Q: A friend of mine used the expression “rant and rave” the other day. That got me thinking. To “rave” about something is positive, but the word turns negative when it’s linked with “rant.” Just wondered if you have any comments!

A: Yes, to “rant and rave” (to shout angrily and wildly) might be described as negative. But to “rave” isn’t quite as positive as you seem to believe.

The verb “rave” can be negative as well as positive. You can rave in anger about something or rave in praise of it.

The verb “rave” has undergone a few changes over the centuries. Let’s follow its history, with a few interruptions along the way.

When “rave” came into English in the 1300s, it didn’t involve shouting or other forms of self-expression.

It meant “to be mad, to show signs of madness or delirium,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The word’s origins are uncertain, but there’s a connection with “reverie,” which originally meant wild and uncontrolled behavior.

“Reverie” came into English in the 1300s from Middle French, where it implied madness, delirium, wandering of the mind, and so on.

Going back to “rave,” the OED says it developed new senses in the 1500s and 1600s, when it came to mean “to rage furiously or intensely” and “to speak or declaim wildly, irrationally, or incoherently.”

These are the senses of the word used in the expression “rant and rave,” which was first recorded in the 1600s.

Here we have to interrupt again to discuss the verb “rant,” a word dating from 1602. It came from the Dutch randen (to talk foolishly or rave).

To “rant,” according to the OED, originally meant “to talk or declaim in an extravagant or hyperbolical manner; to use bombastic language; (esp. of an actor) to orate or speak in a melodramatic or grandiose style.”

Later, in the mid-1600s, ranting became angrier. “Rant” came to mean “to speak furiously; to storm or rage violently.”

So to “rant and rave” means, in the words of the OED, “to talk or declaim hyperbolically, wildly, or furiously, now esp. as if mad or delirious.”

But how about a review that’s described as a “rave”? This comes from a quite different meaning of the verb “rave.”

In 1621, “rave” was first used to mean “to speak or write about someone or something with great enthusiasm or admiration,” the OED says.

The verb “rave” in this sense is generally used with “about” or “over” as in the following citation from the Independent (2002): “Several friends rave about this bra. It’s the sort to wear if you want something simple yet sexy.”

The noun form of “rave,” meaning a wildly favorable review, first showed up in print in 1926, according to OED citations.

An article in the American Mercury magazine gives credit to Variety, the show-biz weekly:

“One of the paper’s coinages should be officially embraced by the dictionary and bred into the language. It refers to a flattering, enthusiastic review by a sycophantic critic as a rave.” 

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Q: We of a certain age consider “records” synonymous with the vinyl discs we grew up with, and are reluctant to use the term for MP3 or iTunes downloads. But I wonder if the wax cylinders that preceded vinyl were also called “records”?

A: You’re right. Those early wax cylinders developed by Thomas A. Edison in the 1870s and ’80s were indeed called “records,” as of course were the vinyl discs that succeeded them.

In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary defines “record” in the musical sense broadly as “a piece or collection of music issued on record, cassette, CD, etc.”

We imagine that “etc.” would include an iTunes download from Apple and an MP3 download from Amazon, as well as whatever recording technology succeeds them.

The OED‘s earliest published references for “record” in the sense of a recording of speech or music date from  the late 1870s.

The first one, from the Jan. 19, 1878, issue of the journal Design and Work, is a bit technical, but here’s the next, from the June 1878 issue of Cassell’s Family Magazine:

“Mr. Edison is now engaged in devising a finished instrument capable of storing up speeches and music of all kinds, and of allowing the records to be sent by post.”

When the noun “record” showed up in English in the early 1300s (via Anglo-Norman and Middle French), it referred to “the documentation or recording of facts, events, etc.”

So even in the beginning, according to that OED definition, the term “record” was used broadly. And when it comes to recordings, we’re pretty broadminded too.

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Q: I’ve always heard “enamored of,” but lately I’m hearing “enamored with,” and it sounds wrong to me. Which is correct? And what might it be about the word “enamored” that makes one choice more correct than the other?

A: The usual phrase is “enamored of,” but lots of people use “enamored with,” and both are accepted by standard American dictionaries.

We googled “enamored” and each preposition. The results: “enamored of,” 2 million hits; “enamored with,” 825,000.

