Similar stories are told about "llama" (a Quechua word, not from the Spanish _Como se llama?_ "What's it called?"); "indri" (this one DOES derive from the Malagasy word for "Look!"); and several place names, among them Canada (_kanata_ was the Huron- Iroquois word for "village, settlement"; Jacques Cartier is supposed to have mistaken this for the names of the country); Istanbul (said to come from a Turkish mishearing of Greek _eis ten poli_ "to the city"); Luzon (supposedly Tagalog for "What did you say?"); Nome (supposedly a printer's misreading of a cartographer's query, "Name?"); Senegal (supposedly from Wolof _senyu gal_ "our boats"); and Yucatan (supposedly = "I don't understand you").

"loo"

"O.K."

• "Oll korrect, popularized by Old Kinderhook" is what's given in most up-to-date dictionaries.
• American "O.K.", abbreviation of Obadiah Kelly, a shipping agent
• American "O.K.", abbreviation of Old Keokuk, a Sac Indian chief
• American "O.K.", contraction of "oll korrect". This was the choice of a British judiciary committee that investigated the matter for a 1935 court case (MEU2), and was further documented by Columbia University professor Allen Walker Read in "The Evidence on 'O.K.', _Saturday Review of Literature_, 19 July 1941. A vogue for comically misspelled abbreviations began in Boston in the summer of 1838, and spread to New York and New Orleans in 1839. They used "K.G." for "know go", "K.Y." for "know yuse", "N.S." for "nuff said", and "O.K." for "oll korrect".
• American "O.K.", abbreviation of Orrins-Kendall crackers
• American "O.K.", abbreviation of Otto Kaiser, American industrialist
• American "O.K. Club". "O.K." gained national currency in 1840 as the slogan of the "O.K. club", a club of supporters of then President Martin Van Buren, in allusion to his nickname, "Old Kinderhook" -- Van Buren was born in the village of Kinderhook, N.Y.
• Choctaw _(h)oke_ "it is so"
• English opposite of "K.O." ("knock out")
• English "of Katmandu"
• English "optical kleptomaniac"
• Ewe (West African)
• Finnish _oikea_
• French dialect _oc_ = _oui_ "yes"
• French _Aux Cayes_, a place in Haiti noted for excellence of its rum
• French _aux quais_, stencilled on Puerto Rican rum specially selected for export
• German letters of rank appended to signature of Oberkommandant
• Latin _omnia correcta_ "all correct"
• Mandingo (West African) _o ke_ "that's it", "all right"
• Scots _och aye!_ "oh yes"
• Tewa _oh-ka(n)_ = "come here", "all right"
• Wolof (West African) "waw kay" = "yes indeed". Supported by Prof. J. Weisenfeld, professor of African and African-American religion at Columbia University. It was shown by Dr Davis Dalby ("The Etymology of O.K.", The Times, 14 January 1971) that similar expressions were used very early in the 19th century by Negroes of Jamaica, Surinam, and South Carolina: a Jamaican planter's diary of 1816 records a Negro as saying "Oh ki, massa, doctor no need be fright, we no want to hurt him." The use of "kay" alone is recorded in the speech of black Americans as far back as 1776; significantly, the emergence of O.K. among white Americans dates from a period when refugees from southern slavery were arriving in the north.

  "portmanteau word"

  This term for "blend word" comes from "portmanteau", "a leather travelling case that opens into two hinged compartments" (from the French for "carry cloak") by way of Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's _Through the Looking-Glass_: "You see it's like a portmanteau -- there are two meanings packed up into one word." Although most modern blends are simply the first part of one word plus the last part of another ("brunch" = "breakfast" + "lunch"; "smog" = "smoke" + "fog"; "Chunnel" = "Channel" + "tunnel"), Carroll himself formed his portmanteau words in a more subtle manner: "slithy" = "lithe" + "slimy"; "mimsy" = "miserable" + "flimsy"; "frumious" = "fuming" + "furious". Carroll's coinages "chortle" (which is now in most dictionaries) and "gallumph" (which is in the OED) are generally understood as "chuckle" + "snort" and "gallop" + "triumph" respectively, although Carroll himself never explained them.

  "posh"

  "Posh" (probably) does NOT stand for "port out, starboard home". MWCD10, p. 27a, says, "our editors frequently have to explain to correspondents that the dictionary fails to state that the origin of _posh_ is in the initial letters of the phrase 'port out, starboard home' -- supposedly a shipping term for the cooler accommodations on steamships plying between Britain and India from the mid-nineteenth century on -- not because the story is unknown to us but because no evidence to support it has yet been produced. Some evidence exists that casts strong doubt on it; the word is not known earlier than 1918 (in a source unrelated to shipping), and the acronymic explanation does not appear until 1935."

  A tenable theory is that "posh" meant "halfpenny" (from Romany _posh_ "half") and then "money" before acquiring its present meaning. Or it may come from the slang "pot" (= "big", "a person of importance"). Or it may be a contraction of "polished".

  I got e-mail from someone whose grandmother claimed to have seen steamship tickets with "P.O.S.H." overprinted; but to convince us, you'll have to *find* one of these tickets and send a copy to Merriam-Webster.

  "quiz"

  This is first recorded in 1775 in the sense "an odd person". It is *doubtful* that "quiz" came from an alleged incident in which James Daly, a late-18th-century Dublin theatre manager, made a wager that he could introduce a new word into the English language overnight, and hired urchins to chalk the word "quiz" on every wall and billboard in Dublin. "Quiz" may come from the Latin "Qui es?" (= "Who are you?", the first question asked in Latin oral exams in grammar schools), or it may be a shortening of "inquisitive".

  "scot-free"

  Like "hopscotch", this word for "without incurring any penalty" has no connection with frugal Scotsmen. In 12th-century England, a "scot" or "sceot" was a municipal tax paid to the local bailiff or sheriff (the word came from an Old Norse cognate of "shoot"/"shot", and meant "money thrown down"). The word "scot-free", which is recorded from the 13th century, referred to someone who succeeded in dodging these taxes. Later, the term was given wider currency when "scot" was used to mean the amount owed by a customer in a tavern: anyone who had a drink on the house went "scot-free". This "scot" was reinforced by the fact that the drinks ordered were "scotched", or marked on a slate, so that the landlord could keep track of how much the customer owed.

  "sirloin"/"baron of beef"

  "Sirloin" comes from Old French _surlonge_, from _sur_ "above" and _loigne_ "loin". Its current spelling may have been influenced by a story that a King of England (variously said to be Henry VIII, James I, and Charles II) "knighted" this cut of beef because of its superiority.

  A "baron of beef" is a joint consisting of two sirloins left uncut at the backbone. This "baron" may have originated as a joke on "sirloin", or it may be an independent word.

  "SOS"

  SOS does NOT stand for "Save Our Ship/Souls", for "Stop Other Signals", for "Send Our Saviour/Succour", or for the Russian _Spasiti Ot Smerti_ ("save from death"). The letters, recommended at the international Radio Telegraph Conference of 1906 and officially adopted in 1908, were chosen because they were easy to remember, transmit, and understand in Morse code (...---...). They have no other significance.

  "spoonerism"

  This term for exchanging parts of two different words in a phrase is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930), Dean and Warden of New College, Oxford. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2nd edition (1953), attributed two famous spoonerisms to Dr. Spooner: "Kinquering congs their titles take", and "You have deliberately tasted two worms and you can leave Oxford by the town drain." (The "down train" was the train going away from London, in this case through Oxford. Other popular attributions to Dr. Spooner are: "a well boiled icicle", "a blushing crow", "a half-warmed fish", "our shoving leopard", "our queer old Dean", "My boy, it's kisstomary to cuss the bride", "When the boys come home from France, we'll have hags flung out", and "Pardon me, madam, you are occupewing my pie. May I sew you to another sheet?")

