Tag: Phrase origin

Q: Why is the word “dense” used to describe both an empty-headed person and a novel stuffed with too much information?

A: For hundreds of years, someone with a low gray-cell count has been described as “empty-headed” or “thickheaded.” And “dense” has been used for nearly as long to describe such a person or a novel overloaded with plots, characters, and description.

How can an empty head be described as “thick” or “dense”? Perhaps because knowledge can’t penetrate it.

When the adjective “dense” appeared in English in the late 16th century, it meant “having its constituent particles closely compacted together; thick, compact,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The first OED citation is from a section on eye diseases in The Boock of Physicke, a 1599 translation of a medical work by the Dutch physician Oswald Gaebelkhover:

“When as the Cataracte is so dense and of such a crassitude [thickness] that heerwith they will not be soackede.”

In the 18th century, the adjective took on the figurative sense of being overwritten and unclear. The first Oxford citation is from a 1732 issue of Historia Litteraria, a monthly literary journal edited by the Scottish historian Archibald Bower:

“Sometimes the Author is not so properly concise, as dense, if I may use the Word. When the Subject is limpid of it self, he frequently inspissates [thickens] it, by throwing in a heap of Circumstances not Essential to it.”

In the early 19th century, the adjective came to mean stupid, as in this OED citation from an 1822 essay by Charles Lamb in the London Magazine: “I must needs conclude the present generation of play-goers more virtuous than myself, or more dense.”

The term “empty-headed,” which appeared in the early 17th century, describes someone “having or showing little intelligence; lacking sense; foolish, frivolous,” according to the dictionary.

The earliest Oxford citation is from The History of the World, a 1614 book by Sir Walter Raleigh: “Wise men depend vpon so many vnworthy and emptie-headed fooles.” (Raleigh wrote the history while he was in the Tower of London, awaiting execution.)

The term “thick-headed,” used figuratively to mean “dull of intellect; slow-witted, obtuse,” showed up in the early 19th century, according to the OED.

The dictionary’s earliest example is from The Good French Governess, an 1801 children’s novel by the Anglo-Irish writer Maria Edgeworth: “He was so ‘thick-headed at his book,’ that Mrs. Grace … affirmed, that he never would learn to read.”

English has many figurative adjectives and nouns for someone who’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Here are a few, with the earliest OED citations: “harebrained” (1548), “blockhead” (1589), “scatterbrained” (1804), “pea-brain” (1938), and “airhead” 1971.

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Q: I believe that Queen Elizabeth I was the source of the expression “Heavens to Betsy!” Good Queen Bess was known for playing the various political, diplomatic, and religious factions in Elizabethan England against each other, leaving them in a state of surprise or shock.

A: This is doubtful. As we wrote more than 10 years ago, in a post that was updated recently, the expression “Heavens to Betsy!” originated in the US and was not recorded until 1857. It could not have originated in Elizabethan England and remained unrecorded in writing for more than two centuries.

The earliest published reference found so far, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, comes from an 1857 issue of Ballou’s Dollar Monthly Magazine: “ ‘Heavens to Betsy!’ he exclaims, clapping his hand to his throat, ‘I’ve cut my head off!’ ”

The OED says the word “heaven,” used chiefly in the plural, has appeared since the 1500s in “exclamations expressing surprise, horror, excitement, etc.” It’s frequently accompanied by an intensifying adjective, Oxford adds, as in “good heavens,” “gracious heavens,” “great heavens,” “merciful heavens,” and so on.

We have extensively researched “Heavens to Betsy!” and have concluded that the “Betsy” in the expression is untraceable—if she even existed.

The name, an extremely common one, was probably used in a generic way to refer to no one in particular, as in “every Tom, Dick, and Harry” and similar expressions.

We’ve written several posts about the generic use of common names, including one in 2007 about “Tom, Dick, and Harry,” and one in 2013 about “Johnny come lately.”

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Q: How did having “a chip on one’s shoulder” come to mean spoiling for a fight?

A: When the expression originated in 19th-century America, it referred literally to a wood chip “carried as a challenge to others,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Today it’s a colloquial term for “a belligerent attitude,” says the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang.

Etymologists have traced the usage back to the early 1800s, when an American boy looking for a fight would place a chip of wood on his shoulder and dare another boy to knock it off—reminiscent of the medieval knight who’d throw down his gauntlet, challenging another to pick it up.

The earliest written reference that we’ve seen for the American practice is in Letters from the South, an 1817 collection of letters written the year before by the American writer James Kirke Paulding:

“A man rode furiously by on horseback, and swore he’d be d—d if he could not lick any man who dared to crook his elbow at him. This, it seems, is equivalent to throwing the glove in days of yore, or to the boyish custom of knocking a chip off the shoulder.”

An OED citation from the May 20, 1830, issue of the Long Island Telegraph (Hempstead, NY), describes the practice in more detail:

“When two churlish boys were determined to fight, a chip would be placed on the shoulder of one, and the other demanded to knock it off at his peril.”

By the mid-1800s, “a chip on one’s shoulder” was being used figuratively, as in this Oxford example from the March 17, 1855, Weekly Oregonian (Portland), which refers to a challenge made in a newspaper editorial:

“Leland, in his last issue, struts out with a chip on his shoulder, and dares Bush to knock it off.” (Alonzo Leland was editor of the Democratic Standard, and Asahel Bush was editor and owner of the Oregon Statesman.)

And here’s a figurative canine example in the dictionary: “The way that dog went about with a chip on his shoulder … was enough to spoil the sweetest temper” (from the October 1887 issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine).

Some websites mistakenly trace the expression to a labor protest at the Chatham Dockyard in Kent, England, in the mid-18th century.

Although a shipwright carried wood home on his shoulder to protest regulations prohibiting the practice, the expression “a chip on one’s shoulder” didn’t show up in writing until a century later—on the other side of the Atlantic. There’s no evidence that would connect the protest with the American usage.

