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Since Christ left Chicago

Q: As my retired physician father was perusing the ancient black bag he used to take on house calls, a doctor friend stopped by and said he hadn’t seen such medicines and paraphernalia “since Christ left Chicago.” I was wondering if you know the origin of that vivid expression.

A: The expression “since Christ left Chicago” is a variation on a theme. Other—and much more popular—versions include “since Christ was a corporal” and “since “Christ was a cowboy.”

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang says the phrase “since Christ was a corporal” means “since time immemorial.”

We don’t see an entry for “since Christ left Chicago” in Random House or any of our other reference works, but we can safely assume from reading a few dozen examples online that it also means for a very long time or since ages ago.

The earliest published example of the “Chicago” version, as far as we can tell, appeared in Life magazine in June 1959.

An article on labor unrest quoted a dissident New York Teamster as calling the attorney Edward Bennett Williams “the biggest liar the world has ever seen. He ain’t told the truth since Christ left Chicago!”

More recently, the writer Nick Tosches has used the expression a couple of times.

He wrote in Spin magazine in 1988: “My brother asks me if Island is one of the dumb-ass companies that still sends me free records even though I haven’t reviewed a record since Christ left Chicago.”

And Tosches used it in his first novel, Cut Numbers (1988): “Someday, if they’re lucky, they’ll look up and see that co-op roof cavin’ in and they’ll realize they been carryin’ thirty-year paper to live in some shit-hole that’s been fallin’ apart since Christ left Chicago.”

The older version, “since Christ was a corporal,” was a favorite of John Dos Passos. Though many people have used the phrase since World War II, most of the earliest examples we’ve found, from 1921 to 1944, are from his works.

Dos Passos used it twice in his World War I novel Three Soldiers (1921), even putting it in the mouths of different characters.

In one section, a character remarks: “Ain’t had any pay since Christ was a corporal. I’ve forgotten what it looks like.” And later a soldier asks, “How long have you been here?” The reply: “Since Christ was a corporal.”

Dos Passos used the same expression in his play The Garbage Man (1926) and in his novel Adventures of a Young Man (1939).

It also turned up in State of the Nation, a book of reportage by Dos Passos that was excerpted in a 1944 issue of Life magazine.

In the book, he quotes an anonymous returning soldier as saying, “Ain’t seen a woman since Christ was a corporal.” (We can’t help wondering whether the reporter enlivened some of the quotes with words of his own.)

As Random House points out, variations on the “corporal” version exist too: “since George Washington was a ‘lance
jack’ ” (from Ira L. Reeves’s Bamboo Tales, 1900), and “since ‘Christ was a lance corporal,’ as the men said” (from Charles L. Clifford’s novel Too Many Boats, 1933).

As for the Wild West version, “since Christ was a cowboy,” the earliest example we’ve found is from a bit of dialogue in Leila Hadley’s travel book Give Me the World (1958), about a trip aboard a cargo ship:

“I haven’t felt such a wind since Christ was a cowboy. Must have been hitting fifty knots for a while back there.”

This “cowboy” version—sometimes the protagonist is “Jesus” instead of “Christ”—has appeared many times since then.

The word sleuth Barry Popik has found several examples in books and newspapers from 1973 to 2007, and notes on his Big Apple website that the phrase is especially popular in Texas.

But phrases like this have been around since Shakespeare’s time. Random House quotes Twelfth Night (circa 1595): “They haue beene grand Iury men, since before Noah was a Saylor.”

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How credible is “incredible”?

Q: When somebody tries to sell me a car and says, “Our prices are incredibly low,” he’s literally telling me that I shouldn’t believe him. Wouldn’t it make more sense to say, “Our prices are credibly low”?

A: The adjective “incredible” meant not credible when it entered English in the early 1400s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

And the adverb “incredibly” meant in an incredible manner—that is, not credibly—when it showed up around 1500.

The two words still have those clearly negative meanings today, but people began using them loosely—“in a weakened sense,” as the OED says—almost from the start.

In this sense, Oxford says, the adjective means, among other things, exceedingly great, and the adverb means exceedingly, extremely, and so on.

Those car dealers you mention are using “incredibly” to mean exceedingly or extremely or (we’d add) astonishingly.

The two words are derived from the Latin incredibilis (unbelievable), made up of the negative prefix –in and credibilis (worthy to be believed). The ultimate Latin source is the verb credere (to believe).

Here’s how The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) defines the two modern meanings of “incredible”:

“1. So implausible as to elicit disbelief; unbelievable: gave an incredible explanation of the cause of the accident.

“2. Astonishing, extraordinary, or extreme: dressed with incredible speed.”

The OED’s earliest citation for the adjective is from John Lydgate’s Hystorye, Sege, and Destruccyon of Troye (1412-1420).

In his Middle English poem, Lydgate describes as “incredible” (that is, not credible) an account of the Greeks put to flight during the Trojan War.

The dictionary’s first citation for the adjective used in its looser sense is from The Revelation of the Monk of Evesham (1482): “An inestymable and incredibulle swetenes of ioyfull conforte.”

The earliest OED citation for the adverb is from The Three Kings’ Sons (circa 1500), an English translation of a work by the French calligrapher David Aubert: “He had seen hem do in armes that day yncredibly.” The adverb here seems to be used in the looser sense.

An even clearer example of the adverb used loosely is from The Itinerary of John Leland, written sometime before 1552. In writing of his travels, the English poet and antiquary describes a church “adorned it with Gould and Sylver incredibly.”

We’ll end with the OED’s most recent example for the adverb used in its looser sense.

We’ve gone to the original to expand on this citation from English Traits, an 1856 book in which Ralph Waldo Emerson describes a meeting with Thomas Carlyle in Scotland:

“He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this moment; recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by the great booksellers for puffing. Hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted now, no books are bought, and the booksellers are on the eve of bankruptcy.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

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Passive distribution

Q: What is your “ruling” on “passive distribution”? An allowable oxymoron?

A: We don’t think the two elements in the phrase “passive distribution” are necessarily contradictory. And in our opinion, the term pretty well describes the various processes it refers to.

We couldn’t find the phrase in any of the references we usually consult. We looked for it in the Oxford English Dictionary as well as in eight standard American or British dictionaries.

However, we did find thousands of examples of the phrase on the Internet—in both technical and nontechnical usages.

In the technical sense, the term often refers to an electrical junction device, like a cable TV splitter, that lets one line feed a signal into two or more lines.

We found several other technical senses, including the natural diffusion of fluids in body tissue, human and animal migrations, the movement of heat and cold, and the dispersion of seeds in nature.

The earliest use of the term that we found in Google Books is from “The Darwinian Theory and the Law of the Migration,” an 1873 English translation of an 1868 paper by the German explorer Moritz Wagner:

“Even the passive distribution of seeds has not a little diminished in comparison with earlier times. In garden, meadow, and field, man wages eternal warfare against all intruders, and where extirpation is impossible, he at all events limits their number, and checks their distribution.”

We assume, however, that you’re referring to a nontechnical usage that apparently showed up in the 1990s: letting outsiders into schools to place religious material on tables for students to take.

For example, members of a conservative group, World Changers, come into schools in two Florida counties, Orange and Collier, to distribute Bibles.

Under a Nov. 2, 2010, consent decree filed in US District Court in Fort Myers, the group has the right to distribute Bibles at the schools one day a year.

The decree stipulates that the Bibles have to be placed on an unattended table, the visitors can’t have contact with students, and a sign must say the event isn’t sponsored or endorsed by the school board.

The document, signed by Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell, refers to the practice as “the passive distribution of literature.”

A brief online search found this earlier example of the usage in a January 1999 report in which the American Association of School Administrators discusses the distribution of religious material in schools:

“Only passive distribution is permitted, however, and no outside adult should be allowed to come onto campus and hand out the materials.”

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Wigs, bigwigs, and big Whigs

Q: A recent headline in the Salt Lake Tribune: “GOP big-whigs suggest Romney quietly go away.” I initially assumed that “big-whigs” was an error (albeit an amusing one), but a quick look on the Internet suggests that there might be a historical basis for this mistake. Can you enlighten me?

A: The headline writer for that post-election article no doubt meant “bigwigs,” not “big-whigs.” The chances are pretty slim that the writer intended a pun on the Whig political parties in Britain or the United States.

Even if a pun was intended, it wouldn’t have been appropriate, since the Whigs—at least in Britain—were known for being liberal.

But a few years ago another headline writer did manage such a pun. In 2007, the Telegraph of London used this headline on a review of a book about the 18th-century British prime minister Robert Walpole: “First of the big Whigs.”

There were Whigs in Britain in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and in the United States in the 19th century. The last Whig president was Millard Fillmore, who left office in 1853.

Certainly many big Whigs in 17th-century England wore big wigs (probably curled and powdered), but etymologically “Whig” and “wig” are not related.

The origin of “Whig” has never been pinned down. It might possibly be from “whiggamer” or “whiggamore,” one of a group of Scottish rebels who marched on Edinburgh in 1648, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The word “wig,” for the hairpiece, was first recorded in the 1600s as a short form of “periwig,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Two words for a hairpiece, “periwig” and “peruke,” came into English in the 1500s, and both were derived from a Middle French word spelled perrucque or perruque, the OED says.

The French terms originally referred to a natural head of long hair, but “periwig” and for most of its history “peruke” have meant artificial hairpieces.

They’re not heard much these days, but here’s a 19th-century example of “peruke.” It comes from a primer on Shakespeare written in 1875 by Edward Dowden:

“That a most Christian king should each morning receive his peruke inserted upon a cane through an aperture of his bed-curtains is entirely correct; for the valet cannot retain faith in a perukeless grand monarch.”

And “bigwig”? We call important people “bigwigs,” according to the OED, because “of the large wigs formerly worn by men of distinction or importance.”

The term “bigwig” was first recorded in 1703 in a weekly journal called English Spy: “Be unto him ever ready to promote his wishes … against dun or don—nob or big-wig—so may you never want a bumper of bishop.”

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Inaugural pronunciations

Q: Please comment on the pronunciation of “inauguration” as
in-aw-guh-RAY-shun. When did this pronunciation become so ubiquitous, even among NPR news readers? Is it “wrong”?

A: Times change, and the pronunciation of “inauguration” is a good example.

When we discussed this subject three years ago on our blog, we said the only pronunciations of “inaugurate,” “inauguration,” and “inaugural” we’d ever heard had a “y” sound in the third syllable: in-AW-gyuh-rate … in-aw-gyuh-RAY-shun … in-AW-gyuh-rel.

And we said those were the only pronunciations given in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.).

But we also noted that one dictionary, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), included the non-“y” pronunciations as equal variants: in-AW-guh-rate … in-aw-guh-RAY-shun … in-AW-guh-rel. (As we said in 2010, that last one sounds to us like “doggerel.”)

But apparently the flatter pronunciations are taking hold. Since we wrote that post, a fifth edition of American Heritage has been published, and that dictionary now accepts the pronunciations minus the “y” sound.

A pronunciation can’t be considered “wrong” if even one standard dictionary accepts it. And certainly the evidence of two dictionaries means the “y”-less pronunciations of “inaugurate,” “inauguration,” and “inaugural” are now entrenched in standard English.

We still believe that most people pronounce “inauguration” and its derivatives with a “y” sound. But the people have a choice!

Inaugurations, of course, augur new beginnings. In 2011 we wrote about the etymology of “augur,” the word at the root of “inauguration.”

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English lit or British lit?

Q: Which is correct: English literature or British literature? I studied “English literature” during my schooldays in England. We read the works of authors and poets born in England, Wales, and Scotland. “British literature” sounds strange to me.

A: This is a somewhat sensitive subject, one that seems to change along with ideas about national identity.

When the two of us were in college, in the 1960s and ’70s, the term “English literature” loosely meant works by writers from the British Isles (a term not popular in the Republic of Ireland).

