Awesome.  Will it work with American Idol?

Dear Word Detective:  I know that “vanish” seems like such a simple word; but somewhere between 1967 (when I was in high school and my dictionary was published) and 1983, this simple intransitive verb became transitive.  It was in 1983 that David Copperfield “vanished” the Statue of Liberty.  That was the first I had ever heard it used transitively, and I am curious when the transitive use first appeared. — Charles Anderson.

Whoa.  1983?  We need to get you a new dictionary.  It’s true that most of the really useful words are in your trusty old friend, and I totally understand loyalty to old books.  I still use the Latin dictionary I was given in high school.  But the great thing about Latin is that they’re not adding many new words to it.  That’s not true in English, where new words and new uses for old words are popping up like worms on the sidewalk after a rainstorm.  Good heavens, man, don’t you want to be able to look up “crowdsource” and “googlebomb”?  “Moofing”?  “Unfriend”?  “Overshare”?  Yeah, me neither.  Wake me when we go back to Latin.

I must have slept through Mr. Copperfield’s “vanishing” of the Statue of Liberty in 1983 (I’m assuming he eventually put it back), as well as whatever usage the transitive “vanish” has enjoyed since, because here in 2009 it strikes me as jarring and strange.  The first thing that popped into my mind when I read your question, in fact, was the use of “the disappeared” to mean the victims kidnapped by the Argentine military junta in the 1970s and never seen again.  The original Spanish term, “los desaparecidos,” translates as “those who have been disappeared,” invoking a similarly unusual transitive use (“to disappear someone”) of a normally intransitive verb.

“Vanish” is an interesting little word, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary in the usual intransitive sense as “To disappear from sight, to become invisible, especially in a rapid and mysterious manner.”  Our English “vanish” is actually an aphetic, or cropped, form of the Old French “esvanir” (meaning “to disappear”), which was derived from the Latin “evanescere,” which also gave us the English word “evanescent” for those things which, like youth and low credit card interest rates, do not last long before vanishing.  Incidentally, within that “evanescere” lies the Latin root “vanus,” which means “empty,” and which also produced “vain” and “vanity.”

“Vanish” first appeared in English as an intransitive verb in the early 14th century, and most of its uses, with or without adverbs (“vanish away” was common usage until the 19th century), have been intransitive.  But Mr. Copperfield and his publicity minions didn’t invent or even pioneer the transitive use of “vanish” to mean “to cause to disappear.”  It turns out to have been puttering along in the background since about 1440 (“Thus are the villains … fled for fear, Like Summers vapors, vanished by the Sun,” Marlowe, 1590), although it’s never been nearly as popular as the intransitive use.  It seems, in fact, to have been used since the 19th century almost exclusively in the field of stage magic (“Then he vanishes a birdcage and its occupant … Finally, he vanishes his wife,” 1886) or in contexts where magic is used as a literary metaphor (“Lenin conjured government by mass-democracy out of sight, ‘vanished’ it as conjurors say … ,” H.G. Wells, 1934).  So Copperfield’s use of the transitive “vanish” was well within the jargon of his craft.

I am not a bug.

Dear Word Detective:  Did the word “delete” exist before computers and, if so, how was it used?  I can’t find anyone who would use “delete” in any other context than in relation to computer files, word processing, etc.  You don’t “delete” your rubbish when you throw it in the bin. You don’t “delete” text on a piece of paper using Wite-Out.  So if “delete” existed before the computer, what did in mean and how was it used? — Mark Chenery.

That’s an interesting question.  But before we get too far into exploring it, I’ll see your question and raise you a bigger one.  What if nothing at all, nada, existed before computers?  What if computers created everything we see, along with false memories of life before computers?  How could you tell?  There is, in fact, a fairly serious scientific debate about the possibility that our entire universe is actually a computer simulation run “from outside,” so to speak.  (See www.simulation-argument.com if you’re curious.)  I am partial to this theory myself because, while deeply depressing on one level, it would at least explain why, every so often, I hear a loud “boing” and the words “Insert another quarter to continue” flash in front of my eyes.

Your question about “delete” is quite understandable because the frequency with which the general public encounters the term has definitely increased dramatically since computers became ubiquitous in the home and business world in the 1990s.  You’d definitely have to search long and hard to find an example of the cheery phrase “accidentally deleted” before that time, and the verb “to undelete” doesn’t appear at all in the written record  before 1981, although the adjective “undeleted” (applied to something which “has not been deleted”) dates back to 1903.  That usage hints at the earlier history of “to delete.”

The root of “delete” was the Latin verb “delere,” meaning “to destroy, wipe out, remove,”  formed from “de,” meaning “away” and “linere,” meaning “to smear or wipe.”  Probably the most famous Latin use of “delere” was in the exhortation “Carthago delenda est!” (“Carthage must be destroyed!”), a rallying cry of Romans, usually ascribed to the statesman Cato the Elder, during the Punic Wars.

When “delete” first appeared in English in the late 15th century, it carried that meaning of “to destroy or annihilate,” but within a few years had acquired the less violent sense of “to obliterate, erase or expunge,” particularly to “cut” a portion of written material (“His Majestie deletted that clause,” 1637).  This is the sense, with extension into film, sound recording and other fields, in which “delete” has most commonly been used ever since.  As someone who worked as a proofreader and editor for years before personal computers became popular, I probably used the word dozens of times every day.

So yes, “delete” has been around for quite a while and in common use.  Of course the invention of a miraculous gizmo (the PC) which could, with the merest brush of a wayward finger (or the paw of a marauding cat) on one’s keyboard, irretrievably vaporize months worth of work has definitely made “delete” a truly household word.