Tag: Usage

Q: Growing up in the ‘50s, I recall hearing “light in the loafers” as a term of derision for gay men. An Internet search turned up several possible explanations, all plausible, none definitive. Have you ever wrestled with “light in the loafers”?

A: Like many expressions, “light in the loafers” is a bit slippery to wrestle with, but here goes.

Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang (2d ed.) has only a brief entry, describing the expression as ‘50s American slang and adding that “the image is the stereotyped effeminate male, tripping along.”

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, which defines it as effeminate or homosexual, lists a series of references for the expression dating from 1967 to 1996.

However, the first Random House citation, which comes from the Dictionary of American Slang (1967) by Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner, describes the expression as “fairly common” since around 1955.

The expression, by the way, hasn’t been used only to mock gay men. It’s also been used as a euphemism by gay men themselves, as in this 1989 reference from the ABC-TV move Rock Hudson: “We’d say, ‘Is he musical?’ Never gay…. Sometimes ‘Light in the loafers.’”

Both the Cassell’s and Random House entries include what they describe as a similar expression for a gay or effeminate man: “light on his (or “her”) feet.” But I’ve never heard this phrase used in any other way than to describe someone who’s graceful.

If you’ve googled “light in the loafers,” you know that it’s still being used today. The most recent Random House citation is from the Feb. 7, 1996, issue of New York Press, an alternative weekly: “The garment business is popularized by citizens who are ‘light in the loafers.’”

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Q: You were asked during your last appearance on WNYC where the phrase “sleep in” comes from. Do you think it may have something to do with maids and other servants who sleep in rather than leave their places of employment?

A: That seems to make sense, but the verbal phrase “sleep in” was apparently first used to mean oversleep or sleep late. The Oxford English Dictionary says this usage is of Scottish origin.

The earliest published reference in the OED for “sleep in” comes from Christine Isobel Johnston’s novel Elizabeth de Bruce (1827): “For ye ken that like myself ye whiles sleep in on a morning.”

Although the OED‘s primary definition of the phrase is “to sleep in the house, or on the premises, where one is employed,” all nine of the citations given refer to oversleeping or sleeping late.

A typical reference is this one from the Dorothy L. Sayers mystery Five Red Herrings (1939): “Shall I tell Mrs. McLeod to let you sleep in, as they say? And call you with a couple of aspirins on toast?”

As for the verbal phrase “sleep out,” it originally meant to spend the night in the open air, but later came to mean sleeping away from home. The first OED citation, in an 1852 British report on juvenile crime, refers to an apparently homeless child committed for the offense of “sleeping out.”

The next reference is from the Kipling poem “Danny Deever” (1890): “‘E’s sleepin’ out an’ far to-night,’ the Colour-Sergeant said.” And a 1908 letter by Rupert Brooke says: “I should love to sleep out with nothing but a few extra socks on.”

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Q: During your last appearance on the Leonard Lopate Show, you said English had prepositions “up the wazoo.” Is the proper expression “UP the wazoo” or “OUT the wazoo”?

The latest OED citation for this usage is in a 2003 novel, Small Town, a post-9/11 thriller by the mystery writer Lawrence Block: “There’d be security up the wazoo, cops and Secret Service agents a mile deep.”

A: Well, I’m glad to see the adjective “proper” used with this expression, since I had a misgiving or two after saying it on the air. Somewhere in the back of my mind I recalled that the phrase’s origin wasn’t all that proper.

I did some checking after the show and confirmed that the earliest published references for “wazoo” in the Oxford English Dictionary refer to the buttocks or the anus.

In fact, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) still describes it as “vulgar slang” for the anus. But Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) now calls it merely slang and says “wazoo” can refer to an excess of something (the way I used it on WNYC).

The OED speculates that “wazoo” might be derived from the kazoo, a musical instrument whose name has been used in similar expressions: “up the kazoo”; “freeze your kazoo off.”