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Q: When did “the birds and the bees” become a euphemism for sex?

A: The use of the expression as a euphemism for the basic facts about sex, as told to children, showed up in print in the first half of the 20th century, but it was undoubtedly used in speech before it appeared in writing.

The earliest written example we’ve seen for “the birds and the bees” used this way is from a Feb. 12, 1940, Associated Press article that appeared the next day in various newspapers around the country.

Here’s the headline in the Feb. 13, 1940, issue of the San Bernardino County (CA) Sun: “Objection to Pictures of Nudes Irks Girl, 12 / Child Suggests That He Learn About Birds and Bees Before Voicing Disapproval.”

In the AP article, a man says schoolchildren shouldn’t be allowed to see two Thomas Hart Benton nudes at a museum. A girl responds that “there is no harm in looking at art exhibitions” and “if you know about the birds and the bees you wouldn’t want to hide the pictures.”

The editors of the San Bernardino newspaper wouldn’t have used “Birds and Bees” in the headline unless the usage was already familiar to readers in the sex-education sense.

A somewhat earlier newspaper example (from the April 29, 1939, issue of the Argus in Melbourne, Australia) uses “the birds and the bees” to mean lovers in nature. A movie reviewer complains about the scarcity of romantic films coming out of Hollywood, then adds:

“I am not suggesting that Hollywood is plastered with posters reading ‘Down With Love.’ Nor do I even hint that it should be given back to the birds and the bees and the flowers and the few Viennese remaining in old Vienna.”

Of course writers have linked birds and bees for centuries as symbols of nature, and noted the care in which birds rear their young.

In a 1675 religious treatise, for example, the Anglican priest John Smith says man should imitate the “well timed and orderly actions of birds and bees,” especially the ingenuity of birds “in making their nests” and in the “parental care of their young.”

(The treatise is entitled Christian Religion’s Appeal From the Groundless Prejudices of the Sceptick to the Bar of Common Reason. Smith was rector of St. Mary at the Wall Church in Colchester, England.)

And here’s a 19th-century example from “Nature,” by the Scottish poet Allan Cunningham:

“Untrodden flowers and unpruned trees / Gladden’d with songs of birds and bees.” (The poem was first published in the Edinburgh Literary Journal on Dec. 27, 1828, and was widely reprinted in the US.)

A more recent, suggestive example is from “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love,” a song that Cole Porter wrote for the 1928 musical Paris: “Birds do it, bees do it, / Even educated fleas do it.”

Porter changed the original wording (“Chinks do it, Japs do it, / Up in Lapland, little Lapps do it”), when told that it was offensive, Philip H. Herbst writes in The Color of Words: An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Ethnic Bias in the United States (1997).

All the early recordings we’ve heard, including those by Rudy Vallée (1928), Bing Crosby (1929), Mary Martin (1941), and Billie Holiday (1941), use the original lyrics. The Yale Book of Quotations, edited by Fred R. Shapiro, dates the new version at 1954.

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Q: A recent headline on the website of the NY Times refers to prostitutes as “sex workers.” For me, “sex workers” is bloodless and sanitized. What’s the latest on the usage here?

A: You can find both “prostitute” and “sex worker” in the New York Times, though “prostitute” is found much more often.

A recent search of the newspaper’s online archive shows that “prostitute” has appeared 147 times over the last 12 months, compared to 11 appearances for “sex worker.”

In fact, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage (5th ed.) recommends against using the term “sex worker” for “prostitute” in most cases. Here’s the relevant section:

“sex worker. Avoid this vague and euphemistic term, except on the rare occasions when a blanket term is needed to encompass a range of activities. Ordinarily prostitute is preferable. But be sensitive to the fact that in many situations prostitution is linked to human trafficking and violence. Whenever possible, describe the circumstances.”

The Jan. 9, 2018, article on the Times website, a feature about a shelter in Mexico City for former prostitutes, uses “prostitute” or “prostitutes” five times, once in a photo caption and four times in the body of the article.

Although the term “sex worker” or “sex workers” appears three times, one appearance is in a comment by a former prostitute and another is in a remark by the director of the shelter.

The headline on the website is “Retired From the Brutal Streets of Mexico, Sex Workers Find a Haven.” The headline in the Jan. 10, 2018, print edition is “A Shelter With No Room for Stigma.”

Why was “sex workers,” not “prostitutes,” used in the website headline? And why was neither term in the print headline?

The copy editor who wrote the website headline may have been unaware of the stylebook’s objections. The editor who wrote the print headline had more time to consider the issue, and less space to deal with it.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “sex worker” as “a person who is paid or employed to provide sexual services, esp. one working in the pornography business or as a prostitute.”

“Typically,” the OED adds, the term is “used (esp. when in preference to prostitute) to avoid or reduce negative connotations and to evoke affinity with conventional service industries.”

The earliest example in the dictionary is from a review in the Nov. 7, 1971, issue of the Times of Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death, a musical by Melvin Van Peebles:

“Coupling rage and laughter, detailing joys among urban field hands, thieves, postal workers, sex workers, factory workers, and the inevitable unemployed, and letting them specify what America is to a great many black folks.”

Although “sex workers” is often used as a euphemism for “prostitutes,” it’s also used as a more general term that includes phone-sex operators, actors in porn films, “adult” models, and so on.

Some organizations opposed to sex trafficking support legalizing “sex work” and unionizing “sex workers.” They believe that unions could help combat forced prostitution and child prostitution. The Gates Foundation, for example, has supported such a union in Calcutta.

However, the issue is controversial. When Amnesty International decided in 2015 to endorse the “full decriminalization of consensual sex work,” many members in Norway and Sweden resigned, saying the organization should seek to end prostitution, not condone it.

Nicholas Kristoff, a Times columnist who has written extensively about forced prostitution and childhood prostitution, is opposed to using the term “sex worker” for “prostitute.”

