Strike up the fedora.

Dear Word Detective: I ran into an old high school chum recently and was flattered when he said what he remembered from the old days was that I was always neatly dressed: “In fact, you always looked as though you had just stepped from a band box.” I think I knew what he meant but I wondered where that expression came from. I have heard it many times so I know he didn’t just make it up. — John D. Wilson.

Well, you’re ahead of me. I had never heard that expression before I received your question. Nevertheless, my mind, which tends to wander off if not watched closely, immediately concocted its own explanation. It seemed logical that the “band box” in question might be one of those gazebo-like park bandstands one sees in idealized Hollywood renditions of small town life in the 19th and early 20th century. Assuming those movies are accurate (which is, granted, akin to assuming that “King Kong” was a documentary), the bands performing in the “band box” were always neatly dressed in matching striped seersucker blazers and straw boater hats, making them a handy standard of neatness in dress.

Nice theory, isn’t it? Too bad it has nothing to do with the actual origin of “to look as if one came out of a bandbox,” which has meant “to appear very neat and fashionable” since the early 19th century.

The “bandbox” in the phrase is not a gazebo, but what today we would probably call a “hat box,” a thin-walled circular cardboard box used for the storage of delicate hats. The term “bandbox” itself actually dates back to the early 17th century, and the “band” in the word is neither a musical group nor the band often found on today’s hats. At that time, a standard article of fancy dress for both men and women was a “ruff” or elaborately ruffled collar (see here for pictures of ruffs), also called a “band” and often stiffly starched and up to a foot in diameter. The “bandbox” was invented to store these delicate “bands,” and later used, as fashion changed, to protect equally delicate hats, celluloid collars, and the like. Thus, to say that someone “looks as if he just stepped from a bandbox” means that he is dressed as if his clothes were fashionable and meticulously neat, and, by extension, that he is quite a dapper fellow.

A curse, foiled.

Dear Word Detective: A couple years ago I was reading Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings,” in which she tells of, as a young girl, being reprimanded by her grandmother for using the phrase “by the way.” Her grandmother said that this was “taking the name of the Lord in vain.” I’d never heard such an interpretation. Any thoughts? — Andrew C. Buckland.

No thoughts, just a blissful sense of wonder at how weird people can get when it comes to language. This reminds me of the little Texas county that common sense forgot a few years ago, whose civic leaders decided to officially discourage use of the greeting “hello” in favor of “heaven-o” (because then, you see, no one would have to say the word “hell” and consequently end up there, or something).

This is the point at which I admit that I have never read the book in question. But I assume that Angelou’s memory is accurate and her grandmother actually believed that “by the way” was a form of blasphemy (from the Greek “blasphemein,” to speak evil of), which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as “a contemptuous or profane act, utterance, or writing concerning God or a sacred entity.” The remedy throughout history for blasphemy, given that human beings are perennially fond of expressing strong feelings through swearing and oaths, has been the concoction of euphemisms (from the Greek “euphemizein,” to speak pleasantly), superficially inoffensive words that serve as stand-ins for the forbidden. Euphemisms probably don’t fool the relevant deity, but they do spare the sensibilities of the easily offended. Often, in fact, euphemisms eventually become so established that speakers are unaware that the words began as euphemisms. For instance, “gosh,” “golly,” and the “grief” in “good grief” all began as euphemisms for “God.”

In the case of “by the way,” it appears that Angelou’s grandmother was looking for blasphemy-concealed-by-euphemism where none existed. “Way,” with the basic meaning of “road or path,” dates back to the Old English “weg,” and “by the way” has been used as a prepositional phrase meaning literally “alongside the road” since the 9th century. The figurative use of “by the way” to mean “incidentally” (as if “by the side” of the main route of the conversation) has been common since the 16th century, and has never had a religious subtext.

My guess is that Angelou’s grandmother was familiar with “the Way” used to mean Christ’s teachings (a usage found numerous times in the Bible) and had jumped to the conclusion that “the way” in “by the way” is a sneaky way of swearing an oath using Christ’s name. It isn’t.

It was the best of times, it was … KAPOW!

Dear Word Detective: Our seven year-old daughter asked me this morning “why cartoons are called ‘cartoons.’” I, of course, could not answer this question. We were wondering if you could solve our dilemma and answer that question for us. — John and Abigale Divozzo.