Here are a couple of examples from among those hits:

“I really love Rudy. He is totally enamored of me.” (Ginny, the Blanch Baker character, in the 1984 film Sixteen Candles.)

“I was enamored with him. And I was excited. And I was enjoying it.” (Monica Lewinsky on Bill Clinton, from a March 3, 1999, interview with Barbara Walters.)

“Enamored” (the British spelling is “enamoured”) was borrowed into English in the early 1300s from the Old French verb enamourer, which came from the noun amour (love).

The verb “enamor,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means “to inspire or inflame with love.”

The adjective “enamored,” the OED says, means “full of the passion of love” or simply “in love.” In a weaker sense, “enamored” can mean charmed or fascinated.

“To be enamored,” the dictionary adds, is “to be in love.” And in this sense, “enamored” isn’t the adjective but a passive form of the verb.

This passive form, the OED says, has historically been used with the prepositions “of,” “on,” “upon,” and “with.”

But constructions using “on” and “upon” are now obsolete. Today, the OED says, we use either “enamored of” or, less commonly, “enamored with.”

The dictionary’s first recorded usage is an example of “enamored on,” from 1303.

Both “on” and “upon” were commonly used for centuries, as in this line that John Palsgrave wrote in 1530: “She hath as many craftes to enamour a foole upon her as any queene in this towne.”

But today, the verb is generally used in the passive voice—as in “I am enamored” rather than “I enamor.”

And the preposition of choice is “of,” according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage.

In fact, the OED says “with” is obsolete in the weaker sense, in which “enamor” means “to charm, delight, fascinate.”

Dickens used “enamored of” in this way in a letter written in 1866: “I am not so much enamoured of the first and third subjects.”

Why is “enamored of” now on top and “enamored with” No. 2?

We can’t explain it. Perhaps for many to be “enamored” is to be consumed by the love OF someone.

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Q: If I heat my oven to 350 degrees, am I doing the same thing as people who preheat their ovens to 350 degrees?

A: We just bought a double oven and asked ourselves the same question while reading the section in the owner’s manual on preheating.

The answer? Yes and no. Although something that’s preheated is also heated, the verb “preheat” does have a more precise meaning than the verb “heat.”

Here’s how “preheat” is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary: “To heat before use or further treatment; to heat beforehand.”

So one “preheats” an oven to a certain temperature before putting in the food.

And here’s the OED’s definition of “heat” in the sense you’re asking about: “To communicate heat to; to make hot, to warm; to raise the temperature of.”

Although “heat” is a very old verb, dating back to around the year 1000, “preheat” isn’t exactly a newbie. It’s been with us since the mid-19th century.

The earliest published reference for “preheat” in the OED, from an 1862 article in Scientific American, describes a pipe that “traverses the furnace for pre-heating the crude sap.”

The dictionary also has citations for preheating tools, an oven, an auto engine, blankets, a sandwich press, and the air.

The two of us say “heat,” not “preheat,” when we talk about stoking up one of our new ovens for a cassoulet. But we don’t get heated up when we hear other people talk about preheating their ovens.

If you’re still bothered by that prefix, you might take a look at a blog item we wrote a couple of years ago about whether “pre-” words need a fix.

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Q: In my family, a child who pushes himself or herself to keep up—on a hike, for instance—is referred to as “a real trooper.” I was just told that, correctly, the child is a “real trouper.” In other words, a good performer in a troupe, not a brave soldier in a troop. That makes sense—or does it?

A: Yes, it does indeed make sense, sort of. Here’s the story.

A “trouper” is a member of a performing company (theatrical, singing, or dancing); the company itself is a “troupe.”

The earliest citation for “trouper” in the Oxford English Dictionary is from The Turnover Club, William T. Hall’s 1890 collection theatrical anecdotes: “As the ‘troupers’ come into the station where I sat, they were a sorry-looking lot.”

The word “troupe,” which was borrowed from French, entered English earlier in the 1800s. The OED’s first citation is from an 1825 issue of the New York Evening Post: “The whole troupe were equally excellent.”

But getting back to your question, another meaning of “trouper” evolved in the 20th century: it can also refer to someone who’s a hard worker, a good sport, a reliable person, a mensch.