The problem with “English” is that it can refer either to the people of England or to the language, which is spoken in many other nations.

That makes the term “English literature” a little ambiguous. It could mean works written in English, or works written by English authors.

Today, “English literature” is often defined simply as literature written in the English language.

“British literature,” on the other hand, usually refers to works by authors from the United Kingdom (comprising England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland), and sometimes from the Republic of Ireland.

The choice of terms can be difficult. A case in point is the five-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, which includes entries for authors and works from the UK and the Republic of Ireland, an independent nation.

The editor in chief, David Scott Kastan, says in the preface that the choice of an adjective for the title was “vexing,” and explains why “British” was chosen instead of “English”:

“ ‘English’ would either limit the field too narrowly (that is, by restricting the focus to the writers of England) or not enough (that is, by opening it up to all writers writing in English),” Kastan writes.

The adjective “British,” he says, “accurately if sometimes uneasily accommodates the Welsh and Scottish entries. The Irish entries less comfortably fit under the rubric.”

So the term “British literature,” Kastan writes, “is admittedly a compromise,” and is intended “largely as a geographical rather than a political term.”

Consequently, Irish writers like Seamus Heaney, Jonathan Swift, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, and others are included in the encyclopedia as writers “participating in and substantially contributing to a common linguistic and cultural history with writers who with greater terminological precision are labeled ‘British.’ ”

As we hinted above, you’ll find that opinions on such terminology often differ. It’s been our experience, for example, that some people from England resent being referred to as “British” and insist on being called “English.” And we’ve heard from some Scots who don’t care to be referred to as “British” either.

We will leave all that for them to sort out. Meanwhile, a little etymology might be in order.

The short version of the story is that the word “English” is Germanic in origin and “British” is from Latin or Celtic or both.

“English” and “England” are derived from an ancient and long dead noun, Engle, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Engle was used in early Old English as a collective plural. It referred both to the Angles—a Germanic tribe that invaded Roman-occupied Britain in the fifth century and settled the region north of the Thames—and to the people of England.

The Angles were originally from Angeln, a region now known as Schleswig and located in northern Germany and southern Denmark.

The words “British” and “Britain” are derived from Latin by way of Celtic (or vice versa), and can trace their roots to the Roman occupation or even further back. The occupation extended into the southern part of what is now Scotland and lasted from the first through the fifth centuries.

“Britain” is from the classical Latin adjective Britannus, which the OED says is “perhaps ultimately [from] the Celtic base of Welsh pryd,” meaning “countenance, image, beauty, form.” (The Old Welsh for “Britain” was Priten.) 

Why, you’re probably asking, can’t we be more precise about the ultimate origin of  “British” and “Britain”? Did their ancestors come into Old English from Latin or from Celtic? Here’s what the OED has to say on the subject:

“At the time of contact with the Anglo-Saxons, south-eastern Britain was heavily Romanized and bilingualism with Latin must have been common. Therefore, although post-classical Latin Brittus (as well as classical Latin Britto and Brittannus ) appears ultimately to have a Celtic base …, it is unclear whether Latin or British forms (or both) were borrowed into Old English.”

The name “Britain” has been used since the Old English period, the OED says, “to denote the geographical area comprising England, Wales, and Scotland, with their dependencies (more fully called Great Britain).” More recently, the term is “also used for the British state or empire as a whole.”

We mentioned the term “British Isles” above, so let’s not keep it dangling.

It’s defined in the OED as “a group of islands, including Britain, Ireland (Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland), the Isle of Man, the Hebrides, the Orkney Islands, the Shetland Islands, the Scilly Isles, and the Channel Islands, lying off the coast of northwestern Europe, from which they are separated by the North Sea and the English Channel.”

The OED says the phrase “British Isles” is “generally regarded as a geographical or territorial description, rather than as one which designates a political entity.” The term, the OED adds, “is deprecated by some speakers in the Republic of Ireland.”

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We hope you’re not bored

Q: At the risk of being thought priggish, but prompted by your discussion of the proper prepositions for use with “squeamish,” what are your thoughts on the current popularity of the phrase “bored of”? Example: “I’m bored of this—let’s change the channel.”

A: When a preposition follows “bored,” it has traditionally been “with” or “by.” So the traditional construction would be “I’m bored with this” or “I’m bored by this.”

However, the phrase “bored of” is common now and some dictionaries have begun to treat it as standard English. Three dictionaries (Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, and Dictionary.com) include “bored of” without comment (that is, as standard) in their examples for the adjective “bored.”

In fact, Cambridge includes this separate “bored of” subentry in its entry for the adjective: “bored of   She was getting bored of listening to the same thing every day.”

Nevertheless, two other standard dictionaries, the Oxford Dictionary of English and the New Oxford American Dictionary, have identical usage notes that suggest “bored of” isn’t quite standard yet: 

“The traditional constructions for bored are bored by or bored with. The construction bored of emerged more recently, and is extremely common, especially in informal language. Although it is perfectly logical by analogy with constructions such as tired of, it is not fully accepted in standard English.”

The phrases “bored with” and “bored by” are still more popular, but “bored of” is a close third, according to a search with Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books.

The verb “bore,” the noun “bore,” and the adjective “bored” used in the tedious sense showed up in English in the 18th and 19th centuries, according to published references in the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED describes the etymologies of these three words as unknown.

John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins says the noun (meaning tiresomeness) suddenly appeared “on the scene as a sort of buzzword of the 1760s, from no known source.”

Ayto adds that “the explanation most commonly offered for its origin” is that the word “bore” that refers to tedium is derived from the much older word “bore” that refers to making  a hole.

The newer word, according to this theory, refers to being pierced with ennui, an explanation that Ayto describes as “not terribly convincing.”

Getting  back to your question, here are a couple of 18th-century examples from the OED in which “bored” is used with  prepositions:

“I pity my Newmarket friends, who are to be bored by these Frenchmen,” from a letter written in 1768 by the Earl of Carlisle.

“I have bored you sadly with this catastrophe,” from a letter written in 1774 by the first Lord Malmesbury.

No prepositions other than “with” or “by” appear in any of the OED’s citations.

The earliest example we’ve seen for “bored of,” the latecomer, is from a theater review in a Canadian newspaper:

“She has known nothing but extravagance, knows nothing of the value of money, and yet she admits to her household and the sycophantic smart set who surround her that she is ‘bored of it all’ ” (The Evening Record, Windsor, Ontario, Nov. 16, 1909).

Fowler’s Modern English Usage (4th ed.), edited by Jeremy Butterfield, says in its “bored” entry: “The normal constructions are with with or with by.” However, Fowler’s notes the use of “bored of,” in speech and online:

“A tendency has emerged in recent years, especially in non-standard English in Britain and abroad, to construe the verb with of, especially in conversation and on blogs, by analogy with tired of. The construction should be avoided in writing.”

Well, “bored of” may not be widely accepted as standard yet, but we suspect that it’s here to stay—in writing as well as in speech.

[Note: This post was updated on Feb. 13, 2024, and Nov. 14, 2013.]

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Behind the Iron Curtain

Q: A recent article in the New York Times Book Review says Winston Churchill coined the term “Iron Curtain.” Churchill, as you’ve written, is a notorious quote magnet, which prompts my question: Did he actually come up with the metaphor or is this another ersatz Churchillism?

A: Max Frankel, in a Nov. 25, 2012, review of Anne Applebaum’s book Iron Curtain, says Churchill “coined the metaphor in a message to President Truman a full year before he used it in public in Fulton, Mo.”

Frankel was referring to a May 12, 1945, telegram from Churchill to Truman, and a March 5, 1946, address by the British Prime Minister at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo.

You’re right that Churchill is a notorious quotation magnet, as we noted in a posting earlier this month.

An oft-quoted example (in one form or another) is the mythological response to a pedant who dared tinker with his writing: “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”

Did Churchill coin “Iron Curtain”? No, but his speech at Westminster College helped popularize the term as a metaphor for the divide between the former Soviet bloc and the rest of the world.

As it turns out, the phrase “iron curtain” first showed up in English more than a century before the Russian Revolution, in a much different context. But first let’s look at the figurative usage you’ve asked about.

The earliest example of the usage in The Yale Book of Quotations is by the English reformer Ethel Snowden, though she used the term two years before the Soviet Union was officially established.

In her 1920 book Through Bolshevik Russia, Snowden writes: “We were behind the ‘iron curtain’ at last!”

The Yale reference, edited by Fred R. Shapiro (who coined the term “quotation magnet”), cites two other early examples of the usage, and one of them preceded Churchill’s:

“At present an iron curtain of silence has descended, cutting off the Russian zone from the Western Allies.” (T. St. Vincent Trowbridge, a British army officer, quoted in the Oct. 21, 1945, issue of the Sunday Empire News.)

“Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend.” (Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, in the Feb. 25, 1945, issue of Das Reich.)

The Oxford English Dictionary cites another Goebbels example in which the German word vorhang is translated by the Times of London as “screen” instead of “curtain.” (Our two German dictionaries translate it as “curtain.”)

In the Feb. 23, 1945, issue of the Times, Goebbels is quoted as saying: “If the German people lay down their arms, the whole of eastern and south-eastern Europe, together with the Reich, would come under Russian occupation. Behind an iron screen [ein eiserner Vorhang] mass butcheries of peoples would begin.”

A letter to the editor of the New York Times Times Book Review, commenting on the review you asked about, noted on Dec. 16 that the Nazi propaganda magazine Signal used the phrase in a May 1943 article entitled Hinter dem Eisernen Vorhang (“Behind the Iron Curtain”).

As we mentioned above, the phrase “iron curtain” was around for more than a century before the Russian Revolution. In fact, it first showed up in English before Karl Marx was a gleam in his mother’s eye.

In the late 18th century, it was a theatrical term for a literal iron curtain that could be lowered between the stage and the auditorium.

A citation from the March 13, 1794, issue of the Times of London says “an iron curtain has been contrived, which, on such occasion [of fire], would compleatly prevent all communication between the audience and stage.”

By the early 19th century, the phrase was being used figuratively to refer to any impenetrable barrier, according to published references in the OED.

Here’s an example from the Earl of Munster’s 1819 journal of a trip across India: “On the 19th November we crossed the river Betwah, and as if an iron curtain had dropt between us and the avenging angel, the deaths diminished.”

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Hear Pat live today on WNYC

She’ll be on the Leonard Lopate Show around 1:20 PM Eastern time to discuss the English language and take questions from callers. Today’s topic: the language of Watergate, 40 years later. If you miss the program, you can listen to it on Pat’s WNYC page.

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Meantime, back at the ranch

Q: Since when has “meantime” become acceptable by itself? I’ve heard several news commentators begin sentences with “Meantime” instead of “In the meantime” or “Meanwhile.” I’ve also seen “meantime” instead of “meanwhile” on news tickers. I was taught in high school that this is incorrect. What happened?

A: The words “meantime” and “meanwhile” have identical meanings and can be used interchangeably, but most of the time we use them for different purposes.

Both are nouns as well as adverbs. When used as adverbs they appear alone, but when used as nouns they’re part of an adverbial phrase beginning “in the …” or “for the ….”

So all of these sentences are correct:

(1) “In the meantime, Herbie did his laundry.” (Here, “meantime” is a noun.)

(2) “In the meanwhile, Herbie did his laundry.” (Here, “meanwhile” is a noun.)

(3) “Meantime, Herbie did his laundry.” (“Meantime” is an adverb here.)

(4) “Meanwhile, Herbie did his laundry.” (“Meanwhile” is an adverb here.)

However, most people use #1 and #4 much more often than #2 and #3. For most of us, the preference is to use the noun “meantime” in the adverbial phrase (#1) and to use “meanwhile” when we want a stand-alone adverb (#4).

While those are the customary idiomatic usages, it’s not incorrect to go the other way—to use “meantime” all by itself and “meanwhile” as part of a phrase (“in the meanwhile,” “for the meanwhile”).

