Cranked up.

Dear Word Detective: I’m reading the papers here on Tsunami Tuesday and I keep seeing this great word, “stemwinder,” referring to a particularly stirring speech. I looked up its origin (Merriam-Webster lists it as “stem-winder”) and saw that it refers to watches, of all things, but wasn’t able to find how this term came to be associated mainly with political speeches. Can you ascertain how that connection came about? — Rick Freyer.

“Stemwinder” is one of those grand old words that have traveled so far from their origins that nearly all traces of their beginnings have faded from popular culture. The culprit in this case is not merely the passage of time (which, after all, has been passing since about day one), but the accelerating pace of technological progress. In many such cases, the advent of the new and shiny has led to the coining of “retronyms” as a way of distinguishing the old and moldy from their more modern equivalents. Thus we find ourselves specifying “broadcast TV,” “film camera,” “brick-and-mortar store,” and the like. But in the case of “stemwinder,” if there were a modern equivalent to its source, it would be as irrelevant as a digital butter churn.

It all goes back to the humble watch. Before there were electronic battery-powered wrist watches, before there were manually wound (or self-winding) mechanical watches, before there were even watches worn on one’s wrist, there were pocket watches. And if you go way back, those pocket watches were wound with a separate tiny key. This may sound cute, but it was a major drag, because the process was awkward and the key was easily lost. So in 1842, when the French watchmaker Adrien Philippe (co-founder of Patek-Philippe) invented a “keyless” watch that was wound by turning its “stem” (a knurled knob on the side of its case, today called the “crown”), it was such an improvement that it won Philippe a Gold Medal at the French Industrial World’s Fair.

It’s hard to imagine today, but the new “stemwinder” watch became an instant public sensation of almost delirious intensity, the iPod of its day. It was so popular, in fact, that within a few years the term “stemwinder” entered the lexicon as a synonym for anything excellent and exciting. By the end of the 19th century, “stemwinder” was being used to mean, first, an energetic person, then a rousing public speaker, and finally an especially inspiring speech itself.

Interestingly, as the public memory faded of how revolutionary the “stemwinder” invention had been, the word took on the slightly more focused sense of a speech which not only impresses but galvanizes a crowd to action, perhaps by analogy to a watch spring being wound up (“After all the calls to unity, ..a stemwinder in the old tradition from Hubert Humphrey,… Sargent Shriver was formally nominated for Vice-President,” T.H. White, 1974). This is the sense in which we use “stemwinder” today.

Absolute maybe.

Dear Word Detective: Where did the expression “to hem and haw” come from? I have also heard it “to him and haw.” Either way, please clarify its meaning and origin. — Mark Anderson.

Well, which is it? “Hem and haw” or “him and haw”? Or is it “hum and hoo”? Ever heard the expression “hish and horp”? Me neither. But it would really help if you would pick one question and stick to it. Then again, wasn’t it T.S. Eliot who said “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”? Truer words were never spoken. Unless they were spoken by W.B. Yeats, which, come to think of it, they were. Golly, this being certain business is hard.

Which is, of course, where “hem and haw” (the usual form) comes in. Depending on one’s point of view, when you are “hemming and hawing,” you are either dithering and refusing to give a definite answer, or simply (as the politicians say) “keeping your options open.”

For a species known for its willingness to leap before looking, humanity has a remarkably long history of “hemming and hawing.” The phrase in that form first appeared in the late 18th century (“I hemmed and hawed … but the Queen stopped reading,” 1786), but other forms (“hem and hawk,” “hum and haw,” etc.) are a few centuries older, and the “hem” and the “haw” are both considerably older than the whole phrase.

The basic meaning of “hem,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), is “an interjectional utterance like a slight half cough, used to attract attention, give warning, or express doubt or hesitation.” If this sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it is the same sound depicted by the interjection “ahem,” the difference being that “ahem” is an actual word used to attract attention to the speaker, rather than producing the sound “hem” itself. One uses “ahem” in situations where, for instance, making noises with one’s throat might be either rude or ineffective. The verb “to hem,” meaning to make the noise, dates to the 15th century, and is “echoic” in origin, being an imitation of the sound itself. “Hem” is also closely related to “hum,” also echoic.

“Haw,” which dates back to the 1600s, is another case of a word imitating a sound, in this case “as an expression of hesitation” (OED). There are fashions in such things, and today we are more likely to say “uh,” “huh,” or “um” when faced with a sudden decision, but the feeling is the same.

So, put together, “hem and haw” vividly describes that moment when our mouth stalls for time while our mind attempts to assess the ramifications of our possible answers, the mental “looking” before the verbal “leaping.” And while it’s annoying to ask a question and be answered with “hemming and hawing,” there’s an argument to be made that the world could do with a little less instant certainty.