, her 2009 book about mythological bug stories, she suggests that the belief in the earwig’s attraction to human ears may have its roots in Roman times.

“Like so much entomological misinformation,” she writes, “the notion that earwigs infect ears may have originated with Pliny the Elder, first-century polymath who, among other things, believed that caterpillars originate from dew on radish leaves.”

Berenbaum cites Pliny’s advice in Historia Naturalis that if “an earwig … be gotten into the eare … spit into the same and it will come forth anon.” (We’re using the same 1601 translation that Berenbaum quotes.)

Now, on to the etymology. The modern word “earwig” comes from an Old English term, earwicga, a compound of words for ear and an insect of some sort. The two earliest written examples in the Oxford English Dictionary date from around 1000.

One of those citations, from the Old English Leechdoms, a collection of Anglo-Saxon medical remedies, includes a cure in which a blade of grass or straw is used to drive an earwig out of the ear.

So, the myth about earwigs and ears was alive and well in Anglo-Saxon times, and we suspect that it played a role in the naming of the insect itself.

An etymology note in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) says wicga, the second part of the Old English word, is a member of the same family of words that has given us “wiggle” and “wag.”

“This group of terms,” American Heritage adds, “denotes quick movements of various sorts and the prehistoric ancestor of the Old English word wicga probably meant something like ‘wiggler.’ ”

Although there’s no truth to the belief that earwigs commonly inhabit ears, many other languages have similar terms for the insect, according to Berenbaum, head of the entomology department at the University of Illinois.

The French call the earwig perce-oreille (ear piercer), the Germans Ohrwurm (ear worm), the Russians ukhovertka (ear turner), and so on.

Since earwigs don’t live in ears or brains, where do they hang out?

In a garden, you’ll find them in clumps of mulch and bark. In a house, you’ll find them in cracks and crevices. That is, if you really want to look!

A final note: Berenbaum says an earwig’s hind wings look a lot like human ears when unfolded. But she doesn’t buy that as an explanation for the insect’s name. And neither do we.

[Update. A reader sent us this email on August 15, 2015: “Just letting you know that when my son was young, an earwig crawled into his ear at night and woke him up.  He came to me, telling me that something was crawling around in his ear.  I looked and could see nothing.  Just to be sure, I dipped a q-tip in alcohol and gently (and carefully) moved it around in his ear.  He said the movement stopped. The next day, I took him to a doctor to check his ear out.  The doctor looked, gasped, and said, ‘It’s true!’ as he pulled the earwig from my son’s ear. So—maybe that’s twice in history.”]

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Q: I’ve heard that one should use “like” for comparisons and “such as” for examples, but everyone I know uses “like” for examples as well. What’s the story?

A: Respected writers have been using the preposition “like” in the sense of “such as” since at least the early 1800s. And as far as we can tell, no language authority objected to this usage until the second half of the 20th century.

Since then, a handful of commentators have criticized the usage for one reason or another. But other usage authorities have either ignored the issue or pooh-poohed the objections.

Count us among the pooh-poohers.

American and British lexicographers, the people who keep track of how English is actually used, agree with us that one standard meaning of the preposition “like” is “such as.”

We checked a dozen standard dictionaries published on both sides of the Atlantic and they were unanimous on this point.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.), for instance, gives this example of the usage: “saved things like old newspapers and pieces of string.”

And the Cambridge Dictionaries Online gives this one: “She looks best in bright, vibrant colours, like red and pink.”

When the ancestors of “like” and “such as” entered English in Anglo-Saxon times, the meanings of the two terms were pretty much alike, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The Old English source of “like” (gelic) meant “like one another, similar, of identical form or character,” while the Old English ancestor of “such as” (swelce swa) meant “of the kind or degree that; the kind of (person or thing) that.”

If anything, the earliest ancestor of “like” was more specific and suggested an example while the earliest ancestor of “same as” was less specific and suggested a comparison.

It wasn’t until the late 17th century, according to OED citations, that “such as” took on the sense of “for example.”

Here’s an early usage from A History of the Earth and Animated Nature, a 1795 work by Oliver Goldsmith: “All of the cat kind, such as the lion, the tiger, the leopard, and the ounce.”

Not long after Goldsmith wrote that, other writers began using “like” in the same way, according to published references collected by the language researcher Mark Israel with the help of the Merriam-Webster editorial department.

Here are a couple of examples from Jane Austen’s novels:

“Good sense, like hers, will always act when really called upon,” Mansfield Park (1814).

“A straightforward, open-hearted man, like Weston, and a rational unaffected woman, like Miss Taylor, may be safely left to manage their own concerns,” Emma (1816).

And here’s an example from Charles Darwin: “to argue that because a well-stocked island, like Great Britain, has not, as far as is known” (On the Origin of Species, 1859).

The OED—from its earliest “like” entry, published in 1903, to its latest online entry—has consistently said “like” often has the sense of “such as.”

(The earliest entry was published in a fascicle, or book part, before the first edition was completed or even called the OED.)

The dictionary’s first citation for the usage is from an 1886 letter by Robert Louis Stevenson: “A critic like you is one who fights the good fight, contending with stupidity.”

OK, lexicographers like the usage, but what about usage authorities?

Well, Henry Fowler, the language maven’s language maven, certainly didn’t see anything wrong with using “like” this way.