The earliest citation in the OED for this sense of the word is from the actor Peter Bull’s 1959 memoir I Know the Face, But ….

“The phrase ‘she’s a trouper’ now has an old-fashioned and faintly derogatory air and is usually bandied about when someone continues to play with a high temperature or a shattering bereavement.”

That quotation suggests, however, that the phrase was around for quite some time before Bull used it in his memoir.

And a Google search finds a lot of earlier citations. The first clear example is this comment about Babe Ruth in a 1933 issue of the Pittsburgh Press:

“This looks like a good spot for trifling encomium for Mr. Ruth, who in his mental travail has conducted himself like a real trouper.”

As you can see, the expression originated as “real trouper” and most language mavens would describe that as the proper usage.

But a recent Google search suggests that “real trooper” has virtually supplanted the “proper” usage among the people who speak English.

Here’s the scorecard: “real trooper,” 397,000 hits, versus “real trouper,” 60,400.  

We’ll stick with “real trouper” for now, but in English the majority ultimately rules.

If you’d like to read more, we wrote a blog item a few years ago that discussed, among other things, “trooper” vs. “trouper.”

As the posting says, “trooper” is commonly used to refer to a state police officer or to a soldier in a horse, armored, air cavalry, or other troop.

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[Note: A Jan. 2, 2023, post discusses the use of “man” to address someone as well as its use in colloquial interjections like “Oh, man.”]

Q: I’m curious about the use of male nouns in expressions like “man oh man” and “oh brother.” Did these expressions begin life as euphemisms? Where are they heard most? Are there female equivalents? Oh boy! I can hardly wait for your response.

A: You may be surprised to hear this, but “man” has been used in similar expressions since Anglo-Saxon days, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

You’d have a hard time making out the Old English examples, but here’s one from 1530 by John Palsgrave: “Plucke up thy herte, man, for Goddes sake.”

In this old sense, the OED says, “man” is used to address a person or introduce a remark “emphatically to indicate contempt, impatience, exhortation, etc.”

You’re asking about a much more recent usage, however.

The OED describes this “man” as a colloquial interjection “used to express surprise, delight, disbelief, amazement, etc. (freq. in oh man!), or to give force to the statement which it introduces. man alive!”

From the published references in the OED, the usage appears to have originated in the early 19th century. At first, according to the dictionary, it was “chiefly” heard among African-Americans and South Africans.

There’s no indication that these expressions began life as euphemisms. From the examples in the OED and other sources, the usage appears to be most common in North America.

The first OED citation is from the New England writer John Neal’s 1823 novel Errata: “Man!—Man!—I had a heart like a well—into it, every living creature might have dipped.”

The earliest OED citation for an “oh, man” version is from Police Officer, Claude L. Vincent’s 1990 study of policing in Canada: “Man, oh man, nobody is going to turn me into a social worker!”

However, a Google Timeline search turns up this May 31, 1926, headline from a Canadian newspaper, the Calgary Daily Herald: “Oh! Man, OH! MAN, WHAT A SALE!”

The OED describes the use of the interjection “brother” as “a mild exclamation of annoyance, surprise, etc.”

Here’s a 1969 example from the Victoria (British Columbia) Islander: “Then when you think you’ve got used to mountain roads you hit one like the Seton-Darcy road. Oh Brother!”

“Boy,” “oh boy,” “oboy,” and “boy oh boy” are described as interjections “expressing shock, surprise, excitement, appreciation, etc. Freq. used to give emphasis to the following statement.”

The earliest example in the OED (a one-“boy” version) is from George Ade’s Chicago Stories (1890), a collection of his newspaper articles: “S-s-t! Boy! Same as last time.”

Here’s a three-“boy” example from a 1932 issue of the Charleston (W. Va.) Gazette: “But, boy, oh boy, oh boy, wouldn’t a line like that knock an editor out of his chair?”

We can’t think offhand of a female version of the kind of “man,” “brother,” or “boy” interjection that’s aroused your curiosity.

In an expression like “way to go, woman” or “what’s happening, sister?” or “you go, girl,” the interjection is used to address someone (as in that early “man” usage we mentioned at the beginning).

By the way, the word “woman” is not derived from (or a mere variation on) the term “man.” The story is much more complicated. We discussed this in a blog item a couple of years ago.