  But after the publication of _Spooner: A Biography_ by Sir William Hayter (W. H. Allen, 1976), the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 3rd edition (1979), gives only one spoonerism ("weight of rages"), and says: "Many other Spoonerisms, such as those given in the previous editions of O.D.Q., are now known to be apocryphal."

  "tip"

  "Tip", in the sense of "gratuity", does NOT stand for "to insure [i.e., ensure] politeness/promptness". It may derive from "tip" in the sense of "to tap, to strike lightly" or the sense of "extremity", both of which have cognates in other Germanic languages. Or it may be a shortening of "stipend".

  "titsling"/"brassiere"

  "Brassiere" is first recorded in a Canadian advertisement of 1911. Dictionaries derive it from obsolete (17th century) French _brassiere_ "bodice", from Old French _braciere_ "arm protector", from _bras_ "arm". (The French word for bra is _soutien-gorge_, literally "support-throat".)

  In the southern U.S., a bra is sometimes called a "tit-sling". This has an obvious derivation.

  Wallace Reyburn, to whom Thomas Crapper owes his current fame, wrote a later book describing a lawsuit over rights to the bra, fought from 1934 to 1938 in New York, between a German-born designer, Otto Titzling (1884-1942), and a French-born designer, Philippe de Brassiere. Martin Gardner, in _Time Travel and Other Mathematical Bewilderments_ (Freeman, 1988, ISBN 0-7107-1925-8), p. 137, says: "The book by Wallace Reyburn _Flushed with Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper_ does exist. For many years I assumed that Reyburn's book was the funniest plumbing hoax since H. L. Mencken wrote his fake history of the bathtub. [...] Reyburn wrote a later book titled _Bust-up: The Uplifting Tale of Otto Titzling and the Development of the Bra_. It turns out, though, that both Thomas Crapper and Otto Titzling were real people, and neither of Reyburn's books is entirely a hoax."

  typo

  "Typo" is related to, but does not come from, the verb "to type". It is short for "typographical error", which, of course, could refer to any error made by a typographer. (The humorous but useful hackish coinage "thinko", used for when the person typing was *thinking* of the wrong thing, pretends that "typo" does come from "to type".) Arguments of the form "It couldn't have been a typo, because those two keys are nowhere near each other on the keyboard" are a bit tiresome, especially when one keeps the true etymology of "typo" in mind.

  Wicca

  Wicca is "a pagan nature religion having is roots in pre- Christian Europe and undergoing a 20th-century revival" (AHD3). Only the most recently published dictionaries contain an entry for it; RHUD2 dates it 1975. "Wicca" is a revival of an Old English word which you can find in older dictionaries by looking in the etymology of either "witch" or "wicked." In Old English, _wicca_ was the masculine form of a word meaning "wizard" or "sorcerer." (The feminine form was _wicce_. "Witch" comes from _wicce_.) _Wicca_ and _wicce_ came from from a proto-Germanic (not Celtic) _wikkjak_, "one who wakes the dead", the first element of which comes from the same Indo-European root as "wake".

  Yes, we've heard the joke about the Beatles song "Wiccan, Work It Out".

  "widget"

  (notes by William C. Waterhouse) "Widget" is a deliberately invented word meant (probably) to suggest "gadget". Most dictionaries fail to trace it to its origin. It comes from the 1924 play "Beggar on Horseback", by George Kaufman and Marc Connelly. In the play, a young composer gets engaged to the daughter of a rich businessman, and he next part of the play acts out his nightmare of what his life will be like, doing pointless work in a bureaucratic big business. At one point he encounters his father-in-law at work, and we get the following dialogue:

  (Father-in-law): Yes, sir! Big business!
  ---- Yes. Big business. What business are we in?
  ---- Widgets. We're in the widget business.
  ---- The widget business?
  ---- Yes, sir! I suppose I'm the biggest manufacturer in the world of overhead and underground A-erial widgets.

  Part of the point, of course, is that no one ever tells him what "widgets" are.

  "wog"

  "Wog", a chiefly British, derogatory word for someone from the Middle or Far East, does NOT stand for "Wealthy/Western/Wily/ Wonderful/Worthy Oriental Gentleman", or for "Worker On Government service". It may be a shortening of "golliwog".

  "ye" = "the"

  The "y" here is a representation of the obsolete letter thorn, which looked like "b" and "p" superimposed, and was pronounced [T] or [D] (the same as modern "th"). The pronunciation of "ye" in "Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe" as /ji/, which you sometimes hear, is a spelling pronunciation.

  ---

  PHRASE ORIGINS

  "the bee's knees"

  A bee's "corbiculae", or pollen-baskets, are located on its tibiae (midsegments of its legs). The phrase "the bee's knees", meaning "the height of excellence", became popular in the U.S. in the 1920s, along with "the cat's whiskers" (possibly from the use of these in radio crystal sets), "the cat's pajamas" (still new enough to be daring), and similar phrases which made less sense and didn't last: "the eel's ankle", "the elephant's instep", "the snake's hip".

  "blue moon" (notes by Philip Hiscock)

  The phrase "blue moon" has been around a long time, well over 400 years, but during that time its meaning has shifted around a lot. I have counted six different meanings which have been carried by the term, and at least four of them are still current today.

  The earliest uses of the term are in a phrase remarkably like early references to "green cheese". Both were used as examples of obvious absurdities about which there could be no argument. Four hundred years go, if someone said, "He would argue the moon was blue", the average 16th-centuryman would take it the way we take "He'd argue that black is white." The earliest citation is a 1528 poem "Rede Me and Be Not Wroth": "Yf they say the mone is blewe/We must believe that it is true."

  This understanding of a blue moon's being absurd (the first meaning) led eventually to a second meaning, that of "never". To say that something would happen when the moon turned blue was like saying that it would happen on Tib's Eve (at least before Tib got a day near Christmas assigned to her).

  But of course, there are examples of the moon's actually turning blue; that's the third meaning: the moon's visually appearing blue. When the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa exploded in 1883, its dust turned sunsets green and the moon blue all around the world for the best part of two years. In 1927, a late monsoon in India set up conditions for a blue moon. And the moon here in Newfoundland was turned blue in 1951 when huge forest fires in Alberta threw smoke particles up into the sky. Even by the 19th century, it was clear that although visually blue moons were rare, they did happen from time to time. So the phrase "once in a blue moon" came about. It meant then exactly what it means today: that an event was fairly infrequent, but not quite regular enough to pinpoint. That's meaning number four, and today it is still the main one.

  I know of six songs which use "blue moon" as a symbol of sadness and loneliness. In half of them, the poor crooner's moon turns to gold when he gets his love at the end of the song. That's meaning number five: check your old Elvis Presley or Bill Monroe records for more information.

  Finally, in the 1980s, a sixth meaning was popularized (chiefly by the game Trivial Pursuit): the second full moon in a month. The earliest reference cited for this is The Maine Farmers' Almanac for 1937. Rumour has it that when there were two full moons in a calendar month, calendars would put the first in red, the second in blue.

  "Bob's your uncle"

  This British phrase means "all will be well" or "simple as that": "You go and ask for the job -- and he remembers your name -- and Bob's your uncle." It dates from circa 1890.

  P. Brendon, in _Eminent Edwardians_, 1979, suggests an origin: "When, in 1887, Balfour was unexpectedly promoted to the vital front line post of Chief Secretary for Ireland by his uncle Robert, Lord Salisbury (a stroke of nepotism that inspired the catch-phrase 'Bob's your uncle'), ..."

  Or it may have been prompted by the cant phrase "All is bob" = "all is safe."

  (Info from Eric Partridge's _Dictionary of Catch Phrases_, 2nd edition, revised by Paul Beale, Routledge, 1985, ISBN 0-415-05916-X.)

  "to call a spade a spade"

  is NOT an ethnic slur.

  The ancient Greeks said "to call a kneading-trough a kneading- trough". This is first recorded in Aristophanes' play _The Clouds_, and also shows up in Plutarch's _Apophthegms_.