In the 1911 first edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, which Fowler edited with his brother, Francis, one meaning of “like” is listed as “resembling, such as.”

As an example of the usage, the Fowlers give “a critic like you,” and say “like” is being used to mean “of the class that you exemplify.” Yup, as an example!

Interestingly, neither the original 1926 edition of Henry Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage nor the 1965 second edition, edited by Sir Ernest Gowers, cites any problem with using “like” in the sense of “such as.”

It’s not until the third edition, edited by Robert Burchfield in 1996 and 1998,  that an eyebrow is raised about the usage. Burchfield says the use of “like” for “such as” is sometimes questioned because of possible ambiguity.

As an example, he says the title of Kingsley Amis’s 1960 novel A Girl Like You could be read as referring to the girl herself or a girl resembling her.

We think that he’s nitpicking and that it would be silly to use a clunky title like A Girl Such as You to help the one reader in a million who might misread the original. And remember, Henry Fowler himself used “a critic like you” as an example of proper usage.

So where did Burchfield, a pretty tolerant language guy, get the idea that the use of “like” for “such as” may be confusing?

We can’t ask him, since he died in 2004, but we assume he was influenced by the few objections raised in the second half of the 20th century to a usage that had passed without notice since the early 1800s and perhaps earlier.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage has a half-page entry on how some language mavens blew this issue of ambiguity out of proportion in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s.

Wilson Follett appears to be the first language authority to write about the “shade of difference” between “such as” and “like” used in this sense.

In Modern American Usage (1966), Follett says the two terms “may often be interchanged,” but “such as leads the mind to imagine an indefinite group of objects” while “like” suggests “a closer resemblance among the things compared.”

Because of “this extremely slight distinction,” he says, some critics may object to the phase “a writer like Shakespeare” on the ground that no writer is like Shakespeare.

He adds, however, that “context usually makes clear what the comparison proposes to our attention. Such as Shakespeare may sound less impertinent, but if Shakespeare were totally incomparable such as would be open to the same objection as like.”

A few years after Follett’s book came out, another language authority, Theodore M. Bernstein, made light of the issue and used Beethoven instead of Shakespeare as an example.

In Miss Thistlebottom’s Hobgoblins, Bernstein’s 1971 book about language myths and misconceptions, he writes that “only some nit-pickers object to saying, ‘German composers like Beethoven.’ ”

Interestingly, both Follett and Bernstein seem to feel that “like” may be somewhat more specific than “such as”—that is, “like” may suggest an example and “such as” a similarity.

Leslie Sellers, in Keeping Up the Style (1975), appears to be the first language writer to suggest that “such as” should refer to examples and “like” to similarities.

H. Ramsey Fowler and Quentin L. Gehle then picked up the idea in The Little Brown Handbook (1980), followed by James Kilpatrick, in Reflections on the Writing Art (1993), and a few other commentators.

After reviewing these “rather diverse opinions,” Merriam-Webster’s concludes that there’s no agreement on standard usage here and  that “the issue of ambiguity, which evidently underlies the opinion of those who urge the distinction, is probably much overblown.”

The usage guide goes on to list eight 20th-century examples of “like” used for “such as,” including a 1956 letter in which Flannery O’Connor refers to “reading someone like Hemingway,” and two books in which language mavens use “like” this way:

Words on Paper (1960), by Roy H. Copperud: “Phrases like three military personnel are irreproachable and convenient.”

American English Today (1985), by Hans P. Guth: “Avoid clipped forms like bike, prof, doc.”

In none of the examples, the M-W editors add, “can you detect any ambiguity of meaning, either as they are written with like or as they would read if you substituted such as.”

In summary, most English speakers don’t recognize a distinction between these two terms, and the few usage writers who believe in a distinction can’t agree on what it is.

We use both “like” and “such as” to mean “for example,” though Pat considers “such as” a bit stuffy and uses it less than Stewart.

What do we do when we want to emphasize that we’re referring to an example? We simply use “for example” or “including” or a similar term:

“The writers we reread the most—for example, Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, P. G. Wodehouse, and Angela Thirkell—all have a sense of humor.”

Finally, if you’re up for reading more about “like,” Pat wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine in 2007 about its use in “She’s like, ‘No way,’ ” and a blog post that same year about its use in “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.”

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Q: I seem to recall reading somewhere that “forever” means continually and “for ever” means eternally. I checked my dictionary and it only has the one-word version. Is there really a difference or is the one-word version enough for both senses?

A: In American English, the one-word version is the only version for the adverb meaning continually, incessantly, or eternally.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.), Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), and all the other standard US dictionaries we checked agree on this.

In British English, the situation isn’t quite so simple.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the two-word version can mean either eternally, continually, or incessantly, but it has a half-dozen citations, beginning as far back as the 17th century, for the one-word version used in both senses.

The original 1926 edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage doesn’t mention the issue, but the 1965 second edition insists on the two-word version.

But, wait, the latest Fowler’s (the revised third edition) says the one-word version means continually or persistently and the two-worder means eternally—except in the US, where one word can do for all those senses.

The lexicographers at standard British dictionaries, however, don’t generally buy that arbitrary approach.

The Cambridge Dictionaries Online, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, and the other British dictionaries we checked list “forever” and “for ever” for all senses in their British editions. And the one-word version is listed first.

In other words, the British seem to be coming around to the American usage here.

