For whom the clinker clanks.

Dear Word Detective: I’ve pondered the question and I’ve done a little research on the internet only to find conflicting opinions on the subject. So I write to you, the master, to give me an answer to the question. Is it “all told” or “all tolled”? Even newspapers frustrate me on this one (not that they don’t frustrate me with their news as well). — L. Fiske.

Master, eh? So how come I can’t get my own dogs to do simple things, such as mowing the lawn? All they’re willing to do is wash dishes, and the plates smell funny afterward.

But since we seem to be in the mood for a pronouncement, here it is: the standard idiom is “all told,” not “all tolled,” and has been since it first appeared in the mid-19th century. What you have stumbled upon is a classic “eggcorn,” the substitution of a word or words that sound similar (or in this case exactly the same, “tolled” and “told” being homophones) to the “correct” words. The term “eggcorn” was coined in 2003 by linguist Geoffrey Pullum in regard to someone online using “eggcorn” instead of “acorn.” The key feature of an “eggcorn” is that the substitution makes a certain weird sense, as in the case of “eggcorn” itself. An acorn is indeed rather egg-shaped, and is a seed, as is corn, so if one has heard “acorn,” but never seen the word in print, writing it as “eggcorn” is not entirely crazy. The substitution of “for all intensive purposes” for “intents and purposes” is another semi-logical classic eggcorn.

“All tolled” is not only an eggcorn for “all told,” it’s apparently one that some people (according to the excellent Eggcorn Database) are willing to defend as the “correct” form. Their argument is that “tolled” means “added up,” which it does not and never has. “To toll” (of which “tolled” is the past tense) means “to ring a bell,” or (rarely) “to demand a tax or charge” (as at a toll booth). The noun “toll” means “tax, charge or levy.” The use of “toll” in “death toll” and similar phrases as a metaphorical equivalent of “price” does not mean that “to toll” means “to sum up.”

“All told,” on the other hand, does sound a bit odd. At first glance, “all told” seems to imply that whatever is being summed up is a sort of story being narrated or “told,” and when the story-telling is finished one says “all told,” a weirdly abrupt equivalent of “game over.”

But “tell” (of which “told” is the past tense) didn’t originally mean “to narrate.” Rooted in the Old English “tellen,” it meant “to count” or “to keep track of,” a sense we still use when we “tell time” and which underlies the word “teller,” a person who keeps track of money in a bank. “All told” embodies this archaic sense of “tell” in the past tense to mean “all counted and added up, in summation.” So “all told” can be properly used in a numerical sense (“All told, twelve football players were arrested”) as well as a more figurative sense of “the end result” (“All told, it was a pretty successful day”). Interestingly, the evolution of “to tell” from meaning “to count” to meaning “to narrate a story” is paralleled by another common word, “recount” (as well as “account” for the story itself).

It was the late Lord Wobbly’s favourite colour.

Dear Word Detective: I can´t find the meaning of the phrase “steady the Buffs.” It occurs in the play “An Inspector Call” by J.B. Priestley, but I’ve looked it up in many reference books and it was a waste of time. If you can find the meaning for me, I would appreciate it very much. — Mabel Susana Galinanes, Argentina.

A waste of time? Oh, I beg to differ. Searching through reference books may not produce the answer to your particular question, but one almost always learns something in the process, even if it’s only the specific gravity of tuna salad or how to hypnotize a wildebeest. And you never know when you may need to know how to tie a half-over whiptailed hitch knot. Granted, that’s not very likely since I just made that up and can barely tie my own shoes. But I do know how to start a stalled car using only a credit card and a cell phone.

I have never read Mr. Priestley’s play, but from summaries I gather it is set in 1912 (although it was written in 1945) at an upper-class family dinner interrupted by the visit of a inspector (perhaps from the police; perhaps, he said ominously, not) inquiring about the death of a local working-class girl. The use of the phrase “steady the Buffs” in the play is apparently one of many not-very-subtle signals that these are indeed prosperous folk.

“Steady the Buffs” is a catchphrase meaning “stay calm, be careful, and persevere,” an expression of encouragement offered to someone in trying circumstances. The phrase itself dates back at least to the late 19th century, when it was popularized by Rudyard Kipling in his short story collection “Soldiers Three.” “Steady” in the phrase is the well-known nautical command, meaning “steer steady,” i.e., maintain the current course and speed.