We’re not alone in saying this, by the way. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage comments: “The evidence shows that meantime and meanwhile have been used interchangeably as nouns since the 14th century and as adverbs since the 16th century.” (And that, we might add, is as long as they’ve been in the language.)

“The general observation that meantime is now the more common noun and meanwhile the more common adverb is undoubtedly true,” M-W continues, “but the adverb meantime and the noun meanwhile have been in continuous use for hundreds of year, and their use in current English is not rare.”

The usage guide’s advice: “There is no need to make a point of avoiding such usage.”

Another authority, R. W. Burchfield, writes in Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.): “The phrases in the meantime and in the meanwhile are still to some extent interchangeable, though the former is the more usual.”

As we said above, the definitions of “meantime” and “meanwhile” are identical.

The nouns mean “the time intervening between one particular period or event and another,” the OED says, while the adverbs mean “during the intervening time between one particular period or event and another; while or until a particular event occurs; at the same time; for the present.”

Their parallel histories are interesting to trace. Both words originally showed up as parts of longer phrases.

In its earliest uses, “meantime” was part of the phrase “in the meantime,” which the OED defines as “during or within the time intervening between a particular period or event and a subsequent one; while or until a (specified) period or event occurs.”

OED citations for the phrase date back to 1340, and it appears (as “in the mene tyme”) in a circa 1384 edition of the Wycliffe Bible.

This modern example is from Muriel Spark’s novel A Far Cry From Kensington (1988): “We thought … we would soon have to find another job. In the meantime we got on with the job we had.”

“For the meantime” was first recorded in 1480 (as “for the mene tyme”), and means “so long as a period of (intervening) time lasts; for the interim,” the OED says.

The OED’s most recent example is from a 1990 issue of the journal Modern Railways: “For the meantime he has a tremendous task, compounded by the managerial and organisational changes racking BR as it attempts to meld the Sectors and production.”

But “meantime” has been used as a stand-alone adverb since the late 16th century. Oxford’s earliest example is from Christopher Marlowe’s play Edward II, written sometime before 1593: “Mean time my lord of Penbrooke and my selfe Will to Newcastell heere, and gather head.”

The dictionary’s examples continue into modern times. The most recent is from BBC Top Gear Magazine (1999): “Ferrari is readying a fully convertible version of the fab 360 Modena…. Meantime, the 360 comes with a removable-panel sunshine roof option.”

Like “meantime,” the noun “meanwhile” first appeared as part of a phrase: “in the meanwhile” (dating to before 1375) and “for the meanwhile” (circa 1390).

This modern example is from a 1986 issue of the Daily Telegraph (London): “In the meanwhile, the Government is effectively admitting that state spending is out of control.”

And this one is from a 1993 novel, Will Self’s My Idea of Fun: “I didn’t know who or where to turn to. So for the meanwhile I continued with my ritualised observances.”

But like you, most people are more comfortable with “meanwhile” used solo as an adverb, a usage first recorded (as “mene whyle”) in 1440.

This elegant example is from D. H. Lawrence’s novel The Rainbow (1915): “Meanwhile the brook slid on coldly, chuckling to itself.”

And here’s one from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel Tender Is the Night (1934): “He … took a small beer on the terrace of the station buffet, meanwhile watching the little bug crawl down the eighty-degree slope of the hill.”

As you can see from all the examples, sometimes these adverbs and adverbial phrases appear at the beginning of sentences and sometimes later; sometimes they’re set off by commas and sometimes they’re not.

We can’t sign off without mentioning the phrase “meanwhile, back at the ranch,” which the OED says was “originally used in western stories and films, introducing a subsidiary plot; now chiefly humorous and in extended use.”

In Oxford’s earliest example, the phrase is in its infancy and lacks the word “back.” It’s from a classic of the genre, Zane Grey’s novel Riders of the Purple Sage (1912):

“Meantime, at the ranch, when Judkins’s news had sent Venters on the trail of the rustlers, Jane Withersteen led the injured man to her house.”

Fowler’s says the complete phrase (“Meanwhile, back at the ranch”) originally appeared as a subtitle in silent Western films and was later “promoted from caption to voice-over.”

The OED’s first published example of the complete phrase is from a 1940 issue of the Oakland Tribune: “Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Sandy’s dog, Pat, began to whine.”

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Quote magnets

Q: I enjoyed hearing Pat discuss quote magnets last month on WNYC. I have a favorite Mark Twain quote, and I’d like to know whether it’s genuine: “If you always tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

A: We can’t find any evidence that Mark Twain ever wrote this. We can’t find it in any of his works, and the Internet websites that say he wrote it don’t say where.

If you can’t look something up to verify it at the source, it’s probably not true. And as Pat said on that WNYC program, Twain never said a lot of the things attributed to him.

In fact, Twain is a good example of a quotation magnet, a term coined by Fred Shapiro, author of The Yale Book of Quotations, for people often credited with saying things they never said.

When a quote is catchy but of unknown or obscure origin, it tends to attach itself to some famous person, like Twain, Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Lincoln, or Dorothy Parker.

In an article in the July-August 2011 issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine, Shapiro calls Twain “the great American quotation magnet” because “any folksy or mildly satiric line tends to be pinned on him.”

The quote you mention is found in many different versions and has been attributed to more than one person, which leads us to think that it should be chalked up to that great fount of platitudes, Anonymous.

We found an early version—“If you always tell the truth, you will never have to fix up excuses”—among a list of anonymous “Ironical Ifs” printed in the Bay City (Michigan) Times-Press on Nov. 19, 1898. The same list was reprinted the following year in the Muskegon (Michigan) Chronicle.

Twain was alive and kicking then and was wildly popular. If those newspapers had been quoting him, they no doubt would have said so.

Over the years, the quotation morphed into many different forms. One version showed up in an African-American newspaper, the Negro Star, of Wichita, Kansas, on Feb. 8, 1952.

In an opinion column devoted to the importance of accuracy, the writer, Ruth Taylor, quoted “a machinist friend” of hers as saying, “If you always tell the truth, then you never have to remember what you said before.”

Similar versions of the quote have been posthumously attributed to Sam Rayburn, the longtime Speaker of the House of Representatives, who died in 1961.

According to a United Press International dispatch that ran in the Chicago Tribune in July 1967, Rayburn “was fond of saying: ‘If you always tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said.’ ”

And in 1978, the Washingtonian magazine quoted Rayburn as saying, “Son, always tell the truth. Then you’ll never have to remember what you said the last time.”

George McGovern apparently made a similar observation. In a New Yorker article in May 1972, when McGovern was running for president, Shirley MacLaine is quoted as saying that McGovern “never gets tired.”

“I asked him how he did it,” MacLaine says, “and he told me that the secret is telling the truth. If you always tell the truth you don’t have to use up energy trying to remember what you said in other places.”

Yet another version appears in David Mamet’s play Glengarry Glen Ross (1982). In Act Two, the character Roma is giving advice on how to talk to the police: “Always tell the truth. It’s the easiest thing to remember.”

Yet other versions appear on the Internet, some attributed to Twain, some to Rayburn, and some to “legend.” Versions differ, to the effect that if you tell the truth, you won’t have to remember “your words,” or “what you said,” or “your lies.”

As for Twain, he did write, “When in doubt, tell the truth,” according to The Yale Book of Quotations. The quote is from Following the Equator, chapter 2, “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar” (1897).

If Twain was the “great American quotation magnet,” then Churchill was the great British one. The tendency for wisecracks to attach themselves to Churchill is so common that it’s been given a name of its own: “Churchillian drift.”

As Pat mentioned on the program, Lady Astor supposedly told Churchill at a dinner party, “If I were married to you, I’d put poison in your coffee.” Churchill’s alleged reply: “If I were married to you, I’d drink it.”

According to legend that exchange took place in the 1920s, but Shapiro has traced it to a joke line from a 1900 edition of The Chicago Tribune.

Similarly, there’s no truth to the old story about someone who wanted to “fix” one of Churchill’s sentences because it ended with a preposition.

There are many versions of what Churchill is supposed to have written in a marginal note. The most common: “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”

While we’re at it, Churchill never described Britain and the United States as “two nations divided by a common language.” We’ve written about these last two legends in our book about language myths, Origins of the Specious.

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Can a fruit be a vegetable?

Q: You pushed one of my buttons when you made the claim that squash is a fruit, not a vegetable. I hear the same thing about tomatoes, usually accompanied by some level of know-it-all smugness. Simply put, the words “fruit” and “vegetable” are not mutually exclusive.

A: You’re right, and we’ve fixed our posting, which discusses whether the “squash” that means to crush is related to the “squash” that one eats.

As you say, something can be a fruit in the botanical sense as well as a vegetable in the culinary sense. It all depends on whether one is using the vocabulary of the kitchen or of the garden.

In the garden, a fruit is the edible reproductive part of a seed plant, while a vegetable is any edible part of a plant.

In the kitchen, a fruit is any edible part of a plant with a sweet flavor, while a vegetable is any edible part of a plant that’s spicy, salty, or otherwise pungent.

Interestingly, the word “fruit” referred to edible “vegetable products in general” when it entered English in the 12th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The earliest OED citation is from the Lambeth Homilies, a collection of sermons dating from around 1175: “Me saweth sed on ane time and gedereth thet frut on other time.” (In this and subsequent quotations, we’ve changed the letters eth and thorn to “th.”)

It wasn’t until the 13th century that the word “fruit” took on its reproductive sense, which the OED defines as the “edible product of a plant or tree, consisting of the seed and its envelope.”

The earliest Oxford citation for this new meaning is from the Ancrene Riwle (circa 1225), which refers to a tree that “bereth swete frut.”

Although the Old French noun fruit is the immediate source of our English word, the term is ultimately derived from the Latin verb frui (to enjoy).

The noun “vegetable” (from the post-classical Latin vegetabilia) first showed up in English in the late 15th century, according to OED citations.

The word initially referred to “any living organism that is not an animal,” Oxford says, but it has come to mean “one belonging to the plant kingdom.”

The first OED citation is in a translation from around 1484 of Secretum Secretorium, a medieval treatise on, among other things, astrology, alchemy, and magic:

“Euiry thyng wantyng lyght of the nombyr of vegetabyllis is attribute to Saturne.”

Thanks for catching our mistake and keeping us on our toes. And thanks for giving us a chance to write about these sweet and savory edibles.

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All for one, and one for all

 

Q: I’m editing a magazine piece and I’m stuck on whether to change “is” to “are” in these two sentences: “All we have is our bodies. All we own is ourselves.” I feel as if it should be “are,” but it sounds awkward to have “our” follow “are.” I feel sound is more important than grammar here. Is a singular verb absolutely wrong?

A: The short answer is that the verb “be” in both those sentences should be singular: “All we have is our bodies. All we own is ourselves.”

In this kind of sentence, “all” is a collective pronoun that means “the only thing” or “everything”. And when it’s used with a form of the verb “be,” the verb is always singular—“is,” not “are.”

This is true even if the verb is followed by a plural complement like “bodies.” Or like “teeth,” as in “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.”

We’re not talking about the adjective “all,” which can be used in either a singular or a plural construction (“all boys are” … “all food is”). And we’re not talking about another use of “all”—the pronoun that can be either singular or plural (“all of the boys are” … “all the food is”).

Here we’re talking about the pronoun “all” in a different construction: it’s not followed by “of” or “the,” and it stands for a totality of something.

Theodore M. Bernstein wrote about this use of “all” in The Careful Writer (1965):

“All is an adjective that sometimes becomes a pronoun, as in, ‘All I know is what I read in the newspapers,’ or as in the line from the one-time popular song, ‘All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.’ In both these instances the word is singular.”

As he explains, “When all is equivalent to the only thing or everything, it takes a singular verb.”