In fact, Garner’s Modern American Usage (3rd ed.) says “the solidified version has become standard in both AmE and BrE, and the two-word version is best described as archaic.”

The two-word version, according to OED citations, is by far the oldest, first showing up around 1300 in Cursor Mundi, a Middle English poem: “This folk … that suld vs serue for euer and ai” (“This folk … that should us serve for ever and always”).

The one-word version first appeared in a 1670 satire by John Eachard that expressed “honest and hearty wishes that the best of our Clergy might forever continue as they are.”

By the 1800s, however, sticklers were complaining about the one-word version. We’ll end with an excerpt from “Forever,” a poem by Charles Stuart Calverley, one of the 19th-century complainers:

Forever; ’tis a single word!
Our rude forefathers deem’d it two:
Can you imagine so absurd
A view?

Forever! What abysms of woe
The word reveals, what frenzy, what
Despair! For ever (printed so)
Did not.

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Q: It occurred to me this morning that “assume” and “presume” are very close in meaning, especially when taking something to be true, and they present, at least to me, a bit of a semantic problem. Am I the only one who finds these verbs confusing?

A: No, you’re not the only one who finds them confusing. In fact, Pat has included them in a section on confusing pairs of words in her grammar and usage book Woe Is I.

Here’s the way she described them:

“ASSUME/PRESUME. They’re not identical. Assume is closer to ‘suppose,’ or ‘take for granted’; the much stronger presume is closer to ‘believe,’ ‘dare,’ or ‘take too much for granted.’ I can only assume you are joking when you presume to call yourself a plumber!

“NOTE: Presume in the sense of ‘believe’ gives us the adjective presumptive. And presume in the sense of ‘take too much for granted’ gives us the adjective presumptuous. As her favorite nephew, Bertie was Aunt Agatha’s presumptive heir. Still, it was presumptuous of him to measure her windows for new curtains.”

Now let’s exhume a few ancestors. You’re right in thinking that these words are closely connected.

Both have at their roots the Latin verb sumere (to take), so both have to do with taking something—a fact, a thing, or whatever—to oneself.

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, “assume,” which showed up in English in the 15th century, comes from the Latin verb adsumere “to take to oneself, adopt, usurp.” Here, the Latin prefix ad– means “to.”

The older and more forceful “presume,” first recorded in the 14th century, comes from the Latin verb praesumere, in which the prefix prae– means “before.”

In classical Latin, the OED says, praesumere meant “to consume beforehand, to take upon oneself beforehand, to anticipate, to take for granted, presuppose, assume.”

Later, in post-classical Latin, the word also meant to be arrogant, to rely on, to expect, to take the liberty, to dare, and to claim.

In your question, you mention a specific use of these words—taking something to be true. Depending on the strength of your conviction, you might either “assume” or “presume” that something is true.

In this sense of the word, the OED says, “assume” means “to take for granted as the basis of argument or action,” or “to suppose.”

Here “presume” has a very similar, though stronger meaning: “to assume; to take for granted; to presuppose; to anticipate, count upon, or expect (in early use with a suggestion of overconfidence).”

And in law, according to the OED, “presume” has a specific meaning: “to take as proved in the absence of evidence to the contrary.”

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Q: Just read your blog about “fishes.” Are you aware of an Italian Christmas Eve tradition known as the Feast of the Seven Fishes? My husband and I attended one at a huge restaurant in South Jersey. It was served banquet style, minimum of seven fish courses. I lost track of the number of species—something like eleven. I remember fried smelt, fish stew, clams casino, shrimp, baked cod with tomatoes, stuffed flounder, on and on. It lasted for hours, and ended with limoncello and biscotti.

A: We might have known there would be a South Jersey angle (not to mention an Italian one) in that blog item. As we noted, both “fish” and “fishes” are proper plurals, with “fishes” usually referring to more than one species of fish.

No, we hadn’t heard about the Feast of the Seven Fishes. But we found out more about it in a 1987 article about the feast by the New York Times writer Craig Claiborne.

The seven dishes, according to Claiborne, are for the seven Roman Catholic sacraments. (A little googling offers a few other explanations.) Each dish uses a different main ingredient or is cooked in a different way: broiled, fried, baked, and so on.

In his Times article, Claiborne offers recipes for a Feast of Seven Fishes served by a friend of his whose parents came to the US from a small fishing village in Italy.

The tradition you enjoyed in South Jersey apparently originated in southern Italy and isn’t known in some other Italian regions.

In fact, Claiborne’s friend said his parents only began serving the seven dishes after moving to the US. They picked it up from neighbors in Waterbury, CT, who were immigrants from southern Italy.

By the way, you might be interested in our posting on “sleeping with the fishes.” And something tells us that we may find ourselves eating with the fishes in South Jersey next Christmas Eve!

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Q: Your recent “orientation” post got me to wondering. Jews of Europe (and America) pray to the east, the direction of Jerusalem (roughly), as do Christians of Europe, where the standard church orientation is with the chancel facing east and the faithful facing east toward the altar. Muslims originally prayed toward Jerusalem, before changing to Mecca. Does the need to orient oneself come from these religious practices?

A: There is indeed a religious dimension to the noun and verb “orient,” but let’s begin with some geography.

In classical Latin, oriens meant “the eastern part of the world, the part of the sky in which the sun rises, the east, the rising sun, daybreak, dawn,” in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary.

