Tag: Linguistics

Q: I’m curious about the word “individual.” I recall reading somewhere in the distant past that it was coined by Dickens as a humorous term for a person. Of course a person is an individual entity. You can’t divide one unless you draw and quarter him or her. Can you shed any light on this?

A: The Oxford English Dictionary says the word “individual” first appeared around the year 1425 as an adjective referring to “one in substance or essence; forming an indivisible entity; indivisible.”

The OED says this sense of the word is now considered obscure. It was derived from the medieval Latin word individualis, meaning indivisible or inseparable.

In the17th century, according to the OED, the adjective took on new meanings, including “numerically one, single” and pertaining to “a single person or thing, or some one member of a class.”

This was when the noun form came into being and meant what it does today – a single person or thing.

So Dickens (a 19th-century writer) wasn’t the first one to call a person an individual.

That honor, according to the OED, goes to the Puritan minister John Yates, who wrote in Ibis ad Cæsarem (1626): “The Prophet saith not, God saw euery particular man in his bloud, or had compassion to say to euery Indiuiduall, Thou shalt liue.”

However, Dickens must have liked the term. He used it many, many times. Here are a couple of examples.

Sketches by Boz (1836): “At the lower end of the billiard-table was an individual in an arm-chair, and a wig …”; Great Expectations (1861): “… a murderous-looking tall individual, in a short suit of white linen and a paper cap.”

As you can see, the use of the noun “individual” for a person has history on its side. But many usage guides insist there’s a right way and wrong way to use this noun.

The New York Times stylebook, for instance, says it’s OK to use “individual” to distinguish one person from a group, but it’s stilted to use the term for a person in general.

So, according to the Times, it would be fine to say someone is only one individual in a large company, but stilted to say the company has hired three individuals.

The new third edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage speculates that much of the “tooth-gnashing” over the usage “can be blamed on police-blotter jargon.”

Garner’s generally prefers the more specific terms “man,” “woman,” and “person” over “individual” when the “person” isn’t being singled out from a group.

I agree. Let’s leave this use of “individual” in the squad room.

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Q: I was the guy who called you on Iowa Public Radio about the incorrect use of the subjunctive. I have another pet peeve: the use of “do … do.” Example: “Do you do copying here?” Is there ever a time when such a double use of the same word is anything but redundant?

A: As a matter of fact there is. The use of “do … do” that you mention is legitimate, and not ungrammatical at all.

The first “do” in that sentence is an auxiliary verb (as in “Do you make copies here?”) and the second one is the principal verb. The auxiliary “do” is often used with a “to”-less infinitive to form a question (“Do you snorkle?”).

As a verbal auxiliary, “do” can also be used, among other things, for emphasis (“Do be careful”) and to make a negative sentence (“I don’t know the answer”). The principal verbs in those two examples, “be” and “know,” are also infinitives.

Here are some other examples of “do” acting as an auxiliary:

(1) Do you do that? … Yes, I do do that. [Or, elliptically: Yes, I do.]

(2) Did you do that? … Yes, I did do that. [Or, elliptically: Yes, I did.]

(3) Do you see that? … Yes, I do see that. [Or, elliptically: Yes, I do.]

(4) Did you eat that? … Yes, I did eat that. [Or, elliptically: Yes, I did.]

On the other hand, a similar-sounding usage (“The point is, is …”) isn’t grammatically correct. I wrote a blog item last year that touched on this double “is” business. And I wrote another a couple of months ago about doubled words in general.

As for double “do”-ing, I’ll let Cole Porter have the last word: “Do do that voodoo that you do so well.”

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Q: I phoned you on Iowa Public Radio, but I didn’t get a chance to ask my question … actually two. It annoys me when people talk about kings or queens being “coronated” instead of “crowned.” Also, I wonder about “out” vs. “out of” in a phrase like “out (or “out of”) the door.” What do you think?

A: Some modern dictionaries list “coronate” as a verb meaning to crown, but I agree with you. I don’t think “coronate” is what the Archbishop of Canterbury does when he places St. Edward’s Crown on a royal head.

At a coronation, an archbishop “crowns” a king or queen; he does not “coronate” one – at least not in the opinion of most English speakers.

The Oxford English Dictionary does indeed include “coronate” as a verb meaning to crown, but it labels the usage rare. More important, the citations listed in the OED have nothing to do with royal coronations.

Here the verb “coronate” and the past participle “coronated” mean something more like topped or furnished with a corona, as in this 1707 citation from a work about the flora and fauna of Jamaica: “A round purplish knob … coronated by a long membrane.”

An obsolete past participle, “coronate,” though, did mean crowned in the 15th and 16th centuries, according to the OED. A 1513 citation, for example, says “William conquerour …Was coronate at London.”

The word at the bottom (or top!) of all this etymology is “crown.” The OED says it was first recorded in Old English in 1085 as a noun, corona, borrowed from the Latin corona (a wreath, garland, or crown). Later the last syllable fell away, and the spelling gradually evolved into “crown.”

The verb followed a century or so later, spelled crunen in Middle English. The OED‘s first citation is from around 1175, when to “crown” meant “to place a crown, wreath, or garland upon the head of (a person), in token of victory or honour, or as a decoration, etc.; to adorn with the aureole of martyrdom, virginity, etc.”

The use of the verb “crown” in the sense of “to invest with the regal crown” came along circa 1290.

But back to “coronate.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) still lists it as a bona fide verb meaning to crown. However, I don’t think the people saying “coronate” today are using that old verb that the OED describes as rare.

If I had to guess, I’d say the verb “coronate” that you’re hearing is a back-formation from the noun “coronation.” (A back formation is a word formed by dropping a real or imagined part from another word.) In this case, people assume that at a coronation, somebody gets coronated.

You also asked about the use (or nonuse) of the preposition “of” in phrases like “out of the door.” These phrases are standard English whether they include “of” or not. The choice (“out of the door” or “out the door”) is up to you.

In certain contexts, the fuller phrase may sound better to your ear. In others, dropping “of” may sound more idiomatic: “I kicked him out the door!” Or, as Groucho Marx said: “Love flies out the door when money comes innuendo.”

If you want to read more, I’ve written a blog entry about a different “of” issue: the sometimes redundant phrase “off of.” And I’ve written another post that briefly touches on the issue.

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Q: Hi, there. I’m a receptionist at WNYC and I see you when you come to the studio each month for the Leonard Lopate Show. I was wondering if you could tell me about the history of “God bless you.”

A: With all the rain in the New York region lately, the vegetation is running amok and so are the allergens. As an allergy sufferer myself, I assume you’re asking (achoo!) why we say “God bless you” when someone sneezes.

The short answer is that nobody knows. There are a few interesting though inconclusive facts, but the most popular explanations for the origin of this usage are pure fiction.

For instance, one suggestion is that people in the Middle Ages believed that the soul left a sneezer’s body for a few seconds, so someone would say “God bless you” to keep the devil from snatching the soul before it returned.

Another suggestion is that medieval people believed a sneezer’s heart stopped beating, so a bystander would say “God bless you” to get the heart going again.

However, I have yet to see an authoritative account from the Middle Ages that connects “God bless you” with soul-snatching or heart-stopping.

In fact, I haven’t seen solid evidence that medieval people even held such beliefs, though that wouldn’t surprise me. A bit of googling indicates that quite a few people believe such nonsense today.

Perhaps the most popular “God bless you” story is that the custom originated during a plague that was devastating Rome in 590 when Gregory I became Pope.