Other authorities agree. Garner’s Modern American Usage (3rd ed.) says this use of “all” as “a collective abstraction” requires a singular verb.

Garner’s gives this sentence from a newspaper as an example: “All she wants is people to be touched by the gifts she believes God has given her.”

The usage guide adds: “Writers sometimes err, especially when a collective all has a plural complement in the predicate—e.g., ‘All she needs are [read is] the open-house listings in the Sunday Real Estate section.”

Fowler’s Modern English Usage (rev. 3rd ed.) puts it this way: “When all is the subject of the verb to be followed by a plural complement, the linking verb is expressed in the singular.”

Fowler’s gives these examples: “All I saw was fields” and “In some sense, all we have is the scores.”

We briefly touched on the subject of “all is” versus “all are” in 2006, but back then we were discussing a different use of “all”—as part of a noun phrase for something concrete, as in “all the milk” or “all the cookies.”

As we mentioned above, such “all” phrases can be either singular or plural, as in “All the milk is fresh but all the cookies are stale.” In that example, “all” is part of two noun phrases, one clearly singular (“all the milk”) and one clearly plural (“all the cookies”).

So when “all” is part of a noun phrase for something concrete, there’s no problem determining whether the phrase as a whole is singular or plural.

Even when “all” isn’t part of a phrase, it often implies either a singular noun or a plural one, as in “all [of the dinner] was delightful” or “all [of the children] are well.”

But again, if “all” stands for “everything” or “the only thing,” then it’s singular, as in “All he ever wants is meat and potatoes.” It might help to remember the familiar expression “All is well.”

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When the past is present

Q: Why do authors, when quoting an important but long-dead figure, usually say things like “Tolstoy writes” and “Jesus says” instead of “Tolstoy wrote” and “Jesus said”?

 A: When authors quote someone else’s words, they often use the present tense. This convention is sometimes called the “literary present,” and it’s not confined to long-dead figures.

You’ll see it in contemporary literary criticism and in other writing about authors both living and dead: “As Tacitus says …” or “In his earlier novels, Roth writes …” or “Here’s how Alan Furst describes ….”

The literary present is especially common in writings about literature, but the literature need not be fictional.

For example, the works of a historian can be referred to in the same way: “In The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman writes …” or “Robert Caro portrays Johnson as ….”

Why the present tense? Because a literary work—no matter when it was created—presents itself to the reader in an unchanging present, as if it were being written as we read.

In other words, such a work is eternally alive to us as we experience it. And an author who writes about the work may use the literary present to convey this sense of immediacy.

However, when putting a literary work in a specific historical time, the past tense is generally used. “When Shakespeare wrote The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Elizabeth’s court was ….”

We’ve written previously on the blog about a similar convention, the “historical present,” where the present tense is used to narrate events in the past.

We came up with this example to illustrate the historical present in action:

“The walls of Troy are still standing after a 10-year siege by the Greeks. Then Odysseus and his best warriors hide inside a giant wooden horse and trick the Trojans into dragging it inside the gates. At night, the Greeks slip out and let in the rest of their army.”

Both the literary present and the historical present are available to writers who want to create a feeling of immediacy. These devices aren’t mandatory though; they’re simply tools a good writer should know how to use.

An author might want to create a different effect altogether by using the past tense: “Hemingway really knew the score when he wrote …” or “Napoleon made a grave mistaken when he ….”

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The whole six yards?

[Note: An updated post about “the whole nine yards” appeared on Dec. 14, 2016.]

Once more, we interrupt our regular programming for an update on “the whole nine yards,” an expression whose origin has eluded etymologists for decades.

In our last bulletin, just four months ago, we said that word sleuths had traced the expression back to the mid-1950s, when it appeared in two articles in a Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife publication.

But the references—“So that’s the whole nine-yards” and “These guys go the whole nine yards”—provided no clue to the phrase’s origin. Even the author of the articles said he had no inside information.

Now Fred R. Shapiro, author of the Yale Book of Quotations, has announced new findings. In the January-February issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine, he says several references to “the whole six yards” (yes six, not nine) have turned up in print from 1912 to 1921.

And the six-yard version of the expression meant exactly what the nine-yard version does—the whole extent of something. What this suggests, Shapiro says, is that “the whole six yards” eventually became “the whole nine yards.”

As he explains: “Anyone who studies quotations and phraseology often sees a phenomenon I hereby dub ‘phrase inflation’: in expressions that use a number meant to be impressive, that number is likely to grow over time.”

He cites the example of “cloud nine,” a phrase that originally appeared as “cloud seven” and “cloud eight.” Likewise, the expression “Let a hundred flowers bloom” now usually appears as “Let a thousand flowers bloom.”

His research was also reported in an article in the New York Times.

So what about the phrase’s original meaning? As Shapiro writes in his article, “Still, we have no explanation of why something six or nine yards long is being alluded to—of what was originally six or nine yards long.”

“Perhaps,” he adds, “the reference was never a specific length of a specific thing, but only a colorful locution vaguely signifying something very long. We can now at least trace the inflation that apparently led to the final formulation.”

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What kind of abbreviation is K-9?

Q: I’m curious about the term “K-9” that appears on the doors of LAPD patrol cars that carry dogs. Is there a proper term for this type of word shortening?

A: “K-9” is obviously an abbreviation, because it’s a short form of a longer word, “canine.” But what kind of abbreviation is it?

Two common kinds of abbreviations are the “acronym” and the “initialism,” which differ in the way they’re spoken.

Since acronyms are pronounced as words and initialisms are pronounced as letters, it would appear that “K-9” could be either one. It sounds just like “canine,” and just like the individual characters “K” and 9.”

But in our opinion, it’s technically neither acronym nor initialism.

An acronym, as we’ve written on our blog, is a word formed from elements of a longer word or phrase. But “canine” doesn’t include a “K” or a “9.”

And an initialism, as we’ve also written, is a series of letters formed from a longer word of phrase. But again, “K” and “9” aren’t part of the unabbreviated word.

We seem to be in a special category here. The “K” and the “9” merely echo sounds found in the word “canine” but don’t stand for anything resembling the longer word.

We’ve at times come across the term “pseudo-acronym,” and “K-9” might be one of those.

No dictionaries that we’ve found define “pseudo-acronym,” and there are conflicting definitions on websites. Here’s one from a paper on acronyms published by the US Department of Homeland Security:

“Pseudo-acronym: A catchall for variations and embellishments, such as creating an acronym from other acronyms (IT Acquisition Center—ITAC) or mixing abbreviations and acronyms (deoxyribonucleic acid—DNA) and ignoring words in a series just to make a pronounceable word (Princeton University Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials–PRISM), or pronouncing vowels that are not there (Guantanamo—GTMO, pronounced Gitmo) to coin a word.”

So, according to Homeland Security, you’d be on safe ground if you called “K-9” a pseudo-acronym. It’s definitely a variation or embellishment, and certainly the canines themselves won’t object.

By the way, we usually see “K-9” with a hyphen, but not always. The Los Angeles Police Department, for example, hyphenates the term on patrol cars, but usually drops the hyphen on the home page of its canine unit.

The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t have an entry for “K-9,” but it includes the term in a citation for the noun “superintelligence.”

A Sept. 7, 1950, article in the Olean (NY) Times Herald uses the term in describing military dogs: “Super-intelligence, willingness and reliability under gunfire are requirements for the K-9 Corps.”

We found a similar use of the term in the New York Times. A Jan. 31, 1943, article describes a demonstration at the Westminster Kennel Club’s dog show “by members of the K-9 Corps—dogs now at work with the Army and Coast Guard.”

The Army’s War Dog Program, started by the Quartermaster Corps on March 13, 1942, was popularly referred to as the “K-9 Corps.”

The K-9 Corps undoubtedly helped popularize the term, though the usage was around long before the War Dog Program began.

A search of Google Books, for example, found an 1876 issue of Hallberger’s Illustrated Magazine that refers to “the various ways of rendering ‘Canine Castle,’ such as ‘K-nine Castle,’ and, better still, ‘K.9 Castle.’ ”

(Canine Castle was a kennel in London owned by Bill George, a celebrated 19th-century breeder of bulldogs.)

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A humbling victory?

Q: Amid the spate of post-election coverage, a lot of politicians have described their victories as “humbling” experiences. My dictionary doesn’t support this use of “humble.” Is the usage correct?

A: To be “humble” is to be lowered. The word comes down to us from Latin, in which humilem means lowly or insignificant and humus means the ground or earth.

So one is “humbled,” or has a “humbling” experience, when reminded of one’s insignificance or lowliness.

And you’re right—we hear “humble” a lot at the end of election cycles. “Humble” is the opposite of proud, and many successful candidates say they’re “humbled” by the experience, or “proud yet humble” to find they’ve been elected.

This isn’t necessarily a misuse of the word “humble.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) defines the adjective “humble” this way:

“1. Marked by meekness or modesty in behavior, attitude, or spirit; not arrogant or prideful. 2. Showing deferential or submissive respect: a humble apology. 3. Low in rank, quality, or station; unpretentious or lowly: a humble cottage.”

So the use of “humble” by a victorious politician isn’t incorrect, if he means he’s proud of winning yet humbled by the responsibilities of office. But we have to say there’s something disingenuous about this “proud yet humble” formula.

It’s all too easy to call yourself “humble” when you’re on top. In fact, it’s really the loser who’s lowered or humbled, not the winner. But rarely does the loser say he’s been “humbled” by his loss. Such is politics.

The adjective “humble” has been around since about 1250, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. As we said, it means the opposite of proud or exalted—lowly, modest, unpretentious, of low esteem.

It’s often applied to people, as in phrases like “humble folk,” “humble suitor,” and “humble servant.” But it’s applied to things too, as in “humble thanks,” “my humble opinion,” “humble bed,” “humble origins,” “humble abode,” and so on.

The adjective gave rise to the verb “humble,” first recorded in the late 1300s.

The verb first meant “to render oneself humble” or “to assume a humble attitude,” as in bowing or doing obeisance, the OED says.

Later the verb came to mean “to render humble or meek in spirit” or “to cause to think more lowly of oneself,” the OED says.

An example is this passage from Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona (early 1590s): “Love’s a mighty Lord, / And hath so humbled me.”

Another meaning of the verb is “to lower in dignity, position, condition, or degree; to bring low, abase.”

The OED’s first citation for this sense of the word comes from William Caxton’s 1484 translation of Aesop’s Fables: “The prowde shall be allway humbled.”

Another example is from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (1594): “All humbled on your knees.”

If the word “humiliate” occurs to you here, there’s a reason. It has the same Latin ancestry as “humble”—the Latin humilis, which is also derived from humus.

“Humiliate,” first recorded in the 1500s, means to humble or make low, and originally also meant to abase or prostrate oneself.

The earlier noun “humility” (circa 1315) originally meant the quality of being humble, “the opposite of pride or haughtiness,” says the OED.

No winning candidate wants to appear haughty or full of pride—unless of course the pride is leavened by “humility” or a sense of being “humbled.”

But one point is worth making. You can’t feel humbled—that is, brought low—unless you have a rather high opinion of yourself in the first place. This reminds us of an anecdote.

In 1969, the Israeli politician Simcha Dinitz spoke to the New York Times about Golda Meir, who had just become Israel’s Prime Minister: “She is always telling people: ‘Don’t be so humble—you’re not that great.’ ”

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Thanks for collocating!

Q: I’m taking an online course in emergency management and I’ve come across the word “collocate” used to mean share, as in, “a Unified Command to collocate facilities.” When I looked the word up, however, this usage seems incorrect. Please educate me!

A: The Oxford English Dictionary defines the verb “collocate” as to set in a place, place side by side, or arrange.

The verb entered English in the 16th century (first recorded in 1548, according to the OED), but its ultimate source is the Latin col- (together) plus locare (to place).