And when the noun “orient” entered English in the 14th century, it was “originally used with reference to countries lying immediately to the east of the Mediterranean or Southern Europe (i.e. east of the Roman Empire); now usually understood to mean East Asia, or occas. Europe or the Eastern hemisphere, as opposed to North America.”

Now for the religious significance. When the verb “orient” came along in the 18th century, it had as one of its meanings “to place or arrange (a thing or a person) so as to face the east; spec. (a) to build (a church) with the longer axis running due east and west, and the chancel or chief altar at the eastern end; (b) to bury (a person) with the feet towards the east.”

Here are the OED’s citations for this sense of the word:

1728, in Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopædia: “In most Religions, particular Care has been taken to have their Temples oriented. St. Gregory Thaumaturgus is said to have made a Mountain give way, because it prevented the orienting of a Church he was building.”

1884, in an issue of the journal Science: “The coffins were of plank or stone, and were not oriented.”

1896, in The Classical Review: “The primitive Aryan in taking his bearings literally oriented himself and turned to the east.”

1993, in Joan E. Taylor’s book Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins: “The basilica is, like other Byzantine churches, oriented to the east.”

These practices, however, predated the use of the word “orient” in reference to them. Here’s an explanation we found in a 1907 edition of The Catholic Encyclopedia (we’re adding paragraph breaks for readability):

“The custom of praying with faces turned towards the East is probably as old as Christianity. The earliest allusion to it in Christian literature is in the second book of the Apostolic Constitutions (200-250, probably) which prescribes that a church should be oblong ‘with its head to the East.’ Tertullian also speaks of churches as erected in ‘high and open places, and facing the light.’ ”

Why did the custom develop? The encyclopedia goes on to explain: “The reason for this practice, which did not originate with Christianity, as given by St. Gregory of Nyssa … is that the Orient is the first home of the human race, the seat of the earthly paradise. In the Middle Ages additional reasons for orientation were given, namely, that Our Lord from the Cross looked towards the West, and from the East He shall come for the Last Judgment.”

The writer goes on to say that “the existence of the custom among the pagans is referred to by Clement of Alexandria, who states that their ‘most ancient temples looked towards the West, that people might be taught to turn to the East when facing the images.’”

In discussing church construction, the encyclopedia adds: “The form of orientation which in the Middle Ages was generally adopted consisted in placing the apse and altar in the Eastern end of the basilica. A system of orientation exactly the opposite of this was adopted in the basilicas of the age of Constantine. … Thus, in these cases the bishop from his throne in the apse looked towards the East.”

In practice, however, ecclesiastical architects found that prior construction, street arrangements, and terrain often interfered with strict adherence to the rules of orientation. Not everybody could move a mountain!

As for Jews, rabbinical opinion has generally held that those living outside the Land of Israel should pray toward the Holy Land, and those living in Israel should pray toward Jerusalem.

Most Jews of the Diaspora live to the west of Israel and thus pray to the east. From what we’ve read, ancient synagogues usually conformed to this tradition and may have influenced the orientation of Christian churches.

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[Note: This post was updated on Nov. 2, 2025.]

Q: This is from a posting on Care2 about funding for the Senate campaigns of Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown: “Plenty of politicians pearl-clutch over the impact of Citizens United but complain that they are helpless to do anything about it.” Can you explain the phrase “pearl-clutch”?

A: The verbal phrase “pearl-clutch” and several similar expressions, including “pearl clutching,” “clutch my pearls,” “clutch the pearls,” “they clutched their pearls,” and so on, are often accompanied by a gesture suggesting the clutching of an imaginary string of pearls.

They convey the image of a genteel, perhaps prudish lady whose hand dramatically flies to her chest—where, as often as not, she’s wearing pearls. The actual gesture is reminiscent of old silent films and stage melodramas from the turn of the last century, though it didn’t get its “pearl clutching” names until the gesture became figurative instead of literal.

The figurative expressions usually refer to shock or outrage of one sort or another—real shock, mock shock, amused shock, awed shock, or shock over something that’s not generally considered really shocking. So “pearl clutching” is comparable to “hand-wringing” and being “shocked, SHOCKED.”

But this is an evolving usage and in the posting you cited from the social network Care2, the lawyer-writer Jessica Pieklo uses “pearl-clutch,” minus the shock, to mean grumble uselessly.

Pieklo praises Warren and Brown for trying to reduce the impact of the Citizens United case on their Senate race, but then says (in the sentence you cite) that a lot of other politicians just fret about the Supreme Court ruling without doing anything about it.

Most dictionaries today define “pearl clutching” as an exaggerated response, deliberately expressing more shock than appropriate, and possibly more than you really feel.

So if someone says you’re clutching your pearls, they’re calling you a hypocrite—faking outrage about something that’s not so outrageous.

The earliest example we’ve found of this figurative usage is from the late 70s. And it may indicate that it originated in gay slang.

In the February 1979 issue of Off Our Backs, a journal published by a lesbian/feminist collective, the Black writer Sheila Brown described a meeting at which the white members of the collective were accused of racism.

She said she heard gasps and “could see them clutching the pearls they no longer wear (unless they’re going home). Well, after all the pearl-clutching we finally got down to something we could all relate to.”

(As we said, this is the earliest figurative usage we’ve found. The much older ones we’ve examined are literal, including an oft-quoted snippet from 1909. Read in context, the passage from the Chambers Journal in fact depicts a man stealing a strand of pearls from a dressing table.)