The “Buffs” takes a bit more explaining. It’s capitalized in the phrase because “the Buffs” is the nickname of the East Kent Regiment of the British Army, a famous unit that dates back to the 16th century. The regiment’s nickname refers to their uniform jackets in the 19th century, which sported facings (trim on the collars, cuffs, etc.) of a “buff,” or light yellowish-tan, color. “Buff” as the name of a color comes from the tanned hides of buffalo (the Asian sort, not the American bison) used as outerwear; “buff” meaning “enthusiast” comes from “fire buffs” in 19th century America, volunteer firefighters (or just wannabe firefighters) who wore such coats to conflagrations.

The exact origin and logic of the phrase “steady the Buffs” is a bit unclear, although given the illustrious history of the unit there is no lack of stories set in pitched battle against an implacable foe in which a commander encouraged his men with the phrase. After Kipling popularized it, it became a common way to say “carry on and don’t panic,” especially among the upper classes.

Wassamatta, you don’t wanna buy “Dictionary Ringtones”?

Dear Word Detective: I’ve checked your archive (I still think you should charge for access and password-protect it!) for “vamp” and “revamp”(as verbs) but found nothing (verb or noun). We’re revamping our website and I wondered if we ever really “vamped” it in the first place. Can you explain? — John R. Pearson.

You mean I should try to make money from the internet? Never! If everyone did that, next thing you know there’d be flashing ads all over the place and even junk email (can you imagine?) and all sorts of wicked people trying to scam their fellow cybernauts. No, I like the internet just the way it is: dignified, rigorously non-commercial and free. By the way, 1994 says to say hello.

I suspect that the first order of business is to explain that “revamp” has nothing to do with “vampire,” which the Oxford English Dictionary cheerfully defines as “A preternatural being of a malignant nature (in the original and usual form of the belief, a reanimated corpse), supposed to seek nourishment, or do harm, by sucking the blood of sleeping persons.” The word “vampire” comes from Slavic roots meaning “A preternatural being…” and so forth. Persons who exploit others for personal gain are also sometimes called “vampires,” and a “vamp” in movies of the 1920s and 1930s was a woman who seduced and exploited men. “To vamp” as a verb can mean to behave like a “vamp” or, in Black English in the US, “to attack or victimize.”

The “vamp” in “revamp” is of a far more pedestrian origin. A “vamp” is the portion of a shoe (or stocking) covering the front of the foot. The word dates to the 13th century in English, and is derived from the Old French “avantpie,” meaning “in front of the foot.”

For most of human history, boots and shoes have represented a substantial investment, and it was not uncommon to have the “vamp” of one’s shoes replaced periodically, giving the pair a new life. Thus “revamp,” meaning this process, first appeared in English back in the mid-19th century, and quickly took on the figurative meaning of “make new again, renovate, revise or remake” (“He had to keep on procuring magazine acceptances and then revamping the manuscripts to make them presentable,” Mark Twain, 1878).

Oddly enough, there is a figurative sense of the “shoe” kind of “vamp,” but rather than meaning “build for the first time,” it has always meant basically the same thing as “revamp” (renew, revise), so it has never been as popular as “revamp,” which has that handy “re” prefix signaling that something is being done again.

Whipped cream works wonders with our cats, by the way.

Dear Word Detective: You know how hard it is to get a cat to do anything it doesn’t want to. So this morning I asked my cat to get off my robe and I actually said “pretty please,” and then, just to increase my humiliation, added “with tuna on top” (hey — she’s a cat). Where the heck did the phrase “pretty please” come from, and when and why did we feel the need to start adding sugar on top? — Jackie.

Ah, cats. Lovely pets, I hear. Someday I hope to have one or two. Oh those? Those aren’t cats. Those are demons from another dimension sent to rob me of my sanity by destroying the furniture and smashing every bit of crockery in the house, and then lying peacefully amidst the wreckage as if to say, “Don’t look at us, we’re just little cats, it must have been that idiot dog again.” It’s all a lie, of course. I once watched an eight-week old kitten throw a ten-pound dictionary across the room.