The OED’s first citation for “wazoo” comes from the back cover of the May 1961 issue of the California Pelican, a now-defunct humor magazine at the University of California, Berkeley: “Run it up yer ol’ wazoo!”

In short time, “wazoo” traveled a long way. The next citation is in the April 1, 1971, issue of the Wall Street Journal: “Golf itself is quite safe, the greatest risk being the possibility of a long drive plunking some poor fellow in the wazoo.”

The OED notes that “wazoo” is often used as a substitute in expressions where the word “ass” would normally be found, as in this citation from the Feb. 14, 1975, issue of the San Francisco Chronicle: “Dating is a real pain in the wazoo.”

It wasn’t until the 1980s that the word “wazoo” was being used to describe a great quantity of something. The first OED reference comes from the Jan. 5, 1981, issue of the Herald-Journal in Syracuse, NY: “There comes a time in performing when you just do it. You can have theory up the wazoo.”

Here’s another citation, from the June issue of the American Bar Association Journal: “I had done well – law review, Coif, American Jurisprudence book awards up the wazoo.” (The Order of the Coif is an honor society for US law graduates.)

As for your question, Merriam-Webster’s lists both “up the wazoo” and “out the wazoo” as slang expressions meaning in excess. But the OED includes the preposition “in” when the expression is used in its anal sense.

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(A posting on Sept. 18, 2012, about “squash” and “quash” updates and expands upon this item.)

Q: I’ve always thought the word to use when you squelch something is “squash.” But I’m now hearing the word “quash” used instead: “The report was quashed.” Have I been hearing wrong? Or is this another squishy new usage that should be squashed?

A: I’ve done a bit of poking around in the Oxford English Dictionary and, lo and behold, I find that the verb “quash” (meaning to crush, stifle, or destroy) has been perfectly good English since the 13th century.

The OED’s earliest citation, a reference to quashing a woman’s lust, comes from The Owl and the Nightingale (circa 1275), one of the first long comic poems in English.

The dictionary has many published references for this usage of “quash” right up until the present day, including one in Mary: A Fiction (1788), a novel by the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

Feuding families in the novel decide that the best way to end a dispute between two potential heirs is to “quash it by a marriage.” (Wollstonecraft, as you may know, was the mother of Mary Shelley, author of the Frankenstein novel.)

As for the verb “squash,” it turns out to be the newbie. It’s been around only since a 1565 English translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People: “Ye must, I saye, teare them, rent them, and squashe them to peeces.”

Who says clerical writing has to be dull?

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Q: Would you kindly explain why people who comment on the news are called “commentators” and not “commentors.” This seems inconsistent with the usual constructs: “builders” build, “sailors” sail, “programmers” program, and (one would expect) “commentors” comment.

A: One would expect so, wouldn’t one? But English has its surprises.

In fact, you’ll surprised to learn that “commentor” and “commenter” used to be fairly common words in the 17th century for someone who comments, but they’re considered obsolete today.

Both nouns are quite old. The earliest published reference for “commentor” in the Oxford English Dictionary dates all the way back to 1387. The first “commenter” is in Donne’s Satire 2 (circa 1593): “As slily as any Commenter goes by / Hard words, or sense; or in Divinity.”

Interestingly, the word “commentator” is pretty old too, with OED citations dating back to the 1400s, when it referred to a writer of historical commentaries. By the 17th century, the word was being used more generally to include a writer of literary, religious, or other commentaries.

In the early 20th century, the term was extended to broadcasting and sports, as in this excerpt from a 1928 BBC handbook: “In addition to expert knowledge, the sporting commentator must also obviously have a good voice and great fluency.”

The first citation for “commentator” as one who comments about current events on radio or TV is from the Encyclopedia Britannica’s1938 Book of the Year: “Experienced radio commentators are free to voice every kind of opinion.”

Oh, yeah?

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[Note: An updated post about “decimated” appeared on the blog on Oct. 24, 2011.]