After that Off Our Backs example, the figurative usage showed up only sporadically for a few years, usually in gay slang.

Speaking in Queer Terms (2003), a collection of essays about the globalization of gay men’s English, edited by William L. Leap and Tom Boellstorff, includes several examples of gay men using “pearl-clutch” in the sense of shock, surprise, and even awed admiration, though it doesn’t cite dates.

However, perhaps the best-known example in gay usage is from a 1990 episode of the Fox TV show In Living Color.

In an April 15, 1990, sketch, a flamboyant movie critic (played by Damon Wayans) gushes over how daring the producers were to cast a male actor as the female lead in Dangerous Liaisons.

When told that Glenn Close is actually a woman, he squeals, “Well, clutch the pearls! What a sneaky thing to do.”

In the last 20 years or so, the phrase has been used in blogs, particularly of the “girl-talk” sort, and in various other kinds of popular usage.

And in the last decade, it’s been showing up in political writing and speech as a way to dismiss or ridicule the opposition.

For example, Washington Monthly in July 2015 published an article headlined “The Role of Peggy Noonan’s Pearl Clutching.”

In the piece, Nancy LeTourneau wrote: “I have to admit that no one on the right intrigues me more than Peggy Noonan. It might be because she is the most prominent female conservative pundit. But it also has to do with her unique skill at pearl-clutching. She is absolutely the queen of that venue.”

In the 2020s, the usage seemed to catch on more firmly in the political language of the Beltway. Fast forward to a couple of examples from October 2025:

On Oct. 14, in response to leaked GOP group-chat messages that joked about racism, rape and gas-chambers, J.D. Vance wrote, “I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence.”

And on Oct. 19, the disgraced former Congressman George Santos said after he was released from prison, “So pardon me if I’m not paying too much attention to the pearl-clutching of the outrage of my critics.”

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Q: With this recent cruise-ship accident off Italy, a friend and I are almost arguing over the word “capsize.” My friend insists the ship capsized, but I would say it tipped on its side. Can “capsize” refer to tipping over as well as turning upside down?

A: The Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia rolled on its side Jan. 13 after it ran aground off the rocky coast of Tuscany. But the ship didn’t turn upside down and it was only partially submerged.

Almost across the board, news organizations (including our old boss, the New York Times) said the ship had capsized. Were they right?

Not according to the maritime dictionaries we’ve consulted. To capsize, the dictionaries say, a ship must flip upside down. So while the reporting was thorough, the language wasn’t quite seaworthy.

In this case, it would have been more correct to say the ship grounded or ran aground on a reef and rolled on its side.

The Dictionary of Naval Terms (2005), by Deborah W. Cutler and Thomas J. Cutler, defines “capsize” this way: “To turn over; to upset; as when a boat ‘turns turtle’ (goes keel up).”

The same dictionary, published by the Naval Institute Press, defines “ground” this way: “To run a ship ashore; to strike the bottom. Usually a result of ignorance, violence, or accident.”

(Standard dictionaries says the verb “ground” in its nautical sense has the same meaning as the verbal phrase “run aground.”)

Another source, the Marine Affairs Dictionary (2004), by Niels West, says capsizing is “the complete overturning of a vessel by rolling as it lies parallel to the wavetrains.”

A book designed for litigation lawyers, Successful Personal Injury Investigation (2000), by Francis D. Ritter, has this in a section devoted to nautical terms:

“CAPSIZE: To overturn a vessel. Synonymous with the term to ‘keel over.’ A vessel that has capsized is known to be ‘keel up in the water.’ Capsizing is most often caused by storms.”

Finally, this definition of “capsize” is from The Sailor’s Illustrated Dictionary (2001), by Thompson Lenfestey with Capt.Thompson Lenfestey, Jr.:

“To turn over. Most commonly it means the inadvertent turning over of a boat. To capsize an oil drum is to turn it over, usually to gain access to the bung. To capsize a lifeboat would be to turn it over with the bottom up to prevent rain from getting in it.”

So much for the technical meaning of “capsize.” But what about ordinary usage?

Standard dictionaries, it turns out, are in the same boat as the more technical authorities.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.), for example, defines “capsize” as “to overturn or cause to overturn.”

And Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) says it means “to cause to overturn … to become upset or overturned … turn over.”

(Both dictionaries, by the way, say “overturn” means “turn over.”)

In short, it’s pretty clear that the Italian cruise liner didn’t “capsize.”

We know that “capsize” was first recorded in the late 18th century but, unfortunately, its etymology is hidden in the past.

Here’s what the Oxford English Dictionary has to say about the word’s history: “Origin unknown; apparently originally a sailor’s expression. … The first element may possibly be cap [the noun].”

The OED does mention, without additional comment, a theory proposed by the philologist Walter W. Skeat:

“Prof. Skeat suggests corruption of Spanish cabezar ‘to nod, pitch as a ship,’ or of capuzar in ‘capuzar un baxel, to sink a ship by the head,’ [from] cabeza, cabo head.”

Without a heads up from the OED, we won’t let Professor Skeat have the last word here.

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Q: How did “croaking” come to mean dying? Does it have anything to do with the sound a frog makes?

A: People who die are said to “croak” because of the croaking sounds they make on their deathbeds. Here’s the story.

When the verb “croak” entered English in the 15th century, it meant to “utter a deep, hoarse, dismal cry, as a frog or a raven,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The sound could be made by a human as well as an animal.