Gregory, according to this story, urged the people of Rome to take part in mass processions and prayers, and say “God bless you” when anyone sneezed. (Many websites tell the same story, but say the pope was Gregory VII, who actually lived hundreds of years later.)

Well, Gregory did call for processions and prayers in Rome in response to the plague, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, but he did it before he was consecrated Pope.

More important, there’s no evidence that he ever used the expression “God bless you” (in Latin or English ) in response to sneezing or that he ever asked the people of Rome to do it.

The Catholic Encyclopedia‘s comprehensive entry on Gregory makes no mention of the practice.

As a matter of fact, the limited evidence available suggests that the medieval church tried to stop such practices and considered them relics of pagan times.

For example, St. Eligius (circa 588-660) threatened to “withhold the sacrament of baptism” from anyone who observed “incantations” or “auguries or violent sneezings” or other “sacrilegious pagan customs.”

Pagan customs? Yes, people were apparently blessing or otherwise welcoming sneezes hundreds of years before Gregory assumed the papacy.

The Roman writer Pliny the Elder, in his Historia Naturalis, asks, “Why is it that we salute a person when he sneezes, an observance which Tiberius Caesar, they say, the most unsociable of men, as we all know, used to exact, when riding in his chariot even?”

Pliny’s comment (from Book XXVIII, Chapter 5) is in a section on “prayers for good fortune, and, for luck’s sake.”

Pliny doesn’t mention exactly how the Romans saluted someone who sneezed, but some scholars have suggested that they used the word salve, which is usually translated as “welcome,” “good day,” or “goodbye.”

The Satyricon, reputedly written by the first-century Roman Petronius Arbiter, uses the verbal phrase salvere iubeo (to bid good day) in describing the reaction to a fit of sneezing. The poet and classical translator Sarah Ruden has used the phrase “bless you” in putting this scene into English.

But why did we begin saluting or blessing or whatever-ing when someone sneezed?

The classicist Arthur Stanley Pease, writing in the journal Classical Philology, suggests that it was because the ancients believed that a sneeze was a divine omen.

In “The Omen of Sneezing,” Pease cites numerous examples from Greek and Latin literature of sneezing considered an omen, sometimes a good one and sometimes a bad.

In the Odyssey, for example, Penelope’s son, Telemachus, sneezes when his mother expresses hopes that Odysseus will return home and wreak vengeance on her unwanted suitors. Penelope takes the sneeze as a good omen and says that “my son has sneezed a blessing on all my words.”

The classics scholar Elaine Fantham has said Penelope considers her son’s sneeze “a sign from the gods.” In a May 27, 2006, interview with NPR, she explained why the Greeks could consider sneezing a good omen:

“Because it was seen as something humans couldn’t engineer. It was spontaneous. It came over them. It was out of their control.”

Wilson D. Wallis, in “The Romance and the Tragedy of Sneezing,” says similar customs were common in many other ancient cultures. Wallis’s paper in Scientific Monthly cites sneezing traditions among Hindus, Chinese, Zoroastrians, and others.

In “The Rabbis and Pliny the Elder,” a treatise in Poetics Today, Giuseppe Veltri compares sneezing beliefs of Talmudic sages and ancient Romans.

In other words, we’ve been talking about sneezing for a long, long time. However, I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure why people began saying “God bless you” or ancient versions of it.

I lean toward the idea that we once considered sneezing an omen, either of good or bad. Perhaps a good omen was a blessing and a bad one needed a blessing.

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Q: Is “google” a legitimate verb yet? I probably should google it, but I’ve decided to check with you first.

A: “Google” (the verb) has made it into the OED (with a capital “G”).

The definitions: (1) “To use the Google search engine to find information on the Internet.” (2) “To search for information about (a person or thing) using the Google search engine.”

The first citation given for No. 1 is from 1999, in a Usenet newsgroup called alt.fan.british-accent: “Has anyone Googled?”

The first citation for No. 2 is from 2000 in another newsgroup, alt.sysadmin.recovery: “I’ve googled some keywords, and it came up with some other .edu text.”

However, Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, may have been the first person to use the company’s name verbally. Here’s how he signed off the July 9, 1998, Google Friends Newsletter: “Have fun and keep googling!”

Interestingly, Google itself has discouraged the use of its name as a verb. Why? It’s concerned about the possible loss of its trademark if “google” becomes a generic term.

In 2006, for example, a Google trademark lawyer sent a letter to the Washington Post describing “appropriate” and “inappropriate” ways to use its name.

It’s “appropriate,” according to the lawyer, to write: “I ran a Google search to check out that guy from the party.” It’s “inappropriate” to write: “I googled that hottie.” Sorry, Google, but I fear it’s too late. The genie is out of the bottle.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) already lists the verb “google” with a lowercase “g,” but notes that it’s often capitalized. M-W says it means “to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web.” In other words, to google a hottie.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) doesn’t have an entry yet between “goofy” and “googol” (the number 10 raised to the power 100), but I’d be shocked if “google” isn’t there in the fifth edition.

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Q: You were discussing the origin of the word “hijack” recently on WNYC. Could it be derived from the verb “jack,” meaning to steal or rob?

A: If only it were that simple. The verb “hijack” apparently came before “jack,” but we’ll have to do some digging to get to the bottom of this.

The Oxford English Dictionary says “hijack” originated as a slang term in the United States in the early 20th century, then passed into general use. Apart from that, the OED says, the ancestry of “hijack” is unknown.

The dictionary has no published references for the word, or for its derivative terms, published any earlier than the 1920s.

The first such citation is from a July 1923 article in the Nation: “There was, of course, the rush of adventurers, oil promoters, highjackers (an oil-region term for murderous robbers).”

Back then, the term “hijacker” (spelled “highjacker”) must have been unfamiliar to most people, since the writer or editor of the article felt it necessary to toss in a definition.

The OED also cites two references that appeared only a month later, in the Literary Digest issue of August 1923: ” ‘I would have had $50,000,’ said Jimmy, ‘if I hadn’t been hijacked.’ ” And, “So much for hijacking on the high seas.”

Here’s another OED citation for “hijacker” that includes a definition for the benefit of British readers; it was published in the Times of London in October 1925: “A shooting affray between bootleggers and ‘hijackers’ (men who prey on bootleggers) took place … in a lodging-house on the west side of New York.”

By the way, the OED‘s definition of “hijack” is “to steal (contraband or stolen goods) in transit, to rob (a bootlegger or smuggler) of his illicit goods; to hold up and commandeer (a vehicle and its load) in transit; to seize (an aeroplane) in flight and force the pilot to fly to a new destination.”

The verb “jack” originated as a shortened form of “hijack” with much the same meaning, according to the OED. It was first recorded in the American Mercury in 1930: “Two loads jacked. That’s the blow off. You’re through.”

As used today, however, this slang use of “jack” is closer in meaning to “rob” or “burgle.”

But back to “hijack.” Words don’t just suddenly appear out of the blue in national publications. “Hijack” must have been part of slang speech well before 1923. So where did it come from?

The etymologist Gerald L. Cohen has asked himself the same question, and he was kind enough to send me copies of some of his findings. In Studies in Slang II (1989), he presents evidence suggesting that “hijack” originated in the late 19th century as a mining term in Missouri, where zinc ore was referred to as “jack.”