  In the Renaissance, Erasmus confused Plutarch's "kneading-trough" (sigma kappa alpha phi eta) with the Greek word for "digging tool" (sigma kappa alpha phi epsilon iota omicron nu), and rendered it in Latin as "ligo". Thence it was translated into English in 1542 by Nicholas Udall in his translation of Erasmus's version as "to call a spade [...] a spade".

  "To call a spade a bloody shovel" is not recorded until 1919. "Spade" in the sense of "Negro" is not recorded until 1928.

  This, of course, does *not* necessarily render the modern use of "to call a spade a spade" "politically correct". Rosalie Maggio, in _The Bias-Free Word-Finder_, writes: "The expression is associated with a racial slur and is to be avoided", and recommends using "to speak plainly" or other alternatives instead. In another entry, she writes: "Although by definition and derivation 'niggardly' and 'nigger' are completely unrelated, 'niggardly' is too close for comfort to a word with profoundly negative associations. Use instead one of the many available alternatives: stingy, miserly, parsimonious..." Beard and Cerf, in _The Official Politically Correct Handbook_, p. 123, report that an administrator at the University of California at Santa Cruz campaigned for the banning of such phrases like "a chink in his armor" and "a nip in the air", because "chink" and "nip" are also derogatory terms for "Chinese person" and "Japanese person" respectively. In the late 1970s in the U.S., a boycott of the (now defunct) Sambo's Restaurant Chain was organized, even though the name "Sambo's" was a combination of the names of its two founders and did not come from the offensive word for dark-skinned person.

  "The die is cast."

  does NOT mean "The metal template has been molded." It's what Julius Caesar said on crossing the Rubicon. The "die" is a gambling die, and "cast" means thrown. (In the original Latin "Jacta alea est", _alea_ denotes the *game* of dice, rather than the physical die: the dice game is in its thrown state. "The die is cast" and "the dice are cast" would be equally good translations. Compare "Les jeux sont faits", heard at Monte Carlo.)

  "dressed to the nines"

  This expression, meaning "very fashionably and elaborately dressed", is recorded from the 18th century. "The nine" or "the nines" were used to signify "superlative" in numerous other contexts. Theories include: 9, being the highest single-digit number, symbolized the best; a metanalysis of Old English _to then eyne_ "to the eyes"; a reference to the 9 muses; and from the expression "nine nines fine", denoting gold of 99.9999999 percent purity.

  "Elementary, my dear Watson!"

  does not occur as such in the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, although Holmes does exclaim "Elementary" in "The Crooked Man", and writes "My dear Watson" in "The Final Problem". The first recorded juxtaposition is in the 1929 film _The Return of Sherlock Holmes_ (the first of the series with sound).

  The original stories never mention an Inverness cape, a deerstalker hat, or a meerschaum pipe, either. Those props are due to illustrators and to actors.

  "The exception proves the rule."

  The common misconception about "The exception proves the rule" (which you will find in several books, including the _Dictionary of Misinformation_) is that "proves" means "tests". That is *not* the case, although "proof" *does* mean "test" in such phrases as "proving ground", "proof spirit", "proofreader", and "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."

  As MEU says, "the original legal sense" of the "the exception proves the rule" is as follows: "'Special leave is given for men to be out of barracks tonight till 11.0 p.m.'; 'The exception proves the rule' means that this special leave implies a rule requiring men, except when an exception is made, to be in earlier. The value of this in interpreting statutes is plain."

  MEU2 adds: "'A rule is not proved by exceptions unless the exceptions themselves lead one to infer a rule' (Lord Atkin). The formula in full is _exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis_." [That's Latin for "The exception proves the rule in cases not excepted."]

  The phrase seems to date from the 17th century. (Anthony Cree, in _Cree's Dictionary of Latin Quotations_ (Newbury, 1978) says that the phrase comes from classical Latin, which it defines as Latin spoken before A.D. 400; but no classical citations have come to our attention.) Below are the five seventeenth-century citations we could find. 1, 3, and 4 are in the OED; 2 is in _Latin for Lawyers_ by E. Hilton Jackson and Herbert Broom; 5 is in _A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries_, by Morris Palmer Tilley.

  1. 1617 Samuel Collins, _Epphata to F.T.; or, the Defence of the Bishop of Elie concerning his answer to Cardinall Ballarmine's Apologie_ 100: "Indefinites are equivalent to universalls especially where one exception being made, it is plaine that all others are thereby cut off, according to the rule Exceptio figit regulam in non exceptis." [Note that "figit" rather than "probat" is here used. "Probo" can mean any of "give official approval to", "put to the test", or "demonstrate the verity of"; but "figo" can only mean "fix", "fasten", or "establish".]
  2. _Les reports de Sir Edward Coke, jades chiefe justice de Bank le roy_ (published in 1672, but Sir Edward Coke died in 1634): "Know reader, that where it is said in this case, that a writ of error lies not upon an award, till the principal judgment is given; and where it is also said, that no writ of error lies till the whole matter in the original is determined; both these rules are regularly true; but yet each of them has exceptions; for as to the first, in Trin. 18 H. 7. in the King's Bench, Rot. 3. the case was that one Eaton was indicted of the death of John M. before Justices of Peace in the county of Lincoln; upon which a _Capias_ was awarded, and upon that an exigent; after which, Eaton died before any attainder, upon which award of the exigent, his administrators brought a writ of error; and it was adjudged, that the writ of error did lie; and the reason was, because by the award of the exigent, his goods and chattels were forfeited; and of such awards which tend _ad tale grave damnum_ of the party, a writ of error lies, although the principal judgment was never given; and in this case, _exceptio probat regulam_, & _sic de similibus_." ["A writ of error lies" = "an appeal is admissible"; "capias" = writ commanding arrest; "exigent" = writ of suspension of civil rights pending an attainder; "attainder" = loss of all civil rights as a result of a judgement; _ad tale grave damnum_ = "to such great loss"; _sic de similibus_ = "thus about similar things".]
  3. 1640 Gilbert Watts, _Bacon's Advancement and proficience of learning_ VIII. iii. Aph. 17: "As exception strengthens the force of a Law in Cases not excepted, so enumeration weakens it in Cases not enumerated." [So when Lewis Carroll wrote "I am fond of children (except boys)", he affirmed his fondness for girls more strongly than he would have had he written merely "I am fond of children."]
  4. 1664 John Wilson, _The Cheats_, To Reader: "For if I have shown the odd practices of two vain persons pretending to be what they are not, I think I have sufficiently justified the brave man even by this reason, that the exception proves the rule." [The OED (but not the other books I checked) gives the date as 1662. As far as I can tell from this scant context, Wilson seems to be saying, "My description of two cowardly cheats should serve to show you the bad consequences of not being brave, and hence convince you of the need for a rule: 'Be brave!'."]
  5. 1666 Giovanni Torriano, _Piazza universale di proverbi italiani, or A Common Place of Italian Proverbs_ I, p. 80 "The exception gives Authority to the Rule." note 28, p. 242 "And the Latin says again, Exceptio probat Regulam."
  To convince us that *in this particular phrase* "proves" originally meant "tests", you will have to cite any quotations as old as or older than these to support your view.

  "face the music"

  This expression for "accept the unpleasant consequences" was first recorded in the U.S. around 1850. It may derive from musical theatre: a nervous actor would have to summon all his courage to face the audience across the orchestra pit. Or it may be one of three military references: an infantryman taking his place in the line of assembly; a cavalier keeping his restive horse still while the band starts to play; or a soldier being drummed out of his regiment.

  "Go figure"

  This expands to "Go and figure it out", and means: "The reasons for the fact just stated are unknown and possibly unknowable. You can waste your time thinking about what they might be, if you choose, but you're not likely to accomplish anything." (Kivi Shapiro)

  "Go figure" comes from Yiddish _Gey vays_ "Go know". Leo Rosten, in _The Joys of Yinglish_ (Penguin, 1989, ISBN 0-452-26534-6), says: "In English, one says, 'Go _and_ see [look, ask, tell]...' Using an imperative without any link to a conjunction is pure Yiddish, no doubt derived from the biblical phrase, translated literally: 'Go tell...' 'Go praise the Lord...' (In English this becomes 'Come, let us praise the Lord.')"