Although it may possibly be related to an Old English word for a raven’s sound, the OED says, the Middle English versions of “croak” (the ancestors of our word) are probably “later formations imitating or suggesting varieties of animal and other sounds.”

In the early 19th century, the verb took on the slang sense of dying, according to the dictionary. Here’s a citation from an 1873 slang dictionary: “Croak, to die—from the gurgling sound a person makes when the breath of life is departing.”

The noun “croak” entered English in the second half of the 16th century, according to OED citations. Here’s an example of a human croak from Anthony Trollope’s 1861 novel Barchester Towers:

“ ‘I told you so, I told you so!’ is the croak of a true Job’s comforter.”

If you’re in the mood for more, we wrote blog items in 2008 and 2011 about euphemisms for death and dying.

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Q: Does “African American” or “Asian American” require a hyphen, especially when used as an adjective?

A: In writing Origins of the Specious, our book about  English myths and misconceptions, we asked ourselves the same question.

In the end, we (along with the editors at Random House) decided to hyphenate African-American ONLY as a compound adjective preceding a noun (as in “an African-American idiom”).

We decided not to hyphenate it as a noun phrase (as in “African Americans” or “he is an African American”).

This decision, we felt, treats these terms in the ordinary way. A compound adjective is normally hyphenated before a noun (as in “a piece of early-American furniture”) while a single adjective needs no hyphen (“a piece of early Americana”).

We would do the same with “Asian Americans”—omitting the hyphen in the noun phrase, but hyphenating the compound adjective (“Asian-American cuisine”).

But what you decide to do is up to you. Style guides differ on this question. Some do as we do, but some recommend omitting the hyphen in all cases, even in the compound adjective.

This isn’t a matter of correct or incorrect usage. It’s an issue of style and, in the view of some, avoiding offense because of negative associations with the term “hyphenated American.”

Here, for example, is the advice given in The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.):

“Whether terms such as African American, Italian American, Chinese American, and the like should be spelled open or hyphenated has been the subject of considerable controversy, the hyphen being regarded by some as suggestive of bias. Chicago doubts that hyphenation represents bias, but since the hyphen does not aid comprehension in such terms as those mentioned above, it may be omitted unless a particular publisher requires it.”

Elsewhere, in a table giving the Chicago Manual’s hyphenation rules for proper nouns and adjectives relating to geography or nationality, the same advice is given. Examples include “African Americans” and “African American president.”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.), in its entry for “hyphenated,”  has a usage note that takes a strong position against using the term “hyphenated Americans” for US citizens of foreign origin and their descendants:

“Naturalized immigrants to the United States and their descendants have sometimes been called hyphenated Americans in reference to the tendency to hyphenate such ethnic compounds as Irish-American and Polish-American. This term has come under strong criticism as suggesting that those so designated and not as fully American as ‘unhyphenated’ citizens. It is best avoided in all but historical contexts.”

The Oxford English Dictionary agrees that the expression “hyphenated American” suggests “a person whose patriotic allegiance is assumed to be divided.”

The OED says the phrase originated in the United States in the late 19th century, but the dictionary’s earliest citations are from British sources.

The first published reference, from an 1893 dictionary of slang, has a neutral definition: “Hyphenated American, a naturalised citizen, as German-Americans, Irish-Americans, and the like.”

But the next citation, from the Aug. 15, 1900, issue of the Daily News in London, hints at bias: “My opponents were of the hyphenated variety—Dutch-Americans and Irish-Americans predominating.”

And the next citation, from the Jan. 3, 1904, issue of the Westminster Gazette, is clear about it: “American politics, where men who call themselves Irish-Americans, German-Americans, Dutch-Americans, and so on, are contemptuously referred to as ‘hyphenated Americans.’ ”

In case you’re interested, we wrote a posting a couple of years ago about the terms “African American” and “Black American.”

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Q: Can you refer to the appearance of an individual in a movie or on TV as a “cameo” if he is listed in the credits under his own name or has a speaking part as himself?

A: Most of the standard dictionaries we’ve checked define “cameo” (short for “cameo appearance” or “cameo role”) as a minor part played by a well-known performer in a single scene of a film, play, TV series, or similar work.

But that definition may be a bit too restrictive. The term “cameo” is commonly used for such an appearance by any prominent person, whether a performer or not.

Can the celebrity in a cameo role be listed in the credits? We don’t see why not. Donald Trump, for example, is credited for his brief appearance in the film Zoolander.

And can the celebrity have a speaking role? Again, we don’t see why not, as long as the celeb doesn’t speak a lot. Michelle Obama had a speaking—and dancing—cameo role on the Nickelodeon sitcom iCarly earlier this month.

When English borrowed the term “cameo” from Italian in the 13th century, it referred to a precious stone with two layers of different colors, and a figure carved in the upper layer.

In the mid-19th century, according the Oxford English Dictionary, the meaning of the word expanded to include “a short literary sketch or portrait.”

And in the early 20th century, OED citations show, this sense was extended to include “a small character part that stands out from the other minor parts.”

Interestingly, none of the OED examples of the usage mention a celebrity appearing in a minor role. But here’s an example from the Jan. 21, 1993, obituary of Audrey Hepburn in the New York Times:

“Her last screen role, in 1989, was a cameo as an angel easing the hero toward death in Steven Spielberg’s ‘Always,’ a role in which the character’s grace and serenity echoed the image Miss Hepburn had maintained throughout a 40-year career.”