“The miners in the booming Webb City area of Missouri (SW) would often slip some ‘high jack’ (high grade zinc) into their boots or pockets before leaving work,” he writes. “They were referred to as ‘high jackers.’ “

The word “hijack,” he adds, “later turned up in the hobo jungles with the meaning ‘rob a fellow hobo while he is asleep’ – a major offense among the hoboes; and by 1923 it came into widespread use as ‘steal bootlegged liquor.’ Now, of course, it refers to commandeering a plane, bus, etc.”

Cohen notes that the only point not clear is how the hoboes applied a mining term for “pilferer of zinc ore” to “robber of a fellow hobo while asleep.”

“In any case,” he says, “once this semantic development occurred, the revulsion by the hoboes toward such stealing led to the term’s coming to refer to an outright hold-up. And it was in this latter sense that the 1920s bootleggers adopted the word.”

Cohen writes that another common explanation, that robbers would shout “High, Jack” when commanding victims to raise their hands, “is almost certainly a folk etymology.”

Is the ultimate source of “hijack” now present and accounted for? Perhaps, but only time will tell.

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Q: I heard you recently on Iowa Public Radio, but I wasn’t able to call about the frequent mispronunciation of “women” as “woman.” Do others complain about this? Or are my ears playing tricks on me?

A: This is a mispronunciation that’s new on me. I haven’t heard it, at least not that I’m aware of.

Roughly since the 14th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “woman” and “women” have been the regular spellings for the singular and plural forms of the word.

And from at least the 16th century, the only difference in pronunciation between the two has been the sound of the first vowel.

Here’s how the OED puts it: “The pronunciation (wu-) was ultimately appropriated to the sing. and (wi-) to the pl., probably through the associative influence of pairs like foot and feet.”

By the way, it was mentioned during my radio appearance that the word “woman” is not derived from (or a mere variation on) the term “man.” The story is much more complicated.

Here’s how my husband, Stewart Kellerman, and I explain it in our book Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language:

“In Anglo-Saxon times, when words were bubbling away in the stewpot of Old English, there were several ways to refer to men and women. For a few hundred years, manna and other early versions of our modern word ‘man’ referred merely to a person regardless of sex – that is, a human being. So how did the Anglo-Saxons tell one sex from the other? A single or married man was a wer or a waepman (literally a ‘weapon-person’). A single or married woman was a wif or a wifman.

“By the year 900 or so, wifman began to lose its f. Over the next five hundred years, it went through many spellings until it settled down as our modern word ‘woman.’ Meanwhile, wif, which had its own share of spellings before becoming ‘wife’ in the 1400s, led a double life. It could mean a married woman, as it does today, but also a woman, married or single, in a humble trade – an archaic usage that survives in the quaint terms ‘fishwife’ and ‘alewife.’

“Speaking of quaint terms, whatever happened to the weapon-people? Around the year 1000, the various versions of manna began to mean an adult male as well as a human being. By the 1400s, manna had become our modern word ‘man,’ while the old macho terms wer and waepman had fallen out of use. … That left the guys without a unique word for an adult male. They had to share ‘man’ with humanity in general. If you ask me, it was the men who got screwed, etymologically speaking. We women ended up with a word all our own.”

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Q: I was wondering about the origin of the phrase “to get it in the neck.” More important, how old is it?

A: The expression, which was first recorded in the early 1880s, means “to be thoroughly bested or victimized, as by overwhelming force, swindling, death, etc.,” according to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang.

The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from a three-line headline in the May 26, 1881, issue of the Arizona Weekly Star: “Curly Bill / This noted desperado ‘Gets it in the Neck’ / at Gayleyville.” (I’ve gone to the original source and expanded the citation.)

Another desperado, Jim Wallace, shot Curly Bill as he was leaving a saloon, according to the Arizona weekly, “the ball entering penetrating the left side of Curly Bill’s neck and passing through, came out the right cheek, not breaking the jawbone.”

So, the OED’s earliest citation for the phrase refers to the literal shooting of somebody in the neck. Could this shooting have inspired the expression we have now for being defeated, victimized, and so on?

Well, Curly Bill (actually William Brocius), was indeed a noted desperado. But I suspect that the headline writer thought it would be entertaining to use in a literal way a figurative expression that was already in the air, if not in print.

In fact, six months after that headline appeared in Kansas, an item in a New York City tabloid suggested that the expression had been in common use for a while.

Here’s the OED citation from the Nov. 25, 1882, issue of the National Police Gazette: “An ‘Artless’ Young Girl Gives it to Her ‘in the Neck,’ as the Sports Say.”

I think the most probable origin of the expression is the earlier use of “to get it” in the sense of to be shot or killed or punished.

The first citation in the Random House slang dictionary for “to get it,” meaning to be shot or killed, is from this 1844 description of a panther hunt: “I’ll git him! Bang! Oh, dam you! you’ve got it! I know you is! you aint shakin’ that tail for nothin’ ! Yes, thar’s blood on the snow!”

The earliest citation in Random House for “to get it,” meaning to be punished, is from an 1861 book about the working poor in London: “I was flogged as a convict, and he as a soldier; and when we were both at the same hospital after the flogging, and saw each other’s backs, the other convicts said to me ‘D— it, you’ve got it this time.’ ”

As for the “neck” business, I imagine it’s an allusion to a vulnerable part of the anatomy, as in a human who’s hanged by the neck or a chicken whose neck is wrung or axed.

Both Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English mention the chicken connection, but we don’t know for sure which, if any, specific neck inspired this expression.

In conclusion, here’s an excerpt from The Inimitable Jeeves, a 1923 story collection by one of my favorite writers, P. G. Wodehouse:

“It seemed to me that everything was absolutely for the best in the best of all possible worlds. But have you ever noticed a rummy thing about life? I mean the way something always comes along to give it you in the neck at the very moment when you’re feeling most braced about things in general. No sooner had I dried the old limbs and shoved on the suiting and toddled into the sitting-room than the blow fell.”

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Q: I hope you can do something about a recent trend in American language: the use of “no problem” instead of “you’re welcome” or “yes.” If I’m in a restaurant and ask for an extra napkin, the server says “no problem.” Why do I need to be told I’m not a problem? Am I the only person who finds “no problem” a problem?

A: No, you’re not the only person who has a problem with “no problem.” But it’s no use hoping we can “do something about” it. We can only explain, maybe illuminate. We can’t stem the tides.

Although many people seem to think this usage originated recently among the younger generation, it’s actually been around since the mid-1950s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED describes “no problem” as a colloquial phrase that can mean either of two things: (1) that whatever is being referred to is “simple” or “acceptable” or “not problematic”; (2) that one is agreeing, acquiescing, or acknowledging a “thank you.”

Here are the dictionary’s first two citations:

1955, in a letter written by Ralph Ellison to Albert Murray: “No problem on haircuts here. Moroccans come in all textures. No problem there either.”

1973, from Martin Amis’s novel The Rachel Papers: “Finally, every time I emptied my glass, he took it, put more whisky in it, and gave it back to me, saying ‘No problem’ again through his nose.”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language lists “no problem” as an idiom used “to express confirmation of or compliance with a request.”

The American Heritage’s usage panel apparently has no problem with it. We don’t either. It may be used a bit too much, but so are many common idioms, such as the American expression “You’re welcome.”

By the way, “You’re welcome” (generally not used in British English) isn’t much older than “no problem,” in the grand scheme of things. The first published use of “You’re welcome” in response to thanks was recorded in 1907, according to the OED.

Other cultures have many idiosyncratic ways of acknowledging thanks. Examples: “no worries” in Australia; “no hay de qué” or “de nada” or “no hay problema” by various Spanish speakers; “prego” in Italian; “bitte” in German; and “de rien” in French.

