Category: Word origin

Q: My question concerns eating habits—that is, how to describe them. Does one eat “healthy” or “healthily”?

A: You’re asking about adverbs, but let’s first discuss adjectives, a subject we wrote about in 2012 and 2006.

Most readers of the blog are probably familiar with the traditional view on the adjectives: a food is “healthful” while a person who eats it is “healthy.” This is a distinction that was invented (for no good reason) in the late 19th century.

But as we said in those blog posts, language authorities haven’t insisted on that for many years. It’s become almost universal to refer to “healthy food,” as well as to “healthy people.”

Today, the usage is considered standard English. Here’s how The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) explains it in a usage note:

“In fact, the word healthy is far more common than healthful when modifying words like diet, exercise, and foods, and healthy may strike many readers as more natural in many contexts. Certainly, both healthy and healthful must be considered standard in describing that which promotes health.”

And as Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage notes, “If you ignore the distinction” between the two adjectives, “you are absolutely correct, and in the majority.”

Both “healthy” and “healthful,” not to mention “healthily,” are derived from haelth, Old English for soundness of body. (We’ve replaced the runic letter thorn with “th.”)

All three words ultimately come from a prehistoric German ancestor of the English word “whole,” according to John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins. Thus “health,” Ayto says, is etymologically the “state of being whole.”

So is “healthy” making inroads on “healthily” as well as “healthful,” and becoming accepted as an adverb? Apparently the change is beginning, but it’s not yet firmly established.

The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t recognize the usage. It has citations for “healthy” as an adjective going back to the 16th century, and for “healthily” as an adverb dating from the 17th century.

However, American Heritage now accepts “healthy” as an adverb meaning “so as to promote one’s health” or “in a healthy way.” The dictionary gives this example: “If you eat healthy, you’ll probably live longer.”

Nevertheless, seven of the eight standard dictionaries we checked don’t accept the usage.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), like the other dictionaries we consulted, hasn’t yet made the leap. M-W’s entry for “healthy” gives only adjectival uses.

But it’s only a matter of time, in our opinion, before “healthy” is recognized as an adverb. That’s because the word is already widely used this way in common practice.

The phrase “eat healthy” gets more than twice as many Google hits (2.4 million) as “eat healthily” (1 million). As we’ve said many times, popular usage eventually wins out.

So go ahead and “eat healthy.” Our guess is that “eat healthily” will begin to sound stuffy before long, if it doesn’t already. 

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Q: In following the story of the missing Malaysian airliner, I’ve noticed that a lot of articles refer to the 239 “souls” aboard. I only hear this usage in the context of tragedies. Is there a reason for it, besides trying to not be repetitive by saying “people” over and over?

A: Your question reminded Pat of a vivid image from her past, back when she was an editor at the Des Moines Register in the late 1970s.

Like many other newspapers, the Register devoted a corridor in its headquarters to a display of famous front pages.

One was dated April 16, 1912, and it carried a headline that Pat remembers to this day: MIGHTY TITANIC, HIT BY ICEBERG, GOES DOWN WITH 1200 SOULS.

If the headline had used “people” instead, would she remember it today? Probably not. The use of “souls” was what made it so unforgettable. (In fact, the losses were even worse than first reported; more than 1,500 people died.)

It’s true, as you say, that the use of “souls” in this sense is more likely to occur in chronicles of extraordinary human loss.

Many news organizations used “souls” in reporting on the Malaysian Airlines disaster. For example, this headline appeared in the Australian, a newspaper based in New South Wales:

“Terrorism fears as plane vanishes with 239 souls.”

And a great many articles around the word referred to the “239 souls on board.”

Why “souls” instead of “people” or “persons”? In our opinion, the use of a poetic image helps to acknowledge the humanity behind the numbers.

But the word “soul” wasn’t always as poetic as it seems to us today. In Old English, “soul” had a much wider range of meanings, including some that were quite down to earth.

One’s “soul” could refer to many different levels of existence: the physical, the intellectual, the emotional, and the moral, as well as the spiritual.

The word, which came from old Germanic sources, has three very broad meanings in English, all of them around a thousand years old.

(1) An animating force or principle necessary for existence; this is what gives life to a body and dies with it. 

(2) A spirit that lives on after death (this category includes the religious meanings).

(3) A person or individual.

You might say that in #1, the soul inhabits the living body; in #2 the soul is separate from the body; and in #3 the soul is the body.

The last meaning is the one we’re seeing in those news stories. The Oxford English Dictionary says that in the physical sense, “soul” means a person, an individual, or a living thing.

And as the OED says, this meaning is still current today, as when “soul” is “applied to the number of people on board a ship or other large vehicle.”

The dictionary gives examples ranging from Old English to the present, but we’ll provide just a handful of the citations:

“Erthe and soulis that thereon dwelle.” (From Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Parlement of Foules, circa 1381.)

“All maner of soules yt crepe vpon earth.” (From the Coverdale Bible of 1535.)

“Below the middle part, there was but one body, and aboue the middle there was two liuing soules, each one separated from another.” (A description of an “unnaturall Childe,” from William Lithgow’s 1614 memoir of his travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa.) 

“There were about three hundred souls on board.” (From Lord Wolseley’s The Life of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, to the Accession of Queen Anne, 1894.)

“In Woodilee there was signing of the Covenant by every soul that could make a scart with a pen.” (From John Buchan’s novel Witch Wood, 1927. A “scart” is a scratch or mark.)

