Ours just wear those little fur suits.

Dear Word Detective: What is the derivation of the phrase “cat’s pajamas”? I think it means the hottest new craze, but I don’t know where it came from or why. I’ve never seen a cat wearing pajamas, or anything else for that matter, although my dog does have a chenille sweater. — Susan.

A chenille sweater. For your dog. And the dog actually wears said sweater? Our dog Brownie also has a thing for clothes, but with a slight difference. She regards them as a very special kind of food. So far, by my count, she has eaten six or seven socks, assorted mittens and gloves, and at least one small scarf. I guess the poor thing must have an Orlon deficiency in her diet.

“The cat’s pajamas” does indeed mean “the hottest new thing” or “great, wonderful” (as in “Fred’s new car is the cat’s pajamas; Fred himself, not so much”). But I’m wondering where you’re running into “the cat’s pajamas” these days, because the phrase itself is nearing its one-hundredth anniversary. “The cat’s pajamas” is first recorded in 1920 as part of the typical vocabulary of the “flappers,” young women whose avant-garde wardrobe and free-spirited disregard for popular mores epitomized the spirit of the Roaring Twenties. The term “flapper” itself had appeared about 1915 (although an antecedent meaning of “young prostitute” was current in the late 19th century), and was most likely an adaptation of “flapper” in the 18th century sense of “a young duck or partridge” (i.e., one given to much flapping but inept flight).

According to Stuart Berg Flexner’s “Listening to America” (1982), “the cat’s pajamas” was one of a number of nonsense phrases invented in the flapper period, often on the template of combining an animal, the more unlikely the better, with a part of the human body or an article of clothing. Thus “the cat’s pajamas” seems to have inspired a rash of similar phrases also meaning “excellent,” including “the bee’s knees,” “the clam’s garters,” “the eel’s ankles,” “the gnat’s elbow,” “the pig’s wings” and my personal fave, “the sardine’s whiskers.” While none of these phrases or dozens of others have any intrinsic logic (don’t go looking for an eel’s ankle, in other words), the formula does have the advantage of nearly infinite variation, and one can easily imagine a hipster of the day poring over zoology textbooks in search of ever more exotic species with which to wow the gang.

While “the cat’s pajamas” doesn’t really mean anything, it is worth noting that in 1920 pajamas were still a relatively new form of sleep apparel (as opposed to nightshirts and nightgowns), and thus were still considered slightly risque, especially for young women.

There but for fortune.

Dear Word Detective: I was asking a co-worker what costume her kids were choosing for Halloween and she mentioned how costumes are more complex today compared with the past when a kid could just put on old clothes and tie a bundle on a stick and go as a “hobo.” I commented that she was dating herself with that term and we discussed the more politically correct terms, from “homeless” to “outdoorsman” (that euphemism sounds like someone who reads “Field and Stream”). I looked at the dictionary for hobo and it says “origin unknown” and it is not in your archives. I hope you have more than just “origin unknown.” Any theories? — Martin Celusnak.

Well, if it’s theories you’re looking for, you’ve hit pay dirt. We have bushels of theories about all sorts of things, from why cats stare at blank walls (they’re messing with your mind) to why so many Americans drive like morons these days (NASCAR is the one sport many couch potatoes are, unfortunately, equipped to emulate).

As for “hobo,” there are quite a few theories about its origins as well, but I must admit from the git-go that certainty on the question remains, shall we say, elusive. Incidentally, I had never heard “outdoorsman” as a euphemism for “homeless.” I think whoever came up with it (no doubt in a warm, dry place) should spend a week sleeping under a highway overpass and then reassess his or her obnoxious invention.

A “hobo” is, of course, a homeless person, specifically one who travels or wanders in search of work or odd jobs. (The traditional explanation of the difference between a “hobo” and a “tramp” is that the former travels to find work, the latter to avoid it.) The classic “hobo” who travels by hopping rides on freight trains first appeared in the US after the Civil War, and the “hobo” population exploded during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The term “hobo” is first attested in print in the late 1800s in the Pacific Northwest, and almost immediately theories arose as to its origin. The English dialect terms “hawbuck” and “hawbaw,” meaning “an unmannerly lout” (Oxford English Dictionary) have been proposed as sources, but England was a world away from the Northwest US in those days. A more logical local source may have been the greeting shout “Ho, boy!” apparently common among railroad workers at the time. There’s also a suggestion that “hobo” is short for “hopping boxcars,” and some maintain that “hobo” is short for Hoboken, NJ, where many rail lines converged in the 19th century, making the city a natural gathering point for vagabonds.

