Tag: Etymology

Q: I was reading the Dickens novel Hard Times recently and came across the expression “pleased as Punch.” Why is there a capital letter in “Punch” and where does the phrase come from?

A: The “Punch” in “pleased as Punch” (as well as “proud as Punch”) refers to the comic villain of the Punch and Judy puppet shows popular in Britain since the mid-1600s, though in decline in recent years.

The plots vary from show to show, but Punch typically bumps off folks left and right – his wife (Judy), his child, a policeman, even the hangman. Along the way he takes great pleasure and pride in each evil deed, hence those expressions.

Punch is a shortened version of Punchinello, which is an Anglicized version of Polichinello, a stock character in 16th-century Italian commedia dell’arte. Samuel Pepys, in his 17th-century diary, reports seeing a play at King’s Theatre, then going “to Polichinello, and there had three times more sport than at the play.”

The first published reference for “pleased as Punch” in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the poet William Gifford’s satirical writings (1797): “Oh! how my fingers itch to pull thy nose! / As pleased as Punch, I’d hold it in my gripe.”

The earliest citation for “proud as Punch” is in the Dickens novel David Copperfield (1850): “I am as proud as Punch to think that I once had the honor of being connected with your family.”

All of the OED’s 19th-century references cap the “P” in “Punch.” But some 20th-century citations lowercase it, as in this one from D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928): “She wanted me, and made no bones about it. And I was as pleased as punch.”

Nowadays, you can find both capped and lowercase versions of “pleased as punch.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) caps it, but this is a matter of style. It’s your pleasure.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: What is a word that means the use of long, rather obscure words? Not “pleonasm,” which means using more words than necessary; and not “lexiphanic,” which means using pretentious words (although that comes close).

A: I think the word you want is “sesquipedalian,” which literally means “a foot and a half long,” from the Latin words sesqui (one and a half) and pes (foot). Now, in words of few syllables (I hope), a little history.

We have the Roman poet Horace to thank for this word, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. In his Ars Poetica, Horace used the Latin word sesquipedalia (foot and a half long) to describe highfalutin words.

The first English citation for this usage is in a 1656 dictionary of obscure words: “Sesquipedalian words (verba sesquipedalia) used by Horace for great, stout, and lofty words; words that are very long, consisting of many Syllables.”

A shorter version, “sesquipedal,” entered English in 1611, and originally referred to size only, with no reference to words. But in 1624 Robert Burton remarked in his Anatomy of Melancholy on “Fustian, big, sesquipedal words.”

Meanwhile, “sesquipedalian” also had to do with simple measurement when it first appeared in 1615, according to the OED, originally referring only to “a person or thing that is a foot and a half in height or length.”

Both “sesquipedalian” and “sesquipedal” have survived to the present day, but the two words have different meanings now.

These days, “sesquipedalian” refers to long and ponderous words, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), while “sesquipedal” means merely a foot and a half long.

So, a “sesqipedal” hot dog” would be an example of a “sesquipedalian” usage.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: Can “problematic” and “problematical” be used interchangeably? Are both correct?

A: Yes, both words are legitimate, and they mean the same thing.

The longer one, “problematical,” first appeared in print in 1567, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines it as “of the nature of a problem.”

The word was used later in the 1500s in reference to both geometry and logic. (The OED notes that a “problematical question” in logic was one “put forward merely for discussion, but not of any practical importance; an academic question.”)

The shorter version, “problematic,” was first recorded in 1609 and means the same thing, “of the nature of a problem.” (This too has a specific meaning in logic, where a “problematic” proposition is one that “asserts that a state of affairs is possible rather than actual or necessary,” according to the OED.)

In addition, “problematic” and the plural “problematics” are sometimes used as nouns in English, as in these recent citations: “the particular problematic of the day” (1997) and “the problematics of seeing” (2004).

Both “problematical” and “problematic” have been in use pretty steadily since they first appeared. If I had to choose, though, I’d go for the more concise “problematic.” A quick Google search tells me it’s vastly the more popular word.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: I know someone who uses the expression “all of THE sudden” all of the time, and I just found it in a not very well-written novel. I consider it one more entry in the Ugly Lexicon, up there with “humongous” and “it’s so fun.”

A: The common expression in modern English is of course “all of a sudden.” It’s one of those idiomatic phrases that on the surface don’t make sense literally. But read on.

“Sudden” came to us from Old French, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and its ultimate source is the Latin subire, meaning to come or go stealthily.

It entered English in about 1300 as an adjective (spelled soden, sodeyne, sodein, swdan, and all sorts of other ways; the spelling wasn’t established until after 1700). Beginning in the 1400s, according to the OED, “sudden” was also used as an adverb, the way we use “suddenly” today.

But (and here’s the relevant part) in the 1500s people began using “sudden” as a noun. A “sudden” was an unexpected occurrence. So people spoke of events that happened at, in, of, or upon “the sudden” or “a sudden.”

Notice, though, how phrases with “the” came before those with “a.” H-m-m. Here are some citations from the OED of “sudden” at work with various prepositions:

• “at the sodeyne” (1559) vs. “at a sudden” (1560)
• “in the Sodeyne” (1559) vs. “in a sodaine” (1560)
• “of the suddeyne” (1570) vs. “of a sodaine” (1596)
• “upon the soden” (1558) vs. “vpon a sodayne” (1565)

At about this time, the use of “sudden” was extended to phrases that required the indefinite article “a,” like these: “upon suche a sodeyn” (1572); “upon a very great sudden” (1575); and “with such a sodaine” (1582). This may have influenced a general movement toward usages with “a” instead of “the,” a preference that eventually won out.

“All” didn’t enter the picture (as far as our phrase is concerned) until the 1600s. “All of a sudden” first appeared in 1681. So the historical progression of the phrase we’re talking about was “of the sudden” … “of a sudden” … “all of a sudden.”