Oh, please. Rome wasn’t built by people who announced “I, of course, could not answer this question.” You’re her parents — make something up, perhaps a story involving automobiles and music. By the time she begins to suspect that you were, shall we say, being creative, she’ll be old enough to write to me herself, and together we’ll make fun of you. But seriously, ninety percent of my business comes from people misled by their parents, and it’s only fair that you hold up your end of the deal.

I’m actually a bit surprised that cartoons are still called “cartoons.” There are people, I have lately discovered, who personally resent, and are not shy about saying so, the venerable term “comic book.” Apparently once a comic book reaches a certain page count, it is now properly known as a “graphic novel.” I know this because our local Barnes & Noble recently ripped out an entire section of old-style novels (the kind with line after line of boring old type) and replaced them with “graphic novels.” Sic transit Madame Bovary. Presuming these things eventually end up on school reading lists (a fair bet), what do you suppose the Cliff’s Notes for them will look like?

Onward. There are two kinds of “cartoons,” of course: the static drawings found on editorial pages and in comic strips, and the moving kind (now often known, apparently inevitably, as “animated features”) shown on TV and in movie theaters. The moving kind of “cartoons” take their name from the static drawings, but the use of “cartoon” to mean a humorous or topical drawing published in a magazine or newspaper dates only to the mid-19th century.

Prior to that time, a “cartoon” was a preliminary sketch made on heavy paper by a serious artist, the word being derived from the Italian “cartone,” based in turn on the Latin “charta,” meaning “writing paper” (which also gave us our English words “chart,” “card” and “charter,” among others). Thus, in this sense, major artists of the stature of Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael (“But the sight best pleased me was the cartoons by Raphael, which are far beyond all the paintings I ever saw,” 1878) produced what are now some very valuable “cartoons.”

Level-headed.

Dear Word Detective: The desperate urge to find out the origins of words often creeps up on me, but I can usually work it out myself with the help of dictionaries or your excellent column. However, it recently it suddenly crossed my mind (as it does) that I didn’t know why odd and even numbers were called that. “Even,” OK — smooth, level, equal, etc. — but “being divisible by two” didn’t seem to come up with “even.” And as for “odd,” there’s nothing odd about 3, 5 or 7, any more than 2, 4 or 6, they are just as useful. And, oddly, there is no etymology for “odd” in my dictionaries. Can you help? — David, Ripon, North Yorkshire, England.

So, you’re saying there’s something odd about “even”? “Odd” seems quite a bit odder than “even” to me. Not as odd as otters, of course. Then there are the woodchucks chucking. It’s a wonder I ever get any work done around here. But I dare you to stare at “odd” for a while and not begin to wish you spoke some other language. It’s a seriously weird little word.

Before we get too far into this question, I should explain that I do not understand mathematics. Period. I once had a moment of absolute clarity in ninth grade when I thought I finally understood trigonometry. But the moment lasted all of fifteen minutes, and I’ve been abysmally innumerate ever since. This is relevant because explaining “odd” and “even” necessarily involves a smidgen of math.

Both “odd” and “even” are extremely old words. “Even” harks back to the ancient Germanic root “ebnaz.” It’s not known whether that root meant “equal, the same” or “flat or level,” the two primary meanings of “even” today, but when “even” first appeared in Old English, it carried the primary sense of “level, not sloping.” The application of “even” to numbers as the opposite of “odd,” oddly enough, dates only to the middle of the 16th century. The sense is that an “even” number of things, divided by two, would create two equal amounts with no difference — no slope, so to speak — between them.

“Odd” comes from the old Scandinavian root meaning “triangle,” which led to the Old Norse “oddi” having the sense of “three” (as in sides of a triangle), which evolved into a word applied to an “extra” element added to a pair or the “odd man” who might break a tie vote. The mathematical meaning comes, again, from division by two, which in the case of an “odd” number, results in one being left over and the two parts not being “even.” The use of “odd” to mean “strange” or “unusual” stems from this sense of an “outsider” that doesn’t neatly fit in.

It just takes a smidgen …

Dear Word Detective: I checked your alphabetical listing of words past but it didn’t help. The main problem is that I don’t know how the word would be spelled. I used to hear this term a lot as a youngster in the 1970′s (I believe it was even used in a blue jean commercial at the time), and heard it in “The Drew Carey Show” once in the last 5 years, but I’m considering reviving the word. The word is “skosh” (long o), and it means “a bit” or “a tad,” as in “a skosh more room in the seat of those jeans.” Do you have any history on the origins of this fun term? — Micki Morrison.