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Q: I just heard the phrase “a tad bit” on the radio. I know I’ve heard it before, but it struck me now as a tad bit odd, since “tad” means a very small amount, and a “bit” is also a very small amount. The result is a redundancy that’s parallel to “the most teeny-weenie-est.” What do you think?

A: Aren’t you being just a tad bit picky here? Yes, it’s true that a “tad” means a “bit,” but why not regard “tad bit” as reinforcement rather than a repetition?

The phrase is not formal English, after all, but a folksy and semi-humorous usage. People use “little bit” too, and nobody seems to mind.

As we’ve said before, there’s a fine line between an emphatic use and a redundancy. And we think “tad bit” is the kind of expression in which that extra emphasis can be defended.

Besides, there’s a kind of expression (the writer Ben Yagoda calls it “the salutarily emphatic redundancy”) that is memorable chiefly because of its apparent repetition. A good example is “Raid kills bugs dead.”

We’ve written about this subject several times before on our blog, in discussions of phrases like “first time ever,” “fourteen different countries,” “meet up with,” “face up to,” “try out,” “divide up,” “hurry up,” “lose out on,” and many more that some people find redundant. Here’s a link to one post.

But let’s look more closely at “tad,” an interesting noun. It’s originally and chiefly North American, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and may be derived from “tadpole.”

By the way, “tadpole” is interesting too. It combines the Middle English word tade or tadde (toad) and, apparently, the noun “poll” (head or roundhead.) It was first recorded in the 1400s, the OED says, as “taddepol.”

“Tad” first cropped up in 1845 with a different, unrelated meaning: someone who can’t or won’t pay. But the modern sense of something small was first recorded in the 1870s, when a “tad” or a “little tad” meant “a young or small child, esp. a boy,” the OED says.

It wasn’t until the 20th century that “a tad” came to mean a small amount or, used as a modifier, a little, slightly, or somewhat.

The OED’s first citation is from a 1940 issue of the journal American Speech, in an article about Tennessee expressions. The article said “tad” meant “a very small amount,” as in the sentence “I want to borrow a tad of salt.”

But the expression was obviously around for some time before it caught the attention of language scholars. At any rate, “tad” soon entered the mainstream.

Here’s a 1977 example from the Toronto Globe and Mail: “Things are a tad hectic.”

And here’s a 1980 usage from the New York Times: “The Mayor’s pitch is a tad exaggerated both on the law’s certainty and on the roominess of New York’s prisons.”

While “tad” does appear in some slang dictionaries, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) labels it “informal” and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) treats it as standard.

As we said, “tad” is a noun, but it’s used attributively—that is, as a modifier—in the noun phrase “tad bit.” The noun phrase itself is often used adverbially, as in “Aren’t you being a tad bit picky?”

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Q: I recently read an English-language report from Israel about the creation of a government team whose “remit” was to recommend ways to deal with ultra-Orthodox extremism. This use of “remit” as a noun is new to me.

A: The Oxford English Dictionary describes this use of “remit” as chiefly British. If you’re an American, that may explain why it’s unfamiliar to you. A bit of googling suggests, however, that it’s not uncommon among English speakers in Israel.

The OED defines the meaning of the noun that caught your eye as “a set of instructions, a brief; an area of authority or responsibility.”

Although this sense of the word is relatively new (it first showed up in the 19th century), the noun “remit” has been around in one form or another since the 15th century.

In Scottish English, according to the OED, it used to refer to a pardon or remission, but that meaning is now considered obsolete.

It’s still used, though, in Scotland for the referral of a matter to another person or authority for settlement. It’s also still used for the transfer of a case from one court or judge to another. And in New Zealand, a “remit” is an item submitted for consideration at a meeting, conference, and so on.

The word “remit” entered English in the 14th century as a verb meaning to give up a right or claim. The source is the Latin remittere (it means, among other things, to send back a person or a reply).

The English verb has had many meanings over the years, including to forgive a sin, to pardon, to abandon, to send back to prison, to transfer someone from one court to another for trial, and of course to send or transfer money.

We suspect that the sense of “remit” you asked about (the noun meaning an area of authority) reflects the Scottish noun for referring a matter to someone or some authority for settlement.

The Scottish usage first showed up in 1650, according to OED citations, but the use of the noun in the sense that caught our eye didn’t appear until more than 300 years later.

The earliest citation in the dictionary for the newer usage is from an 1877 book by William Alexander, a Scottish writer, about rural life in the 18th century: “Mr. Wight does not appear to have considered it within his remit to offer remarks in detail upon the state of the roads.”

Although this usage isn’t seen often in the United States, it does show up from time to time.

In fact, the latest OED citation for this sense of the noun is from the June 22, 2006, issue of the New York Review of Books: “Even their generous remit wouldn’t allow them to include the dictionary entire.”

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Q: When I told a friend that a test I took was very “intensive,” she insisted I should have said “intense.” What’s the difference and which one is appropriate?

A: Either word might have been appropriate, depending on how you found the test.

If you found it “intense,” then it was stressful, demanding, and perhaps nerve-wracking.

If you found it “intensive,” then it was highly concentrated and covered a lot of territory in a short period.

Of course an “intensive” exam might also be “intense.”