  Other English expressions said to derive from Yiddish include: "Big deal!" (_A Groyser kunst!_); "Bite your tongue" (_Bays dir di tsung_"); "bottom line" (_untershte shure_); "Eat your heart out" (_Es dir oys s'harts_); "Enough already!" (_Genug shoyn_); "for real" (_far emmes_); "If the shoe fits, wear it" (_Oyb der shukh past, kenstu im trogn_); "Look who's talking!" (_Kuk nor ver s'ret!_); "make like a" (_makh vi_); "shm-" as in "Fair, shmair"; "Sez you" (_Azoy zugst du_); "Thanks a *lot*" (ironic) (_A shenem dank aykh_); and "That's for sure" (_Dos iz oyf zikher_).

  "Go placidly amid the noise and the haste" (Desiderata)

  "Desiderata" was written in 1927 by Max Ehrmann (1872-1945). In 1956, the rector of St. Paul's Church in Baltimore, Maryland, used the poem in a collection of mimeographed inspirational material for his congregation. Someone printing it later said it was found in Old St. Paul's Church, dated 1692. The year 1692 was the founding date of the church and has nothing to do with the poem. See Fred D. Cavinder, "Desiderata", _TWA Ambassador_, Aug. 1973, pp. 14-15.

  "hell for leather"

  Robert L. Chapman's _New Dictionary of American Slang_ (Harper & Row, 1987, ISBN 0-06-181157-2) says: "hell-for-leather or hell- bent-for-leather adv _fr late 1800s British_ Rapidly and energetically; =all out, flat out. _You're heading hell-for-leather to a crack-up_ [origin unknown; perhaps related to British dialect phrases _go hell for ladder, hell falladerly, hell faleero_, and remaining mysterious even if so, although the _leather_ would then be a very probable case of folk etymology with a vague sense of the _leather_ involved in horse trappings.]"

  "by hook or by crook"

  This phrase used to mean "by fair means or foul", although now it often means simply "by whatever necessary means", especially in the U.K. The first recorded use is by John Wycliffe in _Controversial Tracts_ (circa 1380). Theories include: a law or custom in mediaeval England that allowed peasants to take as firewood from the King's forests any deadwood that they could reach with a shepherd's crook and cut off with a reaper's billhook; rhyming words for "direct" (reachable with a long hook) and "indirect" (roundabout); beginners' writing exercises, where letters have hooks and brackets are "crooks"; and from "Hook" and "Crook", the name of headlands on either side of a bay north of Waterford, Ireland, referring to a captain's determination to make the haven of the bay in bad weather using one headland or the other as a guide.

  "Illegitimis non carborundum"

  Yes, this means "Don't let the bastards grind you down", but it is not real Latin; it is a pseudo-Latin joke.

  "Carborundum" is a trademark for a very hard substance composed of silicon carbide, used in grinding. (The name "Carborundum" is a blend of "carbon" and "corundum". "Corundum" denotes aluminium oxide, and comes to English from Tamil _kuruntam_; it is related to Sanskrit _kuruvinda_ = "ruby".) "The "-ndum" ending suggests the Latin gerundive, which is used to express desirability of the activity denoted by the verb, as in _Nil desperandum_ = "nothing to be despaired of"; _addendum_ = "(thing) fit to be added"; _corrigendum_ = "(thing) fit to be corrected"; and the name Amanda, from _amanda_ = "fit to be loved").

  _Illegitimis_ is the dative plural of _illegitimus_ = "illegitimate"; the gerundive in Latin correctly takes the dative to denote the agent. _Illegitimus_ could conceivably mean "bastard" in Latin, but was not the usual word for it: _Follett World-Wide Latin Dictionary_ (Follett, 1967) gives _nothus homo_ for bastard of known father, and _spurius_ for bastard of unknown father.

  The phrase seems to have originated with British army intelligence early in World War II. It was popularized when U.S. general Joseph W. "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell (1883-1946) adopted it as his motto. Various variant forms are in circulation.

  "Let them eat cake!"

  The French is "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" (*not* "gateau" as one might expect). And Queen Marie-Antoinette did *not* say this. Jean-Jacques Rousseau attributed it to "a great princess" in book 6 of his _Confessions_. _Confessions_ was published posthumously, but book 6 was written 2 or 3 years before Marie-Antoinette arrived in France in 1770.

  "mind your p's and q's"

  This expression, meaning "be very careful to behave correctly", has been in use from the 17th century on. Theories include: an admonishment to children learning to write; an admonishment to typesetters (who had to look at the letters reversed); an admonishment to seamen not to soil their navy pea-jackets with their tarred "queues" (pigtails); "mind your pints and quarts"; "mind your prices and quality"; "mind your pieds and queues" (either feet and pigtails, or two dancing figures that had to be accurately performed); and the substitution of /p/ for "qu" /kw/ in the speech of uneducated ancient Romans. And yes, we've heard the joke about the instruction to new sextons: "Mind your keys and pews."

  The most plausible explanation is the one given in the latest edition of Collins English Dictionary: an alteration of "Mind your 'please's and 'thank you's.

  "more honoured in the breach than in the observance"

  From _Hamlet_, Act 1, Scene 4. Shakespeare meant "BETTER broken than observed", not "more often broken than observed".

  "put in one's two cents' worth"

  This expression meaning "to contribute one's opinion" dates from the late nineteenth century. Bo Brodham suggests that it comes from "the days of $.02 postage. To 'put one's two cents' worth in' referred to the cost of a letter to the editor, the president, or whomever was deserving." Someone should check when postage actually did cost two cents.

  "rule of thumb"

  This term for "a simple principle having wide application but not intended to be strictly accurate" dates from 1692. A frequently repeated story is that "rule of thumb" comes from an old law regulating wife-beating: "if a stick were used, it should not be thicker than a man's thumb." Christina Hoff Sommers (_Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women_, Simon & Schuster, 1994, ISBN 0-671-79424-8, pp. 203-207) investigated this and found no evidence of such a law; the earliest reference to it was in two U.S. court rulings (Bradley v State, Walker 156 Mississppi 1824; State v Oliver, 70 North Carolina 61, 1874) which called it an "ancient law". Thumbs were used to measure *lots* of things (the last joint is roughly one inch). The phrase may also come from ancient brewmasters' dipping their thumb in the brew to test the temperature of a batch; or from a guideline for tailors: "Twice around the thumb is once around the wrist..."

  "son of a gun"

  dates from 1708; therefore, NOT son of a "shotgun marriage", which is only recorded from 1922. Possibly "cradled in the gun-carriage of a ship"; allegedly, the place traditionally given to women on board who went into labour -- the only space affording her any privacy and without blocking a gangway -- was between two guns. Or it may mean more simply "son of a soldier".

  "spit and image"/"spitting image"

  These phrases mean "exact likeness". "Spitting image" is first recorded in 1901; "spit and image" is a bit older (from the late 19th century), which seems to refute the explanation "splitting image" (two split halves of the same tree). An older British expression is "He's the very spit of his father", which Eric Partridge, in his _Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English_ (Routledge, 1950) traces back to 1400: "He's ... as like these as th'hads't spit him." Other languages have similar expressions; e.g., the French say _C'est son pere tout crache_, "He is his father completely spat." Alternative explanations are "so alike that even the spit out of their mouths is the same"; "speaking likeness"; and a corruption of "spirit".

  "to all intents and purposes"

  This cliche meaning "practically" is a shortening of the legal phrase "to all intents, constructions, and purposes". The corruption "for all intensive purposes" is frequently reported.

  "Wherefore art thou Romeo?"

  "Wherefore" means "why", not "where".