Here and there, one comes across an “all of the sudden” on the Internet or heard on the street, but rarely in published writing. The expression is well established as “all of a sudden.” And in the 21st century it gives us our only remaining chance to use old “sudden” as a noun!

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: In Sunday school, we were told that Jesus was born in a manger, which my dictionary defines as a feed trough. Am I right to assume that “manger” is a corruption of the French manger, meaning to eat? Does anybody still use “manger” for a feed trough? Or was the word created so we wouldn’t have to sing, “Away in a feed trough”?

A: You’re on the right track, but it’s a twisty one that goes back many hundreds of years.

Our noun “manger” came into English in the 1300s from the Anglo-Norman mangure, which in turn came from the Old French maingeure. All these mean the same thing: a long open box or trough for feeding cattle or horses.

The source of them all, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is the Old French verb mangier (“eat”), ultimately derived from the Latin manducare (“chew”). The modern French words are mangeoire for “manger” and manger for “eat.”

In the 15th and 16th centuries, there was a related verb in English for chowing down, “maunge,” but it’s gone by the wayside, replaced by “eat.”

The word “eat,” by the way, is ancient. It has old Germanic roots that go back many, many centuries, long before it first entered English in the year 825.

In preferring “eat” over “maunge,” speakers of English chose an old Anglo-Saxonism over a Latinate word.

But there are echoes of the old word “maunge” around today: in the British pudding “blancmange” (“white food”), in the disease “mange” (which is an eating-away of the skin), and in the related adjective “mangy.”

In fact, the OED says the word “munch” (and consequently, I guess, “munchies”) may have been influenced by the Old French word for eating.

And, yes, the term “manger” is still used for a feed trough, as in this excerpt from a Jan. 3, 1986, article in the British magazine Farmers Weekly: “We must do something about the troughing, both to improve intake by having feed constantly in the manger, and to cut down labour.”

In case you’re wondering about the expression “dog-in-a-manger,” the OED defines it this way: “A churlish person who will neither use something himself nor let another use it; in allusion to the fable of the dog that stationed himself in a manger and would not let the ox or horse eat the hay.”

With that, I’m off to put on the feed bag.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: Gotcha! Your Sept. 16, 2006, post about “each other” says: “Short answer: you’re right and your teacher’s right.” Methinks you made an error here. You used the possessive “teacher’s” to modify the word “right.” That’s not right, unless you’re referring to something like a teacher’s inalienable right.

A: I’m surprised at you! The apostrophe in English has two functions: (1) to indicate a possessive; (2) to show where letters are omitted in a contraction.

In that sentence from the blog, “you’re” is a contraction of “you are” and “teacher’s” is a contraction of “teacher is.”

“Teacher’s” can be either a contraction or a possessive, as in these examples:

(1) “The teacher’s a firm disciplinarian.”

(2) “The teacher’s class is always well-behaved.”

In the first sentence, we have a contraction of “teacher is.” In the second, we have the possessive of “teacher.”

Now, go stand in the corner! (Just kidding.)

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: People usually talk about grammar and syntax as if they’re a package deal, like Proctor & Gamble or Cheech and Chong, but I wonder how many people actually know what syntax is. To be honest, I don’t. Can you help, please?

A: Grammar is a system of rules for combining words into sentences. It has two parts: the choice of words and the arrangement of words. Syntax (the second part) is the orderly arrangement of words to show their relationships.

To straighten out a sentence’s syntax, in the words of Jacques Barzun, is “to link or separate what has been wrongly split or joined.”

Here’s an example of a mistake in word choice: “Everybody love a lover.” Although we use the word “everybody” when we’re thinking of a crowd, it’s actually singular and goes with a singular verb: “Everybody loves a lover.”

Here’s an example of a problem involving syntax: “Tail wagging merrily, Bertie took the dog for a walk.” As the words are arranged now, the tail is attached to Bertie, not to the dog. Let’s put the tail where it belongs: “Tail wagging merrily, the dog went for a walk with Bertie.”

This common error, called a dangler, involves putting a word or phrase in the wrong place so it describes the wrong thing. You can find a lot more examples of screwy syntax in “The Compleat Dangler” chapter of my grammar book Woe Is I.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: Why is it that we go to school, go to work, and go to church, but we don’t go to home?

A: The words “school,” “work,” and “church” in your question are nouns that represent places. We use a preposition (a positioning word like “to”) when we talk about movement toward a place.

The word “home,” on the other hand, is an adverb above and modifies the verb “go.” We don’t need a preposition with an adverb: “Let’s split and head home.”

The word “home” has been a noun, adjective, and adverb since Anglo-Saxon days. The earliest published reference for the adverb in the Oxford English Dictionary dates from around the year 1,000.

A similar word, “south,” can also be a noun, adjective, and adverb. Here’s the adverb in action: “When the temperature fell, he headed south.” No preposition needed.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: It seems to me that “phenomenon” has two valid plurals: “phenomena” and “phenomenons.” Example: Federer is a “phenomenon.” Nadal is a “phenomenon.” They are “phenomenons” or “phenomena.” Right?

A: Modern dictionaries do accept “phenomenons,” but I think anyone who uses the term as the plural of “phenomenon” is likely to raise a few eyebrows. Mine, for instance.

Traditionally, the singular is “phenomenon” and the plural “phenomena,” although, as the Oxford English Dictionary says, the “singular phenomena and plural phenomenons are both frequently found (especially in speech and in informal writing).”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) says that “phenomenon” is the only singular form, and that “phenomena” is the usual plural. But it adds that “phenomenons” may be used as the plural “in nonscientific writing when the meaning is ‘extraordinary things, occurrences, or persons.’ “

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) agrees for the most part. It says the singular is “phenomenon” and lists two possible plurals: “phenomena,” for more than one observable fact or event, and “phenomenons,” for more than one “exceptional, unusual, or abnormal person, thing, or occurrence.”

