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 It must be Spring. Our two resident turkey vultures, Babs and Monroe, have returned from wherever they go in the winter and are busily tidying up their nest in the old dead tree about 100 yards from the house. And there is, of course, nothing that says “tax time” quite like having two real live vultures circling your house every day.Folks who visit this site often will probably have noticed that I’ve been experimenting with various forms of advertising on the site, ranging from the classy (Apple Store, Adagio Teas, etc.) to the unbearably cheesy and annoying (animated role-playing games, “smileys,” idiotic ringtones, etc.). The classy ads I pick. The sleazy ones (and, to be fair, a few good ones) are picked by Google and supposedly tied to content on the page itself. Just how my columns manage to provoke ads for online gambling and discount swimsuits is a mystery. I’m actually surprised I don’t get more ads for pet products.
Judging from the ads appearing on other sites, I suspect that I would get more interesting ads if I were to spend some time ruminating about how Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had a secret love child named Levitra who married a guy named Cialis Prozac who built a self-improvement empire in Second Life and collected discount air fares and Fort Myers timeshares as a hobby. Now I’ve done it. No, wait. Ron Paul. There we go.
In any case, it beats me why you people aren’t snapping up the mail-order organic muffins. And would it kill you to have your DNA tested once or twice? Maybe you’re related to Dick Cheney too. Anyway, I’ll try to keep the ads fairly unobtrusive.
Speaking of famous brand names, don’t forget to take a gander at our newest spin-off, Ask for It by Name, where you’ll find the stories behind Mercedes, Coke, Motorola, Eureka, Formica, Microsoft, Velcro, Barnes & Noble, Adidas, Hermes, Hush Puppies, Frisbee, Pringles, Godiva, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, and Dr Pepper, just to mention the most recent entries.
Onward. As I mentioned in mid-February, there’s something new at the bottom of every page of this site: a customized Google Word Origins search engine which will search a range of English etymology websites for any word or phrase entered in the box. It sure beats searching the entire web for something if you can’t find it here.
Lastly, please remember that this site relies on your support for its continued existence. If you enjoy what we do, please consider subscribing for less than four cents per day. Subscribers see the columns a month or two before they appear free on this site. This week, subscribers got the skinny on, among other topics, curling (the sport), the proof is in the pudding, and in the tank. Don’t miss out on the fun. They’re talking about abolishing pennies anyway, y’know. Why not send a few to our incredibly cute cats?
Whatever.
Dear Word Detective: Does “slack,” as in “cut me some slack,” have anything to do with the body covering we call “slacks”? Am I a “slacker” if I wear slacks … no, don’t answer that! Is the word “lax,” which is very similar in meaning and in sound to “slack,” related in any way? Which language do these words come from? In German “Lachs,” which sounds exactly the same as “lax,” means a salmon, not exactly a lazy fish, maybe just a laid back one? — Margherita.
 Funny you should mention salmon. I was compiling a mental list the other day of all the bizarre jobs I’ve ever held, and I realized that one of the strangest was an offer I didn’t take — sitting by a river in Alaska, counting the salmon swimming upstream to breed. It seemed kinda creepy and intrusive to me at the time, not entirely fair to the salmon. Of course, that was before they (you know, Them) put surveillance cameras on every parking meter. Speaking of our shiny new Panopticon, am I the only one who assumed that having everyone read “1984″ in high school would inoculate us against that sort of thing? Silly me.
The etymology of German words is a bit beyond my bailiwick, but I can report that “slack” is indeed related to “lax,” albeit in a rather roundabout way.
Although we might assume that “slacker” invokes a relatively modern sense of “slack,” the original meaning of “slack” as an adjective in English was, in fact, “lacking in energy or diligence; inclined to be lazy or idle.” “Slack” is based on the Proto-Germanic root word “sleg,” meaning “careless” or “lazy.” “Slack” first appeared in Old English (as “slaec”), meaning “careless in personal conduct,” and that meaning has persisted steadily to this day, when “slacker” is used as a noun synonymous with the old-fashioned “lazybones.”
It wasn’t until the 14th century that “slack” as an adjective took on the meaning of meaning literally “not tight or snug,” and loose trousers weren’t called “slacks” until the early 19th century. “Slack” as a noun meaning “the part which hangs loose, especially of a rope, etc.” (e.g., “Take up the slack in that cord so someone doesn’t trip”) didn’t come into use until the 18th century. But “slack” as a verb meaning “to be remiss; to waste time” dates all the way back to the 16th century.
Now if we rewind a bit to that Germanic root word “sleg” (specifically its alternate form “leg”), we find that it is also the root of “lax” (via the Latin word “laxus”). In English, as with “slack,” the first uses of “lax” were in regard to people whose attitudes were perhaps more relaxed than they should have been (as well as to the intestinal tracts of people, which gave us our English “laxative”). It was only in the 15th century that “lax” was first applied to laws and rules.
Full boor.
Dear Word Detective: Where does the word “rude” come from? Is someone who is “rude” someone who is “rue-ed,” as in one regrets his or her company because they are annoying? Or is there a completely different origin? — Aimee.
 Well, it’s time to say it again — I have the smartest readers on the planet. That explanation would never have occurred to me. Then again, it never occurred to me to release the parking brake before driving to the Post Office last week. But I do think “ru-ed” is truly inspired. However, I notice from your email address that you’re writing from France, so you have an advantage, since almost every street sign there includes the word “Rue.” Incidentally, do you folks have a “Rue de Rue,” perhaps some run-down alley where Parisians go to wallow in regret? I know Edith Piaf (“Non, je ne regrette rien”) wasn’t big on second thoughts, but surely “if only” has its tear-stained equivalent in French. Somebody is drinking all that absinthe.
Oh right, you had a question. How rude of me. No, there is, sadly, no connection between “rue” and “rude.”
There are actually two “rues” in English. One is a sort of evergreen shrub, “Ruta graveolens” to its friends, the leaves of which were once used to make medicinal tea which tasted terrible and made for equally terrible puns on the “regret” sort of “rue” (“Least time and triall make thee account Rue a most bitter hearbe,” 1583).
The other “rue,” a verb today meaning “to feel regret,” first appeared in Old English from Germanic roots (as “hreowan”) meaning “to make someone feel regret or penitence.” It wasn’t until the 13th century that “rue” took on the modern meaning of “feel sorry about.” There is also a noun form of “rue,” meaning “a regret or misgiving” but it is now considered archaic. Another noun formed from “rue,” namely “ruth” (meaning “pity”), didn’t fare much better, and is today known only in its negative form, “ruthless.”
“Rude” first appeared in English in the 14th century, derived from the Latin “rudis” (“unformed, inexperienced, or unpolished”) with the general sense of “ignorant, wild, or raw,” and quickly took on a wide variety of meanings, from “discourteous” to “crudely drawn” (as in “a rude sketch”). Somewhat surprisingly, “rude” is completely unrelated to “crude,” which is rooted in the Latin “crudus,” meaning “rough or cruel.” But the Latin root of “rude” did spin off two other useful words, “rudiment” (the “raw or most basic state” of something) and “erudite” (literally “brought out of ignorance”).
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