Category: Phrase origin

Q: In the class-conscious Sussex, England, of the 1950s, my mother would label certain people at the village Women’s Institute “not quite quite.” What is the history of this usage? And does “not quite quite” suggest even less gentility than “not quite”?

A: As far as we can tell, the use of “not quite” to mean socially unacceptable first appeared in the mid-19th century, and the longer term, “not quite quite,” a decade later.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes “not quite” as a colloquial adjective meaning “not wholly socially acceptable or respectable.”

The earliest OED citation is from The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867), by Anthony Trollope. In this passage, Mr. Walker is speaking of Mr. Toogood, a fellow attorney:

“still he wasn’t quite,—not quite, you know—‘not quite so much of a gentleman as I am,’—Mr Walker would have said, had he spoken out freely that which he insinuated. But he contented himself with the emphasis he put upon the ‘not quite,’ which expressed his meaning fully.”

The OED, an etymological dictionary, notes that “quite” here can be modified by another “quite,” but it doesn’t comment on whether the addition alters the meaning.

We’d describe “not quite quite” as an intensified “not quite,” as does Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (8th ed., 1984, edited by Paul Beale):

“quite quite (Usu. in neg.) An intensification of quite, adj., as ‘He’s really not quite quite, is he, do you think?’: middle-class coll. [colloquial].”

The earliest example we’ve found for the expanded “not quite quite” is from Heaps of Money (1877), a novel by the English writer William Edward Norris. In this exchange, Mainwaring discusses his friend Ada with another friend, Linda:

“She is one of the most popular girls I know.”

“I daresay,” said Linda; “but is she quite—quite —?’’

“Quite a lady? Well, yes, I think she is.”

The next example we’ve seen is from A Bubble (1895), a novel by the Scottish writer Lucy Bethia Walford.

In this passage, two young women discuss a party to which medical students from the University of Edinburgh will be invited. One woman, Clara, is from London society, and the other is a professor’s wife who feels she should warn Clara about the company she will meet:

“You understand, dear Clara, that these young men—a great many of them—are not quite—quite—?”

“Half the people one knows are not ‘quite—quite,’ ” said Clara, frankly.

[The professor’s wife replies:] “Of course society is dreadfully mixed now-a-days.”

The OED’s first “not quite quite” example, which we’ve expanded, is from The Whispering Gallery: Leaves From a Diplomat’s Diary (1926), a fictional diary written anonymously by Hesketh Pearson, an English actor, theater director, and writer:

“On arrival at one of these affairs my hostess bustled up to me and said: ‘Oh, you must know H. G. Wells! He’s coming to-night. Do tell me what you think of him. He’s not “quite quite,” you know, but he’s so clever.’ ”

We’ve also expanded the dictionary’s most recent citation, which is from “And Now, Pragmatisim,” a column by Anna Quindlen in The New York Times (April 8, 1992):

“But over and over you hear about folks who are uncomfortable with him, who think he’s too slick or too polished or just not quite quite. And then they meet him. And their opinion changes. Bill Clinton is a guy who does better up close and personal.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A Sonnet to a Clam”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are the earliest examples we’ve found:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Q: If someone is charging a price we consider unwarranted, we say that’s “highway robbery.” Is highway robbery worse than ordinary robbery? And why do we say “highway robbery” when we are not on a highway, but standing in a supermarket shocked by the price of strawberries?

A: Today “robbery” (the taking of something by force) is worse than “highway robbery” (charging an exorbitant price for something).

If you feel the price of something is “highway robbery,” you usually don’t have to buy it, but you can’t just brush off an armed robber.

However, the expression “highway robbery” was more intimidating when it first appeared in the early 17th century, a time when armed “highwaymen” on horseback preyed upon travelers. Here’s the colorful history of the phrase.

The oldest of these terms, “highway” first appeared as heiweg in the Kentish dialect of early Old English, and meant a public road regarded as being under royal protection, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The earliest OED citation is from a land charter in Latin and Old English, dated around 859, for the sale of property by Ethelmod, an ealdorman or alderman, to a man named Plegred:

“Ab oriente cyniges heiweg. A meritie stret to Scufelingforde” (“From the east, the king’s highway, a street south to Scufelingforde”). From Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, Part 2 (2013), edited by Susan E. Kelly and Nicholas P. Brooks.

The noun “robbery” appeared in Old English writing in the 12th century. The OED’s earliest example, which we’ve expanded here, describes how those who turn away from God are punished:

“Vuele he us briseð. gif he binimeð us ure agte. oðer þurh fur. oðer þurh þiefes. oðer þurh roberie. oðer þurh unrihte dom” (“Wrathfully he crushes us, if he takes away our property, either through fire, either through thieves, either through robbery, either through unjust judgment”).