In a column published on Jan. 23, 2006, Kristoff says: “I’m in the ‘prostitute’ camp; I don’t see any reason for euphemisms, particularly those that tend to legitimize something that is usually closely linked to organized crime and violence.”

As for us, we’d use “prostitutes” for people who engage in sexual intercourse for money, though we might use the broader term if we were referring to several different kinds of “sex workers.”

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Q: Why do people say “I don’t have a dog in this race” when the word should be “fight,” not “race”?

A: Those people may be conflating two figurative expressions that mean the same thing: “I don’t have a horse in this race” and “I don’t have a dog in this fight” (“this” is often replaced by “that” or “the.”)

Those two expressions, as well as “I don’t have a dog in the hunt” and “I don’t have skin in the game,” mean the speaker doesn’t have a personal interest or stake in the outcome of the matter.

However, it’s possible that some of the people who say “I don’t have a dog in this race” may be referring figuratively to dog racing.

Despite the folksy, old-time sound of these metaphorical expressions, all of them are relatively new. They didn’t show up in writing until the second half of the 20th century, according to our searches of various databases. (A variation of the “dogfight” expression appeared in the early 1900s.)

We could find only one of these expressions in our language reference sources. The Oxford English Dictionary says “to have (one’s) skin in the game and variants” originated as a colloquial North American business usage.

The OED defines the expression as “to have a stake in the success of something, esp. to have a financial or personal investment in a business; to be closely involved in something.”

“It is not clear,” the dictionary adds, “whether the metaphor underlying this phrase is to do with putting oneself at risk … or with risking one’s money.” Both possibilities, Oxford says, have been suggested. (The word “skin,” as the dictionary explains elsewhere, can refer to one’s identity as well as one’s money.)

The earliest Oxford example for the usage is from the March 1976 issue of Infosystems: “I suggest that the various groups of participants should consider that they do not have any skin in the game.”

The latest OED example refers to an orchestra’s financial contribution to the performance of a piece of music commissioned by a patron: “We’ll pay for the commission, but we want the orchestra to have some skin in the game” (from the Jan. 23, 2005, issue of the New York Times).

The oldest “dog hunt” example we’ve seen is from an Aug. 10, 1988, op-ed column in the State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL) about the opposition of a state official, Jim Edgar, to a constitutional convention:

“That’s one reason Edgar has gone public on the constitutional reform issue, even though the conventional wisdom would be that he doesn’t have a dog in the hunt—that he doesn’t need to run the risk of making unnecessary enemies.”

The earliest “dogfight” example we’ve found is a comment by Vice President George H. W. Bush about financial questions concerning Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic candidate for vice president, and her husband, John Zaccaro:

“I don’t have a dog in that fight” (from an Aug. 20, 1984, report on the United Press International newswire).

However, we’ve found a much earlier variation on the “dogfight” theme in the Aug. 28, 1919, issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer, which quotes a school official about the awarding of building contracts:

“ ‘I sympathize with the union men,’ he said, ‘but there is another dog in this fight—the non-union man—and we must consider him.’ ”

The oldest “horserace” example we’ve seen is a comment by Marlin Fitzwater, the White House press secretary for President George H. W. Bush, on the choice of David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, as the Republican candidate for governor of Louisiana:

“Basically, we don’t have a horse in that race” (from the Oct. 22, 1991, issue of the Houston Chronicle).

We found an earlier variation on the “horserace” usage in a Feb. 13, 1983, UPI report on the views of Democratic officials around the country about the 1984 Democratic National Convention:

“The highlight in Des Moines was a private luncheon with key state Democrats including former Iowa governor and senator, Harold Hughes, who still hasn’t picked his horse in the race.”

Finally, the earliest example we’ve come across for the “dog race” expression is from an article in the March 6, 1986, Seattle Times about plans to build new naval bases around the country:

“Rep. David Martin, R-N.Y., also defended the home-porting plan. While one big base is to be built at Staten Island, N.Y., Martin noted his district is 300 miles from there. ‘I don’t have a dog in this race,’ he said.”

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Q: I saw this the other day in the NY Times: “I love these African wood sculptures, and the antique Buddha head. You and your wife have a great eye.” That sounds odd! How can two people have “a great eye”?

A: Steven Kurutz, a Times feature reporter, made the comment in interviewing the “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker.

The “eye” in his remark isn’t being used literally for one of the two organs of sight each of us is born with. In this sense, “eye” means visual discernment, taste, judgment, or appreciation.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the usage this way: “The faculty of appreciation or judgement of visual objects (also situations, etc.), either in a particular context or for a specific quality.”

So a person—or a husband and wife who collect art together—might have “a great eye” for antiquities, for African sculptures, for design, or for anything else that’s visual.

The OED’s examples of this usage date back to the 16th century. The earliest is about combat and the importance of being able to visualize the enemy’s position:

“There must be a speciall care taken in viewing by experience, & the eye of a soldior, the scituation which the enimie occupyeth.” (From Sir Edward Hoby’s Theorique & Practise of Warre, a 1597 translation of the Spanish of Bernardino de Mendoza.)

In this later example, the “eye” is possessed by more than one person, represented by “we.” It comes from James Beattie’s Dissertations Moral and Critical (1783):

“If we have any thing of a painter’s eye, we are struck with the waving lines that predominate so remarkably in his figure.”

And the two of us can never resist citing P. G. Wodehouse. This is from his novel Hot Water (1932): “House-broken husband though he was, he still had an eye for beauty.”

In most cases, one person is said to have “an eye” for something, but there’s no reason that two people can’t share “an eye.” That is to say, they can share the same faculty for visual appreciation.

There are many other usages in English in which “eye” is used in the singular to mean something other than the organ of sight.

The expression “to have an eye for [or an eye to] the main chance,” for instance, has been around for more than 400 years. The OED says the expression means “to have consideration for one’s own interests.”