The adjectives “intense” and “intensive” are ultimately related to the Latin verb intendere, meaning to stretch or strain. Although they overlap quite a bit, they’re not always interchangeable.

“Intense,” which came into English around 1400, still retains that etymological sense of stretching or straining, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

So we might describe a high-strung meeting (one that’s a strain) or a meeting that requires a lot of mental effort (one that makes us stretch) as “intense.”

Although “intensive” entered the language 125 years later with some of the same senses as “intense,” we generally use it now to describe something that’s highly concentrated or forceful.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) has a good explanation of how these adjectives can differ. We’ll quote the dictionary’s usage note below, adding paragraph breaks for readability:

“The meanings of intense and intensive overlap considerably, but the two adjectives often have distinct meanings.

“Intense often suggests a strength or concentration that arises from an inner disposition and is particularly appropriate for describing emotional states: ‘He wondered vaguely why all this intense feeling went running because of a few burnt potatoes’ (D.H. Lawrence).

“Intensive is more appropriate when the strength or concentration of an activity is imposed from without: ‘They worked out a system of intensive agriculture surpassing anything I ever heard of, with the very forests all reset with fruit- or nut-bearing trees’ (Charlotte Perkins Gilman).

“Thus a reference to Mark’s intense study of German suggests that Mark engaged in concentrated activity, while Mark’s intensive study of German suggests the course Mark took was designed to cover a lot of material in a brief period.”

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Q: Like any teenager, my 15-year-old daughter has a ravenous appetite and will invariably have a hot dog as a snack after school. When she got home the other day, I asked her if she wanted one and she replied in the emphatic affirmative. “Does this surprise me?” I said to her. “No, why should it?” she replied. “It was purely a rhetorical question,” I said. Now comes the crux. She said a proper rhetorical question would have been phrased with “should” rather than “does.” What is your take on this?

A: The form of the question doesn’t really matter. A rhetorical question, no matter how you phrase it, is one “to which no answer is expected, often used for rhetorical effect.”

That definition is from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.), and it’s pretty much the same in other dictionaries.

The adjective “rhetorical” in the phrase is defined this way in the Oxford English Dictionary: “Designating a question asked only to produce an effect or make a statement, rather than to elicit an answer or information.”

In other words, when you ask a rhetorical question—like “How was I supposed to know it was loaded?” or “Am I supposed to eat this?”—you’re not asking for information. You’re using what sounds like a question in order to make a point.

Published references in the OED indicate that the phrase “rhetorical question” first showed up in English more than 300 years ago.

The dictionary’s earliest example, dating from sometime before 1686, is in a political pamphlet written by the First Earl of Anglesey: “To this Rhetorical Question the Commons pray they may Answer by another Question.”

A 1721 religious tract written by Robert Manning offers an illustration of the phrase as well as the question used for rhetorical effect:

“But, to turn your fine Rhetorical Question upon yourself, cannot you enjoy the Advantages you have over impenitent Sinners, and the Devils without Damning them all to the Pit of Hell for ever?”

Rhetorical questions themselves have been around a lot longer than the English phrase “rhetorical question,” since they were familiar to orators in ancient Athens and Rome. The Greek term for a rhetorical question was erotema, and the Latin term was interrogatio.

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Q: I recently noticed the term “powting” in a news story that suggested it means doing something illegal while pretending to do something legal. The context was landlords who were engaged in powting to avoid tenants they didn’t want.

A: We could find nothing about this specific use of “powting” or “powt,” either in the scholarly literature, slang dictionaries, or on the Internet.

Most of the Google hits were mistaken spellings of “pouting” and “pout,” as in sullen or seductive lips. So we’ll assume that this is a spontaneous slang usage that will either catch on or die out.

But verbs written as “powt” and “powter” have had other meanings, probably unrelated to the one you’ve noticed.

For example, Green’s Dictionary of Slang (Vol. 3) has an entry for a verb spelled variously as “powter,” “polter,” or “poulter.” It has two meanings—“to work carelessly” and “to potter about.” The word is Scottish but originated in Ulster, according to Green’s.

We found similar words in several 18th- and 19th-century dictionaries, some of them devoted to archaic and provincial words. The verb “powt” has been defined as meaning to poke, to stir a fire, or to feel around in the dark.

And in an apparent extension of those meanings, some dialect dictionaries say, the verb has also meant to malinger on the job. (We can understand the connection here, from poking in a literal sense to aimlessly poking around.)

Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary (1896-1905) says “powt” meant “to move the hand uncertainly as a person working in the dark,” as well as “to set to work aimlessly, slowly or unwillingly.” And Wright defines the participial adjective “powting” as “unskilful and slow at work; harassed by poverty and hard labour.”

John Jamieson’s Supplement to the Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1825) says the verb “powt” meant “to make short and as it were convulsive motions with the hands or feet.” Similarly, Jamieson says, the noun “powt” was “a short and kind of convulsive motion. … Perhaps from Fr. pat, paute, the paw or foot.”

Jamieson defines the verb “powter” as meaning both “to rummage in the dark” and “to do little easy jobs.” That latter meaning, he says, “seems merely a secondary sense of Pouter, to poke.”

But rather than rummage in the dark we’ll leave it at that. We’ll just add that there’s probably little or no connection between the “powt” that meant to work slowly and the one you came across that apparently means to do something illegal. But that last one could easily land someone in the pokey.

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