Oxford says a specialized meaning in linguistics showed up in the mid-20th century: “To place (a word) with (another word) so as to form a collocation.”

A “collocation” is a group of two or more words that often appear together: “green” and “envy,” for example, or “blond” and “hair.”

The definitions in the two standard dictionaries we use the most—The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.)—agree with those in the OED.

It would appear that the language used in your emergency management course stretches the meaning a bit.

However, this isn’t all that unusual in the academic world, where educators often prefer a bureaucratic-sounding word like “collocate” to a simple one like “share.”

Thanks for sharing this—or, as the people teaching that course might say, collocating this!

[Note: We’ve written a new post that updates and expands on this item.]

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Hypercritical vs. hypocritical

Q: I was reading a posting on the religious blog Patheos about critics who are both “hypercritical” and “hypocritical,” which got me to thinking about those two words. They look like antonyms, but being “hypercritical” isn’t the opposite of being “hypocritical.” Are these terms related?

A: You’re right. The two adjectives aren’t antonyms. Someone who’s “hypercritical” is excessively critical while someone who’s “hypocritical” is insincere. But as that posting suggests, a “hypercritical” person can be “hypocritical.”

Are the words “hypercritical” and “hypocritical” related? Yes, if you go back far enough.

The English prefixes “hyper” and “hypo” are derived from the Greek prepositions hyper (over) and hypo (under). The “critical” part of these words ultimately comes from the classical Greek verb krinein (to judge, decide, etc.).

So someone who’s “hypercritical” is overly judgmental. But why, you’re probably wondering, is a “hypocritical” person insincere?

In ancient Greek, according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, hypokrinesthai meant to play a part, hypokrisis was acting on the stage, and hypokrites was an actor.

How did the classical terms hypo (under) and krinein (to judge) give the Greeks the terms for act, acting, and actor?

The etymology is fuzzy here, but one possibility is that the Greeks recognized that actors had to subordinate their own judgment to play a role.

Now how did hypokrisis, the Greek term for acting, give English “hypocrisy,” a negative word for professing beliefs you don’t really have?

It turns out that in classical times hypokrisis also had an unpleasant odor to it, according to Chambers. In addition to meaning acting, the term referred to pretense and dissimulation—that is, insincerity.

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Doing the math on “aftermath”

Q: We were watching the news the other morning when the title card on the screen said “Sandy Aftermath.” My husband turned to me and asked: “Does the ‘math’ in ‘aftermath’ have anything to do with mathematics?” Could you enlighten us?

A: The “math” that’s part of “aftermath” is an entirely different noun from the one in “mathematics.” In fact, they came into English from two different routes—one from old Germanic sources and the other from Latin.

“Aftermath” got its start as an agricultural term associated with mowing. You might say its literal meaning is “after-mowing.”

The word entered the language in the 15th century as a compound of the prefix “after-” plus the noun “math,” which once meant a mowing or the portion of a crop that’s been mowed.

This sense of “math” is very old, dating back to Old English and beyond, to ancient Germanic sources.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the Old Saxon word maddag meant mowing day, and the Old High German mada is ultimately from the same Germanic base that gave us the word “mow.”

When first recorded in writing in the late 1400s, the OED says, “aftermath” meant “a second crop or new growth of grass (or occas. another plant used as feed) after the first has been mown or harvested.”

This example from 1601 is a good illustration of its use: “The grasse will be so high growne, that a man may cut it down and have a plentifull after-math for hay.” (From Philemon Holland’s translation of Pliny’s Natural History.)

The agricultural sense of “aftermath” has survived into modern times, as illustrated by this citation from Heather Smith Thomas’s book Getting Started With Beef and Dairy Cattle (2005): “They can’t graze cornfield aftermath where herbicides or pesticides were used.”

But today “aftermath” is more familiar in its figurative sense, defined by the OED as “a period or state of affairs following a significant event, esp. when that event is destructive or harmful.”

The figurative usage dates back to the mid-17th century. The OED’s earliest citation is from Robert Fletcher’s 1656 translation of Martial’s Ex Otio Negotium: “Rash Lover speak what pleasure hath Thy Spring in such an Aftermath?”

Here’s another figurative example, from the writer David Hartley Coleridge’s Essays and Marginalia (1851): “The aftermath of the great rebellion.”

We know you’re still wondering about the other “math,” the one that’s about numbers. This “math,” first recorded in 1847, is an American short form of “mathematics.” The British shortened form, “maths,” was first recorded in 1911.

The long form, “mathematics,” was first recorded in the mid-16th century, according to the OED, and developed from the earlier adjective “mathematic,” which dates from the 1300s.

Originally, as the OED says, “mathematics” was a collective term for “geometry, arithmetic, and certain physical sciences involving geometrical reasoning, such as astronomy and optics.”

Later it came to mean “the science of space, number, quantity, and arrangement, whose methods involve logical reasoning and usually the use of symbolic notation, and which includes geometry, arithmetic, algebra, and analysis.” To most of us, that means numbers.

We owe “mathematics” to Latin (mathematica), which got it from Greek (mathematikos). The Greek is derived from the noun mathema (science, learning, knowledge) which is related to the verb manthanein (to learn). The word “polymath” (a person of great and varied learning) has a similar Greek etymology.

As John Ayto writes in his Dictionary of Word Origins, etymologically the word “mathematics” means “something learned.” He points out that “from earliest times the notion of ‘science’”—mathema in Greek—“was bound up with that of ‘numerical reasoning.’”

The ultimate source of the Greek mathematikos, according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, is an ancient Indo-European compound reconstructed as mens-dhe.

The first element means mind and the second means direct or toward, so the compound means “direct the mind (toward),” Chambers says.

This compound, the dictionary adds, has filtered down into many languages, including Sanskrit (medha, wisdom) and Avestan (mazda, memory). In case you’re wondering, Avestan is the language of Zoroastrian scripture.

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More about caring less

[Note: This post was updated on March 19, 2021.]

Q: How did “I could care less” (US) and “I couldn’t care less” (UK) come to mean the same thing? Is the American version a shortened form of something like “See if I could care less”? (I’m an emeritus professor of education at a British university.)

A: “I could care less,” which we’ve written about before on our blog, is an extremely common idiom—almost a cliché—even though many English speakers strenuously deplore it. And it wasn’t first recorded in the US, as we’ll show later.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes “could care less” as a US colloquialism dating from the 1960s that means the same thing as “couldn’t care less” but omits the negative element. However, earlier examples have been spotted in Canadian and Australian newspapers of the 1940s.

The earliest example reported so far is from an article published in the Ottawa Evening Citizen, July 20, 1948:

“The idea is that because their frost comes earlier (if it does) the Gatineau goers are a more rugged, tougher breed than people who stick around in Ottawa. I could care less!” (Sightings were reported in separate, nearly simultaneous postings to the ADS-L, the mailing list of the American Dialect Society, by Ben Zimmer and Garson O’Toole on March 9, 2021.)

And your hosts at Grammarphobia found several examples in a letter written in February 1949 in Australia. Here are some excerpts from the letter, which was read in divorce court testimony in Perth:

“I did love you with all the passion and love that is possible of a man (if you can call me a man in your idea) and now I could care less.”  … “But at the present time I could care less.” … “I don’t care how you take it, I could care less.” … “I’m writing how I feel and I could car [sic] less. Goodnight Zoe and goodbye if you wish it—I could care less.” (The Mirror, Perth, June 28, 1952.)

The news article examines a case tried in 1950 in which a woman who lived near Melbourne and taught English was granted a divorce on grounds of desertion. The February 1949 letter, which her husband wrote after he’d left her, was entered into evidence.

In the 1950s and ’60s, published uses of “could care less” became more common. Here are two from the mid-’50s:

“He received the most indifferent treatment which a government department can hand out. He hasn’t heard from the department since. Apparently they could care less.” (The Chilliwack Progress, Chilliwack, B.C,  Jan. 6, 1954; the finding was first reported by Mark Liberman on the Language Log.)

“The National League clubs have always shied from pitching left-handers against the Dodgers, but Casey Stengel could care less about the Dodgers’ reputation for beating southpaws.” (The Washington Post, Sep. 25, 1955; the sighting was first reported by Ben Zimmer.)

This example, which we found in a 1960 issue of the Sourdough Crock, published by the California Folklore Society, shows just how familiar “could care less” had become by then:

“Dear Uncle Flabby: I get sick and tired of hearing people say, ‘I could care less,’ which doesn’t mean what they mean to mean at all. If they would only stop and think about it, they would know that what they are trying to say is, ‘I couldn’t care less,’ which means ‘I don’t care at all.’ ” (The comment appears in a column by the pseudonymous Flabby Van Boring.)

Here’s another California sighting from the same year: “People who ordinarily could care less about a symphony orchestra have been known to see him [Leonard Bernstein], if only out of curiosity. While they are there, they are exposed to music at its best.” (An article about a New York Philharmonic concert in San Diego, published in the Coronado Eagle and Journal, Sept. 8, 1960.)

The OED’s earliest citation is from a 1966 issue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “My husband is a lethargic, indecisive guy who drifts along from day to day. If a bill doesn’t get paid he could care less.”

We quoted so many earlier examples only to show that “could care less” was more widespread, both geographically and sociologically, than has been assumed.

But here we’d like to speculate a bit about its origins, if you don’t mind.

This common idiomatic phrase—amounting to a negative statement without a negative element—might have grown from an earlier usage in which the negation comes before the phrase. This earlier usage, which is quite literal, appears in both British and American writing.

In this mid-19th-century example, for instance, the negative “few” appears before the “could care less” part: “Few men in the diocese could care less who are the lucky recipients of Church gifts.” From an article in The Times by “S. G. O.” (the Rev. Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne), London, July 30, 1862.

And in this American example, the negation is implied by an “if” used conditionally: “As to profits, if our farmers could care less for the comforts of themselves and their families … they could now with their present facilities, no doubt double their incomes.” From a letter by the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, published in The Caledonian (St. Johnsbury, Vt.), July 18, 1889, and widely reprinted.

Later examples are plentiful: “no man could care less” (1900); “few could care less” (1915); “no one could care less” (1917); “nobody could care less” (1925); “neither of them could care less” (1954); “I don’t believe they could care less” (1955), and so on.

Perhaps it’s not much of a jump from “nobody could care less” to “they could care less.” Just a thought. 

As for the fuller version of the phrase, “couldn’t (or could not) care less,” it apparently dates from the early 1940s.

The earliest example we know of was also found by the intrepid Ben Zimmer. It’s from a story, “The Coup of Mr. Marsland Faille,” by Marcel Wallenstein, printed in the Kansas City Star, Jan. 25, 1942:

“ ‘Why, Mr. Pennington, I think you’re funny.’ ‘I mean it. You see, I’ve lost.’ ‘Have you?’ she said, and poured herself another drink. ‘Yes, I have.’ ‘I couldn’t care less,’ responded Miss Mond lightly.”

The usage, both contracted and uncontracted, began showing up with great frequency in the later 1940s, in both the US and the UK.

The OED’s earliest example for either form—contracted or not—is the title of a book, I Couldn’t Care Less (1946), by the English air transport pilot Anthony Phelps. We found one from the same year in an American newspaper: “the mayor’s campaign fund to preserve the G. O. P. in city hall is being given the bird by a number of city employees who couldn’t care less.” (The Indianapolis Times, March 21, 1946.)

You aren’t alone in suggesting that “I could care less” may be a shortened  form of something like “See if I could care less.” The usage has been discussed to death by academic linguists, and theories abound.

Some have analyzed the abbreviated idiom as deliberately ironic or sarcastic. Yet others disagree, pointing out that even if it did begin sarcastically, it’s certainly not sarcastic anymore.

And as the linguist Arika Okrent has written, the “could care less” / “couldn’t care less” partnership isn’t unique. Think of “you know squat” (which really means “you don’t know squat”),  and “that’ll teach you to mess with me” (meaning “that’ll teach you not to mess with me”).