  "whole cloth" (notes by Ellen Rosen)

  The phrase "made out of whole cloth" (and variants) means "utterly without foundation in fact, completely fictitious". MWCD10 gives only this sense for "whole cloth", and dates it 1840. This is a surprise to some people who sew and quilt, who still use "whole cloth" in its literal sense of "uncut fabric".

  The OED has citations of "whole cloth" from 1433 on. Its first definition is "a piece of cloth of the full size as manufactured, as distinguished from a piece that may be cut off or out of it for a garment, etc."

  The OED also gives the phrase "cut (or made) out of whole cloth". The earliest citation is from 1579. From the citations, it seems that for the first 300 years or so, the phrase was used with the connotation of entirety, but not of falsehood. For example, this citation is from 1634: "The valiant Souldier .. measureth out of the whole cloath his Honour with his sword."

  OED labels the falsehood sense "U.S. colloquial or slang". The citation from 1843 is the first with this sense: "Isn't this entire story .. made out of whole cloth?" A citation from 1905 (and obviously British) indicates that the term "whole cloth" was not yet being used only in that sense: "That Eton captain is cut out of whole cloth; no shoddy there."

  Before the Industrial Revolution, few people had ready access to whole cloth. Cotton had to be picked (or sheep sheared); the cotton or wool had to be washed and picked over; the material had to be spun into thread, and the thread woven into cloth. Cloth was therefore precious and frequently reused. A worn-out man's shirt would be cut down to make a child's shirt; the unworn parts of a woman's skirt would be reused to make quilts; etc. Also, homespun fabric was not very comfortable to wear. Even after the Industrial Revolution, ready-made whole cloth was sufficiently expensive that many people could not afford to use new cloth for everything.

  Therefore, to have a piece of clothing made out of whole cloth must have been very special, indeed: something new, not something hand-me-down; something that hadn't been patched together from disparate, often unmatched pieces; maybe even something comfortable. So describing something as being made from whole cloth would mean that it had never existed as a garment before, and that it was something special, something wondrous -- one's Sunday best, or better.

  The modern figurative meaning of "whole cloth" seems to depend on a lie's having sprung whole _ex nihilo_; having no connection with existing facts. All-newness distinguishes garments and lies made out of whole cloth. This is a positive characteristic for clothes, but not for the average tissue of lies and deception.

  "the whole nine yards"

  This phrase, meaning "all of it, everything" dates from at least the 1950s. The origin is a matter for speculation. 9 yards is not a particularly significant distance either in football or in the garment business (a man's three-piece suit requires about 7 square yards of cloth, and cloth is sold in bolts of 20 to 25 yards). The phrase may refer to the capacity of ready-mix concrete trucks, which averages about 9 cubic yards. See Cecil Adams, _More of the Straight Dope_, pp. 252-257.

  ---

  MISCELLANY

  Do publishers put false info in dictionaries to catch plagiarists?

  From: david@frnk303.franklin.com (David Justice)

  > For what it's worth, I worked a few years at Merriam-Webster (late
  > 1980s) and can attest that we never deliberately inserted false
  > stuff for purposes of catching plagiarists.  For one thing, every
  > dictionary I've ever examined has been all too full of
  > *un*intentional errors, and they could serve the same purpose.
  

  On the other hand, books such as _Who's Who_ do have fictitious entries.

  How did "Truly" become a personal name?

  by Truly Donovan (truly@lunemere.com)

  My name is my mother's nickname. Her name was Etrulia, which she acquired from an aunt-by-marriage, Etrulia (a.k.a. Truly) Shattuck. Beyond that, the origins of the name are lost. Truly Shattuck, however, was a woman of some notoriety, having first come to public attention, according to family legend, when her mother, Jane, was tried and acquitted for having murdered her young daughter's seducer. This would have been in Northern California, perhaps the Bay Area, around the turn of the century, I would guess. At some point thereafter Truly went on the stage, and was supposedly a Floradora girl. Somehow (family legend is very murky about this), she got herself married to a staid Scottish lawyer from Michigan (during which time my mother was born and named for her), but that was not a very enduring union. During my mother's childhood, she was known to be running a chicken farm in California. Her last brush with notoriety, which we learned about from her obituary published in the Chicago Tribune, was when she was arrested for shoplifting a very expensive dress at Marshall Field. Her defense was that she needed to look for a job and hadn't anything to wear.

  Anyway, it sure beats being named for a fatuous character in a bad Ian Fleming children's book.

  trademarks

  1. words that were once trademarks, but as a result of legal decisions or otherwise lost that status

     familiar words

     aspirin, brassiere ? , cellophane, celluloid, corn flakes ? , corselet (undergrament, from Corselette), Cuisenaire rod, dry ice ? , escalator, gramophone, granola, heroin, immunogen, jungle gym (from Junglegym), kerosene, lanolin ? , linoleum, lite (beer) ? , mah-jongg, milk of magnesia, mimeograph, pogo (stick), raisin bran ? , saran, shredded wheat, tabloid, tarmac ? , thermos, trampoline ? , vibraharp, vulcanized fibre, windbreaker (jacket) ? , yo-yo, zipper

     chemical and medical terms

     agene, amidol, antipyrine, duralumin, formalin, hirudin, Janus green (from Janus), malathion, mecamylamine, ninhydrin, parathormone, pulmotor, ronnel, secobarbital, toxaphene, vasopressin

     miscellaneous more obscure words

     autogiro, barathea, beaverboard, chainomatic, cube steak ? , corona (cigar), cyclostyle, ditto (to copy printed matter etc. on a duplicator), georgette, graphophone, ionoscope, kinescope, kinetoscope, klystron, moviola, moxie, simonize (from Simoniz), thyratron,

  2. words derived from trademarks

     aqualunger (from Aqualung), cola (from Coca-cola), dexamethasone (perhaps from Dexamyl), isoproterenol (from Arterenol), kart (probably from GoKart), organza (probably from Lorganza), payola (influenced by Victrola),

  3. words that are still trademarks, although many people use them generically

     AstroTurf, Autoharp, BVDs, Baggies, Bakelite, Band-Aid, Beer Nuts, Benzedrine, Biro, Boogie Board, Breathalyzer, Brillo Pads, Carborundum, Chap Stick, Chemical Mace, Chiclets, Cinerama, Coca-Cola/Coke, Cuisinart, Dacron, Day-Glo, Deepfreeze, Demerol, Dianetics, Dictaphone, Dictograph, Ditto machine, Dixie cups, Dolby, Dow Jones Average, Dry Ice ? , Dvorak Keyboard, Erector Set, Eskimo Pie, Ethernet, Exercycle, Fiberglas, Fig Newtons, Formica, Freon, Frigidaire, Frisbee, Grand Marnier, Green Stamp, Hacky Sack, Hammond organ, Hide-a-Bed, Hi-Liter, Hula-Hoop, Identi-Kit, Invar, Jacuzzi, Jarlsberg, Jeep, Jell-O, Jockey Shorts, Kewpie (doll), Kitty Litter, Kleenex, Ko-Rec-Type, Kodak, Laundromat, Levi's, Liederkranz (cheese), Life Savers (candy), Linotype ? , Liquid Paper, Lucite, Mace (spray), Mack (truck), Magic Marker, Mailgram, Malathion, Mary Janes (sprinkles, shoes), Masonite, Mellotron, Metroliner, Miltown (tranquilizer), Minicam, Monel, Monotype (typesetting machine), Muzak, Novocain, NutraSweet, Orlon, Pan-Cake (cosmetic), Parcheesi (the generic word is "pachisi"), Peg-Board (perfboard), Phonevision, Photostat, Pianola (player piano), Picturephone, Ping-Pong (table tennis), Playbill (theatre programme), Play-Doh, Plexiglas, Polaroid, Pop Tarts, Popsicle, Pyrex, Q-Tip, Realtor, Rollerblade, Roller Derby, Roquefort (salad dressing), SAT, Sanforized, Sanka, Scientology, Scotch Tape, Scrabble, Seeing Eye (dog), Sellotape, Sheetrock, Skivvies, Slim Jim, Styrofoam, Super glue, Tarmac ? , Technicolor, Teflon, TelePrompTer, Teletype, Thermos, TV Dinners, UNIX, Valium, Vaseline, Velcro, Victrola, Vitallium, Walkman, Wedgwood (ceramic ware), Welcome Wagon, Wiffle Ball, Windbreaker (jacket?), X-Acto, Xerox, Yellow Pages ?