In Britain, the standard response is quite often no response at all. And if you’ve seen the Disney animated film The Lion King, you’ll remember “Hakuna Matata,” a lively song with music by Elton John and words by Tim Rice. The title means “no worries” in Swahil (in other words, “no problem”).

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Q: Lately, a lot of newscasters, politicians, and people in general are using the phrase “as well” instead of the normal “also” or “too,” especially at the end of a sentence. What is this all about? Is it correct? I now find myself using it as well!

A: This use of “as well” is nothing new. In fact, the phrase has been used to mean “also,” “in addition,” “besides” or “in the same way” for more than 700 years.

The Oxford English Dictionary‘s first citation for this use of “as well” comes from Robert Manning of Brunne’s 1303 work Handlyng Synne: “Ryght as she dede, he dede as weyl.”

Or, as we would put it, “Right as she did, he did as well.” Brunne was translating a long poem from Anglo-Norman French into Middle English.

Since the Middle Ages, this usage has been pretty routine. Here’s a more recent citation, from On the Lesson in Proverbs (1853), by Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench: “We have a right to assume this to be a voice of God as well.”

If these guys could use the phrase, you have the right to use it as well.

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Q: What is the meaning of the phrase “not to put too fine a point on it”? I’ve heard it several times on NPR and can’t pick up what the speaker means by it. I hope you can educate me about this one.

A: We may have Dickens to thank for giving us this expression. The first published reference in the Oxford English Dictionary for the usage is from his 1853 novel Bleak House.

In fact, one of the characters, Mr. Snagsby, uses the phrase – or one nearly identical – 11 times in the book. Here’s an example: “It is relating,” says Mr Snagsby, “it is relating – not to put too fine a point upon it – to the foreigner, sir.”

The OED says “to put too fine a point on” something means to mince words or to be unnecessarily delicate. But the dictionary says the expression is used only in the negative – that is, in the sense of not mincing words.

The OED describes the usage as figurative, but doesn’t say exactly what the figure is. Go figure.

I imagine, however, that the expression is derived from an early sense of “point” to mean a small or separate item, detail, or part of something. That’s what the word meant when we borrowed it from the French in the 13th century.

A now-obsolete phrase “to point” used to mean “to the smallest detail.” Shakespeare uses it here in The Tempest (1610-11): Hast thou, Spirit, / Performed to point, the Tempest that I bad thee?

The later phrases “to a point” and “to a fine point” have meant precisely or completely since the 19th century.

But how did we get from a phrase about being precise to one about being overly precise or, in the negative, not mincing words? I’ll let Dickens have the last word.

In Chapter XI of Bleak House, he describes “not to put too fine a point upon it” as “a favourite apology for plain-speaking” that Mr. Snagsby “always offers with a sort of argumentative frankness.”

I hope I’ve been clear enough, and haven’t put too fine a point on my answer.

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Q: Can you tell me where the word “husbandry” comes from? I assume it once had something to do with husbands and marriage.

A: The word “husbandry” has nothing to do with marriage, at least not in this day and age. And it had nothing to do with marriage when it entered English in the late 13th century.

In fact, the word “husband” itself didn’t mean a married man when it first showed up around the year 1000.

The noun “husband” originally meant a “male head of a household,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The guy could have been married, widowed, or single.

A word-history note in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) suggests that the wedded sense of “husband” was derived from the fact that male heads of household were usually married.

The origins of “husband” are Scandinavian. A similar word from Old Norse and Old Icelandic, husbondi, roughly meant a householder. (A bondi in Old Norse was a peasant who owned his house and land.)

It took nearly 300 years for “husband” to evolve into its modern sense of a married man. This meaning was first recorded in about 1290.

That same year, according to the OED, the word “husbandry” entered the language as a noun for the management of a household and its resources.

Here’s an example from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (1596-1598): “Lorenzo, I commit into your hands / The husbandry and manage of my house.” (Portia is speaking here.)

In the 1300s another word, “husbandman,” came to mean a farmer or a tiller of the soil, and the word “husbandry” widened to mean farming and agriculture in general, including the raising of livestock, poultry, and such.

This latest sense of “husbandry” survives today. We still speak of “animal husbandry” as a branch of farm management. However, I don’t know of a term for husband management!

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Q: Has “hone in” become an accepted phrase? Or is “home in” still correct?

A: Things haven’t changed, at least in the opinion of usage writers. The phrase is “home in.” Here’s how Pat explains these look-alikes in the new, third edition of her grammar and usage book Woe Is I (due out this month):

“HOME/HONE. As verbs, these are often confused. To home in on something is to zero in or concentrate on it. But to hone (not ‘hone in’) is to sharpen. Uncle Bertram honed his knife, then homed in on the problem: how to carve a roast suckling pig.”

Now, replacing our usage hat with our etymological hat, we should mention that “hone in” is homing in on acceptance among lexicographers, the people who put together our dictionaries.

The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, has an entry that defines “to hone in” this way: “To head directly for something; to turn one’s attention intently towards something. Usu. with on.”

The OED describes the usage as an apparent alteration of “to home in.” It traces the alteration to confusion caused by the somewhat similar meanings of the verbs “home” (to be guided to an objective) and “hone” (to refine a skill).

The dictionary has published references for “to hone in” going back more than four decades, including citations from the New York Times and the New York Review of Books.

The first OED citation is from George Plimpton’s 1966 book Paper Lion: “Then he’d fly on past or off at an angle, his hands splayed out wide, looking back for the ball honing in to intercept his line of flight.”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) have entries for “hone in” that also describe the verbal phrase as an alteration of “home in.” [2013 update: The new fifth edition of American Heritage agrees here.]

Merriam-Webster’s says “hone in” seems to have established itself in American English and made inroads in British English.

But the dictionary adds that using it, especially in writing, “is likely to be called a mistake.” We think so too. “Hone in on” is bad usage.

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Q: What is the origin of the word “pumpernickel”? My local newspaper guy and I (both former Iowans living in New York) disagree on the origin of the noun describing a coarse dark bread.

A: “Pumpernickel,” the name of the dark, slightly sweet bread, has humble origins, to say the least, in the Westphalia region of Germany.

The word is German and was first used for the bread in the 17th century. But it had an earlier meaning, roughly equivalent to a rascal or lout, in the 16th century.

To get a better sense of its early literal meaning, you have to take the word apart: in German, pumper means “fart” and Nickel is a pet-form of the name Nikolaus. The nickname has been used in German to mean “goblin,” “devil,” or “rascal,” according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the earliest meaning of the word “pumpernickel” is “not entirely certain,” but the etymology indicates that “it is clearly depreciative.”

“As applied to bread it was apparently also originally depreciative and was perhaps originally applied to Westphalian bread by outsiders,” the OED adds. “This type of bread was probably so called either on account of its being difficult to digest and causing flatulence or in a more general allusion to its hardness and poor quality.”

You didn’t say what your disagreement with the newspaper guy was about, but I think I can guess: a popular folk etymology that “pumpernickel” is from a French phrase, usually bon pour Nicol, or “good for Nicol.”

The “Nicol” here is a horse, sometimes even Napoleon’s horse. This false etymology has been around almost as long as the original; in fact, it was recorded before Napoleon’s time.

By the way, there are two kinds of pumpernickel: German-style, which uses a chemical reaction to darken the bread, and American-style, which uses molasses or some other darkening agent.