[Note: This post was updated on Jan. 2, 2023.]

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Q: Was Pat really just a clue in the New York Times crossword? I saw it in the International Herald Tribune. I was in Sardinia over the weekend, and took the rare opportunity to work the crossword. Does this mean congratulations are in order? Or perhaps I should ask, where does that expression come from?

A: Yes, Pat was indeed a clue in a recent Times crossword (Patricia who wrote “Woe Is I”). It was 2 down in the Feb. 11 puzzle. The answer was her last name, minus the apostrophe (OCONNER).

In fact she’s been a clue—or, rather, part of one—in several other crosswords in the Times and elsewhere.

The answer is usually “ISI,” the second and third words of her book Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English.

Little did we realize back in the mid-’90s when the book was named that the letter combination “ISI” would fill a much-needed gap (as the saying goes) for crossword puzzle writers!

As for “congratulations are in order,” the expression seems to have originated in the United States in the 19th century.

The earliest appearance in the New York Times archive is from a Sept. 20, 1886, profile of Capt. R. B. Forbes shortly after his 82nd birthday. Forbes introduced double topsail yards, a rig that made it easier to handle a sailing ship.

The article in the Times refers to “the anniversary of his birth, when congratulations are in order.”

A Google Timeline search produced several other examples of the expression from earlier in 1886. The first one is from the April 2,1886, issue of the Adrian (Mich.) Weekly Press:

“Rev. Wilson, of the Christian church, returned from Ohio last week, bringing with him his new wife. Congratulations are in order. They expect to be keeping house in about two weeks.”

The noun “congratulation” entered English in the late 16th century, adopted from similar words in French or Latin, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The earliest citation in the OED is from Sir John Harrington’s 1591 translation of the Italian poem Orlando Furioso, by Ludovico Ariosto: “Only Gradassos faint congratulation, / Makes men surmise, he thinks not as he saith.”

The use of the plural “congratulations” for expressing compliments first showed up in the early 17th century. We especially like this early citation from Samuel Johnson’s 1749 tragedy Irene: “That fawning Villain’s forc’d Congratulations.”

But why, you may ask, do we say congratulations are “in order” when we mean they’re appropriate or proper or fitting?

When the word “order” entered English in the early 13th century (via the Anglo-Norman and Old French ordre), it referred to a rank in a hierarchy, especially any of the nine grades of angels in medieval Christianity, according to the OED.

Early in the next century, the word came to mean a grade or rank in the Christian ministry or ecclesiastical hierarchy.

But by the 14th century the word had broken away from its church origins and was being used in a more general way to refer to any rank or row or series.

It wasn’t until the mid-19th century, though, that the phrase “in order” came to mean “appropriate to or befitting the occasion; suitable; called for; correct.”

The OED says this usage is of US origin and its first citation is from a report on an 1850-51 constitutional convention in Ohio: “I have prepared a resolution … and whenever it may be in order I shall offer it.”

The dictionary doesn’t have any published references for “congratulations are in order,” but it does have an apologetic version of the expression from around 1861.

Here’s the citation, from Theodore Winthrop’s novel John Brent (circa 1861): “If the gent has made a remark what teches you, apologies is in order.”

Winthrop was one of the first Union officers killed in the Civil War. His novel was published posthumously.

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Q: I heard this on the radio: “The candidate now identifies as a transsexual male.” In an age when people can change their sexual identity, it seems the verb “identify” has lost its sexuality by dropping the reflexive pronouns “himself” and “herself.” This may be politically correct, but is it grammatical?

A: Only recently have people begun using “identify as” to mean “think of oneself as.” A cursory search suggests the usage has been around for only a decade or two.

If a sentence like “John identifies as male” sounds odd to some ears, perhaps that’s because it seems to combine other usages that are more familiar: “John identifies (or identifies himself) with males” and “John identifies himself as male.”

When we find “as” with the verb “identify,” we expect to find a reflexive pronoun in between: “John identifies himself as ….”

It’s true, as you note, that “John identifies as … ” is a handy construction for journalists who write about transsexuals. The writer can omit a sex-related pronoun (“himself” or “herself”).