So I suppose that bird migrations, moon phases, or the mating habits of insects might be observable “phenomena,” while Dracula and the Frankenstein monster would be “phenomenons.”

Merriam-Webster’s also remarks in a usage note that “Phenomena has been in occasional use as a singular for more than 400 years and its plural phemonenas for more than 350.”

But M-W calls the singular “phenomena” a nonstandard usage, noting that it has “nowhere near the frequency of use” of words like “stamina,” “agenda,” and “candelabra,” all of which were once strictly plural and are now recognized as singulars.

Phenomenal, isn’t it?

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: The other day I told my dad that I had gotten him a birthday present, and he said, “Is it bigger than a breadbox?” Where did this expression come from?

A: The question “Is it bigger than a breadbox?” was popularized by Steve Allen when he was a panelist on the TV quiz show “What’s My Line.”

The object of the show was to guess the occupation of a mystery guest. This meant that panelists often had to ask questions about a product invented or produced by the mystery guest.

The breadbox question became a comic refrain on “What’s My Line,” the longest-running game show in the history of prime-time network TV. It lasted for 18 seasons, from 1950 to 1967. Allen, a comedian, composer and writer, later wrote a book entitled Bigger Than a Breadbox.

Descriptive phrases like “no larger than a breadbox” and “not much bigger than a breadbox” were known in the 1940s. But it was Allen’s “Is it bigger than a breadbox?” that kept the usage alive long after breadboxes were a distant memory.

Other panelists on “What’s My Line” (no, there was no question mark) included the columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, the publisher Bennett Cerf, the actor Arlene Francis, the comedian Fred Allen, and the poet Louis Untermeyer, who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era and forced off the show.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: I’m an editor who works with writers at a trade journal. Why does the word for my job end in “-or” while the word for someone I edit ends in “-er”?

A: Suffixes, or word endings, can be a challenge. (“Suffix,” by the way, is from the Latin for “to fasten.”)

We add the suffixes “-er” or “-or” to the ends of words to make them what are called agent nouns. (An agent noun is a name for a doer, somebody who does something.)

Here are some examples of doers: “editor,” “singer,” “rider,” “writer,” “doctor,” “auditor,” and so on. Sometimes the sound of the last syllable is spelled “-or” and sometimes “-er.” How do we know which one to use, and when?

In general, agent nouns with “-er” endings come from old Germanic roots. So words like “sing,” “ride” and “write,” all derived from old Germanic sources, become agent nouns with the addition of “-er.”

In general, agent nouns with “-or” endings come from Latin. That’s why “edit,” from the Latin editus, “audit,” from the Latin auditus, and “doctor,” from the Latin docere, all become agent nouns with the addition of “-or.”

This is just a very general rule. There are many exceptions (“plumber,” for instance, is ultimately derived from the Latin plumbum, but it ends in “-er”).

In addition, some English words have both endings (like “adviser/advisor”). Where both exist, the “-er” ending is often the older one.

In the case of some legal terms, it appears that lawyers historically have been fonder of the more pompous-looking Latinate endings than of the simple Teutonic ones.

Buy our books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: I don’t see the need for including “different” in a sentence like “He visited 14 different countries on his tour.” Does “different” serve to emphasize an unusually large number for an activity? Or is it simply redundant?

A: In an expression like “14 different countries,” the word “different” is of course optional. Although it’s not necessary, the writer or speaker many be using it for emphasis.

Depending on the context, it may or may not be an outright redundancy. For example, a traveling salesman might want to use the word “different” to emphasize that he visited some countries more than once: “Last year I made 25 sales trips to 14 different countries.”

But if someone were to ask, for instance, how many people were coming to dinner, I would respond, “Eight people.” I certainly wouldn’t say, “Eight different people.” There would be no justification for such a redundancy.

I suppose what I’m saying is that some redundancies are more redundant than others.

If you don’t think it’s redundant to read on, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) has an informative usage note on “redundancy.”

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: I tried to call you on the air but couldn’t get through, so I’m e-mailing my question. What is the origin of all those “motley” expressions: “motley fool,” “motley crew,” and “mötley crüe”?

A: As you probably suspect, all three are fruit of the same family tree. The mother of them all is the word “motley,” which first showed up in English in the 1300s.

We don’t know for sure where “motley” comes from, but the Oxford English Dictionary suggests that it’s related to the Anglo-Norman word motlé, meaning variegated, which may be derived from the Old French medlee, or conflict.

“Motley” originally referred to cloth woven from threads of several colors. Here’s a late 14th-century quote from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: “In motlee, and hy on horse he sat; / Upon his head a Flandrish bever hat.”

From its earliest days, the word was used as both a noun for the cloth and an adjective for something multicolored like the cloth. By the 15th century, it was also used as a verb meaning to give something a multicolored appearance.

In the late 16th century, the noun came to mean the multicolored outfit worn by a court jester or fool. And in the early 17th century it was used to refer to the fool himself, as in this excerpt from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 110 (1609): “Alas ‘tis true, I have gone here and there, / And made my selfe a motley to the view.”

By the 17th century, the noun and adjective were also being used to refer, often negatively, to a hodgepodge of people or things. That’s pretty much the usual meaning of “motley” today.

Churchill, in A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956), uses the word in that way when he refers to “a motley, ill-knit collection of states, flung together by the chance of a single marriage, and lacking unity both of purpose and strength.”

As for the phrase “motley crew,” the earliest published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from an 1827 comic poem by George Canning: “But if, amongst this motley crew, / One man of real parts we view.”