“Pretty please” is a phrase used, as the Oxford English Dictionary notes,”in emphatically polite or imploring request[s].” “Pretty please with sugar on top” is Extra Strength Pretty Please, deployed by children and desperate adults in an appeal for cooperation when all other entreaties have failed.

Plain old “please” used in requests (“Please send money”) is an adverb, based on the verb “to please” meaning “to be agreeable or pleasant,” derived from the Latin “placere” (“to be pleasant”). The “request” use of “please” probably originated as a shortened form of the phrase “if it pleases you [to do whatever].”

“Pretty” primarily means, of course, “attractive,” and is rooted in the Old English “praettig,” which meant “clever.” In the 16th century, “pretty” came into use as an adverb meaning “to a considerable extent” (“Bob’s pretty sick”) or, as an adjective, “substantial” (“That boat must have cost a pretty penny”). In the phrase “pretty please,” “pretty” functions as an intensifier, ratcheting up the strength of the “please” to signify that the speaker really, really wants whatever it is they’re asking for. “With sugar on top” turns the urgency dial up to eleven.

The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for “pretty please” is from 1913, and the earliest for “pretty please with sugar on top” is from 1973. But my guess is that “with sugar on top” actually arose much earlier, at least by the 1950s. While sprinkling sugar on food has a long history, it was in the 1950s when ready-made sugar-coated breakfast cereal became popular, and the phrase may have been spawned then in imitation of advertising (“Ask Mom for Choco-Balls — the ones with with sugar on top!”) for such wholesome fare.

“Pretty please with sugar on top” was always a bit excessive coming from a child, and on the lips of an adult is often meant as sarcasm, as in Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction, where a character says, “I need you guys to act fast if you want to get out of this. So pretty please, with sugar on top, clean the [bleeping] car.”

But then my get-up-and-go got up and went.

Dear Word Detective: When I was growing up in Yorkshire, in the 1940s, “gumption” was commonly understood to mean “common sense,” or “street smarts.” I have since moved to Canada, where “gumption” seems to be a synonym for “courage” or “nerve.” I would be interested to see how this word could have acquired two such different meanings among people of the same basic heritage. — Brian Whitehead.

Well, there you go. You just happened to have lived through a time when the meaning of a common word changed substantially. It happens all the time, actually, although the last two centuries, and indeed the past few years, have seen some especially breathtaking linguistic transformations. When I was a boy, for instance, a “mortgage” was a rather boring long-term loan you wheedled from your local bank in order to buy a house. A “mortgage” these days, however, appears to be a very expensive ticket in a high-stakes national lottery run by people who make the Mafia look like Boy Scouts. Google “Countrywide” if that seems an overstatement.

The difference in the meaning of “gumption” between Yorkshire in the 1940s and Canada today is more a result of time passing than of your move to a new continent. The word “gumption” itself first appeared in English dialects in the early 18th century, imported from Scots, where it meant “common sense” or “shrewdness.” The roots of “gumption” are uncertain, but it may well be connected to the Middle English “gome,” (in Scots, “gaum”) meaning “attention or notice,” perhaps based on the Old Norse “gaumr.”

In English, “gumption” thrived with the meaning you knew as a lad, “common sense” or “smarts” (“Tis small presumption To say they’re but unlearned clerks, And want the gumption,” 1719). By the early 19th century, however, “gumption” had acquired the added sense of “drive, initiative” (“If they … show pluck and gumption they … get promoted,” 1889). The addition of “initiative” to the meaning “common sense” wasn’t much of a leap, as the two personal characteristics often travel together. And it was probably no accident that “gumption” was first used to describe someone who had both good sense and the drive to succeed in the 19th century, a period of the rapid expansion of mercantile capitalism. It was a period of unprecedented class mobility, when a lowly clerk with gumption could, with a bit of luck, become successful in business.

“Gumption” gradually lost the meaning of “street smarts” in the course of the 19th century (although that usage is still heard in certain parts of England), and now is used to mean simply “initiative” or “ambition.” Interestingly, however, another relative of that Middle English root “gome” (meaning “smarts” or “understanding”) is alive and well, albeit in a negative sense. To be “gormless” is to be clueless, empty-headed and hopelessly dense.

You have the right to remain our top story for the next six months….