“Some immense airliner with hundreds of souls on board.” (From the Times of London, 1983.)

“In the early days … the Jewish community in Buenos Aires comprised just fifteen hundred souls.” (From Isabel Vincent’s book Bodies and Souls, 2005.)

We also use “soul” to mean a person when we say things like “not a soul was around” or “don’t tell a soul.” This has been common usage since the 16th century, the OED says.  

Similarly, a “soul” means a living person in expressions like “poor soul,” “honest soul,” “dull old soul,” and so on.

This construction—“soul” appearing with an adjective to mean a person having that character or quality—was first recorded in the late 15th century, the OED says.

Despite all these long-established uses of “soul” to mean a person, its use in news stories about loss of life does strike some people as odd.

We’ve found dozens of questions in online forums from people who apparently think a “soul” is one thing and a person is entirely another.

But there’s no conflict here. The Latin noun for “soul,” anima, has a similar range of meanings, as the OED points out.

Cassell’s Latin Dictionary translates anima as meaning “the breath of life, the vital principle, soul (anima, physical; animus, spiritual).”

And Cassell’s adds that anima is “also used in other senses of the English ‘soul,’ ” namely “as a living being” and “as the rational soul.”

Each of the three broad meanings of “soul” we mentioned above can be broken down into many more specific senses, and these sometimes blur the division between the physical and spiritual.

For example, since early Old English, the #1 sense (the animating force of life) has included notions of the “soul” as the seat of consciousness, intelligence, character, one’s nature, even “the central or inmost part of a person’s being,” in the words of the OED.

These are all inherent in the living person, of course, but they’re sometimes contrasted with life’s purely physical side and spoken of in spiritual terms.

The #1 sense of “soul” includes a contemporary usage that isn’t as new as you might think. In fact, it dates back to Shakespeare’s time.

This is the sense of the word we often find in reference to artistry, aesthetic qualities, deep feelings, intellectual power, and the like (as in “Billie sings with a lot of soul”).

The OED’s earliest citation for this sense of the word is from Othello (written around 1603): “Those fellowes haue some soule.”

Closer to our own time is this OED citation from Henry T. Finck’s book Grieg and His Music (1906):

“He put into his playing so much soul, so much emotional intensity, that he came back into the artists’ room completely exhausted.”

As we all know, this use of the term became identified with African-American culture in the mid-20th century.

The OED has this early example from a 1946 issue of Ebony magazine: “He uses a bewildering, unorthodox technique and his playing is full of what jazzmen refer to as ‘soul.’ ” 

We mentioned above that “soul” came from Germanic sources, but we didn’t say how it got its meaning. Apparently there’s some uncertainty here.

In the late 19th century a German etymologist, Friedrich Kluge, suggested the source of “soul” was a Proto-Germanic word reconstructed as saiwalo, which meant coming from or belonging to the sea.

The rationale, as the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology explains, is that the sea “was supposed to be the stopping-off place of the soul before birth and after death.”

The OED is doubtful, however, saying “the evidential basis for this is extremely slender.”

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Q: Are there too few English majors nowadays? A recent headline on CNN.com: “Volunteers pour over satellite images.” Hmm. I prefer maple syrup on my satellite images. What about you?

A: It shouldn’t take an English major to tell the difference between “pour” and “pore.” Yet many people, even in news organizations, write “pour over” when they mean “pore over.”

The verb “pour” means flow or cause to flow, as when a river “pours” over its banks, troops “pour” over a border, or you “pour” maple syrup over your waffles.

The other verb, “pore,” means to examine or study closely.

As Pat writes in Woe is I, “You pore over an engrossing book, but it’s gross to pour over one.” She uses this example: “While Charlotte pored over a steamy novel, the bathtub poured over.”

CNN wasn’t the only news organization to use “pour over” instead of “pore over” in reference to volunteer efforts in the search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370. This passage is from the Telegraph of Calcutta:

“The approach is a kind of crowdsourcing, but not one in which volunteers pour over satellite images, like they have in search of Flight 370.”

The verbs “pour” and “pore” have been part of English since the Middle Ages, but they’re unrelated and probably come from different sources, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED says “pour,” first recorded around 1330, is of uncertain origin but perhaps is derived from the Middle French verb purer, which meant “to decant, pour out (a liquid).”

Over the centuries, “pour” has been widely used in transferred or figurative senses.

This OED citation from a 1995 issue of the British magazine Sugar is a good illustration: “If you want to cause a stir on the beach just pour yourself into a gorgeous swimsuit.”

In fact, “pour” has so many figurative uses that it’s hard to count them.

Today people “pour out their hearts,” “pour money” into causes, “pour into” hot vacation spots, and “pour themselves” into their jobs. And when lavishly praising or criticizing, they “pour it on” (a usage the OED dates from the late 1940s).

But the uses of the other verb, “pore,” are much more limited. It still means roughly what it did when first recorded around 1300, the OED says: “to look intently or fixedly, to gaze.”

“Pore” is of unknown origin, the dictionary says, but may be related to a now obsolete Middle English verb, “pire,” meaning to peer or look closely.

This long-dead verb, “pire,” bears some similarity to a regional usage in Low German, piren, meaning “to search closely, to collect carefully,” the OED says. But we’re getting into speculation here, and there’s no definite connection to the modern “pore.”

The most common use of “pore” today is one that developed in the late 1300s. The OED defines this sense as “to examine a book, map, etc., with fixed attention; to study or read earnestly or with intense concentration; to be absorbed in reading or study.”