The first OED example of the phrase “highway robbery” appeared in the early 17th century: “Skulking surprises and vnder-hand stealthes, more neerely resembling high-way robberies, then lawfull battell” (The History of Great Britaine Under the Conquests of Ye Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans, 1611, by John Speed).

The noun “highwayman” soon showed up in Compters Common-wealth (1617), a play by William Fennor about the inmates of a compter, or debtor’s prison:

“It is this that makes Newmarket heath, and Royston-dounes about Christmas time so full of high-way men that poore Countrie people cannot passe quietly to their Cottages.”

In the late 18th century, English speakers began using “highway robbery” figuratively to mean “blatant and unfair overcharging or swindling; the charging of an exorbitantly high price,” the OED says.

The dictionary’s first citation is from All the World’s a Stage (1777), a farce by the Irish playwright Isaac Jackman: “What, five shillings for a boiled fowl! … This is high-way robbery, without the credit of being robbed.”

The figurative use of a literal expression is common in English, as when you “rock the boat,” “shake a leg,” come to a “dead end,” “put your best foot forward,” or have “a laundry list” of things to do.

Finally, here’s an illustration of a literal highway robbery, done by Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827). The tinted etching (Vicissitudes of the Road in 1787: The Highwayman, Lord Barrymore Stopped) was reproduced in a London weekly, The Graphic, Dec. 6, 1890:

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Q: I often hear the term “tuckered out,” but not in any other tenses. My dictionary says “tucker” is a dress. I’m confused. What does “tuckered out” mean, where did it come from, and what are its other tenses?

A: The story begins back in Anglo-Saxon days, when the verb “tuck” (tucian in Old English) meant to punish, mistreat, or torment.

The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Old English Boethius, a late ninth- or early tenth-century translation of De Consolatione Philosophiae (“The Consolation of Philosophy”), a sixth-century Latin treatise by the Roman philosopher Boethius:

“Lustlice hi woldon lætan þa rican hi tucian æfter hiora agnum willan” (“Gladly would they [the unwise] let the powerful torment them at will”).

The “punish” sense of “tuck” is now obsolete, the OED says, but in the Middle English of the late 14th century, the verb came to mean “to pull or gather up and confine” loose garments—a sense we use now when we “tuck in” our shirttails or “tuck in” a child at bedtime.

The dictionary’s earliest citation for the new meaning is from the story of Dido, the Queen of Carthage, in Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women (circa 1385).

When Dido meets Aeneas and Achates in the wilderness, she asks if they’ve seen her sisters, out hunting “i-tukkid vp with arwis” (“[their skirts] tucked up with arrows”).

This “gather up” meaning of “tuck” apparently led to the use of “tucked up” to describe a tired horse or dog—a sense the OED defines as “having the flanks drawn in from hunger, malnutrition, or fatigue; hence, tired out, exhausted.”

The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded here, describes the wild pariah dog: “They generally are very thin, and of a reddish-brown colour, with sharp-pointed ears, deep chest, and tucked-up flanks” (from The Dog, 1845, by the English veterinary surgeon William Youatt).

Meanwhile, the related verb “tucker” appeared in the US with the sense of “to tire, to weary.” The OED says it’s usually seen in the phrasal verb “tucker out,” especially its past participle “tuckered out,” meaning “worn out, exhausted.”

The earliest example we’ve seen, which uses the present participle (“tuckering”), is from an article in a New York literary journal about a shark hunt:

“There’s no sich thing as tuckering out your raal white shark: he’s all bone and sinners [sinews]” (The Knickerbocker, January 1836).

The earliest example we’ve found for the past participle is from an anonymous short story, “The Book Agent,” in The Rhode-Island Republican (Newport, RI), June 22, 1836:

“ ‘I thank you a thousand times,’ said the stranger, ‘I reckoned to have got to the tavern by sun down, but I havn’t, and as I am prodigiously tuckered out, I’ll stay, and thank ye into the bargain,’ following the clergyman into the house.”

The online Cambridge Dictionary has recent examples of the usage in the present tense (“it tuckers you out”) and in the present perfect (“the puppy has tuckered herself out”).

We haven’t been able to find an example of “tucker” used to mean a dress. However, it’s a now-obsolete term for a strip of gathered or pleated material, like a ruffle or frill, sewn in or around the top of a bodice (the upper part of a dress).

The earliest OED citation, which we’ve expanded here, is from a book about heraldry that defines “tucker” as “a narrow piece of Cloth Plain or Laced, which compasseth the top of a Womans Gown about the Neck part” (The Academy of Armory, 1688, by  Randle Holme).

This sense of “tucker” is seen, especially in British English, in the expression “one’s best bib and tucker,” meaning “one’s smartest clothes.”