The dictionary’s earliest example is from an Elizabethan drama, Robert Wilson’s The Three Ladies of London (1584):

“Trust me thou art as craftie to haue an eye to the mayne chaunce: / As the Taylor that out of seuen yardes stole one and a halfe of durance.”

This later example comes from Studies of a Biographer (1902), by Sir Leslie Stephen, who was Virginia Woolf’s father: “It … cannot be said that an eye for the main chance is inconsistent with the poetical character.”

The word “ear” has been used in much the same way. It’s often said of people who appreciate music that they have “a good ear.” This usage, too, has been around since the 16th century.

The earliest OED citation is from William Bonde’s The Pylgrimage of Perfection (1526): “In the psalmody … haue a good eare.”

And in this example, from William Hubbock’s Great Brittaines Resurrection (1606), both “eye” and “ear” are used this way:

“As the cunning eye in pictures, the skillfull eare in musicke discerneth more then the vulgar sort.”

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Q: Why do our British cousins say “happy Christmas” while we say “merry Christmas”?

A: You can find “merry Christmas” and “happy Christmas” in both the US and the UK, though Christmas is more often “merry” in American English and “happy” in British English.

Our searches of the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus show that “merry Christmas” is overwhelmingly more popular in the US, while “happy Christmas” is somewhat more popular in the UK.

Here’s a recent “merry Christmas” example from the UK: “Hundreds of well-wishers turned out to catch a glimpse of the royal family, with some calling out ‘merry Christmas’ as they walked past” (from a Dec. 25, 2017, report in the Guardian on the crowd outside Sandringham House, Queen Elizabeth’s Norfolk estate).

And here’s a recent “happy Christmas” example from the US: “So, this year, for the first time in a long time, this native will not return to the scene of the happy Christmases of his childhood” (from the Dec. 7, 2017, issue of the Chicago Tribune).

Some language commentators have attributed the British preference for “happy Christmas” to the use of the expression by the royal family in annual Christmas broadcasts. King George V began the practice in his 1932 Christmas radio message, written by Rudyard Kipling:

“I speak now from my home and from my heart to you all. To men and women so cut off by the snows, the desert or the sea, that only voices out of the air can reach them; to those cut off from fuller life by blindness, sickness, or infirmity; and to those who are celebrating this day with their children and grand-children. To all—to each—I wish a happy Christmas. God Bless You!”

Queen Elizabeth II, who has continued the usage, concluded her 2017 Christmas TV broadcast this way: “Whatever your own experiences this year; wherever and however you are watching, I wish you a peaceful and very happy Christmas.”

However, the royal family isn’t unanimously “happy” in its Christmas greetings. A recent holiday photo issued by Kensington Palace was accompanied by this wording: “A new family photo—Merry Christmas from The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince George and Princess Charlotte.”

Kipling’s choice of “happy” in the speech he wrote for King George may have been influenced by the feeling among some Anglican clerics in the 19th century that “merry” suggests noisy, boisterous, or drunken behavior, while “happy” signifies a deeper, more loving enjoyment.

In “Happy Christmas,” an 1864 lecture, the Rev. Gordon Calthrop, a prebendary at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, says, “Now it is usual, I believe, to speak rather of a ‘Merry,’ than of a ‘Happy’ Christmas. But I had a reason in my own mind for departing in this particular instance from the general custom.”

“There seems to me to be a difference—a considerable difference between the thing signified by the word ‘merry,’ and the thing signified by the word ‘happy,’ ” Calthrop explains.

He says “merry” indicates “boisterous gaiety” and “extravagant demonstrations,” while “happy” reflects “the true spirit of this most blessed season” and a feeling “too deep to be very demonstrative.”

Interestingly, “merry” meant simply pleasing or delightful when it first appeared in Old English. It didn’t come to mean boisterous or tipsy until the late 14th century. “Happy” meant lucky or fortunate when it showed up in writing in the late 14th century. It didn’t take on the sense of pleased or contented until a century later.

Getting back to your question, “merry Christmas” was first used in writing in the early 1500s, while “happy Christmas” came along nearly two centuries later.

The earliest example of “merry Christmas” in the Oxford English Dictionary is from a Dec. 22, 1534, letter by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, to Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to King Henry VIII: “And thus our Lord send yow a mery Christenmas, and a comfortable, to yowr heart desyer.”

(The bishop, a prisoner in the Tower of London, asks Cromwell in the letter for better clothing and other necessities, as well as a priest to hear his confession. He was executed on June 22, 1535, for refusing to accept Henry VIII as head of the Church of England.)

The OED defines this use of “merry” as “characterized by celebration and rejoicing. Frequently in Merry Christmas! and other seasonal greetings.”

The dictionary says “happy” is used similarly “in expressions of good wishes for a person or persons on a celebratory occasion, event, day, etc., as happy birthday, happy Christmas, happy New Year, etc.”

The earliest Oxford example of “happy Christmas” is from a 1707 memoir by Frances Shaftoe: “I wish you a happy Christmas and New Year.”

However, we’ve found many earlier examples, such as this excerpt from a Dec. 20, 1688, letter by George Wheler, a canon of Durham Cathedral, to George Hicks, Dean of Worcester:

“I Send You this to express my hearty Wishes, That You may enjoy a Happy Christmass and New-Year.”

The linguist Arika Okrent has noted that “happy” is the usual adjective for expressing good wishes on a festive event: “happy birthday,” “happy New Year’s Day,” “happy Thanksgiving,” “happy Easter,” “happy St. Patrick’s Day,” and so on. She suggests in a video on the Mental Floss website that “happy” may be seen as a classier term than the rowdy, tipsy “merry.”

Classy or not, “merry Christmas” is alive and well on both sides of the Atlantic, though merrier in the US. We’ll end with the last of the many examples of the expression in A Christmas Carol, the 1843 novella by Charles Dickens:

“A merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!”