In this sense, “pore” is frequently used with prepositions, especially “over” the OED says. And only occasionally do we find “pore” used in any other sense.

The OED says it’s sometimes used when we speak of meditating or thinking intently, as in this 1982 example from the Financial Times: “The Treasury clearly does not spend all its time poring over macro-economic issues.”

Generally, “pore” is used literally in its original sense, as Gretel Ehrlich did in her essay collection Islands, the Universe, Home (1991): “We pore over maps, chart our expeditions.”

In summary, volunteers definitely wouldn’t want to “pour over” those satellite pictures—especially if they were pouring something sticky. They’d want to “pore over” the images.

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Q: The word “liaison” has been around for quite some time, but at a recent lunchtime meeting someone offered to “liaise” with others. This usage makes me cringe, but what’s your take on it?

A: We liaise a lot—that is, we work together on matters of mutual concern—but we don’t use the term “liaise” (it sounds like jargon to us).

Nevertheless, the verb “liaise” is standard English, a back-formation that’s been around for nearly a century, and a word with roots in the 1600s.

We’ve written many blog posts about back-formations—words formed by dropping parts of existing ones. New words have been formed this way for many hundreds of years.

Examples of verbs that started as back-formations from nouns include “injure” (from “injury”), “babysit” (from “babysitter”), “escalate” (from “escalator”), “curate” (from “curator”), and  “surveil” (from “surveillance”).

We can add the verb “liaise” to the list. It’s a back-formation (from the noun “liaison”) that emerged in British military slang during World War I, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Oxford’s earliest citation comes from C. F. Snowden Gamble’s The Story of a North Sea Air Station, which is about the Royal Flying Corps in 1914-18.

Snowden Gamble’s book was published in 1928, but it includes this 1916 quote by Lord Fisher, Admiral of the Fleet: “I want a soldier … to keep in touch with the Navy and so ‘liaise’ or exchange inventions which may be suitable.”

Apparently “liaise” had staying power, since British military types were still using it in the next war.

The OED cites a comment that appeared in a 1941 issue of the journal American Notes and Queries, remarking on a recent instruction sheet issued by Britain’s Home Guard: “in the event of certain circumstances, it stated, two groups were ordered to ‘liase’ with two others.”

And a year later, in 1942, the New Statesman commented:
“ ‘To liaise’ … was at first frowned on by the pundits: its usefulness … soon came to outweigh its objectionableness.”

The OED defines “liaise” as meaning “to make liaison with or between.” By the 1950s, according to the dictionary’s citations, the usage had been absorbed into civilian usage.

The noun that it came from, “liaison,” can ultimately be traced to the Latin verb ligare (to bind). And when it first came into English, in the mid-17th century, it was decidedly civilian.

The original “liaison” was a cooking term (we’re not making this up). It meant “a thickening for sauces, consisting chiefly of the yolks of eggs,” the OED says.

This noun, which was borrowed from French, also for a time meant “the process of thickening,” Oxford adds.

The dictionary’s earliest citation in English is from a cookbook by an English courtier and intellectual, Sir Kenelm Digby, who died in 1665. (He left his recipes behind, and they were published posthumously in 1669.)

In a recipe for a mutton pot-roast, we find this line: “The last things (of Butter, bread, flower) cause the liaison and thickening of the liquor.” (The noun “liaison” appears several other times in the book, also in connection with a thickened broth or gravy.)

The noun took on new meanings in the early 19th century.

First, it came to mean an intimate (sometimes illicit) relationship or connection; and in 1816 it acquired a military sense, defined by the OED as “close connection and co-operation between two units, branches, allies, etc., esp. during a battle or campaign.”

In the early 20th century, this military sense of “liaison” also became common in corporate, governmental, and other civilian usages.

As you say, “liaison” has been around for quite some time. Our guess is that “liaise” will be with us for a while too, whether we like it or not.

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Q: How come we use the word “shaft” for two different things: a linear object like an arrow and an open space like a tunnel in a mine? Are these two usages somehow related etymologically?

A: The “shaft” that’s a slender rod and the “shaft” that’s a narrow hole have always been two different nouns in English.

But it’s natural for you to wonder if there’s a link somewhere in their ancient ancestry, since both “shafts” are long, straight columns—the first a solid object and the second a hollow cavity.

Well, there is probably a connection, but scholars disagree on what it is.

The first “shaft”—a smooth, straight stick or pole, like the body of an arrow or spear—was known in Old English as sceaft around the year 1000 or earlier, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

 The other “shaft”—the hole or pit—wasn’t known in Old English. It made its appearance in the 1430s, the OED says, when it meant “a vertical or slightly inclined well-like excavation made in mining, tunnelling, etc., as a means of access to underground workings.”

How did the different “shafts” develop?

The OED says the original, rod-like “shaft” probably got its meaning from the sense of something shaven—that is, scraped and made smooth. (The Old English verb sceafan meant to shave.)

This word has its origins in a prehistoric Germanic root that linguists have reconstructed as skafto-, which has to do with shaving. That ancient root, in turn, comes from an even earlier Germanic word element that has to do with digging.

There are a couple of theories about the origin of the pit-like sense of “shaft” in English. Here are the possibilities: 

(1) In Europe in the early Middle Ages, speakers of Low German simply transferred the word for a rod to mean a pit. The Low German schacht combined both senses of “shaft,” perhaps with “the primitive notion being that of something cylindrical,” the OED says.