In another clothing sense, the noun “tuck” has been used since the 14th century to mean one of several folds stitched into cloth to shorten, decorate, or tighten a garment.

The earliest OED citation is from The Testament of Love (1388), by Thomas Usk: “That no ianglyng may greue the lest tucke of thy hemmes” (“That no jangling [quarreling] may grieve [trouble] the least tuck of thy hems”).

(Usk, an English writer and bureaucrat caught up in the turbulent politics of the late 14th century, wrote the Testament in prison as an appeal for mercy. He was convicted of treason, hanged, and beheaded.)

We’ll end on a more palatable note—the use of “tuck” to mean “eat” or “eat heartily,” a sense that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, perhaps from the “gather up” sense of the verb or the use of the noun “tuck” for a fishing net, a usage that appeared in the early 17th century.

The OED’s first citation for “tuck” used to mean “consume, swallow (food or drink)” is from Barham Downs (1784), a novel by the English writer Robert Bage: “We will dine together; tuck up a bottle or two of claret.”

The dictionary’s first example for “tuck” in the sense of “feed heartily or greedily; esp. with in, into,” uses the gerund (“tucking”): “Tom Sponge now began cramming unmercifully, exclaiming every three mouthfuls, ‘Rare tucking in, Sir William.’ ”

Finally, the Yorkshire schoolmaster Wackford Squeers uses the phrasal verb “tuck into” in this OED citation from the Dickens novel Nicholas Nickleby (1839): “If you’ll just let little Wackford tuck into something fat, I’ll be obliged to you.”

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A: How did the phrase “no object” come to mean “not something important” or “not an obstacle” in a sentence like “I’d fly first class if money were no object”?

A: The usage was first recorded in the late 18th century in newspaper advertising copy. It’s derived from the much older use of the noun “object” to mean a goal or purpose. Here’s the story.

When the noun first appeared in English in the late 14th century, it meant “something placed before or presented to the eyes or other senses,” but now more generally means “a material thing that can be seen and touched,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from On the Properties of Things, John Trevisa’s translation, sometime before 1398, of De Proprietatibus Rerum, an encyclopedic Latin work by the 13th-century Franciscan scholar Bartholomaeus Anglicus:

“The obiecte of þe yȝe is al þat may ben seyn, and al þat may ben herd is obiect to þe heringe” (“The object of the eye is all that may be seen, and all that may be heard is the object of the hearing”).

The OED says the usage ultimately comes from the classical Latin noun obiectum (something presented to the senses) and past participle obiectus (offered, presented).

In the early 15th century, the English noun came to mean a “goal, purpose, or aim; the end to which effort is directed; the thing sought, aimed at, or striven for,” according to the dictionary.

The first Oxford citation is from Grande Chirurgie, an anonymous Middle English translation, written sometime before 1425, of Chirurgia Magna (1363), a Latin surgical treatise by the French surgeon Guy de Chauliac:

“Euacuacioun for his obiecte only biheld plectoric concourse” (“The object of evacuation only concerns plethoric accumulation”). The passage refers to the evacuation, or draining, of plethoric concourse, excessive accumulation of blood.

So how did “object,” a noun for a goal or purpose, come to mean something important or achievable when used in the negative phrase “no object” (not important or achievable)?

As an explanation, the OED cites a 1931 paper by the lexicographer C. T. Onions, the dictionary’s fourth editor.

In “Distance No Object” (Tract XXXVI, Society for Pure English), Onions says the expression is derived from a formula commonly used in early newspaper advertisements, “in which the word object had its normal meaning of ‘thing aimed at,’ ‘aim.’ ”

Thus, he writes, “the advertiser states directly what is his object or his principal object.”

Later, Onions says, “object” was used in negative constructions meaning something that’s not an aim—“the first step” in its “shift of meaning.”

Finally, he says, the negative construction came to mean something that “will not be taken into consideration by the advertiser, that it will not be regarded as an obstacle, that it will not matter.”

The earliest OED citation for “no object” used this way is from a newspaper ad by a woman seeking a job: “A Gentlewoman … wishes to superintend the family of a single Gentleman or Lady …  and salary will be no object” (Morning Herald, London, May 20, 1782).

The expression soon escaped its advertising origins. We found an example in Management (1799), a comedy by the English playwright Frederick Reynolds.

A character who wants to be an actor says he’ll work for free. When offered money, he replies, “Pha!—money’s no object.”

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Q:  The university where I teach is urging the staff to “lean into” the success of our students. Is this trendy use of “lean” legit? So many suits are employing it that I can hear Bill Withers moaning from the great beyond.

A: The phrasal verb “lean into” is indeed legit and means to embrace or commit to. The usage that’s been around since the mid-20th century, but we know of only two standard dictionaries that have embraced it.