Another early citation is from the 1848 diary of Henry Greville, a British diplomat: “This motley crew … dressed more ludicrously than any masks on a Mardi-gras.”

As for the heavy-metal band Mötley Crüe, the guitarist Mick Mars apparently came up with the name, thanks to hearing another group referred to as “a motley looking crew.” This comes from Wikipedia, which attributes the umlauts to a German beer that the band members were drinking at the time.

Interestingly, one of the early spellings of “crew,” dating from 1455, is indeed “crue.” No umlauts, though!

As for “motley fool” (and its modern incarnation as a financial website), the first published reference for the phrase is in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1616): “A fool, a fool! I met a fool i’ the forest, / A motley fool; a miserable world!”

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: I was flabbergasted to hear you say on the air that “We only see ulterior when it’s linked with motive” when you should have said that “We see ulterior only when it’s linked with motive.” My father taught me that “only” should be as close as possible to the word it modifies.

A: Your father was right. I included a section on this in my book Woe Is I, using the sentence “The butler says he saw the murder.” The following examples show how the placement of “only” can change the meaning:

•Only the butler says he saw the murder. (The butler, and no one else, says he saw the murder.)

•The butler only says he saw the murder. (The butler says, but can’t prove, he saw it.)

•The butler says only he saw the murder. (The butler says he, and no one else, saw it.)

•The butler says he only saw the murder. (He saw – but didn’t hear – the murder.)

•The butler says he saw only the murder. (He saw just the murder, and nothing else.)

But in many cases, if not most, the placement of “only” won’t be misunderstood. In fact,”only” often seems more natural immediately before the verb.

For example, “I was only trying to help.” Or, “She’s only skied the beginners’ slope.” Or, “He only started packing at noon.” It would be pedantic to argue for rearranging those sentences: “I was trying only to help.” Or, “She’s skied only the beginners’ slope.” Or, “He started packing only at noon.”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) remarks in a usage note with its entry for “only” that “there are occasions when placement of only earlier in the sentence seems much more natural, and if the context is sufficiently clear, there is no chance of being misunderstood.”

As for the sentence I perpetrated on the air, it could not have been misunderstood. Still, I wish I had moved “only” a couple of spots back. I hate to give listeners a reason to scold me!

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: I’m writing an article that includes a quote from Archimedes’ (or Archimedes’s) principle of buoyancy. Wikipedia, Britannica Online, and my Random House unabridged dictionary make “Archimedes” possessive by adding just an apostrophe, but proper grammar would require an apostrophe plus the letter s. Or am I missing something?

A: You’re right that a singular word, including a name, usually becomes possessive with the addition of an apostrophe and the letter s. My grammar book Woe Is I has this example: “The dress’s skirt, which resembled a tutu from one of Degas’s paintings, was ruined.”

But there are a couple of exceptions to this rule. When a classical or Biblical name ends in s, the general practice is to add only the apostrophe to make it possessive.

Here’s an example from Woe Is I: “Whose biceps were bigger, Hercules’ or Achilles’?” And Garner’s Modern American Usage has these examples: “Aristophanes’ plays,” “Jesus’ suffering,” “Moses’ discovery,” and “Xerxes’ writing.”

Also, we traditionally drop the s in a lot of “sake” phrases – “for goodness’ sake,” “for conscience’ sake,” “for righteousness’ sake,” etc. – to avoid adding another sibilant syllable to a pileup of hissing sounds.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: Whenever I hear the word “rhetoric,” it’s in reference to inane, worthless speech, as in “empty political rhetoric.” Yet my dictionary renders a completely different meaning: the art of using language effectively. What’s with that?

A: Politicians and hucksters have given “rhetoric” a bad name, that’s what! It used to be considered a noble endeavor, one of the seven “liberal arts” of the Middle Ages.

The Oxford English Dictionary primarily defines “rhetoric,” which entered English in the 1300s, as “The art of using language so as to persuade or influence others; the body of rules to be observed by a speaker or writer in order that he may express himself with eloquence.”

What’s often missing today is the eloquence, but this isn’t especially new or surprising. Nor is the dismissive meaning of “rhetoric.” The word has been used for several hundred years to refer to artificial or ostentatious language.

An OED citation from 1570, for example, refers to “rashe ragged Rhetorike” and one from 1615 to “gaudy Rhetoricke.” Milton, Swift, Cowper, and Macaulay used the term in a disparaging way over the next two centuries. And Swinburne, in an 1880 monograph, refers to the “limp loquacity of long-winded rhetoric.” Could he have been guilty of it himself?

Although both The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) list the traditional definition in their entries on “rhetoric,” they also include meanings that are somewhat less admirable.

M-W, for example, says “rhetoric” may refer to “insincere or grandiloquent language,” while AH says it may be used for language that’s “elaborate, pretentious, insincere, or intellectually vacuous.”

Someone accused of displaying “rhetoric” today is probably not being complimented. I’m glad Aristotle (whose Rhetoric I read as a philosophy major in college) isn’t around to hear it.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: I cringe every time I hear an interviewer or an interviewee use “there’s” to refer to more than one thing. What’s going on? I believe this is an egregious error that undermines consideration of one’s point of view. Agreed?

A: Yup, agreed.

When “there” is the subject of a sentence (even if it’s something of a phantom subject), it can be either singular or plural. Examples: “There’s a fly in my soup”; “There are fleas on my dog.”

But many people don’t seem to realize this and resort to “there’s” for all occasions. Why? There’s many reasons. (Just kidding there!)

One reason may be that people find “there are” too much trouble to pronounce (not to mention the questionable contraction “there’re,” an awkward muddle that’s best avoided anyway).

Another reason may be this. When a sentence starts with “there,” the “real” or grammatical subject (the “fly” or the “fleas” above) follows the verb, and that’s what determines (though a bit after the fact) whether the verb is singular or plural.