Whatever its origins, we see nothing wrong with using “I could care less” as long as the user is aware that many fussbudgets still view it as an atrocity—or, as Steven Pinker has called it, “an alleged atrocity.”

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Election daze

Q: I was just reading your post about “lectititude” and I’m now determined to bring back the word “lectory.” I’m thinking of a reading room with a nice chair and a sign saying “Lectory.” Anyway, towards the end of your post you mention the obsolete word “lection,” which looks incredibly similar to “election.” Are they related?

A: We like the idea of a lectory too. We picture an oak-paneled room with a fireplace, a comfy overstuffed chair, a good reading lamp—and books, of course. A nice bottle of wine wouldn’t hurt, either.

As we wrote in our Oct. 26 post, the Latin verb legere (to read) has given us many words, including a couple that are now obsolete—“lectory” (a place for reading) and “lection” (the act of reading).

Yes, “lection” sounds a lot like “election.” But “election” has nothing to do with reading. It means the act of choosing, and it’s descended from the Latin verb eligere (to pick out or select).

Nevertheless, you’re right to suspect that there’s a link here.

As the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology and John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins explain, eligere is a compound verb, formed from ex- (out) and ligere, an alternate form of legere. And another meaning of legere, besides to read, is to gather or choose.

So eligere is a cousin of legere.

In fact, it’s not unknown for compound Latin verbs to be spelled both ways, ending in –ligere as well as –legere, as the Oxford English Dictionary explains.

For example, the OED says the compound Latin verb meaning to neglect has two spellings, negligere and neglegere. “The reason for preference for -ligere or -legere in compounds of legere is not always apparent,” the editors say.

Getting back to “lection” and “election,” it seems that they too have been conflated in the past.

According to the OED, “lection” was briefly used long ago as a version of “election” in the sense of “the formal choosing of a person for an office.”

Oxford has four examples of this usage, including one from the records of the Scottish burgh of Peebles (1462): “Ilke man be his awn vos gaf thair lectioun to the sayd Schyr John.” (“Each man by his own voice gave their lection to the said Sir John.”)

The usage seems to have died out in the 16th century, since the OED’s most recent citation is from 1535.

Besides “lection” and “election,” the Latin verbs legere and eligere are at the roots of many familiar English words, some to do with reading and some to do with being picky (or not).

These words include “lectern,” “lesson,” “lecture,” “legible,” “legend” (literally, something read), “elegant,” “eligible,” “elite,” “collect,” “neglect,” and “select.”

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Never forget! Never again!

Q: Since the Newtown tragedy, I’ve wanted to post “Never forget” on my Facebook page, but I couldn’t trace its origin. Can you help?

A: People have used the phrase “never forget” for hundreds of years. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary, for example, dates from 1647, and we expect that a thorough search would find examples that are centuries older.

But you’re obviously wondering about the use of the phrase as an interjection in reference to a mass killing. Many people believe “Never forget!” was first used this way in referring to the Holocaust.

We can’t confirm that, but we have found an example of that usage from soon after World War II. As part of Allied de-Nazification efforts, an exhibition entitled “Never Forget” opened on Sept. 14, 1946, in Vienna.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has a photo on its website from the brochure for the exhibition, with the words “Never forget!” in German: Niemals vergessen!

The website of the Austrian National Library says the exhibition, seen by 840,000 people, was organized by the graphic artist Victor Theodor Slama at the suggestion of the Soviet Union.

Also in 1946, the writer Howard Fast and the artist William Gropper published a book about the Holocaust entitled Never to Forget: The Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Since then, the interjection “Never forget!” has been used often in reference to other genocides and mass killings, though most of the examples we’ve found date from the last couple of decades, especially since 9/11.

A June 25, 2005, headline in the New York Times, for example, describes the feelings of students who had to flee Stuyvesant High School as the nearby Twin Towers burned: “For This Class, ‘Remember When’ Mingles With ‘Never Forget.’ ”

“Never again!” is another phrase that’s often used in reference to the Holocaust and other atrocities. But when it was first used as an interjection in the 19th century, the phrase had nothing to do with genocides and massacres.

The OED’s earliest published reference to the phrase as an interjection is from The Pickwick Papers (1837), Charles Dickens’s first novel. The phrase appears twice in this exchange between a husband and his dying wife:

“Rouse yourself, my dear girl. Pray, pray do. You will revive yet.”

“Never again, George; never again.”

But when was the phrase first used in its genocidal sense?

The historian Raul Hilberg, a Holocaust scholar, has said prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp put up signs reading “never again” in many languages after they were freed by the Allies, but we’re not convinced.

Hilberg made his comments in an interview with the journal Logos shortly before his death in 2007, but he didn’t mention the signs in his three-volume history of the Holocaust, The Destruction of the European Jews (1961).

The earliest use of the phrase in reference to the Holocaust, according to the Yale Book of Quotations, is in Mein Kampf, a 1961 documentary about the Holocaust by the German-born Swedish director Erwin Leiser.

In the documentary, originally entitled Den Blodiga Tiden (Swedish for The Bloody Time), the narrator says at the end: “It must never happen again—never again.”

The phrase also became the slogan of the militant Jewish Defense League, which was founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1968. Kahane was shot to death in 1990.

The word “holocaust” has an interesting etymology. When it first showed up in English in the early 1300s, a “holocaust” was a “sacrifice wholly consumed by fire; a whole burnt offering,” according to the OED. The earliest citations were in reference to biblical sacrifices.

In the early 1700s, the word (from the Greek holokaustos, burnt whole) took on the sense of a great slaughter or massacre, initially by fire but later by war, rioting, and other means.

By the early 1940s, the word was being used to describe the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis.

It wasn’t until the 1950s, however, that the phrase “the Holocaust” (with the “H” capitalized) was used in reference to this Nazi genocide. Here’s how the OED describes the evolution of this new usage:

“The specific application was introduced by historians during the 1950s, probably as an equivalent to Hebrew hurban and shoah ‘catastrophe’ (used in the same sense); but it had been foreshadowed by contemporary references to the Nazi atrocities as a ‘holocaust.’ ”  

The earliest contemporary reference in the OED is from the Dec. 5, 1942, issue of the News Chronicle in London:

“Holocaust…. Nothing else in Hitler’s record is comparable to his treatment of the Jews. … The word has gone forth that … the Jewish peoples are to be exterminated. … The conscience of humanity stands aghast.”

We couldn’t find a more complete example of the News Chronicle citation elsewhere, but here’s an OED reference from a March 23, 1943, debate in the House of Lords:

“The Nazis go on killing …. If this rule could be relaxed, some hundreds, and possibly a few thousands, might be enabled to escape from this holocaust.”

The earliest Oxford examples of the phrase “the Holocaust” appear in 1957 issues of the Yad Vashem Journal. (Yad Vashem is a memorial, museum, and research center in Israel devoted to the Holocaust.)

A heading in the April 1957 issue of the journal refers to “Research on the Holocaust Period.” An article in the July issue says, “The Inquisition, for example, is not the same as the Holocaust.” (We’ve expanded on the second citation.)

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Does Santa have a gender issue?

Q: Santa Claus is male, so why isn’t he Saint instead of Santa? Does he have a gender issue?

A: In English the name of a canonized person, whether a man or a woman, is traditionally prefixed by the word “Saint” or its abbreviation.

Although a female saint has occasionally been called a “santa” in English, the Oxford English Dictionary describes this usage as obsolete.

The OED’s only written example is from The Book of the Knight of La Tour Landry, a 15th-century translation of a French guide to court etiquette:

“And for-yete not to praie to the blessed virgine Marie, that day and night praieth for us, and to recomaunde you to the seintes and santas.” (We’ve expanded on the OED citation.)

So why is Father Christmas or Saint Nicholas referred to as “Santa Claus”?

The OED says the usage originated in the US in the 18th century. Americans adopted it from the dialectal Dutch term Sante Klaas.

The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology says the dialectal term is derived from the Middle Dutch Sinter (Ni)klaas. In Modern Dutch, the short form of “Saint Nicholas” is Sinterklaas.

Chambers explains that Saint Nicholas “owes his position as Santa Claus to the legend that he provided three impoverished girls with dowries by throwing three purses of gold in their open window.”

“From this legend is said to derive the custom of placing gifts in the stockings of children on Saint Nicholas’ Eve (the night of December 6) and attributing the gifts to Santa Claus.”

In the US and some other countries, Chambers notes, the custom “has been transferred to Christmas Eve.”

We enjoyed reading this definition of “Santa Claus” in the OED:

“In nursery language, the name of an imaginary personage, who is supposed, in the night before Christmas day, to bring presents for children, a stocking being hung up to receive his gifts. Also, a person wearing a red cloak or suit and a white beard, to simulate the supposed Santa Claus to children, esp. in shops or on shopping streets.”

That pretty much sums it up. And here are the OED’s earliest two published references for the usage:

Dec. 26, 1773:  “Last Monday the Anniversary of St. Nicholas, otherwise called St. A Claus, was celebrated at Protestant-Hall.” (From the New York Gazette.)

Jan. 25, 1808: “The noted St. Nicholas, vulgarly called Santaclaus—of all the saints in the kalendar the most venerated by true hollanders, and their unsophisticated descendants.” (From the satirical periodical Salmagundi.)

Although the earliest citations in the OED are from American sources, the last three are from British publications. The latest is from a Dec. 24, 1977, issue of the Times of London:

“Santa must have been updated over the years. Presumably girls hang out their tights now, instead of a solitary stocking.”

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Making love, then and now

[Note: This post was updated on April 3, 2022.]

Q: I’ve been reading a lot of Agatha Christie stories lately, and I’ve noticed that she uses the phrase “make love” to denote the earliest stages of a relationship—perhaps kissing, hugging, and so on. Now, it means a sexual relationship. Comment?

A: Yes, the verbal phrase “make love” has evolved, along with social and cultural attitudes about lovemaking.

The noun “love” is very old, of course, dating back to the early days of Old English, when it was written lufo, lufu, or luuu, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED notes similar words in Old Frisian (luve), Old Saxon (luba), Old High German (luba), and other Germanic languages.

The British, as we’ve written before, have invented some whimsical ways of referring to  “love,” spelling it “lurve,” “luurve,” “lerv,” “lurv,” and “lurrve.” But that’s another story.

In its earliest days, the noun “love” referred to a feeling of affection or fondness or attachment.

The phrase “make love” first showed up in English in the late 16th century, according to published references in the OED, influenced by similar usages in Old Occitan (a Romance language) and Middle French.

Originally, the dictionary says, to “make love” meant to “pay amorous attention; to court, woo.” It’s frequently used with “to,” the OED adds.

The dictionary’s earliest example is from George Fenton’s 1567 translation of a discourse by Matteo Bandello: “The attire of a Cortisan [courtesan], or woman makynge loue [making love].” The passage refers to the sort of clothing worn by a flirtatious or amorous woman.

This old meaning was extremely common for many centuries and is still found today, though the OED labels it “Now somewhat archaic.” This is the meaning of “make love” that you’re seeing in those Agatha Christie stories.

The dictionary’s most recent example is from Sandra Cisneros’s story collection Woman Hollering Creek (1991): “Ay! To make love in Spanish, in a manner as intricate and devout as la Alhambra.”

The newer meaning of “make love”—to have sex—didn’t appear in writing until the 1920s. This sense of the phrase is defined in the OED as “to engage in sexual intercourse, esp. considered as an act of love.” It’s frequently accompanied by “to” or “with,” the dictionary says.

This usage was originally American, Oxford says, giving this as the earliest known example:

“Jimmy embraces Margie LaMont and goes through with her the business of making love to her by lying on top of her on a couch, each embracing the other.” (From a police detective’s 1927 court deposition in an obscenity trial. It’s quoted by Lillian Schlissel in a book she edited and wrote an introduction for, Three Plays by Mae West: Sex, The Drag, The Pleasure Man. All three plays, written by Mae West and staged on Broadway in 1926-28, were closed by the police.)