Well, you’ve done everything right in asking your question. You checked our archive of back columns, you’ve pinned down a time frame and suggested the venues in which you heard the word, and even supplied the pronunciation. This definitely beats the questions I receive that consist of just one bizarre word (“fisselstorp?”) and a mangled AOL address. By the way, you probably noticed that my web index is not as flawlessly alphabetical as one might wish. I guess I simply wasn’t paying attention for large parts of first grade.

Now all I have to do is pull back the curtain and reveal the answer, which fortunately turns out to be easy in this case. “Skosh,” meaning “a little bit,” is derived from the Japanese word “sukoshi,” which means “a little amount” or “a few.” The Anglicized form “skosh” first appeared in the US in the early 1950s (the first printed citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1955), and it’s likely that the term was imported by US service personnel serving in Japan either in the period of American occupation after World War II or during the Korean War. The word is usually pronounced, as you say, with a long “o.” Interestingly, in the Japanese “sukoshi,” the “u” is not voiced, so the English pronunciation is remarkably close to the Japanese.

You’re also correct about hearing “skosh” used in a TV commercial, one that ran in the late 1970s for the then-new Levis for Men, which featured a “skosh more room” in the seat for the increasingly pear-shaped US couch-potato demographic. Mercifully, most of those guys had stopped wearing bell-bottoms by then.

… to do in a pigeon.

Dear Word Detective: I have a vague recollection from my high school days of one of my profs saying that the term “understanding” is derived from the Greek myth of Atlas, who was punished by being made to hold up the weight of the world on his shoulders, and in so doing heard all the many sufferings of humanity, i.e., he came to “understand” the world. Is that in fact the case, or have I (or my former prof) been misinformed? I have done some research, but have yet to find a resource to support the claim. — Stephen.

Nor are you likely to find one, at least not a credible resource. I’m afraid that your teacher was mistaken, probably repeating a story he had heard elsewhere, possibly one that has been passed around for many years. There is, unfortunately, no shortage of such colorful stories. English etymology, the investigation of word origins, is actually a relatively young science, and until the 19th century it was considered acceptable for dictionary editors and others in the field to simply take their best guesses at a word’s origin, inventing etymologies from whole cloth when necessary. Many of the etymologies found in Dr. Samuel Johnson’s groundbreaking 1755 “Dictionary of the English Language,” for instance, are little more than learned guesses.

But the story of Atlas that your teacher recounted does highlight the very real puzzle at the core of our English word “understand” — how did a word which appears to mean “stand beneath” or “support” come to mean “comprehend”?

The real answer is that the prefix “under” in “understand” is not our normal “beneath” kind of “under” as found in “underground” or “undermine.” The “under” in “understand,” although spelled just like the other “under,” comes from an entirely different Indo-European root word, one that carried the sense of “between or among.” When “understand” first appeared in Old English (as “understandan”), it carried the meaning of “comprehend, grasp the idea or details of something,” but literally meant “to stand among or amidst” something, and thereby be familiar with it.

One minor mystery is why the Old English “understandan” was carried over into our modern English while a more logical candidate, the Old English “forstand,” was not. “Forstand” meant literally “to stand before or on top of” and also carried the sense of “comprehend” (much as we say we are “on top of” a situation today). The answer is, as usual, that our modern English is the product of a committee consisting of many millions of people chattering away over the course of many centuries, and the result is often less than logical.

More or less.

Dear Word Detective: My mother (a full blooded Italian) used to say “come si come sa” (not sure of spelling), and I never knew what that meant. I’ve searched everywhere to no avail. Could you please enlighten me? — Clint.

Take a seat, Clint. I have some possibly rather shocking news. Based on what you’ve told me, there are serious doubts about your mother’s supposed Italian heritage. Believe me, I know just how you feel. For years I presumed I was German because people in my family routinely said “Gesundheit” whenever someone sneezed. It wasn’t until I discovered my dislike of sauerkraut and affinity for cheese on toast that I realized I must be largely Welsh. But I adapted to the news quite well, and now I can quote Dylan Thomas on nearly any occasion (“Time held me green and hey, how about those Mets?”), so I’m sure you’ll be fine.