Many people (perhaps most) speak before they’ve thought their sentences through. For them, it’s easier to start out with “there’s” and pray (often to no avail) that the rest of the sentence will take care of itself.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: I’m too shy to call in when you’re on the radio so I’m writing. Why do people say “ivory tower” in reference to academia? The phrases “ivy tower” or “ivied tower” would seem to make more sense.

A: The expression “ivory tower” has a long and interesting history, dating back to the Old Testament. Here’s an excerpt from the King James translation of the Song of Solomon: “Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon.”

In the 17th century, several English writers used the phrase in poems influenced by the Song of Solomon. Here’s an example from A Paraphrase Upon the Canticles (1679) by Samuel Woodford: “Thy neck is like a Tower of Ivory, Hung with the Trophies of Love’s Victory.”

All these early references seem to refer to purity or beauty. But in 1837, the French literary critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve used the expression tour d’ivoire to describe what he considered the aloof, unworldly poetry of Alfred de Vigny.

This usage of “ivory tower,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “a condition of seclusion or separation from the world” or “shelter from the harsh realities of life,” made its way into English in the early 20th century.

The OED’s first English citation for this sense is from a 1911 translation of an essay in which Henri Bergson says each member of society “must avoid shutting himself up in his own peculiar character as a philosopher in his ivory tower.”

For decades, the phrase was primarily used to describe writers, artists, and occasionally public officials who were isolated from the realities of life. In fact, none of the early citations in the OED refer to academia.

The first published reference that puts “ivory tower” on campus is in Mary McCarthy’s novel The Group (1963): “We called you the Ivory Tower group. Aloof from the battle.” An article in the Economist that same year refers to dons “attached to academic ivory-toweredness.”

As for all those “ivy” and “ivied” expressions that refer to academic life, the earliest citation I find in the OED is one from the late 19th century about “the ivied wall of the Bodleian,” the library at Oxford University.

A 1933 article in the New York Herald Tribune refers to football “among the ivy colleges.” And a 1939 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly says: “The ‘Ivy League’ is something which does not exist and is simply a term which has been increasingly used in recent years by sports writers, applied rather loosely to a group of eastern colleges.”

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: A newspaper article about Atlantic City’s war on seagulls says a casino employee “is not so benign about the birds that have seemingly taken over the world’s most famous boardwalk.” I question this use of the word “benign.” Do you think it is correct?

A: Well, the adjective “benign” can mean kind or gentle, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.).

And the Oxford English Dictionary has published citations for this usage going back to the days of Chaucer and earlier. In Troilus and Criseyde, for example, Chaucer uses it (spelled “benyng” in those days) to mean showing a kindly feeling: “Benyng he was to eche in general.”

The word “benign,” it seems, has had that meaning since the 14th century. (Another 14th-century meaning – humble, meek – is now obsolete, however.)

So the newspaper’s choice of words isn’t wrong. But I think that the “kindly” meaning for “benign” is rapidly getting obsolete too. These days, most people use “benign” in the sense of harmless, as in “a benign tumor.”

If I had written that story, I would have used something like “benevolent,” “generous,” “charitable,” “tolerant,” or “kindhearted.” When a usage pulls you up short (as this one did you and me), it’s probably worth changing.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: Several years ago, I read a story about research being done on the “original language.” I have tried, to no avail, to find any reference to the subject. Of course I have no idea where I read it, or anything else about it, just that it was very interesting. Do you have any suggestions?

A: The article may have been referring to the prehistoric Proto-Indo-European language, which was spoken “in an as yet unidentified area between eastern Europe and the Aral sea around the fifth millennium B.C.,” according to The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, edited by Calvert Watkins.

The Indo-European family of languages – including English and the other Germanic languages, the Celtic languages, Latin and its descendants, Greek, the Balto-Slavic languages, Sanskrit, Iranian, and many others – all are descended from prehistoric Proto-Indo-European.

Of course Proto-Indo-European does not include many, many more languages and language groups, like Arabic, Hebrew, ancient Egyptian, Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, Mongolian, Dravidian (the languages of southern India), Korean, Japanese, Chinese languages, Polynesian, Amer-Indian, Eskimo-Aleut, and on and on.

While some linguists like to speculate that everything ultimately came from one pot – some “Proto-World” language that may have existed 100,000 years ago – that at the moment is just a leap of the imagination.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

[An updated post about “fun” and “so fun” appeared on the blog on July 25, 2014.]

Q: My husband and I have always said things like “That was such fun” or “This is so much fun.” Nowadays, I hear “That was so fun.” Is this new usage acceptable?

A: No, the usage isn’t acceptable, but it’s now so common that someday it just might be.

“Fun” is traditionally a noun (a thing, as in “We had fun”), not an adjective. So you usually wouldn’t use it as a modifier (“We had a fun day”). An exception would be when “fun” is a predicate nominative – a noun that follows a verb and modifies the subject (“This is fun”).

Therefore, it would be OK to use “fun” in a sentence like “Skiing is fun,” but not in one like “We had a fun day on the slopes.”

For the same reason, the ubiquitous and annoying “so fun” is incorrect, but “so much fun” is not. If you mentally substitute a noun like “entertainment” you can see why. You wouldn’t say “so entertainment,” but you could say “so much entertainment.” Similarly you could say “This is entertainment” (predicate nominative).

I can’t say exactly when “so fun” came into being. (I don’t see any published references for the expression in the Oxford English Dictionary.) But I think it was probably inevitable.

People are used to putting “so” before predicate adjectives – that is, adjectives that describe the subject of a sentence (“This is so pink” or “This is so hard”). It’s natural, if not proper, that some people would want to put “so” before a noun that describes a subject (“This is so fun”). And if enough people do it, “fun” may become a legitimate adjective one day.