I’ve never tried German pumpernickel, but I’ve heard that the American version is easier to digest – and less gassy. Enjoy!

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Q: I wish “integrious” were a word meaning full of integrity. There is no simple way to say someone has integrity.

A: Would you believe that this came up during a WNYC discussion back in 2004? Some of the proposals for an adjective to use in place of the missing word were “honest,” “upright,” “trustworthy,” and “sincere.”

In fact, we once had both adjectival and adverbial forms of “integrity,” although only for brief times in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The Oxford English Dictionary has an entry for the adjective “integrous” (meaning “marked by integrity”), recorded in a work by William Morice in 1657: “That an action be good, the cause ought to be integrous.”

The OED also has an entry for the words “integrious” (adjective) and “integriously” (adverb). The only citation in the OED is from the diary of Sir Henry Slingsby (1658):

“Such was their integrious candor and intimacy to me in my greatest extremes. … Being so integriously grounded, as it admitted no alloy or mixture with By-respects or self-interests.”

Another adjective was recorded more than a century later in the poet Robert Burns’s first Commonplace Book (1784): “To maintain an integritive conduct towards our fellow-creatures.”

The noun “integrity” first appeared in 1450, according to the OED, and originally meant the quality of being unspoiled or in an original, perfect state. It’s related to “integer,” “integral,” and other words having to do with wholeness.

The moral meaning of “integrity” came along in the next century and meant “soundness of moral principle; the character of uncorrupted virtue, esp. in relation to truth and fair dealing; uprightness, honesty, sincerity.”

This sense of the word was first recorded in Edward Hall’s Chronicle, Hen. VI (1548): “So much estemed … for his liberalitie, clemencie, integritie, and corage.”

Alas, all the old adjectives are now described as obscure and rare. But words have been known to come back from the dead, so who knows?

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Q: I rarely get to hear Pat on the Leonard Lopate Show, but I’m hoping you’ll answer this. I’ve worked in information technology since 1981, so I’m used to techie terms, but I recently encountered a new (and annoying) one: “updation,” as in “document updation.” Please comment on its legitimacy or lack thereof.

A: “Updation” is a new one on us too. After a brief consultation with Dr. Google (2.4 million hits), we’d say the term seems to be most popular with tech heads, especially South Asians.

We can’t find the word in any of the sources we usually consult, but the online Dictionary of Indian English gives this example to illustrate its use: “Write a program for creation, deletion and updation of database records.”

Wiktionary, a collaborative online dictionary, has three published references for “updation.” The first, from a 1998 book on parallel algorithms, says: “The above updation can be done through each vertex k.” (You may know what this means, but it’s beyond us.)

As for the legitimacy of “updation” (or lack thereof), our feeling is that we already have two good words that cover all the bases: the noun “update” and the verbal noun “updating.” Examples: “This requires an update” … “The updating is complete.” Why would we need a third?

All the previous forms of “update” – whether noun or verb or adjective – are 20th-century coinages. But perhaps techies don’t find them sufficiently up-to-date!

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Q: I might as well unload my frustration concerning the overuse and misuse of the word “scenario.” Thanks for letting me get this off my chest.

A: You’re right that “scenario” is getting a workout. The figurative use of the word isn’t necessarily an error, but the looser meanings sometimes go too far.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “scenario” as meaning “a sketch or outline of the plot of a play, ballet, novel, opera, story, etc., giving particulars of the scenes, situations, etc.”

The word has been used literally since the latter half of the 19th century and figuratively since the 1920s.

It first appeared in English, according to the OED, in an 1878 entry in the journal of George Henry Lewes, who was George Eliot’s companion and mentor.

Lewes wrote: “Schemed a scenario from Daniel Deronda.” (Lewes and Eliot were planning a play based on her 1876 novel.)

“Scenario” was adapted from the Italian word scena (a scene in a play) and its derivative, scenario (the arrangement of scenes in a play).

The Italian scenario had earlier given us our word “scenery,” which originally (then spelled “scenary”) was adapted into English in 1695 and meant an arrangement of scenes in a play.

Later, in the 1700s, “scenery” came to mean both a painted stage set and a picturesque natural landscape.

In English, “scenery” has been used in a figurative sense since 1770, with authors’ saying such things as “She’s part of the scenery” and “the shifting scenery of a man’s life.”

In fact, just to bring things full circle, here’s a figurative use of “scenery” from Eliot’s novel Daniel Deronda: “Gwendolen was just then enjoying the scenery of her life.”

Like “scenery,” the noun “scenario” also developed figurative meanings in English. Here are a couple of figurative uses by a favorite author of mine, P. G. Wodehouse.

The first is from The Inimitable Jeeves (1923):

” ‘Jeeves!’
” ‘Sir?’
” ‘I’m in the soup.’
” ‘Indeed, sir?’
“I sketched out the scenario for him.
” ‘What would you advise?’ “

The next is from Bill the Conqueror (1924):

“A young man in a vivid check suit came out, a small young man with close-set eyes and the scenario of a moustache.”

In the second example, Wodehouse uses “scenario” to mean something like “sketch.”

Like you, many people think freer uses of “scenario” can get to be a bit much. The OED notes that “weakened senses” of the word include “circumstance, situation, scene, sequence of events, etc.”

R. W. Burchfield, a former editor of the OED, adds in a note: “The over-use of this word in various loose senses has attracted frequent hostile comment.”

Burchfield also edited The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, in which he has this to say about “scenario”:

“It could hardly have been foreseen that it would become immensely popular from the 1960s onwards in the broad sense ‘a postulated sequence of (future) events.’ Every kind of circumstance, situation, relationship, train of events, etc., came to be called a scenario, and there is no sign of any weakening of the grip that the word has on the language.”

I’ll conclude with this advice from Burchfield: “A wise writer uses the word sparingly.”

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Q: I had a difference of opinion with a British gentleman when I said I could “draw an implication” from a remark of his. He claimed I could only draw an “inference,” not an “implication.” I disagreed. Yes, he did the implying, but why couldn’t I draw an “implication” as well as an “inference” from his words?

A: We all know that to imply is to suggest or say something indirectly while to infer is to conclude or surmise from what is implied or suggested. So, to imply is to give a hint, and to infer is to take the hint.

Obviously, we can draw an inference; one definition of “infer,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “to bring in or ‘draw’ as a conclusion.” In other words, to draw an inference.

But can we draw an implication, too? Let’s see.

The very old word “draw,” first recorded in Old English in the 800s, has dozens of meanings in modern English. These all originated from five general notions: of dragging, of attracting, of extracting, of stretching, and of delineating.

Several meanings of “draw” are in turn derived from the third notion above (that of extracting, removing, withdrawing, or otherwise taking away with you), including these:

(1) To deduce or infer. Most of the OED‘s citations for this usage of “draw” have to do with arriving at a conclusion or an inference.

(2) To frame, formulate, or lay down. This usage of “draw” has to do with making “comparisons, contrasts, distinctions, etc.,” the OED says.

(3) To evoke or elicit. This usage of “draw” has to do with extracting (or causing to come forth) such things as information, responses, and so forth. This even includes the meaning, as your British friend might say, of drawing a fox from a covert.

My feeling is that while we draw an inference; we do not draw an implication. To draw an inference is to extract it from what’s given and take it in. An implication is not taken in; it’s given out. It is one of the givens from which we extract (or draw) a conclusion (or inference).