Dear Word Detective: All the media and late-night jokesters are having a field day with the latest OJ escapade, of course. Several times I’ve heard or seen the phrase “this time they’ve got him dead to rights,” and I think we all understand what it means. The nearest thing to it in your archives is “caught redhanded,” which is not quite the same thing, nor is “they’ve got the goods on him this time!” But when I (figuratively) stand back and look at “got him dead to rights” it seems a rather strange construct — don’t you think? Anyway, did a specific author (like Mark Twain, or A. Conan Doyle, maybe) originate the phrase? Or just when and where did it come from? — Ken in Houston.

OJ who? Oh, right. Gosh, you know, there are times I almost regret my decision to stop watching TV news a couple of years ago. This isn’t one of them. Not that my tele-exile does much good. Despite my best efforts to avoid details of the Simpson kerfuffle, the basic facts of it seem to have seeped into my noggin by osmosis. Perhaps my fillings are picking up Fox News again.

In any case, just going by what the voices in my head tell me, Mr. Simpson does seem to have been caught “dead to rights,” which is to say that there is no reasonable argument that he did not do what he is said to have done and that, in a just universe, he would be, as the legal scholars put it, “toast.”

“Dead to rights” is indeed an odd expression, dating at least to the mid-19th century, when it was first collected in a glossary of underworld slang (“Vocabulum, or The Rogue’s Lexicon,” by George Matsell, 1859). The first part of the phrase, “dead,” is a slang use of the word to mean “absolutely, without doubt.” This use is more commonly heard in the UK, where it dates back to the 16th century, than in the US. “Dead” meaning “certainly” is based on the earlier use of “dead” to mean, quite logically, “with stillness suggestive of death, absolutely motionless,” a sense we still use when we say someone is “dead asleep.” The “absolutely, without doubt” sense is also found in “dead broke” and “dead certain.”

The “to rights” part of the phrase is a bit more complicated. “To rights” has been used since the 14th century to mean “in a proper manner,” or, later, “in proper condition or order,” a sense we also use in phrases such as “to set to rights,” meaning “to make a situation correct and orderly” (“Employed all the afternoon in my chamber, setting things and papers to rights,” Samuel Pepys, 1662). In the phrase “caught dead to rights,” the connotation is that every formality required by the law has been satisfied, and that the apprehension is what crooks in the UK used to call a “fair cop,” a clean and justifiable arrest. (“Cop,” from the Latin “capere,” to seize, has long been used as slang for “to grab” as well as slang for a police officer.) Of course, there’s many a slip ‘twixt the cop and the lips of the jury, so we shall see. Wake me when it’s over.

Beyond cold feet.

Dear Word Detective: I know that “put the wind up” means to make someone nervous or upset, but wonder about the origin. I had an elderly aunt who often complained of feeling cold air flowing up her nose (of such tales are word origins made) and have found myself using the phrase “put the wind up someone’s nose” which I now think was my own elaboration. But the question of what or who the wind is being put up and why and where the concept originated remains. — Alex Pirie.

And a great question it is. “Put the wind up,” meaning “to alarm or make nervous,” as well as its close cousin “to get the wind up” (to become alarmed), both date to just after World War I, and are more often heard in the UK than in the US. The origin of the phrases apparently lies in the armed services slang of WWI (“Shells so close that they thoroughly put the wind up a Life Guardsman in the trench with me,” Wilfred Owen, 1918). But both phrases are still very popular, as can be seen in a recent headline from the UK-based technical website The Register, reporting on US alarm at the theft of a UK government computer containing various secrets: “MoD laptop thefts put the wind up the US.”

Evidently, the origin of “put the wind up” is considered a bit of a mystery. The Oxford English Dictionary is silent on the matter, and most of my reference works don’t even mention the phrase.

I hesitate to even suggest this, because I fear it will awaken the demented munchkins of CANOE (the Committee to Ascribe a Naval Origin to Everything), but it occurred to me upon reading your question that “put the wind up” might have something to do with the age of sail, when the wind rising and filling the sails of a becalmed ship would cause it to begin to move. Perhaps, metaphorically, “put the wind up” described a similar process in an individual.