One more thing: Although “fun” is primarily a noun, it has been used since the 17th century as a verb meaning to make fun or to cheat (this usage is now obsolete), according to the OED.

Now, isn’t English fun!

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: I cringe every time I hear someone say, “It is what it is.” This phrase is ridiculous and it fails to add any substance to a conversation. It was bad enough when I heard it only from friends and students, but now I hear it on the news, even on NPR. What is its origin? And when will it disappear?

A: This annoying and insipid expression (and it’s older than you think) has gotten a lot of attention in the last few years, often from people who are just as irritated by it as you are.

Gary Milhoces, in a December 2004 article in USA Today, picked “It is what it is” as the No. 1 sports quote of 2004, but noted that it wasn’t new even then. “Although the origin is uncertain,” he wrote, “it has been around for years.”

In March 2006, William Safire devoted his On Language column in the New York Times Magazine to the mushrooming usage. The first published reference Safire could find came from a 1949 column by J.E. Lawrence in the Nebraska State Journal.

Here’s an excerpt from Lawrence’s column, describing the way pioneer life molded character: “New land is harsh, and vigorous, and sturdy. It scorns evidence of weakness. There is nothing of sham or hypocrisy in it. It is what it is, without apology.”

Safire likened the expression to Popeye’s “I yam what I yam.” If it was mushrooming two years ago, when he wrote about it, it’s a mushroom cloud today. But the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary still doesn’t have any citations for it.

In 2007, the Creative Group, a California company representing marketers and advertisers, surveyed clients nationwide and asked them to choose the most annoying and overused of their industry’s clichés. They chose “it is what it is,” along with “outside the box,” “synergy,” “low-hanging fruit,” and others.

If advertisers and marketers hate it, then its fate is probably sealed.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: Am I the only one bothered by the recent surge in the use of “who” to refer to non-human subjects? I haven’t noticed it in print but I hear it on radio and on TV – often by folks with otherwise impeccable grammar. Here’s an example: “The banks who did poorly were hit hard by the sub-prime mortgage crisis.” Is this usage acceptable? Or are the perpetrators just too lazy or unschooled to decide between “that” and “which”?

A: This is new to me. I’ve never heard anyone refer to a lending institution as a “who.” It certainly isn’t acceptable. “Who” is restricted to people and sometimes pets. For example, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage recommends that animals be referred to with “he,” “she,” and “who” (instead of the impersonal “it” or “that”) if the animal’s name or sex is mentioned.

Your theory about the source of this boo-boo – confusion over “that” and “which” – may be right. The same thing happens regularly with people who can’t decide between “I” and “me,” and decide to play it safe (they think) and go with “myself.”

I often hear from people who have the opposite complaint, and tell me they’re bothered when “that” is used to refer to people and not objects. In fact, this is perfectly good English. A person can be a “who” or a “that.”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) notes that there’s no foundation either in logic or in usage for the widespread misconception that “that” should refer only to things and not to people.

Both “who” and “that,” as relative pronouns, are appropriate for referring to people, according to A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage, by Bergen and Cornelia Evans. The authors write:

“That has been the standard relative pronoun for about eight hundred years and can be used in speaking of persons, animals, or things. Four hundred years ago, which became popular as a substitute for the relative that and was used for persons, animals, and things. Three hundred years ago, who also became popular as a relative. It was used in speaking of persons and animals but not of things. This left English with more relative pronouns than it has any use for. … Who may in time drive out that as a relative referring to persons, but it has not yet done so.”

One more point. While a bank can’t be a “who,” it can be referred to in the possessive with “whose” (as in “The bank whose loss was greatest was Acme”). There’s an old grammar myth to the effect that you can’t use the possessive “whose” to refer to an inanimate object because things can’t own things. Not so. The possessive “whose” is not restricted to animate antecedents.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: I hear people who should know better use the term “unknown quantity” when “unknown entity” is what they are really getting at. It is the quality of whatever is referred to that is unknown, not the quantity.

A: The expression “unknown quantity” originated in the terminology of algebra in the 17th century. A simple algebraic equation has an “unknown quantity” (often referred to as “x”) plus several known quantities. Solving the equation gives you the value of “x.” For example, in the equation x – 2 = 3 + 4, the unknown quantity (x) equals 9.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives two early citations for this usage: “The degree of Composition in the unknown Quantity of the Æquation” (1676). And “The Root of an Equation, is the Value of the unknown Quantity in the Equation” (1728). So an “unknown quantity,” in this case, is the object in a mathematical operation.

But “unknown quantity” has long been used figuratively as well. The essayist Walter Bagehot wrote in the Fortnightly Review in 1865: “The first election of Mr. Lincoln … was government by an unknown quantity.” The expression likens an unfamiliar or mysterious person or situation (say, a “wild card” or a “loose cannon”) to that part of an equation that remains hidden – the yet-to-be-solved “unknown quantity.”

All things considered, I’d say this is a fair use of metaphor.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: I heard someone on the radio say the goal of the MacArthur Foundation is “to help develop a more just society.” I’m of the opinion that “just” is an absolute adjective and cannot be modified. Before I offer a correction to such an esteemed organization, however, I’d like to check with the word maven herself.

A: An absolute adjective is one (like “dead” or “pregnant” or “unique”) that doesn’t have any degrees. You can’t, for example, be “more dead” or “very pregnant” or “extremely unique.”

The adjective “just,” in the context you cite, means fair, lawful, or morally right, according to modern dictionaries. I’m not absolutely certain it’s an absolute adjective, but let’s assume you’re right.

Sometimes an absolute adjective can legitimately be qualified for rhetorical effect. I think the phrase “a more just society” might be an example of this, similar to the phrase “a more perfect union” in the Preamble to the Constitution.

