A dedicated follower of mozzarella.

Dear Word Detective:  A steak dinner is riding on your answer, so no pressure, okay?  I have long heard the term “fashion pate” to describe a person who dresses in the height of current style.  Lately I hear this term as “fashion plate.”  I contend that “pate” is the older original term and “plate” is a modern (last twenty years or so) lazy corruption.  My friend says “plate” is correct, or at least both terms are equally used.  I’d rather buy you the steak than him, so who is correct? — Lloyd Formby.

OK, but can we make it pizza instead? I gave up eating beef almost 20 years ago. It wasn’t much of a sacrifice; even as a kid, I never actually liked the taste. Now I eat a much healthier diet, mostly pizza and doughnuts. And broccoli. I seem to be going through a broccoli phase at the moment. Broccoli pizza would be awesome.

Unfortunately, our hypothetical menu is moot, because your friend is correct: the idiom is “fashion plate.” But the good news is that the explanation for “plate” may prove sufficiently interesting to lure your friend into a second bet to reverse the first. Just challenge him to explain what the “plate” in “fashion plate” originally meant. Hint: it has nothing to do with dinner.

Incidentally, and here’s a bit of a consolation prize, your rendition of the phrase as “fashion pate” actually makes a lot of sense, speaking, as we are, of a person who devotes a great deal of attention to the cut of their clothes. “Pate” is a very old word meaning “head” or “top of the head,” or, by extension, “mind, intellect.” So a “fashion pate” might be a person whose mind is consumed by attention to current fashion, much as a “gear head” is devoted to things mechanical or technological. Making this even more of a close call is the fact that the origin of “pate” (which first appeared in the 14th century) is a mystery, but it may simply be a modified form of “plate,” referring in particular to the top of one’s head.

“Fashion plate” first appeared in print in the mid-19th century, but the word “plate” is, of course, much older. The original meaning of “plate” when it appeared in English in the mid-13th century (ultimately from the Greek “platus,” flat or broad, also the source of “place”) was simply “flat sheet,” as of metal or glass. The use of “plate” to mean “eating dish” was a later 15th century development.

“Plate” has since developed hundreds of meanings, but for our purposes here the most important is “plate” in the sense of “printing plate,” a sheet of flat metal etched or engraved for use in printing onto paper or another surface. From this use developed “plate” meaning the printed page itself, especially a high-quality, heavier sheet of paper used to print illustrations and then either framed or inserted as a separate page into a book.

Such high-quality printed “plates” were also used on advertising placards, in magazines, and wherever eye-catching quality was needed. This made such “plates” a natural for the fashion industry, allowing the latest clothes, etc., to be advertised in upscale magazines and store windows with fine detail and something close to color fidelity. Thus was born the 19th century “fashion plate.”

The extension of “fashion plate” to mean a person who takes great pains to always wear the latest fashions was natural (“You look just like a fashion plate!”), but the term has come to carry a connotation of superficiality and perhaps a implication of desperation in the “plate’s” attention to the latest designer gear. A few years ago, a reader asked me whether a similar phrase for someone obsessed with couture was “clothes horse” or, as she believed, “clothes whore.” It’s “clothes horse” (originally a wooden rack for drying clothes), but we agreed that “clothes whore” was probably more to the point and a lot more fun.

One step ahead of the Sheriff.

Dear Word Detective:  It’s an old expression, but periodically we still see the expression “done a bunk,” a meaning generally attached to a low life who runs out on a spouse, girl friend, or employer, not infrequently with cash or other loot. We’ve seen “bunk” as it refers to trash, falsehoods, and beds, but where do we get the reference to fast-fading ne’er-do-wells? — Oldusedcop.

That’s a great question, evocative of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, The Maltese Falcon and the whole world of “noir” detective novels and films. Unfortunately, as soon as I wrote that sentence I began to worry about Hollywood’s penchant for ruining great films with tawdry and stupid remakes. I’m praying that the plots of those stories are simply too complicated and subtle to hold the studios’ attention, because I don’t think I could survive even hearing of Vince Vaughn playing Sam Spade (probably with Lady Gaga in Mary Astor’s role).

There are actually several “bunks” in English, the oldest of which is “bunk” meaning a sleeping berth aboard a ship or train or, more generally, any bed, especially when two or more are arranged in a tier. This “bunk” dates back to the mid-1700s and is of uncertain origin, but it may have Scandinavian roots and is probably related to “bunker.”

While the roots of that bed “bunk” are murky, the precise origin of “bunk” meaning “nonsense” or “falsehoods” is refreshingly certain. This “bunk” is short for “bunkum,” a simplified spelling of “Buncombe,” a county in North Carolina. Back in 1820, a certain Representative Felix Walker, whose district happened to include Buncombe County, rose on the floor of the US House of Representatives to address the debate of the day, the famous Missouri Compromise, which dealt with slavery in states wishing to join the Union. But as Walker began to speak, it became clear that what he was saying had nothing to do with the issue at hand and was, in fact, irrelevant nonsense. Worse yet, he refused to shut up. Challenged by his colleagues, Walker replied that his constituents expected him to “make a speech for Buncombe,” and started yammering again. Bingo, “buncombe,” later “bunkum” and simply “bunk,” became national shorthand for “nonsense.”

It’s probable that “to do a bunk,” meaning “to run away” since around 1870, comes at least in part from “bunk” in the sense of “nonsense,” especially in an extended use of “bunk” to mean “trickery, dishonesty.” It’s also probable, however, that “to bunk” meaning “to escape, elude,” was strongly influenced by “bunco,” which since the 1870s has been used to mean “a swindle or con, especially one done via dice or playing cards.” The term “bunco” comes from the Spanish “banca,” a card game similar to “monte,” best known in the form “three-card monte,” a swindle (similar to the “shell game”) still played on unsuspecting marks on the streets of New York and other large cities. While “bunco” originally referred to a card swindle, the term quickly came to cover any sort of confidence game or racket, and many urban police departments used to maintain a “bunco squad” whose target was swindlers and con men in general.

So “bunk” meaning “to escape, elude, run away” (“The keeper tried to catch him, but the bad boy did a bunk,” 1870) may well have had two sources, both embodying the sense of dishonesty that “bunk” in this sense implies.