But the phrase “identify as” has become extremely common lately in other kinds of writing about how people perceive themselves—religiously, politically, racially, and so on.

Here are a few examples that cropped up in the news in the last couple of months.

“More Young Americans Identify as Mixed Race” (a headline in the New York Times).

“In 2010, 31% of Americans identified as Democrats,” while at the same time “the percentage identifying as independents increased to 38%” (from a Gallup news release).

“More than half of Hispanics identify as conservative, poll finds” (a headline in the Dallas Morning News).

“Just 250 of the school’s 5,000 students identify as Jewish” (from an article in the Jewish Chronicle).

Writers (or perhaps copy editors) who dislike “identify as” without a reflexive pronoun as an object often use “self-identify as” instead.

Here’s a recent example from the Times: “His current research reveals that the fastest-growing group along the sexuality continuum are men who self-identify as ‘mostly straight’ as opposed to labels like ‘straight,’ ‘gay’ or ‘bisexual.’ ”

This longer usage (“self-identify as”) is much more common in Google than the shorter one, by a rate of about five to one. So in the media at least, people mulling over their identities are more likely to “self-identify as” than to “identify as.”

You ask whether “identify as” is grammatical. Perhaps a more useful question would be whether this is a natural and logical extension of ways in which “identify” has been used up until now.

The verb “identify,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, entered English in the early 1600s, when it meant “to regard or treat as identical.” It was originally used with an object—that is, transitively.

“Identify” is still used in its original sense. Here’s an OED citation from William James’s Pragmatism (1907): “One misunderstanding of pragmatism is to identify it with positivistic tough-mindedness.”

In the 1700s, the OED says, the verb came to be used in a newer sense: “to model oneself on, now esp. unconsciously; to feel oneself to be, or to become, closely associated with or part of.” And again, the verb was transitive.

Here’s a recent citation: “Cleopatra deliberately identified herself with Isis, and called herself the New Isis” (from Michael and Veronica Haag’s The Rough Guide to the Da Vinci Code, 2004).

But in the last half-century, the verb in this sense has also been used without an object—that is, intransitively. In this case, says the OED, the object is “unspecified or implied by the context.” Here are a few citations.

1959: “An engaging series of attempts and failures to ‘identify,’ as cricket-master at a prep school, or as a journalist on a go-getting daily” (from The Listener, a former BBC publication).

1968: “Finally Tina came on and tore the joint up. She signified, the women identified and the men just drooled” (from a review in Blues Unlimited, a British music magazine).

2008: “Up to your ears in debt? Broke? Here I can really identify. I grew up broke” (from Howard J. Ruff’s How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years).

Notice how the use of the verb has expanded over the years.

It’s important to know that only recently has the intransitive “identify with” (as in “He identifies with Italians”) become acceptable to lexicographers. What’s left out is the object (“himself”). 

For many years, critics of that usage were bothered by the fact that “identify” was used without an object in the form of a reflexive pronoun.

But today, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), “this use of identify with without the reflexive has become standard.”

The dictionary says 82 percent of its Usage Panel accepts the sentence “I find it hard to identify with any of his characters.”

In our opinion it’s a very short grammatical jump from sentences like “He identifies with Italians” and “When he’s with Italians, he can identify” to one like “He identifies as Italian.”

Language changes, and we can identify with that.

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Q: We’re planning to hold a reception “on” the West Porch of our museum. Or do we say “in” that particular room? Does it matter whether the room is enclosed?

A: The noun “porch” can refer to either an exterior, covered structure at the entrance of a building or an interior vestibule or hallway, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) says it can also refer to an open or enclosed room attached to the outside of a building.

We haven’t found any authoritative answer to your question about the appropriate prepositions.

But we ourselves happen to prefer “on” for exterior, open structures and “in” for enclosed, interior areas.

For example, in referring to an exterior, unenclosed porch we would say, “In summer we put the potted palm outside on the porch.”

But if we called our entry hall or vestibule a “porch,” we would say, “Come inside and leave your wet things in the porch.”

We may not be in the majority, however. A cursory Google search of “in the porch” turned up eight times as many hits as a search for “on the porch.”

The word “porch” entered English around 1300, according to the OED. A brief examination of the OED citations shows an early preference for “in” rather than “on.”