The Oxford Dictionary of English and the New Oxford American Dictionary define “lean into” as “commit fully to or embrace something: lean into kindness and community; they’re keys to serving and connecting you and your neighbours well.”

Both are published by Oxford University Press, which produces the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference that says the usage originated in the US and means “to accept and embrace (an experience); to commit to or fully engage with (a role, task, or undertaking).”

The earliest OED citation is from the Princeton Alumni Weekly (Feb. 10, 1941): “Bill D’Arcy is working for the Coco-Cola Co. in Atlanta, Ga. Kent Cooper is leaning into it at Columbia Business.”

The dictionary’s most recent example is from an article in Corn & Soybean Digest (Sept. 29, 2021) about the need for farmers to speak to their children about the future of their farms: “Sometimes it’s a hard subject to get into for many reasons, but you have to lean into it.”

A similar phrasal verb, “lean in,” appeared in the US in the early 21st century and means “to become fully engaged with something; to commit oneself completely to a role, task, or undertaking, esp. in the face of difficulty or resistance,” according to the OED.

The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded, is from an article on interactive storytelling: “Kids are being remade to expect to interact, to lean in and make a difference. They do not want to read or watch passively” (“Psst … Wanna Do a Phrontisterion,” by Thom Gillespie, in Future Courses, 2001, edited by Jason Ohler).

[In case you’re curious, a “phrontisterion” or “phrontistery” is a place for thinking or studying. It comes from the post-classical Latin phrontisterium and the ancient Greek ϕροντιστήριον (“thinking shop”), a term that Aristophanes uses in his comedy Νεφέλαι (The Clouds) to ridicule the school of Socrates.]

You can find the term “lean in” in several dictionaries of American and British English. Merriam-Webster online, for example, defines it as “to persevere in spite of risk or difficulty,” and has this example: “Attending college began as a time of ‘leaning in,’ because it took courage to attend a large campus without much parental support and no friends attending with me.”

The OED notes that “lean in” was “popularized by US business executive Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In (2013), in which she encourages women to challenge traditional gender roles and aspire to leadership in the workplace.”

Finally, you mentioned the American singer-songwriter Bill Withers, who used a much older phrasal verb in his 1972 song “Lean on Me.”

The OED says the use of “lean” with “on,” “upon,” or by itself to mean rely on dates from the Middle English of the 12th century.

The OED’s earliest example, with leonie up on, is from the anonymous Ancrene Riwle, or rules for anchoresses, dating from before 1200. Here’s an expanded version:

“ha understonden þet ha ahen to beon of se hali lif þet al hali chirche, þet is cristene folk, leonie & wreoðie up on ham.”

(“they [the anchoresses] understand that they must live so holy a life that all the holy church, that is, the Christian people, may lean and depend upon them.”)

We’ll end with the chorus from the Bill Withers song “Lean on Me”:

Lean on me
When you’re not strong
And I’ll be your friend,
I’ll help you carry on
For it won’t be long
Till I’m gonna need
Somebody to lean on.

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Q: In “The Dig,” a movie set in England in the 1930s, the characters express gratitude by saying, “Thank you kindly,” and concern for the lady of the manor by asking, “Is she doing poorly?” Are these usages dated?

A: These expressions sound old-fashioned to us too, but they’re still in use and have had somewhat of a revival lately.

“Thank you kindly” first appeared in Middle English in the 16th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines “to thank kindly and variants” as “to thank (someone) very much; (also) to thank politely.”

The dictionary’s earliest example is from an anonymous interlude, or light theatrical work: “Now I thanke you both full kindly” (An Enterlude of Welth, and Helth, Very Mery and Full of Pastyme, first performed in the mid-1550s).

The most recent OED citation is from the Daily Mail (London, Oct. 14, 2002):  “Bernstein … offered me a job as a documentary producer. I thanked him kindly but indicated that my ambitions lay in other directions.”

A search with Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books, shows that the expression began falling out of favor in the late 19th century but had a comeback in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

When the verb “thank” first appeared in Old English as þancian or ðoncian, it meant “to give thanks.” The runic letters þ, or thorn, and ð, or eth, were pronounced as “th.”

In this early OED example, ðoncade is the past tense of þancian: “genimmende calic ðoncunco dyde vel ðoncade & sealde him” (“taking the cup, he gave thanks and gave it to them”). From Matthew 26:27 in the Lindisfarne Gospels.

As for “poorly,” it first appeared in Middle English as povreliche, an adverb meaning “inadequately, imperfectly, unsatisfactorily.” The earliest Oxford citation is from Ancrene Riwle (also known as Ancrene Wisse), an anonymous guide for monastic women, written sometime before 1200:

“Ant tah min entente beo to beten ham her-inne, ich hit do se povreliche, ant sunegi in othre dei-hwamliche seoththen ich wes nest i-schriven” (“And though my intent is to atone for them [sins] in this, I do it so poorly and sin in other [matters] daily since I was last confessed”).