Q: I regret having to correct something you said on the air. You were wrong to criticize a reporter’s statement that 4/5 of a population was decimated. That statement has an actual mathematical meaning, even if it was used improperly by the reporter. The algebraic word problem this represents would mean that 4/5 of a population was reduced by 1/10. Or 4/5 x 1/10 = 4/50 = 2/25 = 0.08.

A: I suppose you’re right by a technicality. But be serious. Nobody in his right mind would deliberately render the figure you’re talking about by saying “four-fifths of a population was decimated.”

As for the word “decimate,” it literally means to kill every tenth one, but most people don’t intend it literally. It can be used loosely to refer to the destruction of a lot of people or things. I give this example in my grammar book Woe Is I: “Gomez says the mushroom crop in the cellar has been decimated by rats.”

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) is with me on using this looser definition of “decimate” for both people and things, but The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) doesn’t go quite so far.

American Heritage‘s usage panel says it’s OK to use “decimate” for killing a large percentage of people, but not for a large-scale destruction of things.

The word “decimate” comes from the Latin decimus, meaning a tenth. In Roman times, the verb decimare meant to take a tax of a tenth, and a decimatio was the execution of one in ten men in a mutinous military unit.

I still think the point that I made on the air was valid. It’s jarring to hear the word “decimate” used with a figure, as in this example from Woe Is I: “The earthquake decimated seventy-five percent of Morticia’s antiques.” Ouch!

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Q: After more than seven years of hearing our President mangle the word “nuclear,” have Americans finally accepted “NOO-kya-lur” as standard English?

A: President Bush is often blamed for the ubiquity of “NOO-kya-lur,” but this questionable pronunciation of “nuclear” was around long before he came on the scene.

And he’s far from the only US President to take liberties with this word. At least three others – Eisenhower, Carter, and Clinton – were creative in pronouncing “nuclear.”

Although the variant pronunciation is very widespread, it’s still frowned upon by many. The usual pronunciation is still “NOO-klee-ur.”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) says the variant version is “generally considered incorrect” and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) sees it as a variant that occurs in educated speech but that is “disapproved of by many.”

A usage note in American Heritage suggests that the popularity of “NOO-kya-lur” may be an example of how a familiar pronunciation pattern can influence a less familiar one.

The last two syllables of the usual pronunciation (“NOO-klee-ur”) are relatively rare in English, American Heritage says, while the last two syllables of the deviant version resemble the endings of such common words as “particular,” “circular,” “spectacular,” and “molecular.”

But some linguists have raised doubts about this theory, pointing out that English speakers don’t seem to have trouble pronouncing “likelier,” “sicklier,” and other words with “klee-ur” endings.

[Note: A later post on this subject was published on March 19, 2013.]

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Q: Which is correct? “Thanks, Jack!” Or: “Thanks Jack!” Help appreciated.

A: The correct sentence is “Thanks, Jack!” Similarly, it would be correct to say, “Jack, thanks!” or “Hey, Jack, what ‘s happening?”

The reason: you need a comma before (or after or around) a name used in direct address – that is, somebody one is talking to.

If the name is at the beginning of a sentence, you put a comma after it. If it’s at the end, you put the comma in front. And if the name is in the middle of a sentence, commas go in front and back.

If you find this confusing, you’re in good company. For example, the comma is missing in front of the name “Jack” in the Percy Mayfield song (recorded by Ray Charles) “Hit the Road Jack.”

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Q: In “Shattered Glass,” a movie about a New Republic journalist who fabricated stories, the magazine’s editor says commas should always appear in pairs. Is this true?

A: Nope. It’s no more true than the myth that nuns always appear in pairs.

I didn’t see the film and I don’t know what Martin Peretz, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, actually thinks about punctuation. But the truth is that commas can appear in ones, twos, threes, etc. It all depends on how they’re being used.