Fortunately, I don’t have to limp home on my lame theory, because the eminent etymologist of slang Eric Partridge came up with a far better explanation years ago. In his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, Partridge related (and endorsed) the theory of one of his readers that the phrase comes from a sardonic parody of a standard British Army marching song of the WWI period called “The British Grenadiers.” The “improved” version, popular among enlisted men, contained the lines “Father was a soldier, at the Battle of Waterloo, the wind blew up his trousers, and he didn’t know what to do.” Soldiers sang this song as they marched off to war, and soon, according to this theory, anyone who was flustered or anxious was said to “have the wind up his trousers,” eventually shortened to “have (or get) the wind up.” As Partridge’s correspondent notes, the fact that the song definitely existed, and contained those words, makes this theory highly likely to be true.

Copy editor (with time machine) needed.

Dear Word Detective: In Craig Wilson’s September 12, 2007 column in USA Today, he quoted liberally from a new book of quotations compiled by one Elise Lufkin. The book is called “Not Bartlett’s.” Here’s Lufkin’s quote from Mark Twain: “Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.” Clever and pithy, but I’m suspicious that the included phrase “who are putting us on” wasn’t yet current in Mark Twain’s time. I’ve tried doing Internet research on it, and I did find the quote attributed to Twain in at least one additional web site (what you might call a “site cite sighting”) but I continue to have my doubts. Can you trace back when “putting me on” became what it is today? — Jerome Norris.

That’s a good question (or, as Shakespeare once put it, “Totally awesome question, dude!”). “To put someone on” means, of course, “to pretend, to conduct a ruse or a hoax, often as a joke” (“Has it ever occurred to you, Oedipa, that somebody’s putting you on? That this is all a hoax?”, Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, 1966). “Put” itself is, as one might suspect, a very old word, derived from the Old English “putian,” but where that Old English word came from is a mystery. As the centuries passed “put” developed a variety of meanings reflecting the general sense of “push” or “place,” and began to sprout figurative meanings as well. Many of these are older than one might suspect. “To put down,” meaning to snub or insult, for instance, dates back to around 1400.

As for that quotation attributed to Mark Twain, there are really two questions: could he have said it, and did he actually say it? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to either question. “To put on” meaning “to feign or pretend” (probably from donning a disguise or costume in order to deceive) dates back to at least the 17th century, well before Twain’s time. But the form in which it was commonly used prior to the 1950s was “to put on [something]” with the “something” being the object of the verbal phrase “put on” (“That voice is put on,” 1806). The earliest written attestation of the form “put someone on,” with the object of the verb being the deceived person, dates only to 1958. So Twain saying “putting us on” is very unlikely, although not absolutely impossible.

As to the second question, I found about 19,000 instances of that exact quotation online via Google, but exactly zero occurrences in several reputable collections of quotations. Given that Twain was the source of dozens of famous quotations, such an omission seems unlikely. Far more likely is that someone fabricated the quote and attached Twain’s name, it spread out over the internet, and Ms. Lufkin didn’t bother to check its provenance before she stuck it in her book. I wish I were more shocked by such a possibility.

Twain, incidentally, is often credited with things he didn’t say, including “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics,” which Twain himself credited to Benjamin Disraeli. The debunking site Snopes.com, in fact, devotes an entire page to bogus Twain quotes at www.snopes.com/quotes/twain.asp.

Next best thing to a bacon milkshake.

Dear Word Detective: Speaking, as you recently were, of authors’ using arcane words, I have stumbled upon a puzzler in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel, The White Company. The tale is set in 14th century England and France, and is rife with what I suppose are 14th century terms and tricks of speech. Most can be worked out with relative ease, but I have been stumped by the phrase “a mortress of brawn.” The reference is clearly to the main component of a hearty dinner, and a dictionary hunt suggests that “brawn” is probably (but not unequivocally) pork. The “mortress” part, however, eludes me, although it evidently refers to either the quantity or the cut of the meat. Even the (Compact) Oxford English Dictionary (OED) does not appear to shed light on it. Can you? — Mike Lucey, Troy, NY.

I’ll give it a shot. I guess if the Compact OED contained words as obscure as “mortress,” it wouldn’t be very compact. What we need is the full-bore 20-volume OED, and here I’m going to let you in on a little secret. There’s a good chance that your local public library subscribes to the electronic edition of the OED. My local library here in Ohio even allows access to it from home via the internet.