In his Principles of Historical Linguistics (1991), Hans Henrich Hock suggests that this Low German schacht (in the sense of a pit) may have originated as miners’ jargon, perhaps as early as the late 900s, and later filtered into English as the new noun “shaft.” Many other Low German mining terms made their way into English and other languages, according to Hock.

(2) The two “shafts” developed separately, much further back in their Germanic ancestry. 

As the OED puts it, the prehistoric Germanic root “skafto- represented by Low German schacht, English shaft ‘pit-hole,’ may be a separate formation” of the Germanic root of “shave” in its original sense, “to dig.”

If the last suggestion is true, then the first “shaft” (the rod) is derived from the notion of something shaven and the second “shaft” (the pit) from that of something dug or excavated.

While English got both “shafts” from Germanic sources, we should note that the words have cousins in Latin (scapus, a stem or stalk) and Greek (skapos, a staff or support).

But enough ancient etymology. We don’t want to dig ourselves into a hole here.

The original English “shaft” (the rod) has been used in many ways, figurative as well as literal, to describe all kinds of rod-like things.

Over the centuries, the same “shaft” has been used to describe an architectural column, a beam of sunlight, a bird’s feather, the stem of a wineglass, a rotating mechanism (driveshaft, crankshaft, etc.), and many other objects.

This “shaft” has also given us slang usages, and as you might imagine (given the phallic nature of the word), few of them are respectable.

For example, the penis has been described as a “shaft” since the early 1600s, according to citations in Green’s Dictionary of Slang.

The OED cites this mock-poetic example from a comic song published in 1772: “For Cupid’s Pantheon, the Shaft of Delight Must spring from the Masculine Base.”

And since the early 1950s, the verb “shaft” has meant to give someone a raw deal—to cheat, reject, slight, take advantage of or treat the person unfairly.

Green’s quotes this line from Mickey Spillane’s noir novel The Long Wait (1951): “She’s going to have more on her mind than trying to shaft you.”

Then of course there’s the expression “to get the shaft,” meaning to be on the receiving end of a raw deal. This has also been a common slang usage since the 1950s.

The OED cites this explanation from a 1959 issue of the journal American Speech: “A girl or boy who makes a play for another’s date is snaking. … If he succeeds, the loser gets the shaft (sometimes with barbs), the purple shaft, or the maroon harpoon, depending upon the degree of injury to his pride.”

This more graphic definition of “get the shaft” appeared in 1960 in the Dictionary of American Slang, by Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner: “the image is the taboo one of the final insult, having someone insert something, as a barbed shaft, up one’s rectum.”

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Q: I am helping promulgate the criteria for recruiting new members of a board of directors. At issue is “diversity.” I say it is now a code word for nonwhite or nonmale. That is, a white male, no matter how diverse his experience, doesn’t provide diversity. Others say “diversity,” without elaboration, could refer to experience. What do you think?

A: We’ve checked ten standard dictionaries, and none of them restrict the term “diversity” to race or gender.

All the dictionaries define “diversity” in general terms, such as a range of different things or the state of being varied. A few include additional definitions that refer to being more inclusive about race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and so on.

We’ve also looked at several legal dictionaries, but couldn’t find the term “diversity,” except in a few relatively obscure usages.

The Oxford English Dictionary has a general definition that could encompass just about any difference: “The condition or quality of being diverse, different, or varied; difference, unlikeness.”

Although some people believe, as you do, that “diversity” primarily refers to race and gender, lexicographers clearly feel that most people use the term more broadly.

What do we think? If we were writing the criteria, we’d use the word “diversity” by itself, without citing any specific differences.

Some outsiders may misunderstand the term, but we assume that the main reason for the criteria is to guide board members, who should know by now what they mean by “diversity.”

Yes, the directors could cite specific kinds of diversity, especially if they were thinking of more than differences in race, gender, and ethnic origin, but the list would clutter up the criteria and almost certainly be incomplete.

Here, for example, is how the Chancellor’s Committee on Diversity at the University of California, San Francisco, defines the term:

“The variety of experiences and perspective which arise from differences in race, culture, religion, mental or physical abilities, heritage, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and other characteristics.”

Interestingly, there’s been a diversity of opinion about the meaning of “diversity” since the word entered English in the 1300s. In fact, the differences date from the term’s Old French and Latin ancestors.

In Old French, the term diverseté (or diversité) meant difference, oddness, wickedness, or perversity, according to the OED.

However, the noun “diversity” as well as the adjective “diverse” ultimately come from the Latin diversus, which means opposite, separate, different, contrary, or hostile, and which is the source of the English word “diversion” (a turning away from the fatiguing and the mundane).

The adjective first appeared in the late 13th century and the noun in the early 14th.

In English, the word “diversity” has meant difference, variety, unlikeness, distinction, perversity, evil, and mischief over the years, not to mention a couple of technical electrical and radio usages. Now, that’s diversity.

[Note: This post was updated on May 26, 2021.]

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Q: I came across someone who wonders if “bullying” has something to do with “bulldogs.” Is there anything to this? Or is it just bull?

A: It’s just bull, though the paths of the two words did cross at least once (more on this later).

“Bullying” and “bulldogs” aren’t etymologically related. In fact, the word “bully” had nothing to do with what we now think of as “bullying” when it entered English in the 1500s.