You might use one, for example, to separate two clauses: “Tina hadn’t left the city for months, and by Friday she was climbing the walls.”

You’d need more than one (in this case three) to separate a series of things or actions: ”She packed a toothbrush, a hair dryer, her swimsuit, and her teddy bear.”

You might indeed use a pair of commas around the name of somebody being addressed: “Hey, Mom, how are you doing?” But you’d need only one comma if the person was at the beginning or end of the sentence: “Goodbye, Mom.”

You might also use a pair of commas with a nonrestrictive (or “which”) clause in the middle of a sentence: “His hat, which blew off in the wind, landed in the gutter.” But if the clause isn’t in the middle of the sentence, then only one comma is needed: “In the gutter he found his hat, which had blown off in the wind.”

Commas are also used before or after a quotation, after an introductory phrase, and around an aside. For more, check out the “Comma Sutra” chapter in my grammar book Woe Is I.

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Q: I’m yet another Brit who enjoys your blog. In my schooldays, we were taught that it was clumsy and redundant to use the phrase “have got.” So instead of saying “Jack and Sue have got a dog,” we were encouraged to say “Jack and Sue have a dog.” Is there a similar idea in American English teaching?

A: Poor little “get” is a very misunderstood verb. We use it to mean acquire or have, which of course raises confusion in the present-perfect tense (“have got”), where “have” is used purely as an auxiliary and there’s no redundancy. (More on this later.)

We also use the present-perfect tense of “get” to mean “must,” as in “I simply have got to go on a diet,” which is a more emphatic way of saying “I simply must go on a diet.” And we use “got” by itself (simple past tense) to mean “was allowed to,” as in “I got to choose the movie.” So “get” and its various forms don’t always refer to having or acquiring.

What’s NOT right is using the past (“got”) alone for something in the present, as in “I simply got to go on a diet” or “I got a million bucks in the bank.” These should be “have got” (present perfect of “get”) or “have” (present of “have”). Americans make this mistake a lot, though they usually say “gotta” for “got to”!

But back to your original question. “Have got” isn’t wrong and isn’t (as some Brits believe) an Americanism. It’s perfect English, both in Britain and in the United States, and has been for ages. It’s the present-perfect form of the verb “get.”

Don’t be misled by the presence of “have,” which in this case is not the simple verb meaning to possess, but an auxiliary verb with no meaning of its own. As a linguist would say, it has no content, only function.

Take, for example, the verb “run.” Its primary forms are “run” (present); “ran” (past); “have run” (present perfect”); and “had run” (past perfect). Notice that in these cases, “have” and “had” bear no relationship whatever to the verb meaning possess: they serve a purely grammatical function (to indicate a perfect tense).

In fact, the simple verb “have” also forms its tenses with the auxiliary verb “have.” The primary tenses are “have” (present); “had” (past); “have had” (present perfect); and “had had” (past perfect). Nobody sees any redundancy here.

Similarly, if we take a synonym for the verb “get” – say, “acquire” – its tenses are formed the same way: “acquire” (present); “acquired” (past); “have acquired” (present perfect); and “had acquired” (past perfect). Nobody has a problem with these, either.

The verb “get,” like every other verb in English, has tenses formed with the auxiliary verb “have.” The primary ones are “get” (present”); “got” (past); “have got” [also “have gotten” in the US] (present perfect); and “had got” [also “had gotten” in the US] (past perfect).

The fact that the simple verb “have” (meaning possess) bears some resemblance to “get” is purely coincidental when the auxiliary verb “have” is used to form perfect tenses.

In short, there’s no redundancy in the present-perfect verb form “have got.” But I suspect there’s some redundancy in this answer. Please forgive it! (And if “gotten” gets your goat, see the Sept. 12, 2006, blog item.)

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[Note: A more definitive post on this subject appeared later.]