I believe both phrases (“more just” and “more perfect”) can be effective and can be justified when they refer to a striving further toward justice or perfection, rather than an ideal of justice or perfection. The expressions “closer to just” or “closer to perfect” may be more logical, but they have less rhetorical power.

In a 2006 speech in Philadelphia, former President Bill Clinton spoke of “how smart the Founding Fathers were” to come up with the expression “a more perfect union.”

“They knew we would never be perfect,” he said. “But they knew we could always be more perfect.”

And that just about sums it up!

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: Watching a Pinter play recently, I was struck by the use of the word “pussens” in referring to a cat. I could not find it in the dictionary, but my wife saw the word in Ulysses. Did Joyce make it up?

A: “Puss” and “pussy” have been used for calling cats since the 1500s, and “pussycat” since the 1600s. The origin of “puss” isn’t clear, but there has been some speculation that it evolved in imitation of sounds one makes to call a cat.

There are similar cat terms in several other Germanic languages, including the Scandinavian languages (pus, puse), Low and Middle Low German (pus, puus, puse), and Dutch (poes, puis).

The word “pussens,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is an extended form of “puss” that was first recorded in 1866 in a book by the Victorian novelist Charlotte Riddell: ” ‘Oh! you dear, dear old pussens’ – and the child made a dive at the tabby.”

It next appeared in 1915 in one of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s books for girls: “‘Him was a nice old pussens, him was,’ vowed Anne, cuddling her pet defiantly.”

The OED‘s third citation for “pussens” does indeed come from James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922): “Milk for the pussens, he said.” (Here’s another example, not in the OED, from Ulysses: “I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens.”)

A 2007 draft revision for the OED calls “pussens” a “nursery and colloquial” usage. The addition of “ens” to “puss” seems to be arbitrary. Another form of the word, “pussums,” first recorded in 1912, may be formed by analogy with “diddums,” which began as 19th-century baby-talk.

So Joyce didn’t make up the word. God only knows where he got it. Do you think he was a fan of Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables books? No, I don’t think so either. Maybe he picked it up from his governess. I seem to remember that she had the same nickname as Stephen Daedalus’s Dante.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: I listen to you on XM Public Radio and you’ve reignited my passion for language. I wonder if you can tell me the origin of the term “mucky muck” in reference to a well-heeled, fancy person?

A: The expression, which has a long and interesting history, is usually seen as “high muckamuck,” “muckamuck,” or “muckety-muck” these days. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) has entries for the first two while Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) goes for the third. Both references say the expression refers to an important, often arrogant person.

The term “high muck-a-muck” began life as mid-19th century American slang for an important or self-important person, according to Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang. (Variations included “big muck-a-muck,” “muckety-muck,” “muckti-muck,” “muckty-muck,” “mucky-muck,” and “mucky-mucky.”)

The first citation for the expression in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from an 1856 article in the Democratic State Journal in Sacramento: “The professors – high ‘Muck-a-Mucks’ – tried fusion, and produced confusion.”

Why “muck”? Doing a little exploring, we find that the noun “muck” was first recorded in 1268, when it was a term for excrement, particularly farm manure. In the following century, it came to be used as a general term for dirt or filth. And since the early 1400s, the verb “muck” has meant to remove manure or dirt from (as in “to muck a stable”).

But from the year 1325 until well into the 19th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “muck” was also a word for “worldly wealth, money, especially regarded as sordid, corrupting, etc.” This sense of “muck” as filthy lucre is now obsolete.

The verb “muck,” not surprisingly, meant to hoard money or wealth back in the 1400s, another meaning that’s become obsolete. And in the 1500s, a “mucker” was a miser or a hoarder of wealth.

All this would seem to point to Middle English origins for the “muckamuck” who’s a VIP in American slang. But surprisingly, the expression apparently comes from a completely different direction – not English at all, but Native American languages of the Pacific Northwest.

As it turns out, according to the OED, “muckamuck” was originally a Chinook word for food, probably derived from a Nootka word meaning choice whalemeat.

In fact, European explorers, settlers, and so on once used “muckamuck” to refer to food or provisions (There was a verb, too: in the old Northwest, to “muckamuck” was to eat.)

It’s this use of “muckamuck” that led to the noun for a big shot. The word in this sense was originally part of the expression “high muck-a-muck,” which the OED says was apparently adapted from Chinook: hiu (“plenty”) plus muckamuck (“food”). In other words, someone with a lot of food was a big cheese.

The “muckamuck” that refers to an important person today is a shorter version of “high muckamuck.” And while we now interpret the beginning of the phrase as the English word “high,” its original meaning was plenty different.

And that’s enough mucking around for today!

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: I’m in the construction business and I use the term “grandfather clause” all the time. But the other day, somebody jumped down my throat for using a racist expression. Is this true?

A: The term “grandfather clause” usually refers to a provision exempting an existing activity from a new regulation affecting it. Under such a clause, for example, an existing business might be allowed to remain in an area rezoned from commercial to residential.

Although this specific usage has no racist overtones, the expression can also refer to now-defunct statutes some southern states adopted to exempt poor whites from the poll taxes and literacy requirements that kept blacks from voting.

The racist statutes, adopted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, generally provided that anyone (or his descendents) who had been allowed to vote before African-Americans were enfranchised would be exempt from the anti-black requirements.

The first published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary for “grandfather clause” is in the Jan. 22, 1900, Congressional Record: “The grandfather clause will not avail those citizens who … are unable to pay their poll tax.”

But Dave Wilton, an independent language researcher, reported on the Linguist List forum in 2006 that he had found an even earlier one in the Aug. 3, 1899, issue of the New York Times: “It provides, too, that the descendents of any one competent to vote in 1867 may vote now regardless of existing conditions. It is known as the ‘grandfather’s clause.’ ”

The verb “grandfather,” meaning to exempt from new regulations, is undoubtedly derived from “grandfather clause.” Or, so Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) defines it: “to permit to continue under a grandfather clause.”