Your hunch about “brawn” is correct. Derived from the Old French “braon” (fleshy part, muscle, hind leg), “brawn” first appeared in English in the 14th century with the general sense of “part of the animal suitable for roasting.” In England in particular, “brawn” almost always referred to pork. The sense of “brawn” meaning “muscle” gave us “brawny” in the 16th century meaning “muscular, strong” in both literal and figurative senses (“Liberty is … the brawn of national strength,” 1883).

While “brawn” remains in common usage, “mortress” is considered archaic and obscure today. A “mortress” was a thick soup made with meat or fish (so a “mortress of brawn” would most likely be a pork soup). “Mortress” (and its cousin “mortrel”) entered English in the 14th century from the Middle French “morterel,” which was then a mixture of bread and milk. The root of all these words was the Latin “mortarium,” mixing bowl or mortar (as in the mortar and pestle once used by pharmacists to crush and mix drugs), reflecting the sense of food that had been crushed in a mortar (or, in the case of meat, finely minced).

Incidentally, the name of the kind of cement called “mortar” used between bricks, as well as that of the artillery piece called a “mortar,” both come from the same “mortarium.” The cement sort refers to the mixing of its ingredients in a “mortar,” while the “boom” sort harks back to the resemblance of early artillery mortars to the pharmacist’s mixing bowl.

Need… more… cake!

Dear Word Detective: We were touring someone’s new home when they showed us a little room off of the kitchen. Our hostess called it her “larder.” I would have called it a “pantry.” My British friend said it was more of a “still room.” Ok, what is going on? Why all these different names? Is it possible to have a pantry, larder and still room all in one house? — Margherita Wohletz.

Sure, why not? I once lived in a house with two kitchens. And the house I grew up in had what we called a “butler’s pantry,” a sort of little anteroom between the kitchen and the dining room where the dishes and bowls, etc., were kept. Also the gloves, hats, hammers and other tools, overcoats, mismatched shoes, and various dead appliances. If you misplaced something in that house, it was most likely to be found in the butler’s pantry. It’s a shame we never had room for an actual butler.

I would have guessed that whatever term the hostess used for her little room was what either the architect or real estate agent called it, but it’s a bit hard to believe a “Realtor” (a trademarked term, by the way) would use the leaden term “larder.” These are the folks, after all, who transformed the “dead end street” into the fashionable “cul de sac,” and they have an ear for hoity-toity locutions. In any case, “larder” is the oldest of the three terms, appearing in English in the early 14th century, and originally meaning, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, “a room or closet … in which meat and other provisions are stored.” A closet full of meat may strike us today as questionable, but “larder” does come from the Latin “lardum” (pork fat, bacon). The meat in question, however, was almost certainly originally bacon or other cured pork products, making refrigeration less critical. “Larder” today is primarily used figuratively to mean “supply of food” or “livelihood” (“Bob’s job was boring, but it kept the larder full”).

“Pantry” appeared in English just a few years after “larder” in the 14th century, and originally meant a small storeroom for bread and other provisions, rooted in the Old French “paneterie,” literally “bread room” (“panis” being Latin for “bread”). The purview of “pantry” was expanded over the centuries, and today a pantry can be used to store canned goods, dishes, silverware and other non-food items.

“Still room” is a new one on me, but if I ever live in a house with a pantry again, I’m definitely going to call it a “still room.” The “still” in this term, which dates back to the early 18th century, was a distilling apparatus, and the “still room” was the place where the kitchen staff would distill various liqueurs and cordials, as well as put up preserves, etc. In 19th century usage, the “still room” was where desserts as well as liqueurs were kept and tea and coffee prepared. I think your friend should forget that “larder” business and call her little room a “still room.”

The ghost in the carburetor.

Dear Word Detective: I was surprised to see no discussion of “gremlin” in your archives. I saw it recently in reference to unusual or bad automobile names. American Motors made a model called the Gremlin (which has the meaning of throwing a monkey wrench into things, I believe). I remember cartoons of gremlins as a child during WWII, which, I guess, dates me. — Maxwell M. Urata, MD.