Q: I often hear people say “than me” when I believe they should be saying “than I.” I hear this on a fairly regular basis, and occasionally see it in published work. The problem is that I am at a loss to explain why “than me” is wrong and “than I” is right. I thank you in advance for taking the trouble to clarify this point.

A: Both “than I” and “than me” can be correct, depending on what you mean.

For example, if you said, “He likes her better than me,” you would mean “better than he likes me.” If you said (correctly but a bit stiffly), “He likes her better than I,” you would mean “better than I do.” In that second case, you might be better off adding the final verb and saying, “better than I do.”

But usages like “He’s bigger than me” are sometimes frowned upon by sticklers. They regard “than” as a conjunction, not a preposition. So they would accept only “He’s bigger than I” and “He’s bigger than I am” as correct in standard English.

The sticklers, however, are no longer in the majority. Many grammarians and usage gurus, including William Safire, accept “than” as a preposition, and say the object pronoun (“me,” “him,” “us,” and so on) afterward is just fine. Certainly common usage is on their side.

You seem to be asking for a “correctness” call. But we can’t be definitive about this, at least not today. A grammatical shift seems to be going on, with more and more authorities recognizing that “than” is both a preposition and a conjunction.

Stay tuned!

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Q: I saw the word “mibsters” in an item in the Atlantic magazine about the British and World Marbles Championship. Am I right in assuming that it refers to people who play marbles?

A: Yes, a “mibster” is a marbles player (or shooter), and “mibbies” are marbles.

Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English has traced “mibbies” to Cockney schoolchildren’s slang of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But games of marbles go much, much farther back. The Oxford English Dictionary‘s first published citation for the game dates from 1681, and refers to “the little round stones wherewith Children play, called Marbles.”

The marble the mibster shoots with is known as a “taw” – a word the OED traces back to 1709. The word “taw” has also been used over the years for (1) the game of marbles itself, and (2) the line from which the mibster shoots.

“Mibbie” and “mibbies” are also popular Scots lingo for “maybe,” as in “Mibbies aye, mibbies naw!”

Remember: Knuckle down! (This phrase, dating back to 1740, comes from the game of marbles, and originally referred to how a mibster’s hand was placed on the ground before shooting the taw.)

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Q: Is there any polite way to break people of the habit of using “myself” when they should be using “me” or “I”?

A: Unless you’re the parent or maybe the spouse of the offender, there’s no polite way to correct somebody’s grammar. Just keep using good English yourself and maybe it will rub off!

I was once taken to task for suggesting during a radio broadcast that one could respond to a mispronounced word by casually dropping it into the conversation with the correct pronunciation. A listener phoned in and said such a “casual” correction would be obvious and rude. I agree (she now says).

And if you attempt to correct the grammar of a child or a spouse, please be tactful – and (need I say?) correct.

You’d be surprised at how many people e-mail me with pet peeves that are in fact misconceptions, such as the myths against “splitting” an infinitive, ending a sentence with a preposition, or beginning a sentence with a conjunction.

As for “me,” “myself,” and “I,” I’ve discussed them before on the blog, including an item last summer entitled “Self improvement.”

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Q: It drives me bonkers when my friends from the Delaware area, where I went to school, pronounce “Mary” and “Merry,” “Carrie” and “Kerry,” and “Erin” and “Aaron” the same way. Please respond with an explanation that I can forward to them, backing my assertion that these are different-sounding words!

A: Sorry, but I can’t give you a simple yes or no answer about the right way to pronounce those pairs.

In some regions of the US, they’re pronounced alike, and in other regions, they’re similar but not quite the same. In the Midwest, where I hail from, all these pairs sound just alike.

What do dictionaries say? Well, many dictionaries don’t have entries for names, and the ones that do aren’t always definitive.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) agrees with you about “Mary” and ”Merry,” for example, but it accepts two pronunciations for “Aaron,” including one that’s very much like its pronunciation of “Erin.”

Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4th ed.), on the other hand, accepts two pronunciations for “Mary,” including one that’s identical with its pronunciation for “Merry.” But it agrees with you about “Carrie” and “Kerry.”