The noun “bully” was originally “a term of endearment and familiarity” similar to “sweetheart” or “darling,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Although it was initially used for both men and women, the OED says, it was “later applied to men only, implying friendly admiration: good friend, fine fellow, ‘gallant.’ ”

The origins of the word are fuzzy, but the dictionary suggests that it might have come from boel or buole, Dutch or Middle High German terms for a lover.

The earliest Oxford citation for the usage is from A Comedy Concernynge Thre Lawes, of Nature Moses, & Christ, Corrupted by the Sodomytes, Pharysees and Papystes (circa 1548), a morality play by John Bale, an Anglican bishop:

“The woman hath a wytt, / And by her gere can sytt, / Though she be sumwhat olde. / It is myne owne swete bullye, / My muskyne and my mullye.” (“Muskyne” and “mullye” are obsolete terms of endearment.)

Here are a few examples from Shakespeare’s plays:

“From my hart strings I loue the louely bully.” (Henry V, c. 1600.)

“What saiest thou, bully, Bottome?” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, c. 1600.)

“Blesse thee my bully doctor.” (The Merry Wives of Windsor, c. 1602.)

In the late 1600s, the term “bully” came to mean a “blustering gallant” or a “swashbuckler,” according to the OED, though it now generally means “a tyrannical coward who makes himself a terror to the weak.”

It’s impossible to tell from the dictionary’s examples when the swashbuckling sense of the noun evolved into the tyrannical sense.

But the verb “bully,” which showed up in the early 1700s, was initially used in both the blustering and tyrannical senses—or, as the OED defines it, “to act the bully towards; to treat in an overbearing manner; to intimidate, overawe.”

The OED’s earliest example for the verb is from Samuel Palmer’s Moral Essays on Some of the Most Curious and Significant English, Scotch and Foreign Proverbs (1710): “His poor neighbour is bully’d by his big appearance.”

And here’s an example in Google Books of the noun used in the tyrannical sense, from Tobias Smollett’s 1775 novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker:

“Then, it must be owned, he wants courage, otherwise he would never allow himself to be cowed by the great political bully, for whose understanding he has justly a very great contempt.”

As for the noun “bulldog,” it first showed up in the mid-1700s. (The OED has a questionable 1518 citation that refers to “two bolddogges,” but it’s unclear whether the animals were actually bulldogs.)

The dictionary defines the noun, which it hyphenates, as “a dog of a bold and fierce breed, with large bull-head, short muzzle, strong muscular body of medium height, and short smooth hair.”

Oxford says the name of the dog is derived from the words “bull” and “dog.” Why a bull? Because the dog was once used in bull-baiting—a “sport” in which a dog would lock its teeth onto the snout of a tethered bull.

The first clear “bulldog” citation in the OED is from a 1752 essay by David Hume: “The courage of bull-dogs and game-cocks seems peculiar to England.”

The adjective “bully” (meaning admirable) showed up in the late 1600s. We discussed this usage in a blog post several years ago about the term “bully pulpit.”

In the late 1800s, the adjective was also used to describe someone who looked like a bulldog—this is where the paths of “bully” and “bulldog” crossed.

The OED’s sole example of the adjective used this way is from Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s 1883 novel Phantom Fortune: “Angelina is bully about the muzzle.” (Angelina is a fox terrier.)

Although the usage hasn’t made it into the OED or standard dictionaries, many dog rescue groups use the term “bully breeds” to refer to such breeds as the American Staffordshire terrier, bull terrier, bulldog, and bullmastiff.

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Q: My father and brother, both deceased, had the same name, and used “senior” and “junior” to differentiate themselves. Now, I can’t decide how to present my father’s name in a book dedication. Do you have any advice?

A: The use of “Sr.” in reference to your father would be appropriate.

This is an issue of etiquette, not style, grammar, or usage. But we think it makes sense to keep the “Sr.” here to be clear who is being referred to in the dedication.

Generational suffixes like “Jr.” and “Sr.” aren’t necessarily dropped when a son or a father dies. A deceased father may still be known as “John Doe Sr.” and a deceased son as “John Doe Jr.”

A well-known example is Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., who outlived his “Jr.” son but continued to be referred to as “Sr.” even after his own death.  

When the son survives the father, he may choose to drop the “Jr.” from his name, or he may choose to keep it.

William F. Buckley Jr., for example, used the “Jr.” throughout his life, and the suffix is still used after his death.

And by the way, it’s not necessary to use commas around the abbreviations “Jr.” and “Sr.,” according to The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.).

The manual uses this example: “John Doe Sr. continues to cast a shadow over his son.”

The Oxford English Dictionary describes the use of “Sr.” for “senior” as “chiefly US.”

This use of the abbreviation to distinguish a father from a son of the same name is relatively new, according to OED citations.

The earliest example in the dictionary is from the June 5, 1936, issue of the New York Herald Tribune: “Extradition of Ellis Parker Sr. to await Republican Convention.”

(The OED doesn’t have any citations for “Jr.” used to distinguish a son from his father.)

However, the dictionary has citations dating from the 1400s for the word “senior” used this way, and from the 1600s for “junior” used for the son.

Here’s an example from a 1692 issue of the London Gazette that uses both: “Lost, a Note of Mr. Tho. Symonds junior’s Hand for Mr. Tho. Symonds senior … for 50£.”

Finally, you might be interested in a post we wrote a few months ago about the use of “senior” to refer to an old person.

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Q: Twice in The Monuments Men (screenplay by George Clooney), Clooney the actor uses “task” as a verb: “We have been tasked to find and protect art that the Nazis have stolen.” But were people saying that back in the early 1940s?