Nearly a century later, the new meaning has almost eclipsed the old one.

We’ll end with an OED citation from the Daily Telegraph (London, Jan. 15, 1971): “Couples who make love frequently are more likely to have sons than those who do so less often.”

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Flack attack

Q: Are flacks so named because they take flak for being such pests?

A: No, “flack” and “flak” aren’t related. While a “flack” (a promoter or publicist) often takes “flak” (criticism), the two words evolved independently.

It’s a common myth that “flack” is a misspelling of “flak.” In fact, it’s one of the myths about language that we discuss in our book Origins of the Specious. Here’s what we say:

“Ask almost anyone and you’ll hear that ‘flack’ is a misspelling of ‘flak,’ a term coined during World War II to describe enemy antiaircraft fire. (‘Flak’ was an acronym for fliegerabwehrkanone, a German antiaircraft gun.) After the war, ‘flak’ also came to mean a barrage of criticism or disapproval. It’s understandable, then, that the flacks who bombarded news hounds relentlessly with press releases got confused with flak. Even slang lexicographers have described ‘flack’ as a misspelling of ‘flak.’

“In the interest of giving credit where credit is due, let’s do some public relations on behalf of the now-obscure PR man who gave us ‘flack.’ His name was Gene Flack (yes, that was his real name), and in the 1920s and ’30s he was a movie publicist without peer. He was so good at his job that Variety, the showbiz weekly, starting calling all publicists ‘flacks.’ ”

One reason the origins of “flack” and “flak” have become confused is that the words emerged at about the same time.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that “flak,” an acronym of the German term described above, was first recorded in a 1938 edition of the naval reference book Jane’s Fighting Ships, which is published in Britain. “Flak” apparently remained a technical term for a couple of years and didn’t become current until wartime, since published usages didn’t appear again until 1940.

The OED says “flack,” which it defines as “a press agent” or “a publicity man,” is a “chiefly U.S.” slang term of unknown origin first recorded in 1946.

But “flack” is older than the OED indicates, and showed up at least a year before “flak” was recorded in Jane’s. Here are the two oldest citations given in Green’s Dictionary of Slang:

1939: “Variety which is trying to coin ‘flack’ as a synonym for press agent (without much luck) might like to know it was born in the offices of Gene Flack, a film publicist.” (From Walter Winchell’s syndicated newspaper column On Broadway.)

1937: “Whereupon Paramount elected to cash in on the publicity and the flack as Variety calls press agents, leaped to his typing machine.” (From the Oakland Tribune.)

Winchell’s column isn’t the only published source that connects “flack” with the press agent Gene Flack.

Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, wrote in the journal American Speech in 1984 about another sighting:

“In the June, 1939 issue of the magazine Better English: A Monthly Guide for the Improvement of Speech and Writing, a small note on p. 28 reads: ‘That alert weekly, Variety, birthplace of numerous Americanisms, is trying to coin the word ‘flack’ as a synonym for publicity agent. The word is said to be derived from Gene Flack, a movie publicity agent. Something Variety may have overlooked, however, is that a Yiddish word similar in sound means ‘one who goes around talking about the other fellow’s business.’ ”

Shapiro went on to say: “Variety‘s eponymous etymology of flack, although questioned by Better English, is backed by the authority of the word’s apparent coiner, and must now replace the chronologically untenable flak theory as the probable derivation.”

You can disregard that suggestion about a Yiddish connection. The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang mentions that 1939 quotation, but notes that the Yiddish word referred to is unknown and “the closest words available are unlikely on various grounds.”

So that’s the story to date. As we noted in Origins of the Specious, “it’s ironic that the press agent behind the word ‘flack’ should be all but forgotten today.”

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Is it “whiskey” or “whisky”?

Q: Your posting about Scotch-Irish got me to thinking about booze. I’ve always heard that Irish whiskey and Scotch whisky are both distilled in the same way, except that the Irish don’t use peat in the process. Is this true?

A: You’re right. Most Scotch whiskies are made from barley that’s dried over peat smoke. Most Irish whiskeys are distilled from barley that’s dried in kilns.

But our blog is about language, not booze. As you’ve noticed, there’s another difference between these libations—the spelling.

In Scotland, they make Scotch “whisky” (plural “whiskies”), but in Ireland they make Irish “whiskey” (plural “whiskeys”).

American and British dictionaries generally observe this distinction when referring to these two products. But then the dictionaries go their separate ways.

In referring to versions of the liquor manufactured in other countries, British dictionaries spell it “whisky.” Some US dictionaries prefer “whiskey” while others accept both spellings as standard.

Why the difference? We haven’t found a definitive answer.

“What determines the spelling is often arbitrary, based mostly on tradition rather than any claim to authenticity,” Kate Hopkins writes in her book 99 Drams of Whiskey: The Accidental Hedonist’s Quest for the Perfect Shot and the History of the Drink (2009).

But it seems possible that the spellings, which have become consistent relatively recently, merely serve to differentiate the products commercially.

As the Oxford English Dictionary says: “In modern trade usage, Scotch whisky and Irish whiskey are thus distinguished in spelling.”

With these two products, spelling is no small matter, and that’s the case with “whiskey”/“whisky.” The New York Times learned this the hard way.

In December 2008, a Times columnist writing about single malts from the Speyside region of the Scottish Highlands used the spelling “whiskey” throughout, as prescribed by the newspaper’s style guide.

He even went so far as to use the phrase “Scotch whiskey”! The Times was pelted with so many complaints that it changed its style.

A follow-up article in February 2009 noted the paper’s change in policy: “As of now, the spelling whisky will be used not only for Scotch but for Canadian liquor as well. The spelling whiskey will be used for all appropriate liquors from other sources.”

With or without the “e,” according to the OED, the word stands for “a spirituous liquor distilled originally in Ireland and Scotland, and in the British Isles still chiefly, from malted barley.” In the US, the OED adds, it’s made “chiefly from maize [corn] or rye.”

The word, Oxford notes, is short for earlier ones written as “usquebaugh,” “whiskybae,” “whisquy-beath,” and others recorded as far back as the 1500s.

They in turn were derived from “Irish and Scottish Gaelic uisge beatha,” which literally means “water of life,” according to the dictionary.

The fact that “water” is lurking in “whiskey” (etymologically speaking) is an interesting point.

A usage note in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) explains that “the words water, whiskey, and vodka flow from a common source, the Indo-European root wed-,” which means “water” or “wet.”

This root “could appear in several guises, as wed-, wod-, or
ud-,” American Heritage says, adding: “Water is a native English word that goes back by way of prehistoric Common Germanic watar to the Indo-European suffixed form wod-or, with an o.”

It goes on to say that the Gaelic compounds uisce beatha and uisge beatha are derived “from Old Irish uisce, ‘water,’ and bethad, ‘of life,’ and meaning literally ‘water of life.’ (It thus meant the same thing as the name of another drink, aquavit, which comes from Latin aqua vitae, ‘water of life.’) Uisce comes from the Indo-European suffixed form ud-skio-.”

Finally, American Heritage says, “the name of another alcoholic drink, vodka, comes into English from Russian, where it means literally ‘little water,’ as it is a diminutive of voda, ‘water’—a euphemism if ever there was one. Voda comes from the same Indo-European form as English water, but has a different suffix: wod-a.”

After all that, we need a drink!

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Hear Pat live today on WNYC

She’ll be on the Leonard Lopate Show around 1:20 PM Eastern time to discuss the English language and take questions from callers. Today’s topic: quote magnets, people who are often credited with saying things they never said. If you miss the program, you can listen to it on Pat’s WNYC page.

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English English language Etymology Phrase origin Usage Word origin

Full time

Q: I’m curious (and I hope you are) about the expression “I’m full. ” It’s a funny way of saying “I’ve had enough to eat.” I wonder—do people in impoverished countries have such a usage or even the notion of being full?

A: It’s the holiday season, and the adjective “full” has been on a lot of lips lately. In fact, it’s been on the lips of English speakers since Anglo-Saxon days, though not always in reference to their stomachs.

When the word first showed up, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it was used to describe a bowl or other object “having within its limits all it will hold; having no space empty; replete.”

The earliest written example in the OED is from the Old English poem “Judith,” which describes the beheading of the Assyrian general Holofernes in the Book of Judith:

“Thær wæron bollan steape boren æfter bencum gelome, swylce eac bunan ond orcas fulle fletsittendum.” (We’ve changed the runic letter thorn to “th.”) Here’s a modern English version of the citation, which describes a feast for warriors:

“There were goblets deep borne off to the benches, with bowls and beakers full, to the feasters.”

The date of the poem is uncertain, but it’s an appendage to the Nowell Codex, the manuscript that contains Beowulf, which may have been written as early as 725.

The adjective “full” took on its gastrointestinal sense around the year 1000, according to published references in the OED. The dictionary’s first citation is from the Paris Psalter, a Byzantine illuminated manuscript.

Here’s an example from an early (1382) version of the Wycliffe Bible: “Thei ben ful of must.” (The word “must” here refers to the juice of freshly pressed grapes in winemaking.)

We don’t agree with you that “I’m full” is a strange way of saying “I’ve had enough to eat.” It’s not much of an etymological leap from a full goblet to a full stomach.

Over the years, the adjective “full” has been used to describe, among other things, a pregnant animal, an emotional heart, a circular moon, a plump person, a sail filled with wind, a complete payment, a poker hand, a football player, etc.

John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins says the word “full” is ultimately derived from the Indo-European root ple-, which passed into prehistoric Germanic as the reconstructed words fulnaz and later fullaz.

The Indo-European root gave Latin the word plenus (full), which is the source of such English words as “plenary,” “plenty,” and “complete,” as well as plein and pieno, French and Italian words for full.

You’ve asked whether people in impoverished countries say things like “I’m full” at mealtime or even have the notion of being full.

Well, there are fat cats in poor countries as well as rich ones, and we’re pretty sure they feel full when they leave the dinner table.

Do they say things like “I’m full”? Some of them, apparently. We’ve read that in Swahili, which is spoken in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and other African nations, “Nimeshiba” means “I’m full.”

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English English language Etymology Grammar Usage Word origin

The birth of a notion

Q: At the place I work, people are fond of using nonwords like “concepting,” “solutioning,” and “stakeholdering.” I find this practice pretentious. Do you agree, or am I witnessing the miracle of wording?

A: We checked eight standard dictionaries in the US and the UK, and none of them include “concept,” “solution,” or “stakeholder” as verbs.

[Note: Later posts on “concept” as a verb ran in April 2019 and June 2019.]

However, a bit of googling suggests that tens of thousands of people are happily concepting, solutioning, or stakeholdering, never mind the dictionaries.

We’re with you on this. We find these words (we wouldn’t call them “nonwords”) affected, stilted, and clunky.

The first two, though, have some history on their side, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED describes “concept” as an obsolete or rare verb meaning “to conceive (in the womb).”

The dictionary has only one published example of this usage, from a 1643 treatise by Richard Overton on the mortality of man: “It [the Soul] is concepted by the woman through the concurrance of the seed of both sexes.”

The OED has two late 19th-century examples for “solution” used as a verb meaning “to treat with, fasten or secure by, a solution”:

1891: “A further improvement … will dispense with the need for solutioning the canvas,” from the Pall Mall Gazette.

1898: “They should preferably not be vulcanised but merely solutioned together,” from Cycling (now Cycling Weekly).

Of course the people using “concept” and “solution” as verbs today aren’t talking about wombs or fasteners. To them, “concept” means to develop a concept (that is, to give birth to a notion), and “solution” means to find a solution.

Oxford doesn’t have any examples of “stakeholder” used as a verb.