Interestingly, many people (especially those on baby-name discussion sites) think that these similar-sounding pairs are the same names spelled differently, or that they’re male and female versions of the same names. Not so!

“Mary” is a Biblical name, usually a reference to the mother of Jesus. The Oxford English Dictionary says it can probably be traced to the Hebrew “Miryam,” which in turn may have its origin in an ancient Amorite word meaning “gift (of God).” But “Merry” is of Old English origin and comes from the adjective meaning festive or full or gaiety.

“Carrie” is commonly a pet name for “Caroline,” while “Kerry” is a cross-gender name that was originally a place name – there are Kerrys in both southwest Ireland and the Welsh border country.

“Erin” (Irish Gaelic for “peace”) is a poetic name for Ireland; it’s been used for both boys and girls. “Aaron” is another Biblical name; the most famous “Aaron” (from the Hebrew for “enlightened”) was a Jewish patriarch, the elder brother of Moses.

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Q: I thought I was reasonably adept at understanding British English, but I recently got my comeuppance. I was reading Above Suspicion, a 1940s thriller by Helen MacInnis, when this sentence floored me: “The oak was sported.” It was in a scene in which the wife of an Oxford don was approaching the door of her husband’s rooms. Please help!

A: To “sport oak,” “sport the oak,” or “sport one’s oak” is to close your outdoor door as a signal that you don’t want visitors. The verb “sport” in the expression means to display or exhibit, as in “He sported a new suit.”

The expression dates from the 18th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and  was “originally and chiefly British University slang.”

Older college rooms often had an inner door for ordinary use and a wooden outer, called the oak, that was usually folded back against the outside wall. A closed outer door indicated one didn’t want to be disturbed.

The OED’s first citation is from a pamphlet in verse about life at the University of Oxford: “ ‘Tis prudent at first coming down to sport oak” (An Incredible Bore: A Familiar Epistle, 1780, by Roger Wittol).

The dictionary’s next citation, which mentions a slightly different version (“to sport timber”), is from a glossary compiled in 1785: “To sport timber, to keep one’s outside door shut: this term is used in the inns of courts to signify denying one’s self.”

The third citation is from James Beresford’s satirical work The Miseries of Human Life (1806): “Seeing the sun quietly slink behind a mass of black clouds, where he sports oak for the rest of the day.”

In the 19th century the expression “to sport oak” caught on at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where it became popular undergraduate slang.

In 1873, Joseph Ashby-Sterry wrote about the tradition (in an essay called, naturally, “The Sported Oak”): “Though believing implicitly in the sporting of the oak as a superb institution, I must say I have considerable sympathy for the sufferers on the wrong side of the door.”

The practice was alive and well in the mid-20th century, according to Prof. Michael Wolff of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Writing about his undergraduate days at Cambridge in the 1940s, Wolff said: “It was a great breach of decorum to open a sported oak.”

And the tradition is alive still. Here’s a line from Antonia Fraser’s contemporary mystery Oxford Blood, in which her sleuth Jemima Shore is shooting a TV exposé of undergraduate life: “Before Jemima could stop her, Tiggie had banged boldly upon Professor Mossbanker’s heavily shut door – his ‘sported oak.’ ”

[Note: This post was updated on Feb. 5, 2023.]

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Q: What, if anything, does a cat-o’-nine-tails have to do with a cat?

A: The expression “cat-o’-nine-tails,” referring to the whip of nine knotted lashes, was first recorded in the late 17th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, though it was probably well known before that.

Here’s the earliest citation, from William Congreve’s play Love for Love (1695): “If you should give such language at sea, you’d have a cat-o’-nine-tails laid cross your shoulders.”

Why a cat? The OED speculates that “the name was originally one of grim humour, in reference to its ‘scratching’ the back.”