A: You’re not the first moviegoer to be startled by Clooney’s use of “task” as a verb. Bloggers and contributors to online discussion groups have criticized this usage.

One critic complains, for example, that Clooney is making a noun (“task”) into a verb. Another suggests that the usage emerged in 1980s corporate-speak, so it’s an anachronism in a movie that takes place near the end of World War II. 

Neither complaint is legitimate. Since 1530, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “task” has been used as a verb meaning to impose a task on someone.

The construction followed by “with” or “to” (as in “tasked to find”) has been around since the late 1500s and appears in Shakespeare.

The OED has an example from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1 (1598), in which Hotspur complains that the King “taskt the whole state.”

But we prefer the scene in Othello (circa 1603) where Iago schemes to get Cassio plastered.

Here Cassio says he can’t hold his liquor and doesn’t want any more to drink: “I am unfortunate in the infirmity, / and dare not task my weakness with any more.”

The OED has only a couple of modern examples, including this Nov. 20, 1980, ad from the Oxford Star, a weekly in England:

“A small engineering team tasked with the design, building and commissioning of high volume production lines.”

However, the usage is alive and well these days. A Google search for “I was tasked to” resulted in more than 1.7 million hits. Example: “I was tasked to look through my old Facebook pics to find a candid photo of myself for a shoot.”

Now for an interesting detour. In Middle English, “task” and “tax” meant the same thing. The two words are etymological twins that went their separate ways over the centuries.

When the noun “task” first appeared around 1300  it meant a payment or a levy—that is, a tax. And when the verb came along in the 1400s, to “task” meant to impose a tax.” 

So why were there two words, “task” and “tax,” one ending in an “sk” sound and the other in a “ks” sound?

As the OED explains, both have their ultimate roots in the Latin taxare (assess, evaluate). It’s been suggested that around the year 800, the consonant sounds were swapped in medieval Latin, resulting in two separate nouns taxa and tasca.

These two Latin words were passed along into Old French, then into Anglo-Norman, and finally into English.

(The transposition of sounds is called metathesis, and it can result in new words. As we’ve written on our blog, something similar happened with the word “ask, which had two forms in medieval English, “ask” and “axe.”)

The words “task” and “tax” began to diverge in the 1500s.

The “task” that originally meant a fixed payment imposed on someone—say, by an overlord—came to mean a fixed quantity of labor imposed on a person or owed as a duty.

From that meaning grew the modern sense of “task”: an assignment or a piece of work. (The verb “task” developed along similar lines.)

While “task” and “tax” have now gone their separate ways in English, they still intersect here and there.

As you know, we sometimes say a difficult task or a hard job is “taxing.” Both “task” and “tax” are occasionally used as verbs meaning to “burden” or “put a strain on,” as in these OED citations:

“It tasked his diplomatic skill to effect his departure in safety” (from John Yeats’s The Growth and Vicissitudes of Commerce, 1872).

“My ingenuity was often taxed for expedients” (from Elisha Kent Kane’s The U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1853).

And when we scold or censure a person for doing something, we “take him to task” for it.

In fact, the verbs “task” and “tax” have both been used in this sense of censuring or reproving someone. Here are a couple of examples from the OED:

“Trollope is another offender who is frequently tasked with endangering the wholeness of his novels” (1965, from Kenneth Graham’s English Criticism of the Novel, 1865-1900).

“That Chronicle … which seems to tax the envy and rapaciousness of Clarence as the Causes of the dissention” (1768, from Horace Walpole’s Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third).

And that’s our task for the day. We won’t tax our brains any more!

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Q: How do you assess the state of “facetious” today? Do most people use it to mean humorous or to mean joking, often inappropriately? Do you find this ambiguity problematic or do you think context is usually sufficient for understanding?

A: All in all, “facetious” is a slippery term. Some dictionaries recognize two meanings, some only one. And those that give only one definition differ as to whether “facetious” remarks are biting or benign.

It’s safe to say, however, that both the meanings you mention are in use today.

The word can simply mean humorous—that is, not serious. But “facetious” can also mean waggish or jokey, sometimes in a flippant or inappropriate way.

We generally depend on the context, or the manner of the delivery, to tell us whether a joke or witty comment is merely amusing or has a bite to it.

Obviously, that’s easier when the witticism is spoken (with vocal inflections and perhaps wry facial expressions), than when it’s written.

The different senses of “facetious” can overlap, of course, which is probably why some standard dictionaries mush them together.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) says only that “facetious” means “playfully jocular; humorous,” as in “facetious remarks.”

And this single definition comes from Cambridge Dictionaries Online: “not seriously meaning what you say, usually in an attempt to be humorous or to trick someone,” as in “I make so much money that we never have to worry – I’m being facetious.”

On the other hand, the Macmillan Dictionary recognizes only the negative meaning of “facetious.” The sole definition is “trying to be funny in a way that is not appropriate.”

Some other dictionaries recognize wider uses for the adjective. 

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) has these definitions: (1) “joking or jesting often inappropriately: waggish,” as in “just being facetious”; and (2) “meant to be humorous or funny: not serious,” as in “a facetious remark.”

M-W’s online edition gives longer examples, including this illustration for inappropriate humor: “a facetious and tasteless remark about people in famine-stricken countries being spared the problem of overeating.”

The Oxford English Dictionary also has two broad definitions of “facetious” in modern usage: (1) “characterized by or given to pleasantry or joking, now esp. when inappropriate or flippant”; and (2) “witty, humorous, amusing.”