But the verb, which is often accompanied by the prepositions “in” or “out,” doesn’t appear to have been used in the racial sense. All five citations in a 1993 addition to the online version of the OED use the verb only in the modern way. Here’s an example from the Kentucky Revised Statutes of 1953: “All certificates or permits grandfathered shall be subject to the same limitations and restrictions.”

As for your original question, the use of “grandfather clause” in the modern sense is not racist and doesn’t have anything to do with race, but the expression has its roots in an infamous chapter in US racial history.

Buy our books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: Do you have any insights into the verb “moon,” which my dictionary says originated as student slang in the ‘60s?

A: Hmm. Your question reminds me of a “streaking” incident when I was a college student in Iowa in the early ‘70s. (In the lexicon of student pranks, the verb “streak” means to run naked in public.) But back to the subject at hand.

The verb “moon” has been around a bit longer than the 1960s. In fact, the earliest published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from a 1601 translation of Pliny’s Historia Naturalis. In those days, it meant to expose to, bask in, or glow like moonlight.

By the mid-18th century, the verb also meant to act listlessly or aimlessly, according to the OED. And by the late 19th century, it took on the additional meaning of to daydream or act sentimentally.

But your question is obviously about a very different meaning of the word, a slang usage that the OED defines this way: “To expose one’s buttocks, esp. as a gesture intended to insult or shock.”

The OED’s earliest citation for this usage is from a 1968 issue of the journal Current Slang. But I prefer this 1971 citation from National Lampoon: “Have a few ‘brews,’ gross out some chicks, ‘moon’ a townie.”

Although this meaning of the verb “moon” is relatively new, the noun “moon” has been used to refer to buttocks for more than 250 years. The OED’s earliest published reference, which dates from 1756, refers to someone’s uncovered moon.

Here’s a more literary citation, from Joyce’s Ulysses (1922): “Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked. Glimpses of the moon.” And here’s one from the Beckett novel Murphy (1938): “Placing her hands upon her moons, plump and plain.”

Well, enough moonshines for today.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: Why do you think computer information is “uploaded” to a network and “downloaded” from one? Why should the network be above us?

A: The verbs “upload” and “download” are defined somewhat differently in various dictionaries. But generally the term “upload” means to transfer data from a smaller computer to a larger, often remote one. And the term “download” means to transfer data from a larger, often remote computer to a smaller one.

Why “up” and “down,” rather than “left” and “right,” or “in” and “out,” or whatever?

Well, many people think of computer networks, especially the Internet, as somewhere up there in the ether – that is, in cyberspace. And networks are often arranged in a hierarchy, with the important computers on top and the subordinate ones below. But I suspect the answer to your question is more etymological than geographical, technical, or philosophical.

The verb “upload,” meaning to load up, has been with us for almost a century and a half, well before anyone ever thought of uploading computer data.

The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary, from 1870, is in a poem by William Barnes: Low-headed horses slowly hail / The newly-made hay, uploaded high.

The OED’s first published reference for “upload” used with computer information is in a 1977 article in Aviation Week & Space Technology: “The joint program office … uploaded navigation data into the satellite by readjusting the phasing of the pseudo random noise signal employed by the navigation system.”

Interestingly, Aviation Week had used the term a year before in the older way in reference to loading a C-130 airplane: “At present most C-5C-141 pallets have to be reconfigured prior to uploading the C-130, particularly the two pallet spaces in the wheel-well area.”

So it seems to me that the digital use of “upload” probably evolved from the analog term. We can see similar evolutions with “cut,” “paste,” “spam,” “send,” “attach,” “clipboard,” and so on.

The first citation in the OED for the verb “download” is in a 1980 article in Electronic Design: “These programs are downloaded into the Microsystem Analyzer for debug and execution.”

I suspect, therefore, that the term “download” is a natural outgrowth of “upload.” But if anyone out there (or up there) in the ether has a better explanation, please let me know.

Buy Pat’s books at a local store or Amazon.com.

Q: Some people use the word “myriad” as an adjective meaning numerous, others as a noun meaning a large number, and still others as a noun meaning 10,000. Which is correct?

A: “Myriad” is both a noun meaning a great number and an adjective meaning numerous. In fact, the noun came first (circa 1555, vs. 1735 for the adjective). Although “myriad” is derived from two Greek words – one meaning 10,000 and the other innumerable – the sense of 10,000 is archaic today.

I agree with Bryan A. Garner, who notes in Garner’s Modern American Usage that the word “is more concise as an adjective (myriad drugs) than as a noun (a myriad of drugs).” But Garner adds that the choice between noun and adjective “is a question of style, not correctness.”

In my opinion, “myriad,” in the sense of an indefinite large number (which is the modern meaning), is redundant in the plural (“myriads”). I’ve maintained this view in both the first and second editions of my book Woe Is I.

I’m well aware that the plural “myriads” is a very old usage (in fact, it reeks of antiquity). But since the noun “myriad” now means a great number, the plural construction (“myriads”) seems unnecessary. And while we’re on the subject of style, not correctness, I regard “a myriad of” as infelicitous for much the same reason.

But it would be wrong to call those usages incorrect. In fact, they’re “parallel with those of the original ancient Greek,” according to a usage note in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.).

[Update: The third edition of Woe Is I (2009, 2010) puts petty prejudice aside and bows to current usage, infelicitous though it may be. Here’s the updated entry: “MYRIAD. It originally meant ‘ten thousand,’ but myriad now is an adjective meaning ‘numerous’ (Little Chuckie has myriad freckles) or a noun meaning ‘great number’ (He has myriads [or a myriad] of them).”]

Buy our books at a local store or Amazon.com.