No muss but lots of fuss.

Dear Word Detective:  What is the origin of “kerfuffle”?  I assume it is a manufactured word.  The first I heard it was on an episode of the BBC series “As Time Goes By.”  I thought it was a delightful word.  I’ve seen it used more and more on this side of the pond, even in your most recent column.  Is it British in origin?  How long has it been around? — David H. Hendon.

Well, there you go.  My plan is still working.  Many years ago I discovered that the way to ensure a steady stream of questions about interesting words is to drop unusual words and phrases  into my explanations of other, unrelated words, thus subliminally “seeding” the readers’ minds with the new word.  Lo and behold, I usually soon receive a question about the word I used.  I’m sure they do something similar with genetically-engineered crops.  Come to think of it, maybe that’s why food doesn’t taste like anything anymore.  Well, I hope it’s the opposite with words.

By my calculations (aided by Google, of course), I have used “kerfuffle” in four of my columns over the years, including once back in 1995 when I actually explained the word.  A “kerfuffle” is a ruckus, a disruption, a fuss, a brouhaha, a bother, a hoopla, a flurry or a commotion.  A “kerfuffle” may generate a lot of sound and fury, but rarely actually signifies much of anything (“A lot of our readers are going to think all this kerfuffle over an old skeleton being snatched is … a bit of a joke,” Kingsley Amis, 1973).  In a column earlier this year, for instance, I referred to the “lipstick on a pig” controversy in the US presidential campaign as a “kerfuffle.”  A “kerfuffle” may send your blood pressure soaring, but it’s usually over pretty quickly.

“Kerfuffle” has been with us since the early 19th century, although until just after the Second World War it was, oddly enough, spelled “curfuffle.”  Go figure.  There were actually several spellings of the word at various times early in its history because it was considered too informal for serious writing and therefore spread largely by mouth.

The root of “kerfuffle” is the very old Scots verb “fuffle,” which first appeared in print in the early 16th century and means “to throw into disorder.”  The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that the “ker” part of “kerfuffle” may hare come from the Gaelic word “car,” meaning “to twist, bend or turn around.”  In the case of “kerfuffle,” that would serve as a sort of intensive element, giving us the sense of “a twisted up, confused ruckus or dispute.”  Sounds like every “kerfuffle” I’ve ever seen.

You talkin’ to me?

Dear Word Detective:  I am researching the phase “like a deer in the headlights.”  Could you tell me the date of origin and the person who was first known to have said the phrase?  I would also greatly appreciate a formal definition. — Bear.

That’s a darn good question.  By the way, I’m going to assume that “Bear” is simply your nickname, and that I’m not being enlisted to give one species of wildlife an unfair advantage over another.

“To look like a deer in the headlights” is an American expression meaning “to look stunned and at a loss for words when asked an unexpected question or made the center of attention” (“When I ask the tellers about Y2K, I get … deer-in-the-headlights stares…,'” Chicago Sun-Times, 1999).  The phrase refers to the behavior of deer caught in the beams of car headlights at night, when they frequently simply freeze for several seconds rather than running safely out of the car’s path.  Living in rural Ohio, I can attest to the alarming stupidity of deer in such situations.  On the other hand, deer can’t hold a candle to possums, who apparently believe they’re immortal and run right at your car.

Deer have been freezing in car headlights for as long as there have been cars, so “to look like a deer in the headlights” was almost certainly making the rounds as a folk saying for decades before it made it into print.  Pinning down the first person to use the phrase is thus probably impossible.

We do know that “to look like a deer in the headlights” leaped into the public vernacular in a big way with the 1988 Presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush.  Bush’s running mate,  Senator James Danforth (“Dan”) Quayle, was widely (and arguably unfairly) regarded as unprepared for the job of Vice President.  During a debate with Senator Lloyd Bentsen, Quayle defensively compared his level of experience to that of John F. Kennedy when he became President, to which Bentsen famously replied “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy.  I knew Jack Kennedy.  Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine.  Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

Quayle’s reaction to Bentsen’s blast was described the next day by several commentators as “like a deer in the headlights, frozen in fear.”  Coupled with his subsequent verbal gaffes as Vice President (e.g., misspelling “potato” while judging a spelling bee and declaring, on another occasion, that “The future will be better tomorrow”), the Bentsen episode dogged Quayle throughout his single term as Vice President and made “like a deer in the headlights” a national catch phrase.

While Dan Quayle may have reluctantly popularized “like a deer in the headlights” in 1988, a “deer-less” relative of the phrase had appeared in print more than a decade earlier in the UK (“It is only when they commit some offence that they are caught in the headlights of history,” Daily Telegraph, 1971), although this usage seems to reflect the sense of “came to public attention” rather than the “caught clueless” meaning of “deer in the headlights.”