We’ve expanded the example above and used a more recently edited version of the manuscript. The OED’s passage is from The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle (1962), edited by J.R.R. Tolkien and Neil Ripley Ker. Ours is from Ancrene Wisse (2000), edited by Robert Hasenfratz.

The form of the word you’re asking about, the adjective “poorly,” meant “unwell, in ill health” when it first showed up in the 16th century, the OED says. The dictionary describes the usage as “chiefly British,” but all four standard American dictionaries we regularly consult recognize it.

The first Oxford citation, which we’ve expanded, is from a farming guide, written in verse, that refers to the health of cattle:

“From Christmas, till May be wel entered in, / Al cattel wax faint, and looke poorely and thin” (from A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandry, 1570, by the English poet-farmer Thomas Tusser).

The earliest OED example for “poorly” used to describe human health is from The Witch, a tragicomedy written in the early 17th century by the English playwright Thomas Middleton: “Why shak’st thy head soe? and look’st so pale, and poorely?”

The dictionary’s most recent citation is from Paper Faces (1991), a children’s novel by the English author Rachel Anderson: “Children couldn’t go into the children’s ward unless they themselves were poorly.”

A search for “feel poorly” in Ngram Viewer indicates that this use of “poorly” fell out of favor in the 20th century, but has come back somewhat in the 21st.

A final note: Thomas Tusser, the author of the farming guide mentioned above, coined an early version of the proverb “a fool and his money are soon parted.”

In an expanded version of his guide, Fiue Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1573), Tusser has these lines: “A foole and his monie be soone at debate, / which after with sorrow repents him too late.”

A version closer to the usual wording soon appeared in A Defence of the Gouernment Established in the Church of Englande (1587), by John Bridges: “a foole and his money is soone parted.”

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Q: How did the word “card” end up in expressions like “play the race card” and “play the gender card”?

A: The “card” in those expressions ultimately comes from the use of the word in card playing. Think of it as a metaphorical use of a valuable playing card, like an ace that completes a royal flush in poker.

Middle English borrowed the word “card” from Middle French, where the plural cartes referred to a game of cards, as in jouer aux cartes (to play cards).

When the English term first appeared in the 15th century, it was also used in the plural to mean such a game. The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the “Code of Laws” for the town of Walsall in the West Midlands of England.

A statute, believed written around 1422, sets penalties for “plaiyng at eny unlawefull games,” including “dyce, tables [backgammon], cardes.” (From A History of Walsall and Its Neighbourhood, 1887, edited by Frederic W. Willmore.)

The noun soon came to be used for the cards themselves. The term “cardes for pleiyng” appears in a 1463-64 law prohibiting the importation of playing cards. (From The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1275–1504, edited by Chris Given-Wilson in 2005.)

A century later, the OED says, “card” took on “various figurative uses arising from card games, esp. denoting something that may be useful in obtaining one’s objective, or a person who can be called upon to support one’s case.”

The dictionary says the noun was used “chiefly with modifying adjective, as good, safe, strong, etc.” The first OED citation uses “sure card” to mean someone or something “that can be relied on to attain an intended end” or success:

“Nowe thys is a sure carde, nowe I maye well saye That a cowarde crakinge here I dyd fynde.” (From Thersytes, an anonymous play, sometimes attributed to Nicholas Udall, first published in the early 1560s. Thersytes was a Greek warrior slain by Achilles for mocking him.)

In the 19th century, according to Oxford citations, the noun when used with a “modifying adjective (as knowing, rum, etc.)” took on the sense of “a person (esp. a man) regarded as having the specified character or quality.”

The earliest citation is from a short piece by Dickens that was originally published as “Scenes and Characters, No. 4, Making a Night of It” in the magazine Bell’s Life in London (Oct. 18, 1835) and later as “Making a Night of It” in Sketches by Boz (1836):

“But Mr. Thomas Potter, whose great aim it was to be considered as a ‘knowing card,’ a ‘fast-goer,’ and so forth, conducted himself in a very different manner.” We’ve expanded the citation.

Two decades later, the OED says, “card” by itself took on the sense of “an ingenious, clever, or audacious person.”

The earliest example cited is in Dickens’s novel Bleak House (1853): “You know what a card Krook was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter.”

In the early 20th century, according to OED citations, the term took on the sense of “an odd or eccentric person, esp. one in whom these qualities are regarded as entertaining or comical; a joker.”

The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded, is from “His Worship the Goosedriver,” a short story by the English author Arnold Bennett in Tales of the Five Towns (1905):

“It would be an immense, an unparalleled farce; a wonder, a topic for years, the crown of his reputation as a card.” In the story, a jokester buys 12 geese and 2 ganders from a gooseherd and tries to herd them to his home. The geese have other plans!