For example, this comes from William Langland’s poem Piers Plowman (circa 1400): “I hym seigh as I satte in my porche.” (“I saw him as I sat in my porch.”)

The word came into English by way of Anglo-Norman and was originally spelled like the French porche. The word’s ultimate ancestor is the Latin porticus (a colonnade, arcade, or porch).

In fact, English borrowed “porticus” itself directly from Latin in the early 17th century, and it’s still sometimes used as an architectural term today.

The OED describes a “porticus” as “a formal entrance to a classical temple, church, or other building, consisting of columns at regular intervals supporting a roof often in the form of a pediment.”

But “porticus” can also mean “a covered colonnade in this style,” according to the OED.

Another word that means the same thing is “portico,” which is more common than “porticus” and was adopted at about the same time.

We got “portico” from Italy, where it’s the Italian version of the Latin porticus.

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Q: I was at a concert last week and began wondering if there’s a correlation between the “fugue” that’s a musical construction and the “fugue” that’s a psychiatric state. Any ideas? Such are the thoughts that sometimes come into my mind while listening to a particularly interesting piece of music.

A: There is indeed a relationship between the “fugue” that’s a musical composition and the “fugue” that’s a mental state. Both have to do with fleeing and come from the same Latin source.

We’ve written about the two fugues before on our blog, but now we’ll go into a bit more detail. Call this a variation on a theme.

We’ll start with an obsolete English word spelled “fuge,” which was a noun for the act of fleeing and a verb meaning to flee.

It was adapted in the 15th century from the Latin fugere (to flee), which is also the source of the words “fugitive,” “refuge,”  “refugee,” “subterfuge,” and others.

The noun “fuge” first appeared, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary, in a 1436 poem: “Assaute was there none; No sege, but fuge.” (“Assault was there none; no siege, but fuge [i.e., retreat].”)

The verb “fuge” came along in 1566, in George Gascoigne’s translation of Supposes, a comedy by the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto: “I to fuge and away hither as fast as I could.”

The old senses of “fuge” quickly disappeared. But soon a more lasting “fuge” entered English, this one meaning a polyphonic composition in which one or more musical themes are interwoven in different voices.

The OED’s first citation for the word is from the composer Thomas Morley’s A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597):

“We call that a Fuge, when one part beginneth and the other singeth the same, for some number of notes (which the first did sing).”

For its first 70 years, this word was spelled “fuge.” It was borrowed directly from the Italian word fuga (flight), a descendant of the Latin fuga (the act of fleeing), a relative of fugere (to flee).

A new spelling, “fugue,” was introduced by the poet John Milton, who used the French version of the word in Paradise Lost (1667):

“His volant touch /  Instinct through all proportions low and high / Fled and pursu’d transverse the resonant fugue.”

(Notice Milton’s play on words in the last line. He uses both “fled” and “fugue,” the original sense of fugere as well as the musical sense derived from the Latin verb. And “volant,” or flying, comes from the Latin volare, to fly.)

We come now to the mental state known as a “fugue.” This sense of the word entered English in the early 20th century, according to OED citations, and is defined in the dictionary as “a flight from one’s own identity.”

The term first appeared in 1901 in Caroline Corson’s translation of Dr. Pierre Janet’s The Mental State Hystericals: “Those long flights (fugues) … those strange excursions, accomplished automatically, of which the patient has not the least recollection.”

Mrs. Corson was translating a book published in French in 1894, and apparently felt the word’s first appearance needed an explanation. But later in the book, she refers to “these fugues” without translating the word.

French doctors, who were the first to describe the psychiatric condition, had been using fugue in the medical sense since the late 1880s. The French also used l’état de fugue before the equivalent term “fugue state” showed up in English.

It’s easy to see why “fugue,” a word having to do with fleeing or flight, seemed appropriate to both composers and doctors.

In a polyphonic “fugue,” melodic strands are introduced that flee or diverge from the original theme, like musical flights of fancy. A psychiatric “fugue” or “fugue state” represents a flight or a fleeing from reality.

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Q: I don’t know if the distinction between “sensuous” and “sensual” is still alive, but I see it as a sort of thought control. It’s hard to even articulate without leaning on suspect concepts like baser vs. higher nature. I’d welcome your thoughts, and any other sources you might refer me to.