Whoa, flashback. American Motors Corporation did indeed produce a car called the Gremlin, the first sub-compact auto produced in the US, from 1970 through 1978. The Gremlin, while supposedly not a bad little crate mechanically, was (in my opinion) just about the ugliest car ever made, resembling a mousy little sedan with its back end lopped off by a chain saw. It’s no wonder that in the years since its demise the Gremlin has become an iconic cultural symbol of lameness. Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons, for instance, owns a Gremlin.

Not to belabor the point, but one really must wonder what the AMC people were thinking when they named a car, already so clearly fated to elicit snickers from the public, after a creature famous for causing mechanical breakdowns. A “gremlin” is a sort of goblin for the industrial age, a mischievous supernatural creature that causes problems or failure in any sort of machine, especially airplanes. The term apparently originated as Royal Air Force slang during WWII, where mechanical problems with no known cause were chalked up to “gremlins” messing with the planes. The roots of the word “gremlin” are unknown, but one plausible suggestion traces it to the Irish “gruaimín,” which apparently means “mean-tempered little fellow.” The “lin” ending of “gremlin” probably owes a bit to “goblin” as well.

“Gremlin” percolated out of military slang as the war ended, aided by a famous children’s book written by Roald Dahl called “The Gremlins: A Royal Air Force Story,” and burrowed into popular culture. One classic 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” featured a pre-Star Trek William Shatner as an airline passenger who spots an actual gremlin, looking a bit like an albino monkey, tearing up the wing of the plane (“Gremlins! Gremlins! I’m not imagining it, he’s out there! Don’t look, he’s not out there now. He jumps away whenever anyone might see him, except me.”). Gremlins were also featured in Gremlins (1984) and the inevitable Gremlins 2 (1990), two Hollywood movies that proved it’s possible to make an evil supernatural creature boring.

“Gremlin” was pressed into service among California surfers in the 1960s to mean an inexperienced surfer, and more recently among skateboarders in an equivalent sense, probably reflecting the idea of “small annoyance” more than anything really destructive. Meanwhile, computers have become the new abode of gremlins, and while software companies may blame “bugs” and issue “patches” to fix the problems, the rest of us suspect that the gremlins will always find a new way to screw things up.

From the folks who brought you Collateralized Dust Bunnies.

Dear Word Detective: I am looking for the origin of the word “charlatan.” Thus far I have found its occurrence in early Italian usage and a possible link in Latin. Are there any roots going further back? In Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit? — Abbie Lipschutz, Houston, Texas.

Perhaps. We shall see. But before we delve into the details, I think we should take a moment to bask in the beauty of the word “charlatan” itself. It’s the pronunciation (“SHAR-lah-tan”) that really sings. “Charlatan” sounds as if it should be a kind of fine fabric or knit, or even an expensive automobile (“Like it, Kenny? It’s a twelve-cylinder Charlatan coupe, one of the only six ever made”).

Unfortunately, it was not to be. A “charlatan” is, of course, a crook, a con artist, an impostor, a quack, a promiser of one thing and deliverer of something quite different and invariably quite useless. “If “Charlatan” were really a car maker, its product would have four flat tires and twelve depressed hamsters under the hood.

While today we apply “charlatan” to any kind of con artist or “pitchman,” the original meaning of “charlatan,” when the term first appeared in English in the 17th century, was a patent medicine salesman, an itinerant seller of useless potions, liniments and cures. We also called such smooth-talking hucksters “quacksalvers” (from the “quacking” sound of their patter as they pushed their phony “salves”), a term eventually shortened to “quack.” An even older term for the species, “mountebank,” comes from the Italian “monta in banco,” literally “to climb up on the bench,” referring to the elevated platform from which the “quack” usually made his sales pitch. “Mountebank” and “quack” are both also used today in the more general senses of “con artist” and “fraud.”

The roots of “charlatan” are, perhaps fittingly, a bit obscure. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is derived from the Italian “ciarlatano,” meaning “babbler,” thought to be from “ciarla,” to prattle or chat, a word possibly formed in imitation of the sound of someone babbling. Etymologist Hugh Rawson, however, identifies “ciarlatano” as a mutation of “cerretano,” a seller of phony Papal indulgences, taken from the name of the Italian village of Cerretto, which supposedly produced many such con artists.