Category: Etymology

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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Q: The Wall Street Journal recently had a rather odd word usage in a headline: “L.A. Police Make Arrests, Begin Disbursing Occupy Camp.” Were the police paying the Occupy protesters?

A: Goof indeed! Any copy editor worth the paycheck should know the difference between “disburse” and “disperse.”

To “disperse” is to scatter, strew about, or distribute widely. To “disburse” is to pay out or expend. Big difference!

But to err is human, especially when the human is writing a headline on deadline. Eventually somebody at the Wall Street Journal caught the mistake.

When the story about the Occupy Los Angeles encampment was updated, the headline was changed to “L.A. Police Disperse Protesters’ Camp.” (Of course, we might quibble even here. It was the protesters that were dispersed, not the camp.)

On a related subject, we wrote a blog item recently about the verb “reimburse,” noting that in the 1500s the defunct term “burse” was another word for “purse.”

Not surprisingly, we can also find a purse in “disburse,” which English adapted from the French desbourser in the 16th century. Both “disburse” and “reimburse” ultimately share the same Greek root, byrsa (leather, hide).

Interestingly, the 1623 first folio version of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors uses the verb “dis-pursed,” though the word is “disbursed” in the 1685 fourth folio.

There’s a “perse” in “disperse” too, but it’s no relation, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

English adopted “disperse” in the 16th century from the French disperser (to scatter or break up). The French word was derived in turn from the Latin dispersus, past participle of the verb dispergere (to scatter).

The Latin dispergere, by the way, is made up of the prefix dis- (in different directions) and the verb spargere (to sprinkle or strew), whose past participle sparsus is the source of the English word “sparse.”

We’ll stop now. We don’t want you to think we’re scatterbrained.

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Q: I’d like to say I got punished for what others did “impunitively” rather than “with impunity.” But I see no evidence that “impunitively” is a word. There’s “punitive,” which suggests that there could be “impunitive,” but I can’t find this either. Would using “impunitively” be misunderstandable? (And is “misunderstandable” a word?)

A: Yes, “impunitively” is a word, but it’s not seen very often and it doesn’t mean “with impunity.” So using it the way you suggest would be “misunderstandable” (a word seldom seen but unlikely to be misunderstood). Here’s the story.

English adapted the noun “impunity” (freedom from punishment) and the adjective “punitive” (inflicting punishment) from Latin in the 16th century.

We got “impunity” from the classical Latin impunitatem and “punitive” from the medieval Latin punitivus. The classical Latin verb punire means to punish.

Published references in the Oxford English Dictionary indicate that he noun first showed up in a 1532 religious tract in which Thomas More refers to “the safegard of heretikes, and impunitie of all mischieuous people.”

The adjective appeared in a 1593 work in which the English ecclesiastical lawyer Richard Cosin writes of the “Processe punitiue, when the enquirie and examination is to punish the offender.”

The terms “impunitive” and “impunitively” are quite new, according to citations in the OED, not showing up in English until the 20th century.

The dictionary describes “impunitive” as a psychological term that means “adopting an attitude of resignation towards frustration; characterized by blaming neither oneself nor others unreasonably.”

The earliest citation in the OED is from Henry Alexander Murray’s book Explorations in Personality (1938), which says an accepting response to a disagreeable situation “may be termed ‘impunitive.’ ”

The dictionary defines “impunitively” as “in a way characteristic of an impunitive individual.” The first citation is from John Michael Argyle’s book Religious Behaviour   (1958): “The humanitarians on the other hand responded impunitively.”

Although all the published references in the OED for “impunitively” use the term in its psychological sense, a bit of googling suggests that some people do indeed use it the way you suggest doing.

We’d still recommend against using “impunitively” that way. As we’ve said, it’s likely to be “misunderstandable,” a word that the OED defines as “capable of being misunderstood.”

The OED’s earliest example is from an 1843 issue of Peter Parley’s Annual, a Christmas magazine for children: “The old mamma grunted and looked very misunderstandable through her grey eyes.”

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