Anyway, I hope this doesn’t affect your security clearance, but it sounds to me like you’re actually at least part French. “Comme ci, comme ca” (pronounced “kohm see, kohm sah”) is a French phrase meaning, literally, “like this, like that.” In common usage, it means “so so” or “fair to middling,” a term of mild but qualified (and definitely lukewarm) approval, as in “The restaurant got a rave in the Times, but the pan-seared Twinkies the reviewer loved so much were definitely comme si, comme sa.” That which is “comme si, comme sa” is barely adequate, better than nothing but not by much. To use the phrase properly, by the way, you’ll need to extend your palm just above your waist and tilt it from side to side while saying “comme si, comme sa.”

Incidentally, to be absolutely serious for a moment, the fact that your mother used the phrase doesn’t mean that she even knew it was French. While “comme ci, comme ca” is definitely French in origin, it has been in common use in English for long enough (just after World War II, in fact) that it is now considered an established English phrase. Judging by the timing of its appearance in English publications, “comme ci, comme ca” was probably popularized by American GIs returning from service in France.

So, now that you’re in touch with your inner French person, why not sprinkle your speech with a few more “bon mots”? A good French phrasebook will have your friends either green with envy or dialing the funny farm in no time. “Chacon son gout” (shac-un son goo) is a good one, the French equivalent of “tastes vary” or “whatever floats your boat.” But my favorite, for which there is no real English equivalent, is “esprit d’escalier” (literally “wit of the staircase”), meaning the perfect witty reply that pops into your mind just after the opportunity to say it has passed.

Light my tiny monster.

Dear Word Detective: I found the following at geography.about.com: “Between about 30 to 35 degrees north and 30 to 35 degrees south of the equator lies the region known as the ‘horse latitudes’ or the subtropical high. This region of subsiding dry air and high pressure results in weak winds. Tradition states that sailors gave the region of the subtropical high the name ‘horse latitudes’ because ships relying on wind power stalled; fearful of running out of food and water, sailors threw their horses and cattle overboard to save on provisions. (It’s a puzzle why sailors would not have eaten the animals instead of throwing them overboard.) The Oxford English Dictionary claims the origin of the term ‘uncertain.’” I wonder why they wouldn’t eat the doomed animals as well. Do you have any more info? Can you corroborate the throwing of livestock overboard theory? — Sonja.

No, but I can verify that the late Jim Morrison once wrote a poem called “Horse Latitudes” and that a song derived therefrom appeared on the Doors’ “Strange Days” album. Let’s take a little listen: “When the still sea conspires an armor/And her sullen and aborted currents breed tiny monsters/True sailing is dead/Awkward instant/And the first animal is jettisoned/Legs furiously pumping/Their stiff green gallop/And heads bob up/Poise/Delicate/Pause/Consent/In mute nostril agony/Carefully refined/And sealed over.”

Like wow. I think “Mute Nostril Agony” would make a great band name, don’t you?

The only thing that makes the preceding snarkiness even marginally relevant, I must admit, is that Morrison apparently wrote that after seeing an illustration of horses being thrown overboard in high school. (Morrison was the one in high school, of course, not the horses. Horses didn’t go to high school back then.) In any case, Jim’s immortal lyrics are an indication of how widespread the “Golly, we’re becalmed, better drown the horses” theory of “horse latitudes” is today. Theories of motive, however, vary. Some say the hayburners were jettisoned to save water and/or food, some say they were tossed to lighten the ship and make the best of what little wind there was. Neither theory is convincing, and, since horsemeat is still consumed by many folks in parts of Europe, the “saving food” angle makes no sense at all.

Another theory, that “horse latitudes” derives from the Spanish “El Golfo de las Yeguas” (the Sea of Mares) makes a bit more sense. Originally applied to the route between Spain and the Canary Islands, the name arose, depending on which story one believes, either because the ocean winds in that region were unpredictable (supposedly like a female horse), or because breeding mares shipped to the Canaries had a high fatality rate in transit due to the arduous conditions of the trip. If the latter is true, and horses did indeed die of heat or thirst while ships were becalmed elsewhere in the “horse latitudes,” the name could well have spread across the entire ocean.

Still running.