  4. words erroneously believed to be trademarks

     nylon

  What is the language term for...?

  It may be one of: "ablaut", "accidence", "acrolect", "adianoeta", "adnominal", "adnominatio", "adynaton", "agnosia", "agrammatism", "alexia", "alliteration", "alphabetism", "amblysia", "amphibol(og)y", "anacolouthon", "anacrusis", "anadiplosis", "anaphora", "anaptyxis", "anastrophe", "antiphrasis", "antisthecon", "antithimeria", "antonomasia", "aphaeresis", "aphasia", "aphesis", "apocope", "apocrisis", "aporia", "apophasis", "aposiopesis", "apostrophe", "aptronym", "asyndeton", "Aufhebung", "banausic", "bisociation", "brachylogy", "cacoetheses scribendi", "cacophemism", "calque", "catachresis", "cataphora", "catenative", "cheville", "chiasmus", "chronogram", "cledonism", "commoratio", "consonance", "constative", "coprolalia", "copulative", "crasis", "cruciverbalist", "cryptophasia", "deictic", "dilogy", "disjunctive", "dissimilation", "dittograph", "dontopedalogy", "dysgraphia", "dyslalia", "dyslexia", "dysphemism", "dysprosody", "dysrhythmia", "echolalia", "embo(lo)lalia", "enallage", "enclitic", "endophoric", "epanalepsis", "epanorthosis", "epexegetic", "epenthesis", "epitrope", "epizeuxis", "eponym", "equivoque", "etymon", "eusystolism", "exergasia", "exonym", "exophoric", "extraposition", "eye-word", "factitive", "festination", "fis phenomenon", "Fog Index", "frequentative", "glossogenetics", "glossolalia", "glottochronology", "glyph", "graphospasm", "hapax legomenon", "haplograph", "haplology", "hendiadys", "heteric", "heterogenium", "heterography", "heteronym", "heterophemy", "heterotopy", "hobson-jobson", "holophrasis", "honorific", "hypallage", "hyperbaton", "hyperbole", "hypocoristic", "hypophora", "hyponymy", "hypostatize", "hypotaxis", "idioglossa", "idiolect", "illeism", "ingressive", "isocolon", "isogloss", "klang association", "koine", "langue", "Lautgesetz", "ligature", "lipogram", "litotes", "logogram", "logogriph", "logomisia", "lucus a non lucendo", "macaronic", "macrology", "meiosis", "(a)melioration", "mendaciloquence", "merism", "metalepsis", "metallage", "metanalysis", "metaplasm", "metathesis", "metonymy", "Mischsprache", "mogigraphia", "mondegreen", "monepic", "monologophobia", "Mummerset", "mumpsimus", "mussitation", "mytheme", "noa word", "nomic", "nosism", "nothosonomia", "objective correlative", "obviative", "omphalopsychites", "onomasiology", "onomastic", "onomatopoeia", "oratio obliqua", "oxytone", "palindrome", "palinode", "paradiastole", "paragoge", "paragram", "paralinguistic", "paraph", "paraphasia", "paraplasm", "parasynesis", "parataxis", "parechesis", "parelcon", "pangram", "parimion", "parole", "paronomasia", "paronym", "paroxytone", "parrhesia", "pasigraphy", "patavinity", "patronymic", "pejoration", "periphrasis", "perpilocutionist", "phatic", "philophronesis", "phonaesthesia", "phonocentrism", "pleonasm", "ploce", "polyptoton", "polysemy", "polysyndeton", "privative", "proclitic", "prolepsis", "proparalepsis", "prosonomasia", "prosopopoeia", "prosthesis", "provection", "psittacism", "purr-word", "quadriliteralism", "quaesitio", "quote fact", "rebus", "reification", "rheme", "rhopalic", "sandhi", "scesis onomaton", "Schlimmbesserung", "semiotics", "sigmatism", "simile", "Sprachgef"uhl", "Stammbaumtheorie", "stichomythia", "subreption", "sumpsimus", "superordinate", "suprasegmental", "syllepsis", "symploce", "synaeresis", "synaesthesia", "synaloepha", "synchisis", "syncope", "synecdoche", "synesis", "systole", "tachygraphy", "tautology", "theophoric", "tmesis", "traduttori traditori", "trope", "univocalic", "Ursprache", "Wanderwort", "Wellentheorie", "Witzelsucht", "wordfact", "xenoepist", or "zeugma". Look 'em up. :-) (A good book to look them up in is _The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers_, by David Grambs (Random House, 1990, ISBN 0-679-72860-0.)

  Commonest words

  According to the _Guinness Book of World Records_, the commonest word in written English is "the," followed by: of, and, to, a, in, that, is, I, it, for, as. The commonest word in spoken English is "I." The commonest word in the King James Version of the Bible is "and".

  _Frequency Analysis of English Vocabulary and Grammar: Based on the LOB Corpus_ by Stig Johansson and Knut Hofland (OUP, 1989, ISBN 0-19-8242212-2) gives the top eighteen words and their frequencies as:

            1.  the       68315
            2.  of        35716
            3.  and       27856
            4.  to        26760
            5.  a         22744
            6.  in        21108
            7.  that      11188
            8.  is        10978
            9.  was       10499
           10.  it        10010
           11.  for        9299
           12.  he         8776
           13.  as         7337
           14.  with       7197
           15.  be         7186
           16.  on         7027
           17.  I          6696
           18.  his        6266
  

  _The American Heritage Word Frequency Book_ by John B. Carroll, Peter Davies, and Barry Richman (Houghton Mifflin, 1971, ISBN 0-395-13570-2) gives the top 300 words in order of frequency and in groups of 100 as:

  the of and a to in is you that it he for was on are as with his they at be this from I have or by one had not but what all were when we there can an your which their said if do will each about how up out them then she many some so these would other into has more her two like him see time could no make than first been its who now people my made over did down only way find use may water long little very after words called just where most know

  get through back much before go good new write out used me man too any day same right look think also around another came come work three word must because does part even place well such here take why things help put years different away again off went old number great tell men say small every found still between name should Mr home big give air line set own under read last never us left end along while might next sound below saw something thought both few those always looked show large often together asked house don't world going want

  school important until 1 form food keep children feet land side without boy once animals life enough took sometimes four head above kind began almost live page got earth need far hand high year mother light parts country father let night following 2 picture being study second eyes soon times story boys since white days ever paper hard near sentence better best across during today others however sure means knew it's try told young miles sun ways thing whole hear example heard several change answer room sea against top turned 3 learn point city play toward five using himself usually

  What words are their own antonym?

  Richard Lederer, in _Crazy English_ (Pocket Books, 1989, ISBN 0-671-68907-X), calls these "contronyms". They can be divided into homographs (same spelling) and homophones (same pronunciation).