That “now esp.” comment in the OED suggests that the dictionary’s editors believe that when “facetious” is used in a joking sense today, the flippant side of the word—the one with the bite—is more common.

The OED’s earliest published citation for “facetious” in the modern sense appears to use the word to mean witty and amusing. It’s from A Treatise of the Felicitie of the Life to Come (1594), by the Scottish minister and poet Alexander Hume:

“To heare the merry interloquutors of facetious Dialogues, pretty and quicke conceits, and rancounters of Comediens, in their comedies, and stage plaies.”

In a more contemporary citation, we find “facetious” used to describe an article that’s an extended joke (though a harmless one) about two literary figures who were dead ringers for each other.

“The resemblance between the two is extraordinary,” Robert H. Boyle writes in the New York Times Book Review (2000). “I decided to write a facetious article stating that Joyce and Jennings had been separated at birth.”

The references are to James Joyce and an angler named Preston Jennings, whose volume A Book of Trout Flies was published in 1935, four years before Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.

In accompanying photographs, the two authors look nearly identical. Boyle argues, among other things, that the “fin” in Joyce’s title is no coincidence, and that his phrase “speckled trousers” is code for “speckled trout.”

Boyle’s article is hilarious, but not flippant or inappropriate.

(None of the OED’s examples of “facetious,” in our opinion, seem to represent inappropriate humor.)

So far, we’ve been discussing the meanings of “facetious” that have survived in modern usage. But an earlier sense of the word in English was lost long ago.

This “facetious,” first recorded in 1542, meant “polished, elegant, agreeable,” and was used to describe a person’s manners or style, according to the OED.

Oxford has only four examples, concluding with this one from Samuel Mather’s An Apology for the Liberties of the Churches in New England (1738):

“I Have a Letter in my Hands, and the very Original Letter, of the learned and pious and facetious Mr. Charles Morton of Charles-Town in New-England.”

What kind of etymological roots could grow a word meaning both elegant and funny? Slightly different roots, it seems.

The “facetious” that’s now obsolete (“polished, elegant, agreeable”) comes ultimately from the classical Latin facetus (clever, whimsical), which in post-classical Latin came to mean courtly.

And the “facetious” that has survived into modern usage is descended from the classical Latin facetia (a joke or jest).

Finally, an interesting aside: In booksellers’ catalogues the word “facetiae” is a euphemism for pornography, according to Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.). It means “jests” in Latin.

Keep that in mind next time you’re shopping for printed rarities.

Update (March 26, 2014): A reader writes to remind us that “facetious” is one of only two common words that contain all five vowels in order. The other is “abstemious.”

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Q: On WNYC, Brian Lehrer invited “expats” from Seattle and Denver to call in with their opinions on the merits of their ex-cities (music scene, weather, microbrews, etc.). Has the term “expat” been domesticated?

A: We’ve checked a half-dozen standard dictionaries, as well as the Oxford English Dictionary, and all of them define “expat” as an informal shortening of the noun “expatriate.”

As for “expatriate,” all the dictionaries define the noun as someone who’s living in a foreign country—not in a new part of his or her own country.

Although lexicographers haven’t yet recognized the domestication of “expat,” the usage is definitely out there.

A search of online databases suggests that the use of “expats” for people moving within their own country began showing up nearly a dozen years ago.

The website Mountain West News, for example, has this headline on an Oct. 1, 2003, article about Californians moving to the Rocky Mountains region: “California’s expats brought their politics.”

And an Oct. 15, 2003, article on the website City Limits reports that “scores of New York expats have joined lawsuits” against 26 Poconos-area builders, real estate agents, and appraisers.

Although this new use of “expat” seems to have originated in the US, American dictionaries say the original use of the term as a shortened form of “expatriate” is “chiefly British.”

The OED, which considers “expat” a colloquialism, has only two examples for the usage—from 1962 and 1968.

The latest citation is from the Jan. 25, 1968, issue of the now-defunct BBC magazine The Listener: “The ‘expats,’ as the expatriate British refer to themselves, are understandably fond of Ghana.”

Interestingly, the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang has four citations from US publications for this supposedly British usage, though some of the cites refer to British expatriates.

Here’s an example from the May 21, 1961, issue of the New York Times: “The easygoing Malays still maintain many Britons, whom they call expatriates, or ‘expats,’ in key positions.”

When the noun “expatriate” entered English in the early 1800s, it referred to someone “expatriated”—that is, forced into exile.

The OED’s earliest example of the usage is from an 1818 issue of the Quarterly Review: “Patriots and expatriates are alike the children of circumstances.”

The English noun (as well as the verb) “expatriate” is ultimately derived from the classical Latin prefix ex- (out) and noun patria (native land).

Getting back to your question, we like the new informal use of “expat” for someone living in a different part of his own country.

It’s similar to the extended use of the newspaper term “column” for a website “column,” a subject we’ve discussed on our blog.

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Q: I am a physician who blogs and strives to improve his style. But I stumble when I see a statement like this one on an NY Times blog: “it betrays a surprising lack of awareness of some critical aspects of the medical profession.” What is being betrayed here? A lack of awareness? Or the medical profession? I would think the latter.

A: The verb “betray” has several meanings that concern disloyalty: one can betray a country, a cause, a confidence, or a spouse.

But you’re asking about a different sense of the word: to make known unintentionally (as in, “The snicker betrayed his true feelings”).