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Q: I’m dreaming of a “white sale” so I can replace my threadbare linens. In the meantime, can you enlighten me about the history of the expression?

A: The phrase “white sale” showed up in the late 1800s in reference to a January or February sale of household linens, also known as “white goods,” at reduced prices.

The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Feb. 2, 1894, issue of the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

“At 8 o’clock yesterday morning J. L. Hudson’s furnishing goods departments were packed with eager buyers, being attracted there by the announcement of a ‘White Sale.’ ”

However, the OED has an earlier citation for a similar usage from a July 3, 1878, ad in the Iowa State Reporter in Waterloo:

“Remember! The Linen and White Goods Sale at Glover & Arther’s on Tuesday, July 9, at 10 o’clock a.m.”

We’ve also found quite a few examples of the shorter phrase “white sale” used in the late 1880s and early ’90s in newspaper ads announcing sales of sewing fabrics or undergarments, though not household linens.

In Wanamaker’s: Meet Me at the Eagle (2010), Michael J. Lisicky credits the American merchant John Wanamaker with coming up with the idea for a white sale:

“In January 1878, he introduced the first annual White Sale. This sale was an attempt to sell excess stock in bedding during a traditionally slow time of the year.”

Lisicky, the author of several histories of department stores, says Wanamaker “chose the name White Sale since all linens were exclusively sold in White.”

However, we haven’t been able to confirm that or any other 19th-century use of the term “white sale” by the Philadelphia department store.

In fact, the earliest example we’ve been able to find for a Wanamaker “white sale” refers to a sale in its store at Broadway and Ninth Street in Manhattan: “Plain Facts About the White Sale” (from the Jan. 3, 1900, New-York Tribune).

The earliest OED citation for “white goods” is from A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts, an 1807 book by the English scientist Thomas Young:

“About one half [of imported cotton] is consumed in white goods, one fourth in fustians, and the remainder in hosiery, mixtures, and candle wicks.” (Fustian is a durable twilled fabric.)

The dictionary defines “white goods” as “household linen, traditionally white in colour, such as sheets and towels.” It says the usage is seen now only in references to the past.

We often call these household items “linens,” though they’re more likely to be made of cotton or a cotton blend. Technically, “linen” is cloth woven from flax, but for many centuries the word has been used loosely to mean either undergarments or household goods like sheets, towels, napkins, and tablecloths

Sometimes linens or muslins or other fabrics that were not bleached and retained their natural color were called “brown goods,” but that term was also used for fabrics that had been dyed brown or a brownish color.

Interestingly, both the terms “brown goods” and “white goods” were resurrected in the 20th century with more modern meanings.

In the 1940s “white goods” came to mean large household appliances that were traditionally white, like refrigerators and washing machines.

The first OED example is fromthe June 13, 1947, issue of the New York Times: “$50,000 worth of white goods like stoves and washers are available for immediate delivery.”

And later in the 20th century the term “brown goods” came to be used to mean electrical appliances like radios, TV’s and phonographs that were often housed in brown cases.

The first Oxford citation is from a March 1976 report by the London consumer organization Which?

“Electrical equipment … includes things like washing machines and fridges (what the trade calls white goods) as well as TVs and audio (which the trade calls brown goods).”

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Q: I just wanted to call your attention to an interesting article in the NY Times that says the phrase “running amok” originated in the Malay language. Have you ever written about this usage?

A: No, we haven’t written about “running amok,” at least not until now. It does indeed come from Malay, a language spoken in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and some other Southeast Asian nations.

In A Dictionary of the Malayan Language (1812), the English linguist and orientalist William Marsden defines āmuk, his transliteration of a Malay adjective, as “engaging furiously in battle; attacking with desperate resolution; rushing, in a state of frenzy, to the commission of indiscriminate murder; running a-muck.”

In “The Malayan Words in English,” a paper presented to the American Oriental Society in April 1896, C. P. G. Scott notes similar words in various versions of Malay: “Lampong amug, Javanese hamuk, Sundanese amuk, Dayak amok.” (In addition to his interest in Malay, Scott was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Columbia College in New York City.)

Duarte Barbosa, a Portuguese writer living in India, apparently introduced the usage to the West.

In a travel book written around 1516, he says Javanese who go on a rampage “are called amuco.” (From A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar in the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century, Henry E. J. Stanley’s 1866 translation of Barbosa’s work.)

In the 17th century, the word “amok” came to be used both literally and figuratively in English as an adverb, almost always to modify the verb “run,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Literally, the OED says, “to run amok” means “to run viciously, mad, frenzied for blood.”

The earliest citation is from The Rehearsal Transpros’d, a 1672 prose political satire by the English poet Andrew Marvell: “Like a raging Indian … he runs a mucke (as they cal it there) stabbing every man he meets.”

Figuratively, according to Oxford, the expression means to act “wild or wildly, headlong or heedlessly.”

The dictionary’s first figurative citation is from A Speech Without-Doors (1689), a collection of essays criticizing restraints on the press, by the English pamphleteer Edmund Hickeringill: “Running a Muck at all Mankind.”

In the latest OED example for “run amok,” the expression is used literally:

“ ‘Here,’ an acquaintance said to me, ‘you either reach for the stars or you crack up and run amok with a chainsaw.’ ” (From Black & White, a 1980 book by Shiva Naipaul about the 1978 Jonestown massacre in Guyana. Shiva Naipaul was the younger brother of the novelist V. S. Naipaul.)

In the Times article that got your attention, Geoffrey Robinson, a professor of Southeast Asian history and politics at the University of California, Los Angeles, says the Malay term mengamok roughly means making a furious, desperate charge.

Robinson says the usage referred to someone who endured an unbearable indignity and lashed out by attacking everyone in sight until he was eventually killed.