  The homographs include:

  • apparent = seeming, clear ("heir apparent")
  • aught = all, nothing
  • bill = invoice, money
  • bolt = to secure, to run away
  • buckle = to fasten, to fall apart ("buildings buckle at an earthquake")
  • cannot praise too highly = no praise is too high, cannot praise very highly
  • certain = definite, unspecified
  • cite = single out for praise ("cited for bravery"); single out for blame ("citation from the Buildings Dept.")
  • cleave = to separate, to adhere
  • clip = to fasten, to detach
  • commencement = beginning, conclusion ("high school commencement")
  • comprise = to contain, [disputed] to compose
  • continue = to keep on doing, [Scots and U.S. law] to adjourn
  • copemate = antagonist, partner
  • critical = opposed to ("critical of"), essential to ("critical to")
  • custom = usual, special
  • dress = to put items on, to remove items from ("dress the chicken")
  • dust = to remove fine particles, to add fine particles
  • factoid = unimportant fact, falsity presented as fact
  • fast = rapid, unmoving
  • fix = to restore, to castrate
  • give out = to produce, to stop being produced
  • go off = to become active, to become inactive
  • handicap = advantage (in golf), disadvantage
  • help = to assist, to prevent ("I cannot help it if...")
  • hoi polloi = the common people, [disputed] the elite
  • hold up = to support, to delay
  • impregnable = invulnerable, [disputed] impregnatable
  • infer = to take a hint, [disputed] to hint
  • keep up = to continue to fall (rain),to remain up
  • left = departed from, remaining
  • let = to permit, [archaic] to hinder
  • literally = actually, [disputed] (used before a metaphor)
  • model = archetype, copy
  • moot = debatable, [disputed] not worthy of debate
  • nauseous = nauseating, [disputed] nauseated
  • note = promise to pay, money
  • out = visible (stars), invisible (lights)
  • oversight = care, error
  • peep = to look quietly, to beep
  • peer = noble, person of equal rank
  • put out = to generate ("candle puts out light"), to extinguish
  • puzzle = to pose a problem, to solve a problem
  • qualified = competent, limited
  • quantum = very small ("quantum level vs macroscopic level"), [disputed] very large ("quantum leap in productivity")
  • quite = rather, completely
  • ravel = entangle, disentangle
  • rent = to buy temporary use of, to sell temporary use of
  • resign = to quit, [hyphen recommended] to sign up again
  • sanction = to approve of, [disputed] to punish [The use of "sanction" as a noun meaning "punishment" is undisputed.]
  • sanguine = hopeful, [obsolete for "sanguinary"] murderous
  • scan = to examine carefully, [disputed] to glance at quickly
  • screen = to view, to hide from view
  • seeded = with seeds, without seeds
  • skin = to cover with, to remove outer covering
  • substitute = to put (something) in something else's place, [disputed] to replace (something) with something else
  • strike = to miss (baseball), to hit
  • table = [British] to propose, [U.S.] to set aside
  • temper = calmness, passion
  • think better of = to admire more, to be suspicious of
  • trim = to put things on ("trim a Christmas tree"), to take things off
  • trip = to stumble, to move gracefully ("trip the light fantastic")
  • unbending = rigid, relaxing
  • undersexed = having a lower-than-normal sex drive, [disputed] sexually deprived
  • wear = to endure through use, to decay through use
  • weather = to withstand, to wear away
  • wind up = to start ("wind up a watch"), to end
  • with = alongside, against

  A couple of homophones:

  • aural, oral = heard, spoken
  • raise, raze = erect, tear down

  sentences grammatical in both Old English and Modern English

  Mitchell and Robinson's _A Guide to Old English_ (OUP, 5th edition, 1992, ISBN 0-631-16657-2) starts its "Practice Sentences" section with a few of these. A sampling: Harold is swift. His hand is strong and his word grim. Late in life he went to his wife in Rome. Grind his corn for him and sing me his song. He swam west in storm and wind and frost.

  phonetic alphabets

  Brian Kelk (bck1@cl.cam.ac.uk) has a collection of phonetic alphabets (A alpha, B bravo, C charlie, etc.) that he posts occasionally.

  Biblical sense of "to know"

  Some people say things like: "It is not correct that it is the biblical meaning. The biblical meaning of a man knowing a woman is such total love as to know all about her, which includes intercourse. It is not an evasive term for one-night stands."

  Not so. The Biblical sense of "to know" is simply "to fuck", as you can see from Genesis 19:4-8 : "[...] the men of Sodom compassed the house round [...] and they called unto Lot, and said unto him, 'Where are the men which came in to thee this night? Bring them out unto us, that we may KNOW them.' And Lot [...] said [...] 'Behold now, I have two daughters which have not KNOWN man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you [...]'"

  The Hebrew word here is "yada" (yod daleth ayin). The Greek word "ginosko" (gamma iota nu omega sigma kappa omega) is used similarly in the New Testament.

  Postfix "not"

  Is assertion followed by "not" a recent American neologism? NOT! "I love thee not" was the regular word order in Shakespeare's day. Examples including the pause are harder to find; the earliest that we've found is in Irish dialect, in Ellis Parker Butler's _Pigs is Pigs_ (1905):

  "Proceed to collect," he said softly. "How them cloiks do loike to be talkin'! _Me_ proceed to collect two dollars and twinty-foive cints off Misther Morehouse! I wonder do thim clerks _know_ Misther Morehouse? I'll git it! Oh, yes! 'Misther Morehouse, two an' a quarter, plaze.' 'Cert'nly, me dear frind Flannery. Delighted!' _Not!_"

  e. e. cummings wrote a poem beginning:

  pity this busy monster manunkind
  not.

  Credit to David Murray for bringing the cummings example to our attention. And Wanda Keown found the following in Fritz Leiber's _Conjure Wife_ (1943): "Norman thought: Country parsonage? Healthy mental atmosphere, not!"

  The construction owes its present popularity to the "Wayne's World" skits in the U.S. TV show _Saturday Night Live_. The first use in SNL was in the 1970s in a skit with Jane Curtin and Steve Martin. (It is said that the writers of these skits encountered the practice when it was a fad in their high school in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough.) Another phrase that comes from SNL is "Isn't that special?" (the Church Lady, played by Dana Carvey).

  Origin of the dollar sign (notes by Mark Brader)

  It is sometimes said that the dollar sign's origin is a narrow "U" superimposed over a wide "S", "U.S." being short for "United States." This is wrong, and the correct explanation also tells why the $ sign is used both for dollars and for pesos in various countries. The explanation is not widely known, maybe because not many people would think to look for it in _A History of Mathematical Notations, Volume II: Notations Mainly in Higher Mathematics_ by Florian Cajori (published in 1929 and reprinted in 1952, by Open Court Press). Cajori acknowledges the "U.S." theory and a number of others, but, after examining many 18th-century manuscripts, finds that there is simply no evidence to support those theories.

  Spanish pesos were also called piastres, Spanish dollars, and pieces of eight. And they were circulated in many parts of the world, much as U.S. dollars are today. The coins were so well known that, when the U.S. got around to issuing its own silver coinage (U.S. dollar coins first appeared in 1794), it simply replicated the Spanish unit's weight and hence value, and even one of its names; so it was natural to use the same symbol.

  Since three of the four names given above for the Spanish dollar start with p (and pluralize with s), it was natural for abbreviations like p and ps to be used. Sometimes ps was written as P with a superscript s. The superscript was a common way of rendering abbreviated endings of words -- we see vestiges of it today in the way some people write "10th". Now, what happens if you write P with a superscript s *fast*, because it's part of a long document that you have to hand-write because you can't wait for the typewriter to be invented, let alone the word-processor? Naturally, you join the letters. Well, now look at the top part of the resulting symbol. There's the $ sign! Reduce the P to a single stroke and you have the form of the $ with a double vertical; omit it altogether and you get the single vertical.

  And yes, both these forms are original. Cajori reproduces 14 $ signs from a diary written in 1776; 11 of them have the single stroke, which was the more common form to the end of the century, and 3 have the double stroke.

  Although the $ sign originally referred to a Spanish coin, it was the revolting British -> American colonists who made the transition from ps to the new sign. (This is apparently also why we write $1 instead of 1$; it mimics the British use of the pound sign.) So, while it did not originally refer to the U.S. dollar, the symbol does legitimately claim its origins in that country.

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  SPELLING

  Diacritics

  You can use diaereses in words like "naive" and "cooperate" if you want. The use of diacritics has been declining because of Linotypes and computers that didn't allow them.