While we may never pin down the origin of “hobo” with absolute certainty, my money is riding on that “Ho, boy!” shout, which was verifiably in use by railway workers at the time and could easily have been adopted as a name for their vagabond passengers.

The Elements of Silly.

Dear Word Detective: What’s the state-of-the-art on “nauseous”? I was told that it was a synonym for “nauseating,” not “nauseated,” but the Merriam-Webster dictionary seems to have given up on that. I saw it used in no less prestigious a source than The Economist to mean “nauseated.” Not that etymology will ever stand in the way of practice, but I’d at least like to know if this actually a change, or if it was just somebody being pedantic. — Joshua Engel.

Oh boy, a usage question. Let’s see how many people I can tick off this time. If I play my cards right, half my own family won’t be speaking to me when I’m done.

Long story short? The “rule” concerning “nauseous” and “nauseated” that you (and nearly everyone else) encountered in school is without either logical substance or historical justification. It is and always was “just somebody being pedantic” (albeit a lot of somebodies in a lot of grammar books).

It is true that the root of “nauseous” is the Latin “nauseosus,” meaning “causing nausea,” which would tend to buttress the traditional “puce wallpaper is nauseous; people seeing it become nauseated” school of thought. But, as you note, etymology is not destiny, and most of our English words have wandered far from their origins, so the Latin “nauseosus” is not a compelling argument.

A glance at the actual use of “nauseous” in the history of written English leaves the “nauseous means nauseating” camp with a problem. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the “causing nausea” usage to 1628, but lists the meaning “inclined to sickness or nausea; squeamish” to fifteen years earlier, in 1613. So the claim that the “causing nausea” meaning is the pure original meaning won’t fly.

More importantly, most of the objections to the use of “nauseous” to mean “feeling ill” have arisen only since the end of World War II, but (according to the excellent Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage) the actual use of “nauseous” in the supposedly proper “makes-me-sick” sense has dropped sharply in learned prose since before WW II and almost everyone today uses “nauseating.” Even E.B. White, after reciting the standard “rule” about nauseous/nauseated in Strunk & White’s revered Elements of Style (1979), lapsed into using “nauseating” rather than “nauseous” elsewhere in his own book.

As it stands now in the real world, “nauseating” is doing the duty of meaning “causing nausea or disgust,” and “nauseous” is almost always used as a synonym of “nauseated” to mean “feeling sick or disgusted.” The only danger in using “nauseous” to mean “feeling sick” is that you may run into people who are erroneously convinced that the usage is wrong, which brings us to one of those Dirty Harry moments: Are you feeling lucky?

The wisdom of whackos.

Dear Word Detective: Today I heard two radio DJ’s arguing over the phrase “worth their salt.” One DJ was exclaiming that she had never heard such a phrase and therefore it never existed. Now, I have heard this phrase many times, but their argument got me to thinking, where did it come from, what does it really mean? I immediately went to your website and was dismayed when I saw that it wasn’t here. I would be very grateful for some insight. — Sarah.

Darn. Well, there goes my hope that disk jockeys were going to lead us into a new age of enlightenment. Speaking of popular media, I read last week that a certain large newspaper chain is planning to adopt something called “crowdsourcing” in its news-gathering operations, inviting readers to act as reporters and leaving it to the papers’ beleaguered editors to sift the cups of wheat from the tons of chaff that will pour in over the transom. I think this is a wonderful idea, and I’m looking forward to lots more by-popular-demand stories about the Illuminati and that so-called moon landing.

Oh, right, you had a question. “To be worth one’s salt” is definitely a well-established idiom, dating back to at least 1830 in English and found, for instance, in Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure classic Treasure Island: “It was plain from every line of his body that our new hand was worth his salt.” The general sense of “worth his salt” and similar uses is “capable and efficient, able to handle the task at hand.” Specifically, someone who is “worth his salt” is a good employee, one well worth the wages paid, which brings us to a brief history of salt.

Although salt is one of the cheapest things found in a supermarket today (not counting those weird store-brand pickles that taste like floor wax), for most of human history salt was a scarce and valuable commodity, at some points more valuable than gold. Salt made dull (or “iffy”) food palatable, made it possible to cure and preserve meat, and was considered a necessity of life in the ancient world. Not surprisingly, the central role of salt in civilization is memorialized today in a variety of “salty” English idioms, including “with a grain of salt” (with skepticism) in reference to making an odd dish more palatable, and “the salt of the earth,” meaning the common people on whom society depends.

Salt was, in fact, considered such a necessity that Roman soldiers were either issued regular rations of salt or paid a special “salt allowance” with which to buy their own. This was known as a “salarium,” which eventually gave us our English word “salary” for regular wages. Thus today an employee who is “worth his salt” is one definitely earning his keep.