He notes that there was a mystique about the amucos, not unlike the notoriety of mass killers today. The practice faded away during British and Dutch rule as the colonial authorities lessened the mystique by committing amucos to institutions.

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Q: Did botanical “wallflowers” and “shrinking violets” inspire the timid human ones?

A: Yes, though we wouldn’t describe botanical wallflowers and violets as timid or inconspicuous, especially when planted in a bed or border of a garden.

The term “wallflower” usually means Cheiranthus cheiri, a European plant “growing wild on old walls, on rocks, in quarries, etc., and cultivated in gardens for its fragrant flowers,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The earliest literal example in the OED refers to “Wall floures” and several other names for the plant (from A Niewe Herball, Henry Lyte’s 1578 translation of a plant history by the Flemish botanist Rembert Dodoens).

Jonathon Green, writing in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, says the figurative sense is derived from the literal “wallflower,” apparently the wild variety that climbs up old walls and into crevices.

Green’s Dictionary defines the figurative “wallflower” as “a woman (occas. a man) who does not join in dancing at a ball or dance, either through her inability to find a partner or through her desire to remain solo; thus a retiring, shy person.”

The OED says “violet” refers to a “plant or flower of the genus Viola, esp. V. odorata, the sweet-smelling violet, growing wild, and cultivated in gardens; the flowers are usually purplish blue, mauve, or white.”

The first written mention of the flower in English, according to Oxford, is from Arthour and Merlin, an anonymous Middle English romance written around 1330:

“Mirie it is in time of June … Violet & rose flour Woneþ þan in maidens bour.” (By 1370 the name of the flower, from the Old French violete, was being used for a color.)

The earliest example we’ve found for “shrinking violet” uses the term literally to describe a flower that’s hard to see in the wild (suggestive of the modern figurative sense):

“There was the buttercup, struggling from a white to a dirty yellow; and a faint-coloured poppy, neither the good nor the ill of which was then known; and here and there by the thorny underwood a shrinking violet.”

(From “Ronald of the Perfect Hand,” an essay by the English poet and critic Leigh Hunt in the Feb. 23, 1820, issue of The Indicator, a literary magazine edited by Hunt.)

Oxford defines the figurative meaning of “shrinking violet” as “a shy or modest person.” The dictionary’s first example is from In Times Like These, a 1915 book by the Canadian feminist Nellie McClung:

“Voting will not be compulsory; the shrinking violets will not be torn from their shady fence-corner; the ‘home bodies’ will be able to still sit in rapt contemplation of their own fireside.”

However, we’ve found many earlier examples, including one in an 1833 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book, an American magazine, that compares Thekla in Friedrich Schiller’s Wallenstein trilogy to Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet:

“The timidity of Thekla in her first scene, her trembling silence in the commencement, and the few words she addresses to her mother, reminds us of the unobtrusive simplicity of Juliet’s first appearance; but the impression is difficult: the one is the shrinking violet, the other the expanded rose-bud.”

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Q: What’s the difference between “repository” and “depository”? Why, for example, is the Beinecke library at Yale often referred to as a repository while that notorious building in Dallas was called the Texas School Book Depository?

A: The two words overlap, but “repository” is more expansive than “depository.”

Standard dictionaries define both “repository” and “depository” as a place where something is stored, but then go on to say a “repository” can specifically mean a warehouse, a museum, a burial vault, a person entrusted with secrets, the site of a natural resource, and someone or something considered a store of knowledge.

Both words are of Latin origin. “Depository” ultimately comes from dēpōnere, classical Latin for to lay away, while “repository” is ultimately derived from repōnere, classical Latin for to put away or store. (In ancient Rome, a repositōrium was a portable stand for serving courses at a meal.)

When the older of the English terms, “repository,” showed up in writing in the 15th century, it meant a “place or receptacle in which things are or may be deposited, esp. for storage or safe keeping,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The earliest example in the OED is from The Lyf of the Noble and Crysten Prynce, Charles the Grete, William Caxton’s 1485 translation of a French biography of Charlemagne:

“Of the floures charles put a parte in a reposytorye.” (The flowers here are said to have bloomed on thorns that came from Jesus’s crown of thorns.)

When “depository” appeared in the 18th century, the dictionary says, it similarly referred to a “place or receptacle in which things are deposited or placed for safe keeping; a storehouse, a repository.”

The first OED citation describes Alexandria as “the depository of all merchandizes from the East and West” (from a 1752 book on commercial law by the English entrepreneur Wyndham Beawes).

“Depository” is still primarily used to mean a place to store things safely, but “repository” has taken on many more specific senses, though all are related in one way or other to its original storage sense.

In the 16th century, for example, “repository” began being used for someone entrusted with confidential information. In the 17th, it came to mean a burial vault, warehouse, marketplace, art museum, and someone who’s a store of knowledge. In the 18th century, it became the site of a natural resource, and in the 19th, an archive or a library.

That’s why the Beinecke library is referred to as a repository for rare books and manuscripts while the Dallas building, primarily a place to store textbooks for distribution, was called a depository.

We’ll end with an example from Charles Dickens’s 1850 novel, David Copperfield, of “repository” used in the sense of a confidante: “I wanted somebody to talk to, then. I missed Agnes. I found a tremendous blank, in the place of that smiling repository of my confidence.”

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Q: In reading my mother’s 1931 diary, I’ve noticed the expression “kicking over the lighter,” as in “The boys tried kicking over the lighter.” I can’t believe it should be taken literally. Any thoughts?

A: We aren’t familiar with “kicking over the lighter,” and we haven’t found the expression in slang and etymological dictionaries or in book and newspaper databases.

Perhaps your mother was thinking of “kicking over the ladder,” and either misheard the expression or misspelled it.

In that expression, and the more common “kicking down the ladder,” the word “ladder” is being used figuratively for the means by which one gets ahead in life.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “kick down the ladder” as “said of persons who repudiate or ignore the friendships or associations by means of which they have risen in the world.”