Finally we come to the usage you ask about. Like the use of “card” for a person, this one also emerged in the first half of the 19th century.

The OED says “to play the —— card” means “to introduce a specified issue or topic in the hope of gaining sympathy or political advantage, by appealing to the sentiments or prejudices of one’s audience.”

In the dictionary’s first citation, the word “card” precedes the hot topic: “The Tories will doubtless play the card of ‘Irish misgovernment’ against Ministers” (The Scotsman, June 1, 1839).

The next Oxford example reverses the order in referring to “Liberal friends in Ulster, who wish to play the land purchase card at the elections” (The Times, London, May 22, 1885).

The next citation uses “Orange card” in the sense of an appeal to Northern Irish Protestants:

“I decided some time ago that if the G.O.M. [Grand Old Man, a reference to Gladstone] went for Home Rule, the Orange card would be the one to play” (from a letter written Feb. 16, 1886, by Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill’s father).

The earliest Oxford example of “race card” uses it to mean an appeal to anti-Black voters: “the Tory leadership declined to play the race card” (The Observer, March 3, 1974).

The OED doesn’t have an example of  “gender card,” but Merriam-Webster online says it showed up in the US more than a dozen years later.

M-W cites an analysis by Gary Orren, a professor of public policy at Harvard, about the unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign of Evelyn Murphy, Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts:

“But Orren thinks if Murphy plays the gender card in her ads she will lose the broader coalition of votes needed to win the election” (The Boston Globe, Aug. 9,1990).

The OED says “play the race card” and similar expressions can now be “depreciative, and chiefly used in accusations of others,” when they mean “to exploit one’s membership of a specified minority or marginalized group as a means of gaining sympathy or an unfair advantage.”

A recent Oxford example cites a Black soldier who appeared in recruitment posters and was “attacked on social media by white colleagues for ‘playing the race card’ to secure career advancement” (Morning Star, London, Sept. 25, 2020).

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Q: I’ve seen “becoming ever-more Prussian” and “studied the ever more frequent engravings.” For me the hyphen is incorrect in the first example, but admissible in the second because of the determiner “the.” What are your thoughts?

A: The short answer is that the modifying phrase “ever more,” meaning “increasingly more,” now needs no hyphen in either of those examples, though the usage was sometimes hyphenated in the past.

Taking a closer look, the adverbs “ever” + “more” form a phrase that modifies an adjective (“Prussian” … “frequent”). The result is an adjectival phrase: “ever more Prussian” … “ever more frequent.” The first is a post-modifying complement; the second pre-modifies a noun.

Note that no hyphens are used in these examples from  the Collins English Dictionary: “He grew ever more fierce in his demands” … “He was deluged by ever more plaintive epistles from his devoted admirer” … “It will become ever more complex.”

The presence or absence of a determiner like “an,” “the,” “some,” etc., is irrelevant, as in this example from the Oxford English Dictionary:

“In an ever more brutal, if technically sleek, world where the skies are filled with killer drones” (New York Magazine, Nov. 2, 2015).

A similar usage combines the adverbs “ever” + “so” to modify an adjective, resulting in an adjectival phrase. Here the sense of the adverbial modifier is “extremely” or “very.”

Merriam-Webster online has these examples: “I’m ever so glad that you got better” … “In the back seat was a Chinese American woman looking ever so chic and glamorous.”

Getting back to “ever more,” it’s also used by itself to modify a noun, as in “ever more Prussians” … “ever more engravings.” In this case, “more” is an adjective, and “ever more” is an adjectival phrase. A pair of examples found in the Oxford English Dictionary: “ever more gadgets in hand” … “ever more artists.”

No hyphens there either. But with an adjective other than “more,” that type of “ever” phrase usually has a hyphen. Some examples from the Cambridge Dictionary: “ever-decreasing profits” … “ever-increasing demand” … “an ever-present threat.”

(We should add that “ever more” and “ever so” can also be used with adverbs, resulting in adverbial phrases: “the price fell ever more steeply” … “he ran ever so quietly.”)

As for the term “evermore” (one word, no hyphen), it means “forever” or “always.” This example is from Merriam-Webster: “he promised to love her evermore, if only she would consent to be his wife.”

When “evermore,” the oldest of these terms, first appeared in Old English as æfre ma, it meant “for all future time,” according to the OED.

We’ve expanded the dictionary’s earliest citation, which is from King Alfred’s late ninth-century translation of Liber Regulae Pastoralis (Pastoral Care), a sixth-century Latin treatise by Pope Gregory:

Gif hwelc wif forlæt hiere ceorl, & nimð hire oderne, wenestu recce he hire æfre ma, ode mæg hio æfre eft cuman to him swa clænu swa hio ær was?