Quack… Thunk. Quack… Thunk.

Dear Word Detective: Back in 2002 you punted (a sports metaphor) on the question of the origin of “having one’s ducks in a row.” You noted that it’s an expression apparently of recent coinage, but several speculations on aquatic waterfowl led to nothing very convincing. I learned once that it’s actually a games metaphor: a “duck” is a pool-hall term for a ball sitting right in front of a pocket — an easy shot. Thus to have one’s ducks in a row is to have all one’s balls sitting lined up in front of pockets, ready to be sunk in series. How do etymologists such as yourself establish the likelihood of such a claim? — Anonymous.

Thanks for an interesting question. To recap for those who missed my original column, “to have one’s ducks in a row” is an idiom meaning to have all one’s preparations done or arranged before beginning an activity or project, and the phrase is thought to have arisen by allusion to a mother duck leading her ducklings in an orderly single file. In my original column I noted that the phrase was first attested in print in 1979, but it has since been found in a Washington Post article from 1932.

The theory tracing the phrase to the game of pool is an interesting one, and “duck” is indeed a pool-hall term for a ball resting at the edge of a pocket (i.e., a “sitting duck”). But the pool theory runs aground, as many such stories do, on a lack of evidence.

Stories tracing phrases now used as general idioms to a specific time, place or practice are only believable if print citations can first be found using the phrase in that specific context. For instance, the theory tracing “the whole nine yards” (meaning “the whole thing”) to the length of aircraft machine-gun ammo belts in World War Two seems eminently reasonable. Yet there has been not a single instance found so far of the phrase being used in print in connection with actual machine guns (and WW II was a very well-documented war), only citations for the phrase in its general slang sense beginning in the late 1960s. Perhaps someday such a citation will be found, but until then the “logic” of the theory counts for nothing.

Similarly, the earliest citation found so far for “ducks in a row” (“We have a world filled today with problems and we are trying to get our economic ducks in a row,” June 1932, Washington Post) clearly has nothing to do with pool. Perhaps the writer first heard it in a poolroom, but until we find an earlier use of the phrase in the context of a pool game (as in “Smith had his ducks in a row and sank them one by one”), the familiar sight of a mother duck and her brood marching in a neat line seems a more reasonable (and much simpler) explanation.

Get offa me.

Dear Word Detective: The expression “they got their ears pinned back” is sometimes used in U.S. sports contexts and seems to mean that the winning team decisively defeated the losing team. It would be the losing team that got its “ears pinned back.” A web search indicated that in the U.K., the phrase seems to have meanings relating to paying attention to someone or to be disciplined by someone. What are the roots of the notion of pinning back ears, for any purpose? — Rich Kretschmann.

That is, as we say in the word biz, a darn good question. As a matter of fact, it’s a question that’s been rattling around in the back of my own mind for several decades, but I’ve never quite gotten around to investigating it. Hey, I’ve been busy.

“To have one’s ears pinned back” means to be chastised, scolded or verbally disciplined in a very forceful manner, or, by extension, to be soundly defeated in a contest or an argument. It’s an American phrase that first appeared in the mid-19th century, and although “to have one’s ears pinned back” is by far the most common form, the Dictionary of American English also lists “to get one’s ears knocked down” and “to get one’s ears chewed down” as synonyms meaning “to receive a severe scolding.” All of these phrases are, incidentally, distinct from such sayings as “to have one’s ears lowered,” meaning to get a haircut. The British use of “pin one’s ears back” to mean “pay close attention” appears to refer to an animal raising its ears in alertness, an action also known as “pricking up” its ears.

The key to understanding “to have one’s ears pinned back” comes from the animal kingdom, where the state of a critter’s ears (especially those of horses and dogs) serves as a window into the animal’s mental state. A horse, for instance, will normally hold its ears erect, alert, presumably, for the sound of oats and apples. But when frightened or angry, the horse will put its ears back against its head, a reflex also familiar to anyone who has ever shouted at Fido for sleeping on the sofa. From an evolutionary standpoint, this reflex makes sense, as the ears are among the most vulnerable, sensitive and easily injured parts of the body. Especially in dogs, to put the ears back against the head also serves as a sign of submission to a threat (perhaps from a larger dog or angry human), an attempt to forestall an attack or physical punishment.

One slightly tricky aspect of “to have one’s ears pinned back” is that the passive voice of “pinned” makes it sound as if Aunt Becky actually does something unpleasant with clothespins to little Timmy’s ears. But “having one’s ears pinned back” really just means “to be forced into visible submission and defeat.”