The earliest OED example for the figurative use of “ladder” as a means to get ahead is from the Lambeth Homilies (circa 1175): “Ðis is sunfulla monna leddre” (“This is the ladder of sinful men”).

The dictionary’s first citation for the expression “kick down the ladder” is from a July 18, 1794, letter by Horatio Nelson (Vice Admiral Lord Nelson) to Samuel Hood (Admiral Lord Hood):

“Duncan is, I think, a little altered; there is nothing like kicking down the ladder a man rises by.”

The verb “kick” has been used since the 14th century in various expressions of equine origin that figuratively mean to rebel uselessly and painfully.

The earliest example in the OED is from a religious tract written around 1380 by the English theologian John Wycliffe:

“It is hard to kyke aȝen þe spore” (“It is hard to kick against the spur”). Oxford also has examples for “kick against the prick” (or “pricks”), and “kick against the goad.”

In addition, the dictionary has citations for the equine expression “kick over the traces” used figuratively to mean throw over the usual restraints.

The first example is from Ravenshoe, an 1861 novel by Henry Kingsley: “I’ll go about with the rogue. He is inclined to kick over the traces, but I’ll whip him in a little.”

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Q: I see the expression “not on my watch” all over the place these days. I assume it began life as a naval usage. Right?

A: The noun “watch” has been used for hundreds of years by soldiers, sailors, and officers of the law to mean a period of vigil on land or at sea. It’s unclear whose usage inspired “not on my watch.”

The earliest example we’ve seen for the expression cites a sailor, but he uses it figuratively to mean “no way” or “absolutely not.” A few years later, a police officer on a night watch uses it literally in the sense of “This won’t happen while I’m on duty.”

That early figurative example, tracked down by the lexicographer Jonathan Lighter, is from the March 17, 1907, issue of the Duluth (MN) News Tribune. It appears in an account of a brawl at a Bowery bar in New York City:

“Jack had started to meander on his way, but Tom pinched him and stung him a fifty for the bunch of busted glass. ‘Not on my watch,’ says Jack, and the two mixed it.”

(Jack Rollings, a sailor on shore leave from the USS Alabama, had broken a mirror and refused the demand of Tom Sharkey, the owner, for restitution.)

The earliest literal example that we’ve found (from the May 29, 1911, issue of the San Francisco Call) describes the response of Capt. Steve Bunner, night chief of detectives at the city’s central station, when a man threatened to commit suicide:

“ ‘Not on my watch,’ said Bunner. He pushed the button and two large policemen appeared. ‘Take this man to the detention hospital,’ he said.”

The usage is quite popular now, as you’ve noticed. The Kentucky Secretary of State, Alison Lundergan Grimes, used it recently in commenting on the presidential voter fraud commission’s request for registration information:

“There’s not enough bourbon here in Kentucky to make this request seem sensible. Not on my watch are we going to be releasing sensitive information that relates to the privacy of individuals.” (From the June 30, 2017, issue of the Hill.)

Another version, “not under my watch,” is also popular. The first example we’ve found is from the Sept. 15, 2000, issue of the Globe and Mail (Toronto).

John Hayter, chairman and chief executive officer at Vickers & Benson, explains why he supported the sale of the struggling Canadian advertising agency to Havas Advertising of Paris:

“There is absolutely no glory in overseeing the slow demise of Vickers & Benson. We have been a proud Canadian agency for 76 years, and not under my watch was I going to see it slowly, slowly fade away.”

When the noun “watch” showed up in Anglo-Saxon times (spelled wæcce or wæccan in Old English), it referred to wakefulness, especially keeping awake for guarding, observing, and the like, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The first OED example is from King Ælfred’s translation (circa 888) of De Consolatione Philosophiæ, a sixth-century treatise by the Roman philosopher and statesman Boethius:

“Hu micele wæccan & hu micle unrotnesse se hæfð þe ðone won willan hæfð on þisse worulde” (“How great the watch and how great the grief of someone with wicked desires in this world”).

This Middle English example is from Confessio Amantis (1393), a long poem by John Gower about the confessions of an aging lover:

“So mot I nedes fro hire wende / And of my wachche make an ende” (“So I must needs go from her and make an end of my watch”).

Over the next two centuries, the noun “watch” came to mean people on guard or observation, as well as their period of duty, especially at night. The term was used for watches in towns, on military posts, and aboard ships.

Here’s an example from Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, first performed in the early1600s: “As I did stand my watch vpon the Hill / I look’d toward Byrnane, and anon me thought / The Wood began to moue.”

This biblical example is from the King James Version of 1611: “I will stand vpon my watch, and set mee vpon the towre, and will watch to see what he will say vnto me.”

And here’s a nautical example from The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624), by Capt. John Smith:

“When we had run 30. leagues we had 40. fadom, then 70. then 100. After 2. or 3. Watches more we were in 24. fadoms.”

The OED suggests that the observation sense of “watch” evolved from the periods “into which the night was anciently divided.” The Israelites divided the night into three periods, the Greeks into four or five, and the Romans into four, according to Oxford.

Interestingly, “in my watch” and “upon my watch” showed up in English before “on my watch.” All three expressions originally meant to be on duty as a watchman or sentinel.

The oldest of these phrases in the OED comes from the Coverdale Bible of 1535:

“Whyle they are yet stondinge in the watch, the dores shall be shut and barred. And there were certayne citesyns of Ierusalem appoynted to be watch-men, euery one in his watch” (from Nehemiah 7:3).

The dictionary’s first example for “upon my watch” is in the passage from the King James Version of 1611 cited above.

The OED doesn’t have an example for “on my watch.” The earliest we’ve found is from the March 1733 issue of the London Magazine:

“I was on my Watch in the Temple that Night the Murder was done; and nothing past but Gentlemen going to their Chambers” (from an account of the trial of Sarah Malcolm, a laundress hanged for three murders).