Dear Word Detective: In a recent column you gave an explanation of “on the lam” as originating from a radio newscast in the 1920s. I disagree that this is the origin of the term. I think that the expression of being “on the lamb” originated with the Odyssey of Homer, and more specifically with the section of this epic story in which Odysseus and his men were being held captive in the cave of the one-eyed Cyclops. If you will recall, the men had blinded the Cyclops by putting out his one and only eye. He kept sheep and lambs in the same cave where he kept the captive soldiers imprisoned. The sheep and lambs were let out to graze on a daily basis. They had to pass by the blinded Cyclops in order to leave the cave. He felt the lambs’ woolly bodies and determined that they were sheep or lambs and let them pass by unimpeded. The soldiers, being ever so alert and clever, took ropes and tied themselves to the underside or belly of the lambs. The Cyclops felt the woolly hides of the lambs and let them pass. Therefore the soldiers were able to escape from the cave of the Cyclops by quite literally being tied “on the lambs.” This is the more plausible origin of the term and one which has over 2,000 years of historical precedent. — David M.

Hmm. This is a bit awkward, but as far as I can tell, I have never suggested that “on the lam” originated in a 1920s radio broadcast, although if you were searching on the net for the origin of the term, you may well have found someone who did.

What I did say was that the term “on the lam” first appeared in print in the late 19th century, and that “lam” (from the Old Norse “lamja”) has meant “to beat” in English since the 16th century. “To lam it” in the underworld slang of mid-1800s was the exact equivalent of “to beat it,” i.e., run away so fast that your feet seemed to “beat” the pavement. So to be “on the lam” simply meant to be “on the run,” a fugitive from justice.

Given the phonetic similarity between “lam” and “lamb,” the story of how Odysseus and his men outwitted the Cyclops does furnish an intriguing sidelight to “on the lam.” But there is no evidence that there is any actual connection to the phrase, and a good deal of evidence that there isn’t. There’s the little matter of that 2,000 year gap between Homer’s epic (written between 800 and 600 B.C.) and the appearance of the phrase. There’s also the fact that, to my knowledge, the phrase “on the lamb” or anything similar doesn’t occur in any other language. More importantly, the form “on the lamb” does not appear at any point in English, which would be expected if it had been the original form that later mutated into “on the lam.” But “lam” in the “beat” sense has a long, documented history in English which can be traced in citations right up to the appearance of “on the lam.”

A zippy lede makes light the grafs.

Dear Word Detective: In the newspaper biz, the lead sentence(s) of a story or the most important article of a publication is referred to among journalists as the “lede.” Supposedly this intentionally erroneous variant of the spelling of “lead” is used to avoid confusion in the newspaper operation about whether a note refers to “the first sentences” (pronounced with a long “e”) or “the line spacing” (leading), or the material of which type was made (atomic symbol Pb, pronounced with a short “e”). In journalism classes, students are told that there are many anecdotes about how things got messed up due to confusion about what the writer meant, hence “lede.” But I’ve yet to hear any of those anecdotes and nobody I’ve talked to about it can recall a single one. They “know” that there ARE anecdotes, but don’t know what those stories might be.

The explanation doesn’t make sense to me, as I think a writer’s intentions would be clear from the context in which the word is used, regardless the spelling. In my skeptical view, the explanation is a bit of folklore — a made-up, back-formed explanation that sounds plausible but does not hold up under scrutiny. I have a theory, though, that “lede” is leftover from an earlier spelling of the word (which changed in the 16th century to “lead”), and that editors (being well-known for their curmudgeonly ways regarding language) continued to use the old spelling while the technologists who made and used type adopted the newer “hip” form. Of course, I’ve been wrong about one or two things in the past. What’s your view? Do you know any anecdotes about pressroom confusion or have any sources regarding the derivation of this alternate spelling that would allay my skepticism? — Bob Kalsey.

I admire your skepticism, and I have heard the “confusion” explanation for years, but never a concrete example. Then again, if the seminal mistakes were made by obscure editors (who were then probably sacked), the lack of specifics is understandable.

Moreover, having worked as a proofreader for several years at the end of the “hot type” era, I can vouch for the importance of the distinction between “lead” and “lede.” “Leading” (pronounced like the metal) back then was thin strips of lead used as line spacers in typesetting machines. A proofreader’s (or editor’s) quick note to “fix lead” could mean thus either that the first paragraph is garbled (poorly written or set in the wrong type) or that the lines are incorrectly spaced, two very different problems. And take it from me, typesetters working on a deadline hate ambiguity (often at top volume) and are not in the business of judging context to decode “lead.” So I tend to believe the “avoid confusion” explanation.