English is not written in stone, however, and here you may disagree. But I’ll have to side with your friend on this one. He makes an implication, and from what he implies, you draw an inference. He may in fact deny that he’s implied anything. You can still infer (from what he HAS said) that he’s implied something.

I’d better stop now. I’m starting to sound like a character in a Marx brothers movie.

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Q: I am enjoying Origins of the Specious, but I think that you and Stewart got the origin of “Miriam” wrong. The Talmud says the name derives from the Hebrew word mar, or bitter. Miriam was given that name because at the time of her birth the situation for the Hebrews in Egypt was the most bitter ever.

A: As with many ancient words, particularly those that come from even more ancient roots, linguists can only speculate as to the most probable or plausible origin of “Miriam.”

Our source for the roots of “Miriam” was the Oxford English Dictionary, which acknowledges that the etymology is “of uncertain origin.”

The OED speculates, however, that the Hebrew original “may be Amorite, with the meaning ‘gift (of God)’; compare the Akkadian root rym ‘to give as a gift’.”

This is why we hedged our statement about the origin of “Miriam” by writing that it “may have its origin in an ancient Amorite word meaning ‘gift of God.'”

Reading between the lines, it’s also possible to draw other inferences – that “Miriam” could be derived from roots meaning “gift of myrrh” or “bitter gift,” which would go along with the Talmudic interpretation.

You’ll note above that the Akkadian word rym meant to give. (Akkadian, the oldest Semitic language, existed as long ago as 2800 BC; here “Semitic” is a linguistic term, not an ethnic one.)

You’ll also note the mention of a possible connection with the word “myrrh.” It’s believed (though not certain) that “myrrh” came from the Akkadian word murra. Murra, according to the OED, was “an aromatic used in medicine, ritual, perfumery, and tanning.”

Similar words came to exist in later Semitic languages: Arabic (murr), Hebrew (mor), Aramaic (mora), and Syriac (mura), all meaning “myrrh” and all from an ancient Semitic base meaning “bitter.” This Semitic base is also thought to be the source of the Hebrew word mar (bitter).

In short, one can speculate, indeed MUST speculate, about the origin of “Miriam.” In cases like these, our practice has been to go with the best guess of our favorite etymological authority: the OED.

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Q: My husband and I have been wondering about the origin of the phrase “get on the stick.” What stick?

A: I’ve been swamped with questions lately, which is why I’ve taken so long to answer this one, but I’ve finally managed to get on the stick.

The expression – meaning to get busy, get going, or get down to work – dates from the early 1900s and comes from the idea of getting a car going by using the gearshift, or stick, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms.

Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang says “get on the stick” is derived from the shorter phrase “on the stick” (meaning “efficient, aware, in control”). Cassell’s says the stick in the phrases represents “the gearstick of a car or joystick of an aircraft, both of which exert control.”

Another reference, Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, notes that “stick” has been used colloquially to mean “joystick” since about 1925 and originated in the Royal Air Force.

“Joystick” itself, meaning the control level in a plane, was first recorded in 1910, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. It has since widened to mean any kind of control lever.

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang notes that “joystick” has also been used to refer to a penis (1916), an opium pipe (1936), and a marijuana cigarette (1962). Slang is fertile – it begets more slang!

Although nearly all the references I’ve consulted say the stick in “get on the stick” is either a gearshift or a joystick, I did find one respectable dissenting opinion.

In “The Argot of the Dice Table,” a 1950 paper by David W. Maurer in the journal American Speech, the expression is defined this way: “To work at the crap table, either as a dealer or stick-man.”

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Q: In an otherwise well-written article in The New York Times, the writer mentions “two glowing chaise lounges.” Am I being too finicky to ask that “chaise longue” be spelled correctly? Or has “chaise lounge” been OK’d by the Anything Goes crowd?

A: The original term is “chaise longue” (the Anglicized plural is “chaise longues”), and the phrase literally means “long chair” in French.

It was first used in English, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, in 1800 in Elizabeth Hervey’s novel The Mourtray Family: “She only begged they would permit her to lie down on her chaise longue.”

Many usage guides (including the New York Times stylebook, by the way) insist that “chaise longue” is the only legitimate spelling. But people have been using the “lounge” version almost since the term entered English.

The OED has citations ranging from the early 1800s into the 21st century for “chaise lounge,” an alteration that it and other authorities chalk up to folk etymology.

Here’s the first citation, from an advertisement in the Times of London in 1807: “The drawing rooms … possess every article of use and variety … as curtains, chairs, sofas, chaise lounge, loo table.”

(Aside: Don’t be alarmed about the notion of a “loo table” in the drawing room. Loo tables were round or oval tables for playing “loo” and other card games in the 18th and 19th centuries. A loo table is mentioned in chapter 10 of Pride and Prejudice.)

But back to “chaise lounge.” Why has this spelling persisted for so long? Well, a “chaise longue” is for all practical purposes a lounge chair, and “lounge” differs from “longue” only in the order of its letters.

Is it correct, though? That depends on whom you ask.

The folks at The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language essentially say no, since AH lists only “chaise longue.”

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) has entries for both versions, though it says “chaise lounge” arose as a folk etymology. Still, it’s not labeled nonstandard, which means the lexicographers at M-W have nothing against it.

Then there’s Garner’s Modern American Usage, which calls the “lounge” variation “an embarrassing error” and “distinctly low-rent.”

Our own opinion, which we share in our book Origins of the Specious, is that “chaise lounge” will become the standard English spelling in the longue run. It’s already the dominant one on Google.

Do we use it ourselves? Not yet. To our ears, “chaise longue” sounds a bit too proper and “chaise lounge” not quite proper enough. We usually take the coward’s way out and say “lounge chair.”

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Q: A guest on NPR, a young woman from an upper-middle-class background, recently pronounced “et cetera” as if it were spelled “ek cetera.” I’ve heard this before, but usually from less educated speakers. Is a shift taking place?

A: No shift has taken place – at least not yet. There’s no “k” or “x” sound in “et cetera.” The “ek cetera” and “ex cetera” pronunciations are very common, though.

The word we abbreviate as “etc.” can be pronounced with either three syllables or four, but the first consonant sound is a “t.”

Here’s how I’m putting it in the upcoming third edition of my grammar and usage book Woe Is I (in a section called “Hissy Fits”):

“People often put an ‘s’ sound where an ‘x’ sound belongs. They get all hissy. They say ‘asseptable’ for acceptable, ‘assessories’ for accessories, ‘essentric’ for eccentric, ‘estatic’ for ecstatic, and ‘estraordinary’ for extraordinary. This is definitely unacceptable!

“Sometimes speakers do the reverse, putting an ‘x’ sound where it doesn’t belong. They say ‘excape’ for escape, ‘expecially’ for especially, ‘excetera’ for et cetera, and ‘expresso’ for espresso. This gives me fits.”

If you want to read more, I wrote a blog item a couple of years ago on the pronunciation of “et cetera.”

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Q: Your recent discussion on WNYC about the use of “check” to mean a restaurant bill made me think of the French term for this: l’addition. I love it because it’s so logical.

A: Although “check” may not be as logical a choice for a restaurant bill as l’addition, I suspect that the English word has a more interesting history.

All of the modern senses of “check” (a bank draft, a move in chess, a bar tab, and so on) are ultimately derived from a Persian word that I’m sure you know: shah, or monarch, as in the Shah of Iran.

Shah was also a term in chess, a game played in Persia long before it was introduced in Europe, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.).