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Q: I just read your “All the fixings” article about using the verb “fix” to mean “get ready” or “be ready.” It reminded me of a phrase my father used when he didn’t get a treat he was hoping to have: “I had my mouth all fixed for some pie.”

A: Your father was using the expression “all fixed for” in the sense of wanting something very much or longing for it.

This dialectal usage is sometimes followed by a gerund (“all fixed for eating some pie”) or, as in your father’s case, the treat itself (“I had my mouth all fixed for some pie”).

As far as we can tell from our searches of newspaper databases, the usage showed up in the late 19th century. In many of the examples, the person all fixed for something is disappointed—similar to your father’s use of the expression.

The earliest example we’ve seen is from the July, 4, 1895, issue of the Phillipsburg (KS) Herald: “Win Bissell got his mouth all fixed for a big feast of roasting ears on the Fourth, but a cow got in and cleaned up the patch Sunday night.”

And here’s one from the Oct. 21, 1909, Hammond (IN) Times: “Christ Brookham of 3619 Elm street reports to the police that duck thieves are abroad in the land, and that he is shy two nice fat ones, and was compelled to eat a third one when he had his mouth all fixed for chicken.”

In this example from the Jan. 16, 1915, Coronado (CA) Eagle and Journal, the person’s face, not his mouth, is “all fixed for” something good to eat:

“Did you ever get your face all fixed for a turkey dinner and find that the turkey supply was exhausted and all you could get was hamburger?”

And here’s a “throat” example, minus the word “all,” from the Aug. 25, 1917, issue of the Loveland (CO) Daily: “We had our throat fixed for trout, but they wan’t nothin’ come of it.”

But most of our sightings were of the “mouth all fixed for” variety. Here are a few more.

From the Nov. 4, 1921, Mohave County (AZ) Miner and Our Mineral Wealth: “J. H. Smith is short two fat ducks that were nabbed in back yard under the guise of a Halloween prank. Hubert says he would rather they had taken his chicken coop as his mouth was all fixed for a duck dinner.”

From the June 27, 1924, Clare (MI) Sentinel: “Oh, say! We are going to be invited out to supper this week and we have our mouth all fixed for chicken; but don’t mention it, as we are telling you this in confidence and wouldn’t like it to reach the ears of our expected hostess.”

And finally, from an advertisement for Junket in the April 3, 1947, San Bernardino (CA) Sun: “I had my mouth all fixed for that rennet-custard dessert you’re givin’ to Daddy! ’Course, Daddy likes it too—who wouldn’t? But you know rennet custards are my dish from ’way back. So how about it?”

This sense of “all fixed for” as longing for something is apparently derived from the use of the verb “fix” to mean be prepared or get ready, a usage that dates back to the early 1700s.

The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from a 1715 entry in The Early Records of Lancaster, Massachusetts (1884), edited by Henry S. Nourse: “We’d fix things directly; I’ll settle whatever you please upon her.”

By the early 1800s, the verb was being used in the sense of preparing a drink or a meal, as in this OED example from Frances Trollope’s notes for Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832): “You must fix me a drink.” Frances Trollope was the mother of the novelist Anthony Trollope.

And later in the 19th century, the expression “all fixed for” was being used in the sense of ready for a meal.

This example is from an ad for Platt’s buckwheat flour in the Nov. 6, 1871, issue of the Hartford (CT) Daily Courant: “Now we are all fixed for a good breakfast.”

The verb “fix,” which meant to make firm or stable when it showed up in English in the 1400s, is ultimately derived from fīxus, the past participle of fīgĕre, classical Latin for to fix or fasten.

The earliest OED example is from a collection of 15th-century songs and carols edited by Thomas Wright in 1847: “I thouȝt in mynd / I schuld ay fynd / The wehle of fortunat fyxyd fast.”

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Q: What is the difference between “it’s all relative” and “it’s all academic”? It seem to me that there’s something hypothetical about both of them.

A: The two usages, which showed up in the early 1800s, have a sense of uncertainty about them. “Relative” here means indefinite or indeterminate, while “academic” means impractical, theoretical, or inconsequential.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “to be relative” as “to be evaluated differently depending on a person’s perspective; to be incapable of definitive or absolute evaluation. Frequently in it’s all relative.”

In other words, it’s all in the eye of the beholder, a usage that showed up in the early 1600s.

The earliest example for “it’s all relative” in the OED is from an 1804 case report by Christopher Robinson, a judge on the High Court of Admiralty:

“It may be difficult to lay down the precise bounds, where ordinary commerce ends, and extraordinary speculation begins. It is all relative.”

The dictionary defines “academic” in the sense you’re asking about as “not leading to a decision; unpractical; strictly theoretical or formal. Now also in weakened sense: of no consequence, irrelevant.”

The dictionary’s first example is from an 1812 issue of the Monthly Review, a British literary journal:

“His erudition must be worked into the edifice, not exhibited in lumpish disconnection. He must preserve the epic form, without sliding into academic discussion.”

The OED doesn’t have a citation for “it’s all academic.” But examples aren’t hard to find.

The earliest example we’ve found is from the February 1892 issue of Books, a publication of the Denver (CO) Public Library: “It is all academic to the last degree. It is perhaps the airiest of suspicions.”

In a recent example, Richard Posner, who had just retired as a federal judge in Chicago, said in a Sept. 14, 2017, interview that he was ordinarily polite in court but found it irritating when lawyers were unprepared or talkative or went off the point:

“So I do get annoyed; I’m criticized for that. I should control myself, but of course now, it’s all academic. I’m not a judge. Too late to correct me.”

As for the etymology, “academic” is ultimately derived from the classical Latin acadēmicus, describing the ancient Academy of Athens or its philosophy, while “relative” ultimately comes from the classical Latin relātus, past participle of referre (to refer).

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