The comment that got your attention—by Lawrence K. Altman, a Times medical writer and professor of medicine at NYU—is about an article in the New York Review of Books by a doctor who was seriously injured in an accident.

In the article, Arnold Relman, a doctor with six decades of experience, writes that he “had never before understood how much good nursing care contributes to patients’ safety and comfort.”

In commenting on that, Altman writes that Relman’s sudden realization of the importance of nursing “betrays a surprising lack of awareness of some critical aspects of the medical profession and the nation’s fragmented health care system.”

Altman is using the word “betrays” here to mean “unintentionally reveals.” What is being revealed? Relman’s former cluelessness about the importance of nursing.

The verb “betray” entered English in the 1200s with the sense of “to give up to, or place in the power of an enemy, by treachery or disloyalty,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

English adopted the word from Old French, but it’s ultimately derived from the Latin verb tradere, meaning to deliver or hand over.

The sense of the word you’re asking about showed up in the late 16th century. The OED defines it this way: “To reveal or disclose against one’s will or intention the existence, identity, real character of (a person or thing desired to be kept secret).”

The earliest citation in the dictionary for the usage is from Shakespeare’s comedy Love’s Labour’s Lost (1598): “I do betray my selfe with blushing.”

And here’s an example from Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667): “Ire, envie and despair … betraid Him counterfet.”

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Q: In The Pioneers, a book from Time-Life’s The Old West series, a pioneer woman uses “ditto” to mean something like “I agree with what you just said.” I thought the term had its origins in the Xerox copy machine, which created “dittos” of documents.

A: No, the word “ditto” had been around for hundreds of years before Xerox made its first copying machine in the mid-20th century. And Xerox wasn’t even responsible for the use of “ditto” in the copy-machine sense.

We wrote briefly in 2007 about the history of the word “ditto,” but your question gives us a chance to expand on our original post.

English borrowed the word “ditto” in the early 1600s from Italian, where detto (ditto in the Tuscan dialect) was the past participle of dire (to say).

At the time, the Oxford English Dictionary says, detto was used adjectivally in the sense of “aforesaid” to modify dates in Italian “to avoid repetition of the name of a month.”

In an Italian sentence, the OED explains, “December 22” and “December 26” might have been written as 22 di dicembre and 26 detto. And the phrase il detto libro would have meant “the said [or aforesaid] book.”

In the dictionary’s earliest English example of the usage, “ditto” appears in the date sense and means “in or of the month already named; said month.”

Here’s the citation, from a 1625 collection of travel writing by the English cleric Samuel Purchas: “The eight and twentieth ditto, I went … to the Generals Tent.”

This monthly use of “ditto” soon expanded in English to include other senses of “aforesaid” and “the same,” the OED says, such as in accounts and lists “in commercial, office, and colloquial language.”

Oxford’s first example of this expanded use of “ditto” is from The New World of Words (4th ed.), a 1678 dictionary by Edward Phillips:

“Ditto (Italian, said) a word used much in Merchants Accompts, and relation of Foreign news; and signifieth the same place with that immediately beforementioned.”

(The OED notes that a 1696 edition of the dictionary changes “same place” to “the same Commodity or Place,” and that a 1706 edition adds “the aforesaid or the same” to the meaning of ditto in Italian.)

In the 1770s, the usage expanded further, with several other senses of “ditto” showing up.

In a 1775 example in the OED, the verbal phrase “to say ditto to” is used in the sense of “to acquiesce in or express agreement with what has been said by (another).”

The citation, from a biography of Edmund Burke by James Pryor, describes a Parliamentary candidate as using “the language of the counting-house” in support of remarks by Burke: “I say ditto to Mr. Burke.”

In an Aug. 12, 1776, letter from John Adams to his wife, Abigail, during the Revolutionary War, “ditto” is used as a noun meaning “a duplicate or copy; an exact resemblance; a similar thing,” according to the OED:

“Here they wait untill We grow very angry, about them, for Canteens, Camp Kettles, Blanketts, Tents, Shoes, Hose, Arms, Flints, and other Dittoes, while We are under a very critical Solicitude for our Army at New York, on Account of the Insufficiency of Men.”

(We’ve expanded on the Oxford citation to add context.)

The OED doesn’t have any examples of “ditto” used as a noun to mean a duplicate produced by a copying machine. However, it has several citations for the term used to mean a copying machine.

The dictionary describes “Ditto” (with a capital “D”) as “a proprietary name in the U.S. for a kind of duplicating machine that reproduces copies from a master.”

The OED’s earliest citation for the usage is from a July 1, 1919, notice in the Official Gazette of the US Patent Office: “Duplicator Manufacturing Company, Chicago, Ill. … Ditto … Claims use since Dec. 16, 1918.”

The Duplicator Manufacturing Company produced a copier called a Ditto that was somewhat similar to a mimeograph machine. The process involved creating a master copy that would be transferred to a hand-rotated printing cylinder.

The July 28, 1921, issue of the trade magazine Printers’ Ink reported that Duplicator, a Chicago company, “has found it expedient to change its corporate name to that of its advertised product, ‘Ditto.’ The corporate name is now Ditto, Incorporated.”

Although Ditto, Inc., is now defunct, a company called the Ink Technology Corp. has sold ink for the few ditto machines still functioning, according to a Jan. 16, 2007, article by Eric Zorn in the Chicago Tribune.

Finally, we should mention that the word “ditto” ultimately comes from the Latin dicere (to say). And as John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins notes, dicere is the source of many other English words, including one we use a lot: “dictionary.”

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