A Persian chess player would say shah, explains American Heritage, as a warning that an opponent’s king was under attack. The Persian word then passed through Arabic and probably Old Spanish before ending up as eschec in Old French.

Now things really got interesting. In the early 1300s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Old French eschec and its plural eschecs gave us our name for the game, “chess,” as well as our interjection or warning, “check.”

Since then, “check” has evolved in all sorts of directions – as a noun, a verb, and an interjection – from that initial idea of checking the king in chess.

The various usages, according to the OED, “have acted and reacted on each other, so that it is difficult to trace and exhibit the order in which special senses arose.”

The original “check” in chess has given us the adjectives “checked” and “checkered” (that is, marked with a chessboard pattern); the verb “check” in its many senses, including to stop, to verify, even to check one’s coat; a check mark; a bank check (originally a receipt stub to help check or stop fraud); and finally (in 1869) a restaurant tab in the US.

In Britain, by the way, some forms of “check” began to be spelled “cheque” in the 17th and 18th centuries. And our game “checkers,” so called because it’s played on a checkered board, is called “draughts” across the pond.

The word “Exchequer” (the royal treasury, originally spelled “escheker”) is thought to refer to a tablecloth divided into large squares on which the king’s accounts were toted up. The cloth resembled a “checker” (chessboard).

You might say the word “check” has had a checkered history.

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Q: We’re hearing more people put “what” into a sentence comparing things. For example: “He can run faster than what I can.” What goes?

A: Grammatically, the “what” is unnecessary, redundant, and nonstandard. But this usage is a common regionalism in parts of the South.

A similar speech pattern, and one that used to be a lot more common, involves the use of “what” in place of “that” or “who” or “which.” Here are some examples:

“This is the dog what bit me” … “Who’s the one what did this?” … “She also brought the egg salad, what made so many people sick.”

All these usages are nonstandard, but they’ve been around for a long, long time. It may be that they just entered your radar recently.

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Q: Your blog post on “spendthrift” cited Shakespeare’s use of “thrift” to mean wealth. That reminded me of another time Shakespeare used the word. In Hamlet, when Horatio agrees that the queen’s marriage “followed hard upon” the king’s funeral, Hamlet replies: “Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats / Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.” That sounds to me like the more modern definition of “thrift.” Did the word have both meanings at the time?

A: Yes, “thrift” could mean, among other things, either wealth or frugality in Elizabethan times, although the use of the word for household economy was relatively new when Shakespeare wrote those sarcastic lines.

The Oxford English Dictionary has this definition of “thrift” in the sense you mention: “Economical management, economy; sparing use or careful expenditure of means; frugality, saving; euphemistically, parsimony, niggardliness (obs.).”

The OED’s first citation for this meaning, from 1553, says “foode is never founde to bee so pleasaunte” as when “thrift hathe pincht afore.” In other words, you appreciate food more when you have to economize and don’t have enough of it.

The dictionary has published references from the early 14th century to the late 19th century for “thrift” used in the sense of wealth, savings, or earnings, though it says this usage is now considered archaic.

Hamlet was probably written between 1599 and 1601, when both meanings of “thrift” were there for Shakespeare to use. And use them, as you point out, he did.

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She’ll be on the Leonard Lopate Show around 1:20 PM Eastern time to discuss the English language and take questions from callers. If you miss a program, you can get it on Pat’s WNYC page.

Q: I hear politicians talk a lot about drawing lines in the sand, which makes me wonder how we got this expression. It seems to me that a line in the sand could easily be erased—not a very good metaphor for issuing an ultimatum.

A: There are at least two theories about what historical incident, if any, inspired the expression “line in the sand.”

A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory, the title of a book by Randy Roberts and James S. Olson, refers to one theory, which the authors say may be far-fetched and then again may not be.

In 1836, as the small band of Texans in the Alamo was about to be overrun by Santa Anna and his Mexican forces, Col. William Travis drew a line in the sand with his sword, according to this version of history.

Col. Travis, so the story goes, then invited those who wished to fight and die with him to cross the line. All but one did, supposedly the guy who lived to tell the tale, which was later passed on by others.

Another line in the sand was drawn some years before the Alamo—168 BC, in fact. The Roman historian Livy writes of a meeting in Egypt between King Antiochus IV of Syria and a Roman Consul, Gaius Popilius Laenas.

Popilius, who was trying to prevent a war between Syria and Egypt, told Antiochus in effect that the Roman Senate wanted him to get his army out of Egypt or else. Here Livy describes the scene:

“Popilius, stern and imperious as ever, drew a circle round the king with the stick he was carrying and said, ‘Before you step out of that circle give me a reply to lay before the senate.’ ”

For a few moments, Antiochus hesitated, “astounded at such a peremptory order, and at last replied, ‘I will do what the Senate thinks right.’ Not till then did Popilius extend his hand to the king as to a friend and ally.”

The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t state an opinion as to what might have inspired “line in the sand.” It defines the verb phrase “(to draw, run, etc.) a line in the sand” as meaning “(to establish) a limit or boundary; (to specify) a level of tolerance or a point beyond which one will not go.”

The OED’s first published citation for the expression is from the Boston Post (July 23, 1850): “He would prefer striking out the clause prohibiting the establishment or exclusion and extending the Missouri line without an express recognition of slavery south of it. It would be running a line in the sand.”

And among its later examples, the OED has this one from the Scotsman (July 23, 1996):  “Whenever John Major draws a line in the sand, you can be sure some Eurosceptic bully will come along and kick it in his face.”

The dictionary describes the usage in these examples as figurative, meaning that the line drawn (or run) was metaphorical rather than physical.

Fred R. Shapiro, editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, cites a clearly figurative usage from a July 1978 issue of Newsweek: “Brzezinski is more eager to draw a line in the sand and dare the Russians to cross it.”

In recent years, the expression has been used numerous times and has become a near cliché among journalists. Take out the sand, and the expression is even more common—and older.

The OED says that in modern colloquial usage “to draw the line” (or “to draw a line”) means “to lay down a definite limit of action beyond which one refuses to go.”

The first citation in the OED comes from the trial in 1773 of a Scottish Unitarian minister, Thomas Fyshe Palmer, who was found guilty of sedition and sent to Botany Bay for circulating a political handbill calling for parliamentary reform.

One of the judges says (we’re supplying a bit more of the quotation from the transcript): “It is difficult to draw the line between trying to inflame the people against the King … and endeavouring to overthrow not only the King, but the King, Lords, and Commons, which cannot be a lesser crime.”

The expression was probably in use well before that. Somehow we doubt that Lord Eskgrove, the Scottish judge in the Palmer case, made it up.

More recently, the first President Bush issued a line-drawing ultimatum of his own after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990: ”A line has been drawn in the sand.” We wouldn’t be surprised if he was thinking of the Alamo.

The President’s son, George W., definitely had the Alamo on his mind when he used the expression in a fund-raising letter opposing Ann Richards’s election as Governor of Texas in 1990, as William Safire pointed out in the New York Times.

“When Col. Travis drew the line in the sand at the Alamo,” the younger Bush reportedly said, “he discovered immediately who had the courage to stand and fight for the Texas Republic.”

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Q: I tried to phone you at WNYC, but couldn’t get through. In frustration I tracked down your website. Ergo, this question: We know what “ruthless” means, but what is “ruth” and where does it come from? I thought at first of Old Norse, but I speak Swedish and Danish and don’t believe that’s the source.