(If a wife leaves her husband and takes another man for herself, do you think her husband will evermore consider her, or can she ever return to him as pure as she e’er was?)

The earliest written use of the phrase “ever more,” as far as we can tell, is from Middle English, where it’s hyphenated. Here’s the OED citation:

“Pitous and Iust, and ever-more y-liche, Sooth of his word, benigne and honurable” (“Compassionate and just, and ever more constant, True to his word, kind and honorable”). From “The Squire’s Tale,” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (circa 1386).

And we found this early unhyphenated example: “Praye God that he will wyte [keep you] safe to worke fayth ī thyne herte / or else shalt thou remayne ever more faythelesse.” From William Tyndale’s A Compendious Introduccion, Prologe or Preface vn to the Pistle off Paul to the Romayns (1526).

And this is the earliest use we’ve found for “ever more” used adjectivally to modify a noun: “there is ever more paine in keeping, then in getting of mony.” From the essays of Montaigne, translated from French by John Florio (1613).

We’ll end with the early use of “ever so” to mean “very” or “extremely” or, in the words of the OED, “in any conceivable degree.”

The dictionary cites a Nov. 5, 1686, letter by Gilbert Burnet, a Scottish historian and Anglican bishop of Salisbury, written from Florence during a trip to Italy:

“When it hath rained ever so little … the Carts go deep, and are hardly drawn” (from An Account of What Seemed Most Remarkable in Travelling Through Switzerland, Italy, Some Parts of Germany, &c. in the Years 1685 and 1686, by Burnet, published in 1687).

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Q: I’m accustomed to seeing “as such” refer back to a specific word or phrase. Lately, I’ve noticed it where the referent is unspecified or absent. Example: “He broke his leg, and as such he missed work.” I’m curious about the history of this term and its changing usage.

A: Yes, “as such” traditionally refers to a word or phrase already mentioned. But the referent is often obscure in a colloquial use of “as such” that’s almost as old as the original.

Traditionally, “as such” means “in itself” (intelligence as such won’t make you rich), “in that capacity” (a judge as such deserves respect), or “in its exact meaning” (she wasn’t a vegetarian as such).

However, the phrase has been used colloquially for three centuries to mean “consequently,” “subsequently,” or “thereupon,” a usage that’s not recognized by standard dictionaries.

The principal definition of “as such” in the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference based on historical evidence, is “as being what the name or description implies; in that capacity.”

The earliest example in the OED is from an essay by Richard Steele in The Spectator (April 17, 1711): “When she observed Will. irrevocably her Slave, she began to use him as such.”

(An earlier, longer version of the phrase, “as it is such” or “as they are such,” appeared in The History of England, 1670, by John Milton: “True fortitude glories not in the feats of War, as they are such, but as they serve to end War soonest by a victorious Peace.”)

The colloquial sense of “as such” was first recorded a decade after the phrase appeared in The Spectator. As the OED explains, the original sense “passes contextually into: ‘Accordingly, consequently, thereupon.’ ” The dictionary describes the usage as “colloquial or informal.”

The first colloquial Oxford citation, which we’ve edited and expanded, is from a Feb. 25, 1721, entry in the church warden’s accounts for a parish in Salisbury, England:

“he [the curate] had chosen the said William Clemens to be his parish Clerk … And bid the Congregation to take notice thereof and accept him—as such Witness Henry Biggs, F. Barber [and others].” From Churchwardens’ Accounts of S. Edmund & S. Thomas, Sarum (1896), edited by Henry James Fowle Swayne.

The next two Oxford citations are from letters written in England in the early 1800s and published in The Correspondence of William Fowler of Winterton, in the County of Lincoln (1907), edited by Joseph Thomas Fowler:

“I very much longed to hear from you … and as such I did not the least esteem it for its having been delayed for the reasons assigned” (from an 1800 letter by John King).

“H. R. H. Princess Augusta … motioned for me to come to her Highness. As such she addressed me in the most pleasant manner possible” (from an 1814 letter by William Fowler).

Although “as such” in those colloquial examples doesn’t refer to a specific word or phrase mentioned previously, it does concern an earlier occurrence or situation. But as we’ve said, the colloquial usage isn’t recognized by standard dictionaries. And we find it vague and sometimes confusing.

We’ll end with the noun “as-suchness,” a derivative of “as such” that’s defined in the OED as the “absolute existence or possession of qualities, independently of all other things whatever.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from A Pluralistic Universe (1909), by the American philosopher and psychologist William James. In this passage, the “it” at the beginning refers to “Bradley’s Absolute,” the British philosopher F. H. Bradley’s concept of ultimate reality:

“It is us, and all other appearances, but none of us as such, for in it we are all ‘transmuted,’ and its own as-suchness is of another denomination altogether.”

