Pencil me in.

Dear Word Detective: I was reading nothing in particular about television scheduling the other day when I had one of my word moments, that is, when a word leaps out of the page and begins to play odd tricks in my mind. The word was “slot” and, within moments, it became a description of some kind of Eastern European, perhaps an obscure currency or perhaps even a breed of dog. It certainly looked most peculiar and reeked of Old Norse or something. However, my dictionary could only come up with a feeble stab at something to do with a breastbone, but labeled it “origin obscure.” Any ideas about a word that is probably used a thousand times a day in Las Vegas alone? — David, Ripon, England.

Obscure currency? I assume you’re thinking of the “zloty,” the currency of modern Poland. “Zloty” is actually pronounced something close to “zwah-teh,” and comes from “zloto,” the Polish word for “gold,” which is related to our English word “gold,” both being derived from the Indo-European root “ghel,” meaning “yellow.” As for “breed of dog,” beats me.

There are actually five, count ‘em, five kinds of “slot” in English, each considered a separate word. The oldest, from the 14th century, means “a bolt or bar that secures a door.” Another “slot” means “the track of a animal,” from the same Old Norse root that gave us “sleuth.” Yet another “slot,” now obsolete, meant “a muddy place.” A fourth “slot” means “castle,” but it’s also obsolete and was just a development of the “door bolt” kind of “slot” anyway.

Finally, we have the sort of “slot” you mention, and here things get a little weird. The original meaning of this “slot” when it first appeared in English in the 14th century, adapted from the Old French, was (as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) puts it) “the slight depression or hollow running down the middle of the breast,” especially the hollow at the base of the throat. Interestingly, the Old French word that gave us “slot” was “esclot,” which meant literally “hoofprint of a horse,” which seems a singularly unromantic, if technically plausible, way to describe the hollow at the base of your sweetie’s throat. Incidentally, that same “esclot” root underlies the other sort of “slot,” mentioned above, that means “track of an animal.”

In any case, by the 15th century “slot” had begun to develop its more familiar modern senses, beginning with “an elongated depression or hole in a piece of lumber, etc., where another piece is inserted.” The use of “slot” for the opening in a vending machine where you put coins dates from the late 1800s, and meaning “parking space” from the 1940s.

Perhaps the most dramatic development of “slot” also came in the 1940s, when it was first used to mean (again quoting the OED) “a position in a list, hierarchy, system, or scheme; a position to be filled; a category; a place or division in a timetable, especially in broadcasting” (“Suitable slots are normally of 90 to 120 minutes, with time for commercials to be taken out of this,” 1976). This figurative use of “slot” was almost certainly an outgrowth of the modern mania for organizational and scheduling charts in which predefined categories or spaces (“slots”) remain fairly constant while the data that fills them varies.

Um, OK, I’ll take “frantic and shallow.”

Dear Word Detective: Can you tell me the origin and meaning of “swamp Yankee”? I have heard a few versions; the meaning is sometimes nice, sometimes not so nice. — Evelyn.

Every so often I wonder what Marcel Proust would have come up with had he been exposed to American popular culture. I suspect he would have read your question, dipped his Twinkie in his Yoo-Hoo, and been instantly reminded of the ditty that goes, “Oh be kind to your web-footed friends, for a duck may be somebody’s brother; be kind to the birds of the swamp, where the weather is cold and damp” (pronounced “dahmp,” of course). Or maybe that’s just me.

Not our sort, dear.

Onward. I vaguely recall encountering “swamp Yankee” prior to receiving your question, but I can’t claim to have given the phrase much thought. That’s a bit odd, since “swamp Yankee” is usually used to mean a resident of Southeastern New England, particularly Rhode Island and Connecticut, and I grew up in Connecticut. I did know I was a Yankee, of course, and assumed I fell in the middle of the spectrum delineated by an aphorism usually attributed to E.B. White: “To foreigners, a Yankee is an American; To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner; To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner; To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander; To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter, and in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.” But nobody mentioned swamps.

Then again, growing up in the suburbs, I apparently didn’t fall into the demographic group usually considered “swamp Yankee.” The term seems to have first appeared in print in the 1930s, but is no doubt much older. A scholarly article on “swamp Yankee” by Ruth Schell published in American Speech (the journal of the American Dialect Society) in 1963 defines the term as meaning “a rural New England dweller who abides today as a steadfast rustic and who is of Yankee stock that has endured in the New England area since the colonial days.”

The significance of “swamp” in the phrase is a matter of dispute. Some say the first swamp Yankees were the less desirable immigrants from England in colonial days, relegated to the outskirts of civilization (“the swamps”) by the Puritans. Others interpret the “swamp” as simply referring to the rural, old fashioned way of life preferred by swamp Yankees, in contrast to the frantic and shallow life of the city-dweller.

Whether being a “swamp Yankee” is a good or bad thing depends, as usual, on where one stands. In her article Schell noted that people who might be considered “swamp Yankees” resented the term when applied to them by outsiders, but often used it among themselves. From the “swamp Yankee” point of view, they are preserving the true independent, self-sufficient spirit of New England. Today, to the extent that the term is still used, it seems to have become the New England equivalent of “redneck,” connoting rural living and a lack of sophistication to the broader society, but embraced as a badge of pride by those so labeled.