Several people have asked me in the past if the cat-o’-nine-tails was somehow connected with the old expression “no room to swing a cat.” The answer is no. I discussed this myth in an Oct. 29, 2006, blog item.

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Q: Did modern usage evolve when I wasn’t looking to allow “fraught” to be used without a preposition to mean uptight or tense? I’ve always believed that the correct usage was “fraught with” something. Do you agree?

A: The adjective “fraught” can be used correctly with or without a preposition. Both usages are found in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.).

M-W, for example, defines the adjective in two ways: (1) “full of or accompanied by something specified – used with ‘with’ (a situation fraught with danger)”; and (2) “causing or characterized by emotional distress or tension (a fraught relationship).”

You can stop reading there if you want, but here’s a little history of “fraught” in case you’re interested.

The noun “fraught,” first recorded in about 1330, meant the cargo or lading of a ship, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins says it’s derived from a Middle Dutch word, vracht, a variant of vrecht, the word that gave us “freight.”

In the 1400s, the noun “fraught” was used more generally to mean a burden or a load. (The noun eventually was replaced by the more popular “freight.”)

Around the same time, “fraught” was also briefly used as a verb meaning to load, and it was used both with and without prepositions (“to fraught their ships with salt” …. “if we fraught any stranger’s ship”).

The old verb eventually became obsolete, but the past participle lived on – in the 1300s and for a couple of centuries afterward, a ship that was laden or loaded was said to be “fraught” or “fraughted,” both with or without prepositions. Voila! We now had a past-participial adjective.

Since the adjective “fraught” originally meant “laden,” it’s natural that this sense of being laden or burdened would come to be used metaphorically for things other than cargo.

In the 1400s, the usage was extended to people and other things besides ships, though a preposition was usually tucked in there somewhere.

Here’s a quote from a play of the 1400s: “With rich rents thou shalt be fraught” (I’ve modernized the spellings). Here’s one from 1530: “fraught full of vice.” And here’s one from Shakespeare’s King Lear (1605): “I would you would make use of your good wisdom (whereof I know you are fraught).”

The bare adjective that simply means distressed or uptight, rather than “laden” with something, has no need for a preposition. This is a much newer usage, which the OED dates from 1966. Here are a few citations: “All that had gone before led me to expect an end more fraught” (1966); “the next day was going to be particularly fraught” (1967); “Don’t look so fraught” (1970).

Interestingly, the past participle “freighted” has also been used as an adjective meaning “loaded,” as in this 1850 quotation from Washington Irving’s biography of Oliver Goldsmith: “Just arrived from College … full freighted with academic gleanings.”

I’ve gone on a bit, haven’t I? I hope you don’t find this answer too freighted.

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Q: The term “naked picture” is often used by talking heads to describe a photograph of someone who’s naked. How can a picture be naked unless it’s missing a cover, frame, or protective coating?

A: I suppose you’re right on a very literal level. But phrases like “naked postcard,” “naked picture,” “naked painting,” and so on are pretty common, and there’s usually no chance that anyone will misunderstand them.

Think of it this way. In the phrase “dirty photo,” no one thinks the photographic print is soiled. What’s dirty is what’s depicted IN the photo.

The Oxford English Dictionary has published references going back to 1503 for a similar expression, “naked bed,” meaning a bed where one sleeps naked.

A good example of this is in a Sept. 7,1666, entry from The Diary of Samuel Pepys: “So here I went the first time into a naked bed, only my drawers on; and did sleep pretty well.”

Interestingly, the OED also has references going back to Anglo-Saxon days for “naked” used as a noun meaning a naked person or a nude in a work of art.

The dictionary says these usages are now rare, but it includes a relatively recent citation from Kenneth Rexroth’s poem The Dragon and the Unicorn (1952): “Too many nakeds for a chapel.”

It doesn’t seem to me that much of a stretch to speak of “naked pictures” as well as “nakeds” in a chapel – or on a street corner.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phenomenal, isn’t it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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