Outta here.

Dear Word Detective:  What is the origin of the word “quit”? — Rex.

That’s a good question.  It’s also a topical question, because I imagine that the number of people “quitting” — voluntarily leaving — their jobs has probably taken a nosedive in the current “economic climate,” as the pundits call the mess we seem to be in.  Incidentally, I dread to think what our actual climate would be if, like the picture of Dorian Gray, it reflected the parlous state of our economy.  I imagine a parched, smoldering desert baking under a merciless sun, the silence punctuated only by screeching of vultures and the screams of consumers who have fallen into the pits of scalding quicksand, the horizon barren except for a faded and scorched sign reading “Ozymandias Securities, LLC.”

OK, back to work. Incidentally, vultures don’t screech. The only sound they make is a loud huffing noise, rather like a bull snorting.  I know because a family of vultures lives right outside my window.  They’re very nice.  We’re pals.

OK, really back to work.  “Quit” is a very old word which has, as very old words often do, a wide range of meanings and platoons of interesting relatives.  It all began with the Latin noun “quies,” which meant, as the Oxford English Dictionary enumerates, “sleep, rest, repose, absence of activity, absence of noise, freedom from disturbance, freedom from anxiety, placidness, serenity, tranquility, peaceful conditions.”  “Quies” produced a derivative verb “quiescere,” (to be still or quiet), and its past participle “quietus” gave us our modern English word “quiet.”

One of the key meanings of “quies” and “quietus” was that of “freedom” from war, anxiety, or debt.  When English first adopted the Anglo-Norman word “quit” (a descendant of “quietus”) in the early 13th century, it was in the sense of “free or released from a debt or obligation,” whether legal, financial or personal.  The verb “to quit,” which developed a bit later, carried the sense of “to set free” in general, but soon developed dozens of specific meanings, from “to repay a debt” to “to release from bondage or debt” to “to prove a person innocent of a crime,” a meaning now handled by the related English word “acquit.”  Other derivatives include “requite,” which originally meant simply “to repay, to return,” but which is now found most commonly in the form “unrequited,” as in “unrequited love,” affection which is not shared by its object.  Even our common English word “quite” is derived from “quit,” and originally meant “absolutely, completely” (“free of any opposition”), but has, since the 19th century, been weakened to mean merely “somewhat” or “moderately” (“The woman has quite a fine face, only she dresses … in a potato sack,” Virginia Woolf, 1915).

The most common sense of “to quit” today, that of “to leave,” arose in the 16th century (“We know our exit, And quit the roome,” 1623).  But “to quit” meaning specifically “to leave, resign or withdraw” from a job, line of work, committee, etc., is more recent, dating to the early 17th century (“He was design’d to the Study of the Law; and had made considerable progress in it, before he quitted that Profession, for this of Poetry,” Dryden, 1680).  The use of “to quit” to mean “to stop doing something” (smoking, drinking, gambling, etc.) also first appeared in the 17th century.

I honestly don’t get it.

Dear Word Detective:  After a long night of drinking, I awoke this morning with a pretty nice hangover.  Surprisingly, my brain was still functioning enough to wonder where and how the word “hangover” was coined.  I would imagine it has to do with being hung over a barrel vomiting or some variation of the sort but I’ve also heard it simply means “unfinished business.”  Could you possibly provide a cure to my hangover conundrum? – Carmen, Utica, NY.

Well, there’s another thing I don’t have to worry about.  I keep a list of such things to cheer myself up.  Don’t laugh.  It’s a real help when I check my bank statement or watch the news to be able to say, “At least I don’t have to worry about being eaten by a polar bear.  Or what I’m going to wear to the Oscars this year.”  If you work hard at it (and I do), you can come up with a list of literally thousands of bullets you’ve dodged.  It makes forking over $700 you don’t have for a car part you’ve never heard of (as I recently did) a teensy bit easier.  Always look on the sunny side, I say, albeit through clenched teeth.

In any case, I don’t worry about hangovers because I’ve been truly, utterly drunk only once in my life, when I was 19, and I decided right then never to do it again.  I do remember that hangover quite vividly, however.  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines “hangover” as “The unpleasant after-effects of (especially alcoholic) dissipation,” but even I know that doesn’t do the affliction justice.  A full-blown hangover can include severe nausea, a blinding headache, excruciating sensitivity to light and aching pain darn near everywhere.

Your theory about “hangover” referring to the posture of literally “hanging over” a receptacle while feeling the after-effects of one’s excess makes perfect sense, since that posture is almost universally a low point of the recovery process.  But the “unfinished business” explanation you’ve heard is the dull, but true, source of the word.

When “hangover” first appeared in English at the end of the 19th century, it was in the general sense of, as the OED puts it, “A thing or person remaining or left over; a remainder or survival.”  The “hang” in the word is the verb “to hang” in the meaning of “to remain unsettled or unfinished,” as we might say an unanswered question in a press conference is “left hanging.”  “Over” carries the sense of “surplus” or “left after the finish,” as one might have the “leftovers” of Sunday dinner for lunch on Monday.  This “something left over or left undone from an earlier time” sense of “hangover” is is still in use (“The oversized dormitories … are hang-overs from the old lunatic asylums,” 1973).  But the use of “hangover” to mean “aftermath of excess alcohol,” which first appeared in 1904, is now by far the more popular usage.