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can be found Domino
Filed Under January 2007, columns | 1 Comment
Not counting that awful Van Morrison song.
Dear Word Detective: Why in the world are there so many uses for the word “domino”? Okay, well, two. I am referring not only to the black tile thing used in the game, but also the “masquerade” wear. — Val.
Whoa, you had me going there at first. As I’ve mentioned before, the great thing about writing this column is the opportunities it affords me, nearly daily, to doubt my own sanity. Thus I paused at the end of your first sentence and began wringing my memory for a third or fourth kind of “domino,” but all I could come up with was the name of that pizza chain.
While the “domino” game tile is probably the better known of the two kinds, the “domino” mask worn in a masquerade (itself from the Italian “maschera,” mask) is the older. “Domino” in this sense today usually refers to just a mask over the eyes (a la Zorro), but originally this “domino” also included a long hooded cloak, the whole shebang often being worn by masquerade partygoers who chose not to disguise themselves as some notable character (the Devil, Sponge Bob, etc.). The name “domino” for such a hooded cloak comes from the French “domino,” a similar hooded robe worn by monks and other clergy in the 16th century. “Domino” itself is derived from “dominus,” Latin for “lord or master,” and it has been suggested that the name was an abbreviation of “benedicamus Domino,” or “Let us now praise the Lord.” In any case, the full “domino” masquerade outfit appeared in English in the early 1700s, but by the 1800s “domino” usually referred to the mask alone.
“Domino” meaning the game piece, a small black tile marked with white dots, first appeared in English around 1801, and the connection, if any, with “domino” in the mask sense is uncertain. It may be that the white dots were thought to resemble eyes behind a mask. Alternatively, the name may have nothing to do with the costume and represent a reference to the verb form of the original Latin “dominus,” perhaps from the winner of the game shouting “Domino!” (”I am the master!”).
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Hot Shot
Filed Under January 2007, columns | Leave a Comment
Dear Word Detective: During the Civil War, iron shot was heated red-hot in a furnace (aboard ship or in shore batteries) before being fired into the side of a wooden ship. These were called “hot shots.” I don’t suppose there is any connection between this incendiary practice and calling someone a “hot shot”? (Still traveling the same road, however, is “big shot” a reference to large caliber ammunition?) — Charles Anderson.
Live and learn. My initial reaction upon reading the first sentence of your question was, I must admit, “Yeah, okay, and when they ran out of ammunition they shot flaming cats and dogs at the enemy, right?” To the munitions-illiterate among us (meaning me), the idea of shooting red-hot cannonballs at ships sounds like yet another implausible seafaring scenario dreamed up by the Committee to Ascribe a Nautical Origin to Everything (CANOE).
But one should, it appears, never underestimate the ingenuity of human beings bent on expunging their enemies of the moment. The use of flaming or heated projectiles actually predates the invention of gunpowder and dates back at least to the heated clay balls catapulted by the Britons at Roman invaders around 54 B.C. “Hot shot,” solid iron cannonballs that were heated and then fired from conventional cannons, appeared in the 16th century, and were apparently used by the British against the Spanish fleet with great success at Gibraltar in 1782.
Reading up on “hot shot” answered two of my initial skeptical questions: (a) Why didn’t the hot cannonball ignite the powder charge the moment it was loaded into the cannon? (a wad of wet clay or straw separated them), and (b) Was the shot still hot enough when it reached its target to set stuff on fire? (yup — at least hot enough to set a smoldering fire in the hull of a ship). Nineteenth century “hot shot” furnaces in which the cannonballs were heated can still be seen at abandoned shore batteries in the US and elsewhere. The US National Park Service even has a web page about them here .
Now, however, it’s time to turn off the Wayback Machine and say that flaming cannonballs are almost certainly not the source of our modern slang term “hot shot” meaning “an exceptionally important or capable person.” The original meaning of “hot-shot” when it appeared in the early 17th century was “one who shoots recklessly” (essentially a “hothead” with a gun) or “a reckless or hotheaded fellow.” The modern sense, which didn’t appear until the 1920s, followed directly from this “recklessly eager” meaning of “hot shot.”
“Big shot” meaning a very important person did originally come from large-caliber weapons (initially in the form “big gun”) in the early 19th century.
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