The most important article on a front page is actually usually spelled “lead” (or called the “leader” in the US), by the way (so every “lead” has a “lede”). The “leader” in a British newspaper is the main editorial.

Roll out the barrel.

Dear Word Detective: My first job out of college involved giving people tours of an old medical school building at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. In the corner of one of the rooms was an old barrel — supposedly to carry dead bodies from the graveyard to the med school where students would dissect them. The story goes that the barrel would have whiskey in it so that if the gravediggers were stopped on the street, they could tap the barrel and prove to the officer that it was a delivery of alcohol going to the local bar. Once the body was removed at the school, the gravediggers would either drink the whiskey themselves or sell it cheap to the students. This booze was called “rot gut whiskey” since the dead bodies would have been in the early state of deterioration. This is the story that I told to hundreds of people during these tours. Now I wonder — is this the right source for the term “rot gut whiskey” or was I spreading an urban legend without knowing it? — Michelle Wilkinson, now in Seattle.

That’s an interesting question, but first, I have my own story. Last summer our neighbor sold his house to a fellow who was delighted that the land included, among other things, a small pond stocked with fish. “Hey, now I can shoot my own fish,” the buyer said. The seller thought he was joking. But a mere twelve hours into his occupancy we heard this clown blasting away at the poor fishies. Not quite “shooting fish in a barrel,” but close enough.

That story, by the way, is true, which is a quality the one about “rotgut” you heard (and innocently spread) does not share. And unlike superficially plausible word-origin fables that can be difficult to debunk, this one can be deflated as easily as shooting fish in a pond. It’s full of glitches.

Glitch Number One is the fact that “rotgut” as slang for adulterated or very low quality liquor or beer first appeared in print in 1633. The website of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, however, informs us that “The School of Medicine was established in 1807,” the same year the University itself was founded. Oops.

Glitch Number Two is that the story makes no real sense. While cadavers were, historically, sometimes obtained by medical researchers and others by less than straightforward means (Michelangelo, for instance, is said to have stolen corpses to study anatomy), the “stiff-in-the-barrel” plan is awkward, overly elaborate and, thus, almost certain to “leak” (yuk yuk) to the police.

Glitch Number Three is that the story is utterly unnecessary. “Rotgut” whiskey (or beer) is so-called because it was so crudely made that it was suspected (quite rightly) of damaging (“rotting”) the innards (“guts”) of its drinker.

The only remaining question is who put that bogus barrel in the corner.

Drip drip drip.

Dear Word Detective: Over the years, as I drive through different towns, and in my own town, I have noticed different fire houses called “Water Witch” instead of “fire house.” I am very curious about the origin of this name for a fire house. I assume the word “water” refers to the pumpers that may be housed there and then used for a fire call, but how does the word “witch” work its way into it? I have inquired with many different volunteer fire fighters and not one of them seem to know the answer to this question. — Anne C.

The mind is a remarkable thing, especially what’s left of mine. Although I can’t seem to remember my own phone number half the time I need it, I was only part way through reading your question when what should pop into my so-called brain but a ghost story I must have read when I was no more than twelve years old. It’s called “The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall,” by John Kendrick Bangs, and I actually found it online. Re-reading it made me feel sorry for the ghost all over again.

“Water witch” as a term for a fire house is a new one on me, but evidently far from new to a lot of other people. It seems most widespread in New England and elsewhere on the east coast of the US, and must have been a fairly common term in the 17th and 18th centuries. At least three engine companies in the Fire Department of New York City had “water witch” in their names in the mid-1800s, for instance.

The oldest sense of “water witch” is, not surprisingly, the literal, i.e., “a witch inhabiting a body of water,” a use dating back to at least 1680. The word “witch” itself is derived from the Old English word “wicca,” which back then meant “wizard” but today is better known as the name of a neo-pagan religion.

But the most common use of the term “water witch” today (and since at least the mid-18th century) is for, as John Bartlett put it in his 1859 Dictionary of Americanisms, “A person who pretends to have the power of discovering subterranean springs by means of the divining rod” (a process also known among believers as “dowsing”). The use of “water witch” as a name for a fire company thus refers to its ability to furnish water with which to fight fires. “Water Witch” is also fairly popular as a name for both pubs in Great Britain and the US and various kinds of pumping and drilling machinery. It was also the name of three 19th century US Navy ships.