A: In a sense (if you’ll pardon the expression), you’re right about this. The word “sensuous” owes its existence to prudery.

The poet John Milton invented “sensuous” because he apparently felt that the existing word, “sensual,” was getting too sexy for his purposes.

“Sensuous” first appeared in writing, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary, in Milton’s essay Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline in England (1641).

In the relevant passage, Milton contrasts the “Soule” with “her visible, and sensuous collegue the body.”

He used the word again in a 1644 essay on education. This quotation comes from a passage in which he discusses practical arts like logic and rhetoric:

“To which Poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being lesse suttle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate.”

It seems the author of Paradise Lost regarded “sensual” as inappropriate for exalted writing and needed something a bit drier.

But “sensual” didn’t always have a juicy reputation. 

It entered English around 1450, adapted from the late Latin adjective sensualis. The ultimate source is the noun sensus, which the OED defines as meaning “perception, feeling, faculty of perception, meaning.”

With that etymology, it’s not surprising that “sensual” originally meant “of or pertaining to the senses or physical sensation; sensory,” according to the OED.

But it soon took on other, sometimes pejorative meanings, like base or lewd or unchaste.

It began appearing in phrases like “sensuall appetite” (1477), “sensuall luste” (before 1513), “the foule yoke of sensuall bondage” (before 1541), “sensual excesses” (1742), and so on.

And as an adjective applied to people, says the OED, “sensual” came to mean voluptuous, sexually passionate, or otherwise “absorbed in the life of the senses,” even to excess.

So the word’s original meaning was almost swamped in these new—and, in the view of some, depraved—usages.

We can understand why Milton might feel the need for a new word to supply the lost innocence of the old one.

When “sensuous” was introduced, the OED says, its meaning was “of or pertaining to the senses; derived from, perceived by, or affecting the senses; concerned with sensation or sense-perception.”

Milton’s new word took a while to catch on, however. “Sensuous” wasn’t seen again until 1814, when Samuel Taylor Coleridge took it up.

Coleridge wrote in an essay: “Thus, to express in one word what belongs to the senses, or the recipient and more passive faculty of the soul, I have reintroduced the word sensuous, used … by Milton.”

But an element of sensory enjoyment has crept into “sensuous,” too.

As the OED says, “sensuous” pleasure is pleasure “received through the senses,” a notion “implying a luxurious yielding up of oneself to passive enjoyment.”

As an example, the OED cites a line from Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s 1862 novel Lady Audley’s Secret (which Stewart happens to be reading at the moment).

Here’s the citation: “There is in the first taste of rustic life a kind of sensuous rapture scarcely to be described.”

So how are “sensual” and “sensuous” treated today? If properly used, they apply to different kinds of pleasures.

For the past 100 years or so, according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, language commentators have maintained that “sensuous emphasizes aesthetic pleasure while sensual emphasizes gratification or indulgence of the physical appetites.”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) puts it this way: “Sensuous usually applies to the senses involved in esthetic enjoyment, as of art or music. … Sensual more often applies to the physical senses or appetites, particularly those associated with sexual pleasure.”

The problem, of course, is that this can be a fine line.

As the editors of M-W point out, “The distinction is true enough within one range of meanings, and it is worth remembering. The difficulty is that both words have more than one sense, and they tend often to occur in contexts where the distinction between them is not as clear-cut as the commentators would like it to be.”

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[An updated post about “have a good day,” “have a nice day,” and “have a good one” appeared on Oct. 19, 2018.]

Q: In your “Have a good one” posting, you never say where the expression comes from. I know. I coined it in 1979 or ’80 as a student at Michigan State University. When a cashier at a Quality Dairy in Lansing uttered the annoying “Have a nice day,” I blurted out, “Have a good one.” The phrase spread around town and migrated to other parts of the US. If you know how I can collect royalties, please let me know.

A: Well, the timing may be right, but don’t count on those royalties.

We did a Google Timeline search and found that the use of “have a good one” in the sense of goodbye apparently showed up about 30 years ago.

The earliest appearance is from the headline of an article about Washington’s Birthday in the Feb. 10, 1981, issue of the Spokane (Wash.) Daily Chronicle: “Whatever, George, / Have a good one!”