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Q: How did “foot” come to be used in “He’ll foot the bill”? And doesn’t it sound awkward to say “He footed the bill”?

A: The use of the verb “foot” in the expression “foot the bill” ultimately comes from the use of “foot” as a noun for the lower part of something—in this case, the total at the bottom of a bill.

When “foot” first appeared in Old English, it referred (as it does now) to the part of the leg below the ankle. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the epic poem Beowulf, dating back to as early as 725:

“Sona hæfde unlyfigendes eal gefeormod fet ond folma” (“Soon he’d devoured the lifeless body, feet and hands”). The passage describes the monster Grendel eating one of his victims.

The noun “foot” soon took on the additional sense of something resembling a foot. The OED’s first citation for this meaning, which we’ve expanded here, is from an Old English riddle that refers to the base of an inkhorn (an inkwell made from an antler) as a foot, spelled fot:

“nu ic blace swelge wuda ⁊ wætre … befæðme þæt mec on fealleð ufan þær ic stonde eorpes nathwæt hæbbe anne fot” (“now I swallow the black wood and water.  … I embrace within me the unknown darkness that falls on me from above. Where I stand on something unknown, I have one foot”). From the Exeter Book, “Riddle 93.”

In the early 15th century, the OED says, the noun “foot” took on the sense of “the sum or total of a column of numbers in an account, typically recorded directly below the final entry in the column.”

The dictionary’s first citation is from a 1433 financial report in the records of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York, a merchant guild:

“First, the saide maister and constables hafe resayved [have received] in mone tolde [money counted], iiijli. ijs. xd., as it profes be [proves by] the fote [foot] of accounte of the yere past” (from The York Mercers and Merchant Adventurers 1356–1917, a 1918 work by the British historian Maud Sellers).

A similar use of “foot” as a verb appeared in the late 15th century, according to the OED, which defines the term as “to add up (a column of numbers, or an account, bill, etc., having this) and enter the sum at the bottom.”

The earliest Oxford citation, with “footed” spelled “futit,” is from a record of judicial proceedings in Scotland: “The tyme that his compt [account] wes futit.” From The Acts of the Lords of Council in Civil Causes, 1478–95 (edited by Thomas Thomson, 1839).

The sense of “foot” you’re asking about showed up in the early 19th century. Oxford defines it as “to pay or settle (a bill, esp. one which is large or unreasonable, or which has been run up by another party).”

The first OED citation, which we’ve expanded, is from A Pedestrious Tour, of Four Thousand Miles, Through the Western States and Territories, During the Winter and Spring of 1818, an 1819 memoir of a walking tour by Estwick Evans, a New England lawyer and writer:

“My dogs, knowing no law but that of nature, and having forgotten my lecture to them upon theft, helped themselves to the first repast presented, leaving their master to foot their bills.” (The dogs were later killed by wolves in the Michigan Territory as Evans was on his way to Detroit.)

As for “footed,” it may sound awkward, but it’s the only past tense and past participle listed in the standard dictionaries we regularly consult.

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Q: I’m curious when the phrase “left for dead” became common usage. Why is the phrase not “left to die”? I saw the “for dead” version recently in an article and I began wondering.

A: The expression “leave for dead” first appeared in Anglo-Saxon times and has been used regularly since then to mean abandon someone or something almost dead or certain to die.

The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary, which we’ve expanded here, is from a passage concerning St. Paul in The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church, First Series, written around 990 by the Benedictine Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham:

“Æne he wæs gestæned oð deað, swa ðæt þa ehteras hine for deadne leton, ac ðæs on merigen he aras, and ferde ymbe his bodunge” (“Once he was stoned unto death, so much so that the persecutors left him for dead, but on the morrow he arose and went about his preaching”). In Old English, “hine for deadne leton” is literally “him for dead left.”

As the OED explains, the preposition “for” is being used here “with an adjective as complement.” This use of “for,” the dictionary adds, is now found chiefly in “set expressions, as in to give a person up for lost, to leave a person for dead, to take for granted, etc.”

In early Old English, the preposition “for” began being used similarly with a noun to mean “with a view to; with the object or purpose of; as preparatory to,” according to the OED.

Here’s a citation from the Gospel of John, 11:4, in the West Saxon Gospels: “Nys þeos untrumnys na for deaðe, ac for Godes wuldre” (“This sickness is not for death, but for the glory of God”). Jesus is speaking about the ailing Lazarus.

Getting back to your question, one could say “left to die” as well as “left for dead.” Both have been common for centuries. In fact, “left to die” is slightly more popular, according to Google’s Ngram viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books.

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