It says the word entered English in the early 18th century as a noun meaning “an independent person or organization with whom money is deposited, esp. when a number of people make a bet or other financial transaction.”

It wasn’t until the early 19th century that the word took on its usual modern meaning: “A person, company, etc., with a concern or (esp. financial) interest in ensuring the success of an organization, business, system, etc.”

The first OED citation, from an 1821 issue of the Times of London, refers to “stakeholders in one system of liberty, property, laws, morals, and national prosperity.”

The earliest clearly financial example is from a 1941 issue of The Journal of Political Economy:

“Trustees were released from nearly all liability through use of ‘exculpatory’ clauses in trust indentures and became virtually ‘custodians’ or ‘stakeholders’ rather than true ‘trustees.’ ”

Getting back to your question, we’ve got Excedrin headaches from plodding through business gobbledygook for instances of “stakeholder” used as a verb.

Here’s a typical example: “The use of Moody’s KMV data was stakeholdered and ultimately approved by FERC in CAISO’s 2006 Tariff change.”

As far as we can tell, this buzzword means to get the support of stockholders (or other interested parties) in a new idea or project.

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English English language Etymology Phrase origin Usage Word origin

Nice and nasty

Q: We say things like “nice and short” and “nice and sweet” all the time, but what exactly is the meaning of “nice” in this context? Is it simply an intensifier? Or does it have something to do with “nicely”?

A: As you suggest, the adjective “nice” is indeed an intensifier—a word that adds emphasis—when used in a phrase like “nice and short.”

“Nice,” as the Oxford English Dictionary explains is “used as an intensifier with a predicative adjective or adverb in nice and—.”

Examples in writing date back to the late 18th century in OED citations, but the usage is undoubtedly older in ordinary speech. Here are the two earliest published examples Oxford gives:

1796: “Just read this little letter, do, Miss, do—it won’t take you much time, you reads so nice and fast.” (From Fanny Burney’s novel Camilla.)

1800: “Skipping … is a very healthful play in winter; it will make you nice and warm in frosty weather.” (From The Infant’s Library, a collection of miniature books for children.)

Sometimes “nice” is used ironically in such phrases, as the OED points out. Oxford gives examples from fiction for “nice and ill” and “nice and sick.”

“Nice” is heard so commonly these days—in this and other usages—that it almost escapes our radar. (When was the last time someone invited you to “Have a nice day”? Did you even register the word?)

“Nice” has done so many jobs over the centuries and meant so many things that it’s simply worn out.

English acquired the word around 1300 from Anglo-Norman and Old French. But its roots are in the Latin adjective nescius (ignorant, unknowing). We had a posting a couple of years ago that discussed the not-so-nice origins of “nice.”

Since it entered Middle English, “nice” has meant ignorant, foolish, cowardly, absurd, lazy, dissolute, lascivious, ostentatious, extravagant, elegant, precise, effeminate, meticulous, fussy, refined, strict, cultured, fastidious, virtuous, respectable, tasteful, proper, fragile, precise, pampered, strange, shy, modest, reluctant, complicated, subtle, exact, insubstantial, trivial, attentive, sensitive, dexterous, critical, risky, and attentive. And that’s only a summary!

Most of those meanings are now obsolete or rare, and for the last couple of centuries the word has meant what it does today: satisfactory, pleasant, attractive, good-natured, friendly, kind—in short, pleasing.

That’s a lot of work for such a small word!

As the OED says, “The semantic development of this word from ‘foolish, silly’ to ‘pleasing’ is unparalleled in Latin or in the Romance languages. The precise sense development in English is unclear.”

This may be an understatement. In fact, the OED notes, lexicographers have found that in some 16th- and 17th-century examples it’s hard to say what the writers meant by “nice.” That’s what happens when a word loses its specificity.

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English English language Etymology Usage Word origin

Can a man be a hostess?

Q: I’ve been to several restaurants that have “Hostess Stand” signs, though I’ve noticed that sometimes the “hostess” turns out to be a man. I’ve always thought that “hostess” only applied to women, and that when you’re unsure of the gender you should use “host.” Have times changed?

A: “Hostess” is not an appropriate job title for a man, and we’d be very surprised if restaurants are extending the meaning of the word. No matter what those signs say, we’d bet that those men are called “hosts.”

The standard dictionaries that we use the most say a “hostess” is always a woman.

For example, every definition of “hostess” in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) begins with either “a woman” or “a female employee.”

When the noun “hostess” entered English around the year 1290, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it referred to a “woman who keeps a public place of lodging and entertainment; the mistress of an inn.”  

The OED says the noun “host,” which entered English around the same time, referred to, among other things, a “man who lodges and entertains for payment; a man who keeps a public place of lodging or entertainment; the landlord of an inn.”

In modern usage, however, “host” is unisex and can serve for either male or female.

Here are the relevant definitions of “host” in American Heritage:

(1) “One who receives or entertains guests in a social or official capacity.” (2) “A person who manages an inn or hotel.” (3) “One that furnishes facilities and resources for a function or event: the city chosen as host for the Olympic Games.” (4) “The emcee or interviewer on a radio or television program.”

The OED, however, still defines “host” as “a man who lodges and entertains” people, either as guests or for payment. But Oxford is obviously behind the times here; a note says, “This entry has not yet been fully updated.”

It’s probable that when the OED eventually updates its definitions for “host,” the term will apply to both sexes as well as host cities, organizations, and so on.

We can’t tell you exactly when “host” became a gender-neutral term. But our 1956 copy of Webster’s New International Dictionary (the unabridged second edition), defines it in a unisex way (“one who …”).

Many people seem to assume that if a feminine version of a noun exists, then the original can’t apply to women.

In this respect, “host” is similar to the “master” in “master of ceremonies,” which we’ve written about before on the blog.

Just as we aren’t compelled to use “hostess” in referring to a woman, there’s no law that says we must use “mistress of ceremonies,” though many people do.

Similarly, the terms “actor” and “comedian” are gender-neutral and appropriate for both men and women, as we discussed in a post a few years ago.

We aren’t saying that feminine titles like “hostess,” “mistress,” “actress,” and “comedienne” should be relegated to the junk heap. Sometimes they seem more appropriate than their neutral counterparts. And if a woman prefers a feminine title, then by all means she should have it.

But certainly feminine titles shouldn’t be extended to men. In fact, restaurants would do well to get rid of those “Hostess Stand” signs. Why name the furniture, anyway?

A simple sign reading “Host,” would be quite enough, posted on the desk or stand or station or whatever. And it wouldn’t have to be changed when a man takes over the job.

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English English language Expression Grammar Language Linguistics Usage Writing

Uppity language

Q: What’s up with “up”? Why is it used in so many phrases where it’s not necessary or doesn’t appear to add any information? Examples: “rise up” … “shut up” … “set up” … “clean up” … “give up” … and so on.

A: This is an interesting topic, and a much bigger one than you might think. In fact, you’ve opened (or “opened up”) a Pandora’s box here.

Let us say right away that we don’t agree that “up” is redundant when used in phrasal verbs like “shut up,” “clean up,” “give up,” and many others.

On the contrary, it often enhances verbs, not merely by adding emphasis but by contributing specific kinds of information. Telling someone to “shut” a door, for example, isn’t the same telling someone him to “shut up.”

As you probably know, “up” is an adverb as well as a preposition.

In phrasal verbs it’s an adverb, and it can have any number of functions.

The Oxford English Dictionary says it can mean “so as to raise a thing from the place in which it is lying, placed, or fixed.” This sense of “up” is illustrated in such familiar phrasal verbs as “take up,” “pick up,” “raise up,” and “lift up.”

Or it can add the sense of “from below the level of the earth, water, etc., to the surface,” as Oxford says. We see this sense of “up” in phrases like “dig up,” “grub up,” and “turn up” (as in turning earth with a spade).

“Up” can add the notion of “upon one’s feet from a recumbent or reclining posture; spec. out of bed,” the OED notes, or “so as to rise from a sitting, stooping, or kneeling posture and assume an erect attitude.”

This gives us such familiar phrases as “get up,” “sit up,” “rise up,” “stand up,” “help up,” and “leap up,” as well as the old expression “knock up,” meaning to wake someone by rapping on the door.

Figurative uses of the adverb are many and varied. For example, the OED says, “up” can mean “so as to sever or separate, esp. into many parts, fragments, or pieces.” We see this sense in “break up,” “cut up,” “chop up,” “tear up,” and so on.

And, Oxford says, “up” can imply “to or towards a state of completion or finality,” a sense that frequently serves “merely to emphasize the import of the verb.”

Consequently we have phrases like “eat up,” “sold up,” “done up,” and “swallow up.” (Certainly we could say simply that the whale swallowed Jonah, but how much more evocative to say it swallowed him up!)

In the sense of “denoting progress to or towards an end,” the OED says, we have phrase like “buy up,” “finish up,” “dry up,” “heal up,” “clear up,” “beat up,” “pay up,” “firm up,” and others.

Frequently, the OED says, “up” is used with verbs that have to do with “cleaning, putting in order, or fixing in place.”

Thus we have “clean up,” “polish up,” “brush up,” “do up,” “fix up,” “dress up,” “fit up,” “make up,” “rig up,” “trip up,” and a verb we’ve written about on our blog, “redd up.”

When used with some verbs, “up” can mean “by way of summation or enumeration,” the OED says. We see this in phrases like “add up,” “count up,” “reckon up,” “total up,” “sum up,” and “weigh up.”

In addition, “up” can mean “into a close or compact form or condition; so as to be confined or secured.” This usage is found in “truss up,” “bind up,” “bundle up,” “fold up,” “tie up,” “gird up,” “huddle up,” and “draw up.”

Yet another sense, “into a closed or enclosed state; so as to be shut or restrained,” is evident in phrase like “close up,” “shut up,” “dam up,” “pen up,” “pent up,” “nail up,” “seal up,” and so on.

“Up” can also mean “so as to bring together,” as the OED notes. We see this in “knit up,” “gather up,” “stitch up,” and others. And it can imply “toward,” as in “come up,” “bring up,” and “ride up.”

It can also mean something like “to completion,” as “fill up,” “top up,” “cloud up,” and other phrases.

In a post earlier this year, we wrote that there are many idiomatic phrases in which an uppity stickler might say the adverb is unnecessary: “face up,” “meet up,” “divide up,” “hurry up,” and others.

But as we said then, “There’s a fine line between an emphatic use and a redundancy.” And sometimes an apparent redundancy adds just the right emphasis.

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English English language Etymology Punctuation Usage Word origin

Shady language

Q: I recently heard a recording in which a doctor pronounces “atropine” as if it were spelled “atropin.” Is this legitimate?

A: Yes, there are two standard pronunciations of the organic compound that eye doctors use in solutions to dilate pupils: AT-ruh-peen and AT-ruh-pin.

In fact, “atropin” was the original spelling of this poisonous compound obtained from belladonna and other related plants. Several standard dictionaries still list that as a variant spelling.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.), for example, cites both spellings, with “atropine” pronounced AT-ruh-peen and “atropin” pronounced AT-ruh-pin.

However, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) has only the “atropine” spelling and At-ruh-peen pronunciation.

In addition to being used in solutions to dilate eyes, the naturally occurring alkaloid atropine is used, among other things, in medicine to inhibit muscle spasms.

The earliest example of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Records of General Science, an 1836 collection of scientific knowledge:

“Atropin may be obtained in a crystalline state by dissolving it in the smallest possible quantity of boiling water.”

The word “atropine” comes from atropa belladonna, the scientific name of the perennial plant that’s also known as deadly nightshade.

English borrowed belladonna from the Italian name for the plant (it comes from the Italian words for “beautiful woman”).

However, the plant’s name is ultimately derived from Atropos, one of the three Greek Fates, according to the OED.

In Greek mythology, Atropos was the Fate responsible for deciding how people died and cutting their threads of life with her shears.

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