If you had in fact coined the usage, we would expect to see a few appearances of it in Michigan newspapers before the expression migrated out to Spokane.

But who knows? As more newspaper archives are digitized, maybe we’ll find a 1979 or ’80 example from Michigan, perhaps even from the Lansing State Journal.

Have a good one!

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Q: I foolishly decided to pick a nit with a zealous animal lover over the euthanizing of a young dog. I maintained that the death an animal could be unexpected, untimely, sad, lamentable, etc., but not tragic (though I believe there’s a goat in the etymology of “tragedy”). My friend maintains that if the traumatized owners felt it was tragic, then it was so. Your thoughts?

A: There is indeed a goat element in the word “tragedy” (more on this later). However, we’re inclined to agree with you. While the death of an animal may be all of the adjectives you suggest, we wouldn’t call it tragic.

Of course, this is a value judgment on our part, not a matter of correctness or incorrectness. Certainly the loss of a treasured pet can be devastating.

The two of us are still grieving over the dog we lost last summer. When she died, we might have felt her death as tragic on a personal level, but we would not have used that word in speaking about it.

That’s because in recent years we’ve experienced real tragedy; several friends and relatives have died needlessly and much too soon. Such things give one a sense of proportion.

Remembering those losses, we could not in good conscience use the word “tragic” to describe our dog’s death, no matter how traumatized we felt.

Definitions of “tragedy,” the noun from which “tragic” derives, don’t specifically say the calamity has to befall a human being.

But this is clearly the way most people interpret “tragedy.” And this is how the word was used in classical times, when it got its start in Greek drama.

Although animals appear in Greek tragedy, the tragic heroes are human. (The classicist Chiara Thumiger has written about animal imagery in Greek tragedy.)

The word “tragedy” comes from the Greek tragoidia, which the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology defines as “a dramatic poem or play in formal or stately language and action having an unhappy resolution.”

The Greek word literally means “goat song,” from the roots tragos (goat) and oide (song or ode). The reason for the goat connection can only be guessed.

Chambers notes that several theories have been proposed. One is that the original actors or singers wore goatskins to represent satyrs. Another is that “a goat may have been the prize for the best performance.”

When “tragedy” came into English in the 14th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it meant “a play or other literary work of a serious or sorrowful character, with a fatal or disastrous conclusion.”

In English, “tragedy” was exclusively a dramatic term until the 16th century, when people started using it figuratively to describe real-life events.

The OED defines its new meaning as “an unhappy or fatal event or series of events in real life; a dreadful calamity or disaster.”

When the adjective “tragic” came along in the mid-16th century, it was used both in reference to “tragedy as a branch of the drama,” the OED says, and to events “characterized by or involving ‘tragedy’ in real life; calamitous, disastrous, terrible, fatal.”

People choose their own words to describe their own experiences. If they prefer to call the loss of a pet tragic, they’re free to do so, of course.

But you asked for our thoughts, and there they are.

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Q: You say in your posting about the word “dick” that it wasn’t used to mean a stupid or obnoxious person until the 20th century. I believe Jane Austen uses the word in just that way in Persuasion when she describes Richard Musgrove in Chapter 6.

A: Oh, my gosh! Both of us recently re-read Persuasion, but we didn’t make the connection when we researched the history of the pejorative “dick.”

We even recall being a bit startled by Austen’s scathingly witty characterization of “poor Richard,” the black sheep of the Musgrove family.

In writing about his death at sea, Austen says “the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son, and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year.”

The passage that caught your attention is in the next paragraph. We’ll repeat it for other readers of the blog:

 “He had, in fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for him, by calling him ‘poor Richard,’ been nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done any thing to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name, living or dead.”

In writing here about the ne’er-do-well Dick Musgrove, was Austen slyly referring to the pejorative “dick”? That’s certainly one way to interpret the passage. We’re not sure, though.

Perhaps now that early newspapers, broadsheets, and pamphlets are being digitized, researchers will come up with more definitive uses of the pejorative “dick.” Something to look forward to!

Austen, who finished writing Persuasion in 1816, died the next year at the age of 41. What a loss!

Both of us have read and reread her novels many times. And with each reading, we discover things we hadn’t noticed before. (Now you’ve brought another one to our attention.)

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