  "-er" vs "-re"

  The following words are spelled with "-re" in Britain but with "-er" in the U.S.: accoutre(ment), calibre, centre, fibre, goitre, litre, louvre, lustre (brilliance, but "luster" one who lusts) , manoeuvre ("maneuver" in the U.S.), metre (for the distance and for poetic and musical metre, but "meter" for the measuring device), meagre, mitre, nitre, ochre, philtre, reconnoitre, sabre, sceptre, sepulchre, sombre, spectre, (amphi)theatre, titre. (The British "metre"/"meter" distinction is retained when the various prefixes are prepended: "kilometre", "speedometer", etc. "Micrometer", a device for measuring minute things, is distinguished from "micrometre", a micron. "Theatre" has some currency in the U.S., especially in names of specific theatres.)

  The following words are spelled "-re" in both Britain and the U.S.: acre, cadre, euchre, lucre, massacre, mediocre, ogre, wiseacre. (The "-cre" and "-gre" words may have been kept that way in order to keep the "c" and "g" hard, although there are counterexamples such as "eager" and "meager".)

  In none of these words is "-er" the agent suffix (as in "revolver") or the comparative suffix (as in "longer"). Most of these words come from Latin through French, and they took the "-re" form in French because the "e" was not part of the word root. (The adjectives tend to be in "-ral", "-ric", and "rical", rather than "-eral", "-eric", or "-erical".) But many similar words (cloister, diameter, neuter, number, sinister) were changed from "-re" to "-er" in English. The process has merely happened faster in the U.S. than in Britain.

  "-ize" vs "-ise"

  The following words are always spelled with "-ise": advertise, advise, arise, chastise, circumcise, comprise, compromise, demise, despise, devise, disguise, enterprise, excise, exercise, (dis/en)franchise, improvise, incise, merchandise, premise, revise, supervise, surmise, surprise, televise. (At least, they're *almost* always spelled that way: "advertize", "merchandize", and "surprize" ARE listed in some U.S. collegiate dictionaries, but are not the usual forms anywhere.) A useful mnemonic is that, except "improvise", none of these make nouns in "-isation" or "-ization". (Exceptions in the other direction are "aggrandize", "criticize", and "recognize".)

  "Apprise" means "to inform"; "apprize" means "to appreciate". British "prise open" = U.S. "pry open".

  For other verbs, "-ize" is usual in the U.S. and recommended by Fowler, although "-ise" is also used in Britain. Fowler recommends "-yse" in "analyse", "catalyse", and "paralyse", although "-yze" is usual in the U.S.

  Where to put apostrophes in possessive forms

  by Peter Moylan

  PRONOUNS

  The ONLY personal possessive pronoun with an apostrophe is "one's".

  The words "his", "its", "whose", "their" do NOT contain apostrophes. Nor do words like "hers", "ours", "yours", "theirs". (Would you say "mi'ne"?)

  The forms "it's", "they're", and "who's" are contractions for "it is", "they are", and "who is" respectively. (Or sometimes "it has", etc.) They have nothing to do with possessive pronouns.

  The apostrophe does occur in the possessive case of indefinite pronouns (anybody's, someone's, and so on).

  NOUNS

  1. The standard rule: Use 's for the singular possessive, and a bare apostrophe after the plural suffix for the plural possessive. For example:

                                 Singular         Plural
           Nominative              dog             dogs
           Possessive              dog's           dogs'
        

  2. Nouns ending with an [s] or [z] sound (this includes words ending in "x", "ce", and similar examples): The plural suffix is -es rather than -s (unless there's already an "e" at the end, as in the "-ce" words), but otherwise the rule is the same as above:

                                 Singular         Plural
           Nominative             class          classes
           Possessive             class's        classes'
        

     (The possessive plural is what is wanted in "the Joneses'". This is short for "the Joneses' house", which is not "the Jones's house".)

     There are, however, examples where the singular possessive suffix is a bare apostrophe:

                  Singular         Plural
           Nominative            patience        patiences
           Possessive            patience'       patiences'
        

     (In most such examples, the plural is rarely used.) For nouns in this category, many people would consider the 's suffix and the bare apostrophe to be acceptable alternatives. The rules listed below may be taken as "most common practice", but they are not absolute.
     1. The 's suffix is preferred for one-syllable words (grass's) or where the final syllable has a primary or secondary stress (collapse's);
     2. The bare apostrophe is preferred:
        • for words ending in -nce (stance');
        • for many classical names (Aristophanes', Jesus', Moses');
        • where the juxtaposition of two or more [s] sounds would cause an awkwardness in pronunciation (thesis').
     3. Usage is divided in the situation where the final [s] or [z] sound falls in an unstressed syllable (octopus'/octopus's, phoenix's/phoenix', and so on).

     The question of which suffix is correct arises less often than one might imagine. Instead of saying "the crisis' start" or "the crisis's start", most native speakers of English would say "the start of the crisis", thus avoiding the problem.

  3. Plurals not ending in s: Use 's for the possessive plural (men's, people's, sheep's).

  HISTORY

  For those who want to know where the apostrophe came from, here is how it probably happened. Some of this is well documented, some is guesswork on my part.

  Back in the days when English had many more inflections than it now has, the most common suffix for the genitive singular was -es. (There were several noun declensions, so that not all nouns fitted this pattern; but this could be considered to be the "most regular" case.) For example: mann (=man), mannes (=of the man). Over time there developed a tendency to stop pronouncing the unstressed "e", so that "mannes" became "mann's". The apostrophe stands for the omitted letter.

  (Modern German still has -es as the genitive suffix for many nouns. The Germans did not stop pronouncing their unstressed "e"s, so the case suffix is still written as -es.)

  Pronouns were also inflected, but not in the same way. (They were all fairly irregular, as they still are today.) The genitive form of "hit" (=it) was "his" (=its). As "his" evolved into "its", there was no "e" to drop, therefore no logical reason to insert an apostrophe.

  The "its" and "it's" forms did coexist in the 17th and early 18th century, but today the "its" form is considered to be the only correct spelling.

  Plural nouns are harder to explain. The most common genitive plural inflection was -a, which is quite unrelated to our modern -s'. My best guess is that most of the old plural suffixes were replaced by -s under the influence of French; and that subsequently the rules for forming singular possessives were extended to the plurals. If this is what happened, then a hypothetical -s's plural possessive suffix would immediately collapse to -s', in the same way as for many singular nouns ending in "s". There was in any case a long period where spelling was a lot less standardized than it is today, so one should not think in terms of any sort of "standard rule" existing during the transitional period.

  NOTE FOR NON-ENGLISH SPEAKERS

  The apostrophe in these cases normally has no effect on pronunciation. Thus dogs, dog's, and dogs' all sound the same. The exception is where the apostrophe separates two "s"s, and then it is pronounced as an unstressed schwa. Thus class's, classes, and classes' are all pronounced as /klas@z/.

  For nouns where there is some difference of opinion over whether the possessive suffix should be -'s or a bare apostrophe (that is, those nouns where a final unstressed syllable ends with an [s] or [z] sound) some native speakers use a lengthened final consonant intermediate between /z/ and /z@z/. This is, however, a fine and almost inaudible distinction.

  OTHER COMMENTS

  One occasionally hears that "John's dog" is an abbreviation for "John his dog". It is more likely that the derivation went in the opposite direction, i.e.:

  Johnes hund => John's hound => Johnny's dog => John 'is dog

  with the "John his dog" form coming into use only briefly before disappearing from modern English.

  Using an apostrophe in a plural which is not a possessive form is almost never recommended by prescriptivists. The only situation where it is recommended is where visual confusion would otherwise result, as for example in the sentence "Mind your p's and q's". In forms like "the 1980s" or "two CPUs", apostrophes are not recommended.

  It is correct to use an apostrophe to indicate missing letters, in contractions like "aren't", "isn't", "it's" (= it is or it has). Be careful in these cases to put the apostrophe in the correct place. The apostrophe replaces the missing letter(s); it does not replace the space between words.

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  Mark Israel