A: I’m so glad you found us! As it happens, I’ve already written a blog item that discusses “ruth,” “gruntled,” and other linguistic relics. The noun “ruth”’ is an old word that’s rarely seen now, except as part of the word “ruthless.”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) do have entries on “ruth,” defining it as compassion for the misery of others or sorrow for one’s faults.

But just because a word appears in a dictionary doesn’t mean it gets around much. The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t have any published references for the usage since the 19th century. And I don’t recall seeing or hearing “ruth” in recent years except in attempts to be funny.

The blog entry doesn’t say so (though it should have), but the noun “ruth” (circa 1175) comes from a much earlier noun, “rue,” first recorded in Old English (as hreow) in Beowulf in the early 8th century. It meant sorrow or regret.

The verb “rue” was first seen in Old English (as hreowan) the following century, in the year 888. Similar words existed in Old Frisian, Old Saxon, and other Germanic languages, and there was a related form in Old Norse (so says the OED).

There’s no connection, by the way, between the noun “ruth” and the Biblical name Ruth, which comes from Hebrew.

In case you’re interested, I’ve written a blog item on another word that’s rarely seen without its appendage, “scrutable,” which I hope describes this answer.

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Q: I’ve been dying to ask you about something that irks me! When I moved to New York, I was fascinated (and a little disgusted) at how my friends from New Jersey would leave out words without noticing. For example, “I’m going down the shore” or “Come over my house.” Is there a secret understanding that allows them to leave out prepositions?

A: The expression “down the shore,” meaning at the beach, is a common regionalism in North Jersey, Philadelphia, and some parts of inland Connecticut.

In 1993, a one-act play called Down the Shore, by Tom Donaghy, had a run Off Broadway. Donaghy is from Philadelphia, where the play takes place.

“You guys goin’ down the shore?” one character asks the others. Later he says, “Don’t think about much down the shore.” Another replies, “Beach makes you stupid.”

As for “over my house” instead of “over to my house,” that’s much more widespread. People have reported hearing it from Milwaukee to the East Coast.

I wrote a blog entry last year about “come over” and I wrote one a few months ago about a clipped form that’s probably even more common, “come with.”

These abbreviated ways of talking are usually more common in speech than in writing, as are most regional peculiarities. I don’t think we should condemn them, or even find them irritating.

This is a big country, after all, with many fascinating groups of people. Naturally, they develop special ways of talking to one another.

Even smaller countries like Britain are chock-full of regional differences in speech and usage. I find these differences interesting and charming, and would hate to see them go.

These regionalisms may not be acceptable in formal writing, but I see nothing wrong with them in casual speech or idiomatic writing.

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Q: I just finished Origins of the Specious and wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed it. But I have one minor issue. I fear that your disdain for Latinistas has led you to accept too many Anglicized plurals. I teach biology and see nothing wrong with using “fora” instead of “forums.” Unfortunately, I see “fora” less and less, and “forums” more and more. Sigh! One other disagreement, sort of. I LIKE “an historic,” and I was taught the “an” is expected.

A: Thanks for your comments, and I’m glad you enjoyed the book. I also appreciate hearing your opinions about Latin plurals.

But “fora”? You have to be kidding! I’m not surprised that you’re seeing it less and less. I’m surprised that you’re seeing it at all outside your classroom.

The “forum” entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, which has five and a half centuries of citations, doesn’t include a single example for the plural “fora.” The only plurals cited are Anglicized, as in this example from a 1647 English translation of Juvenal: “The city of Rome had four great forums or piazzas.”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) list “forums” as the primary plural of “forum,” though they do include “fora” as a less frequently used, secondary variant.

As for “historic,” why say “an historic” if you don’t say “an house” or “an hot dog” or “an haircut”?

The article “an” before a sounded “h” is unnatural in English and in fact is discouraged in Britain as well as the United States.

Check out the British dictionary Longman’s, which, under its entry for “historic,” gives these example of its proper use: a historic meeting of world leaders and “It is a historic moment,” he told journalists.

If you’d like to read more about this aitch business, I wrote a blog entry on the subject a couple of years ago.

Sorry if I sound cranky; I don’t mean to be. To end on a lighter note, here’s a Latin lesson from Ira Gershwin: “I say father and you say pater, / I say mother and you say mater; / Father, mother, auntie, uncle – / Let’s call the whole thing off!”

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Q: I find the English language challenging. Why does “ought” rhyme with “thought,” but “tough” with “rough”? And why do we say “to wit” instead of “to whit”? I’m at my wit’s end.

A: People love to point to words like “ought” and “tough” as examples of how wacky English spellings can be. Not so wacky when you look closely. I recently wrote a blog item about these “gh” words and other spelling oddities.

As for why it’s “to wit” and not “to whit,” we’ll have to go back in time, very far back.

In Anglo-Saxon days, a now-archaic verb “wit” meant something like to know, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED’s earliest example of this usage is in King Alfred’s translation of Boethius from around the year 888.

The expression “to wit,” first recorded in 1320, originally meant “it is to be observed, noted, or ascertained.” Later (around 1400), it came to mean “to be sure” or “indeed” or “namely.”

The “wit” part of the phrase was written all sorts of ways for the first few hundred years: “wite,” “witen,” “wetynge,” and so on.

It wasn’t until the late 16th century that the expression “to wit” took on its modern meaning: namely or that is to say. The earliest citation in the OED (from 1577) says “the beginning of vertue is of Nature, to wyt of Perfect Nature.”

As a nature junkie, I especially like this citation from an 1875 book about the history of Maine: “Thrice nine ridges … to wit, nine of bog, nine of smooth and nine of wood.”

“Whit,” a much newer word, means an itty-bitty amount or the tiniest part of something. It first showed up in the 16th century during the early days of Modern English.

And that, to wit, is that.

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Q: Why does everyone now spell “barbecue” as “barbeque”? Isn’t this wrong? Wouldn’t the “q” version be pronounced bar-BEK? À votre santé.

A: It does seem that a word spelled “barbeque” might be pronounced bar-BEK. (Some kind of Parisian cookout, perhaps?) In fact, the usual English spelling is “barbecue,” and it’s “barbecue” in French too.

However, some English dictionaries now accept “barbeque” as a variant spelling. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), for instance, lists “barbecue” as its main entry and “barbeque” as a “secondary variant” that “occurs appreciably less often.” (Both versions are pronounced BAR-buh-kyoo.)

Although the lexicographers at Merriam-Webster’s are technically correct – “barbeque” does seem to occur a lot less often than “barbecue” – both spellings are very popular. Here’s the Google scorecard: “barbecue,” 29.9 million hits; “barbeque,” 9.3 million.

I was surprised to find that the word “barbecue” has been around since the 17th century. The verb was first recorded in English in 1661, borrowed from the Spanish barbacoa, a word from Arawak that the Spaniards picked up in Haiti. The indigenous word barbakoa meant a treehouse or a wooden framework set on posts, and not a cooking apparatus.

As first used in English, “barbecue” (both the noun and the verb) referred to the drying or curing of meat or fish on a framework.

The first use of the word in English for the actual cooking of meat or fish over a fire came along in 1690. As they say, the rest is history!

What about the spelling? It has varied over the years (“borbecu” … “barbecu” … “barbicu” … “barbikew” and so on), but has pretty much been “barbecue” from the 19th century onward.

The OED doesn’t include “barbeque” among the many spellings, but it does mention (and debunk) a myth that the word comes from a French expression: “The alleged Fr. barbe à queue ‘beard to tail’ is an absurd conjecture suggested merely by the sound of the word.”

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