Man’s real best friend.

Dear Word Detective: You’ve explained the word “cool” but the latest rendition seems to be “cool beans.” Do you have any idea why “beans” need to be added to “cool” to mean “excellent” when “cool” alone suffices? Emphasis? But why beans? — Barney Johnson.

Well, why not beans? After all, in the English language, as in life itself, all roads lead to beans. Take the past twenty years of economic life, for instance. First we had the dot-com boom, when many people apparently became rich, and Aeron chairs and four-star restaurants became the rage. Then the “apparently” part kicked in with a vengeance and we found ourselves sitting on packing crates, dining on what? Beans. Then lather, rinse, repeat with the housing boom, but this time we’re plotzed on the curb in our skivvies, chowing down on our little legume pals again. If we’re lucky.

The Great London Bean Exchange, 1775

The English language has never lacked beans, that’s for sure. As the most humble of human foods, beans have long been used as symbols of the trivial aspects of existence, often with reference to the negligible value of a single bean, as in the use of “bean counter” to mean someone obsessed with minor details and ignorant of the “big picture.” Even in large numbers the bean gets no respect, and since the 19th century we have used “hill of beans” to mean something of little or no value (“He didn’t care a hill o’ beans fer no gal,” 1901). “Not to know beans” is the nadir of ignorance, and “not to care beans” is the apex of apathy. “Tough beans!” is another way of saying “Tough luck. Who cares?”

But every dog has his day, and even the lowly bean can prove valuable. So we speak of revealing a secret as “spilling the beans” (from the fact that a basketful of beans, once spilled, are difficult or impossible to retrieve). And while “not to know beans” means to be completely ignorant, “to know beans” has, since the 1800s, meant to be knowledgeable and “with it.” Our ambiguous attitude towards beans is reflected in the expression “full of beans,” which in the 19th century meant “lively, full of energy,” but by the 1940s was also being used to mean “full of nonsense.”

“Cool beans” in the sense of “excellent” or “that’s great” apparently originated as college slang in the US during the 1970s, but many people probably picked it up from the 1980s TV sitcom “Full House,” in which one character habitually used the phrase. It was also apparently used in a Cheech and Chong movie during the same period. I think that what we have in “cool beans” is actually an updating, unconscious among its users, of the colloquial US expression “some beans,” which has been used since the mid-19th century to mean “quite something” or “excellent, awesome” (“By golly, you’re some beans in a bar-fight,” 1850).

One paper jam over the line.

Dear Word Detective: “Out of whack” doesn’t make any sense to me (but it might just be me). I asked a friend, and she suggested that it might come from old cars (mostly Russian) that started up if you gave them a good whack. This explanation makes sense; after all, my (broken) pencil sharpener needs to be whacked before it will start … but I think it might be too perfect. Can you give me some information? — Aife.

A minor adjustment often helps.

Wow. You own a pencil sharpener? I’m not certain that I still even own a pencil. I do have some pens that followed me home from the office about fifteen years ago, but I use them mostly just to write checks. (They’re a special type that writes on rubber.) What never fails to amaze people, however, is the fact that I don’t own a computer printer. If I need to save something from the web, I usually copy it by hand or just draw a picture of it.

All of which brings us back to “out of whack.” Almost every gizmo found in modern life goes kablooey at some point. The toaster decides you like your bagels “cajun style.” The dishwasher suddenly starts bending all your forks. Sometimes the cure for an “out of whack” appliance is as simple as placing it on the curb the day before trash pickup. This method is especially effective on toasters, which are easily intimidated. Other machines, however, are utterly incorrigible. My last printer, for instance, refused to print even after being tossed out a second-floor window.

“Whack” as a verb first appeared in the early 18th century meaning “to beat or strike sharply and vigorously,” and was probably formed in imitation of the sound such a blow would make. As a noun, “whack” started out meaning just such a blow, but soon developed a range of secondary meanings. One of the odder uses was “whack” meaning “a portion, one’s share,” originally slang in the criminal underworld meaning “a share of the proceeds of a crime.” Just how this sense developed is uncertain, but it may have been coined as a play on the “splitting” of the loot. This “fair share” sense then went on to mean “an agreement” (“‘I’ll stay if you will.’ ‘Good — that’s a whack’,” Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer), and, in the 19th century, “in fine whack” and similar phrases appeared meaning “in good order” or, of a person, “in good shape.”

By 1885, the opposite sense had predictably appeared, and a person (or body part) in bad shape was described as “out of whack” (“His liver is out of whack and no mistake,” 1918). Almost immediately the phrase was also applied to mechanical devices (“Being able to get at any part of the mechanism which may be ‘out of whack’ is important,” 1906), which is the most common sense in use today.