Don’t sweat it, Bumpy.

Dear Word Detective: What is the origin of the term “worry wart”? — Sharon Kawasaki.

Good question, but I wouldn’t let it bother you. I’m always taken aback when folks write in saying that they lie awake at night wondering, even worrying, about the origin of some word or phrase. I, on the other hand, am firmly of the “What, me worry?” school of thought. Last night at around two a.m., for instance, there was a tremendous crash from downstairs. A lesser man might have leaped from bed and raced down to investigate. But I wisely decided to wait until this morning, when I discovered that the cats had merely been rearranging the living room furniture again. No harm, no foul, although I’m still wondering what they did with that table lamp.

“Worry wart,” meaning “a person who worries or frets incessantly,” is one of those phrases that only seem stranger the longer you look at them. It’s possible to worry about warts, of course, although fortunately I don’t think there’s any evidence that worry itself causes warts. I suppose a “worry wart” could be a wart that one “worries” (in the sense of “fiddle with”) in moments of stress, but that sounds like a bad idea.

“Worry” itself is an interesting word, one that has traveled far from its origins. When “worry” first appeared in Old English (as “wrygan”), it meant, not “to fret,” but “to strangle” (putting a whole new light on “put your worries behind you”). That grisly meaning of “worry” softened a bit over the subsequent centuries, first to “bite and shake” (as dogs “worry” their rubber toys today), then “to harass or vex,” until finally arriving at its modern meaning of “to make (or to be) persistently anxious” around 1822.

“Wart,” on the other hand, has meant “a small excrescence on the skin” since it appeared in Old English from a Germanic root. Several centuries of development gave “wart” a variety of figurative meanings, including that of “a defect or unattractive feature” (as in the phrase “warts and all”) and, perhaps inevitably, “an annoying, obnoxious or insignificant person” in the 19th century.

Thus the stage is set for decoding “worry wart” as “a person who annoys others by worrying loudly and constantly over nearly everything.” The earliest use of the phrase in print found so far is from 1956, although an earlier form, “worryguts,” had been popular in Britain since the 1930s. But “worry wart” became a household standard when it was used as the name of a recurrent character in “Out Our Way,” a popular newspaper comic strip drawn by James R. Williams from 1922 to 1957. Oddly enough, Williams’ “Worry Wart” was a young boy who caused worry in others, rather than being plagues by worry himself.

No problem.

Dear Word Detective: I realize that you are the Word Detective and not the Grammar Detective, but a friend took me to see “The Prestige” last night, and I was thrown off by what I believe are a couple of linguistic anachronisms that occur early in the film. I was hoping you could shed some light on when these uses came into the English language. At the very beginning of the film, Michael Caine’s character says something like “I saw someone run on the stage and followed them [sic] backstage where I saw him….” The second, which occurs a few moments later, involves a character saying “He’s a better magician than me.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that “they/them/their” were used as third-person, singular, neuter pronouns in the late 19th century, nor was “than me” used in comparisons in place of the grammatically correct “than I.” Any thoughts? — Jackie.

Hmm. Grammatically correct? Oh, you’re looking for an argument. Sorry, this is Abuse. Argument is down the hall, Mr. Barnard in Room 12. (Persons not Monty Python fans may find Googling “Argument Clinic” helpful in decoding that.)

Much as I love pointing out anachronisms in movie scripts (“Telephone for you, President Lincoln”), I’m afraid that in this case we’re dealing with what the linguists over at Language Log call the Recency Illusion: the understandable but erroneous conviction that a usage one dislikes must be new because no one in The Good Old Days would have put up with such a barbarism.

In the case of “they/them/their” used as third-person, singular, neuter pronouns, writers as notable as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Jane Austen have employed the construction. Even the King James Version of the Bible uses it: “Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, … and shalt stone them with stones, till they die” (Deuteronomy 17). The use of “than” as a preposition (requiring the objective “me” rather than the nominative “I”) has a similarly long history.

The objections to both constructions are the legacy of misguided 18th century grammarians who tried to force English to conform to the rules of Latin. While these spurious “rules” have been perpetuated by popular grammar books for more than 200 years, their disregard by English speakers has been so natural and so common for so long that the examples you cite from “The Prestige” would probably not have even raised an eyebrow in the 19th century.

Mmmfff.

Dear Word Detective: So why do we call mouths “pie holes” (as in “Shut your pie hole”)? Of all the foods we could have chosen, what is special about pie? I mean, I like pie and all, but not as much as … say, pastrami. In researching this on my own, I’ve been notified that “pie hole” is probably a variant of “cake hole,” a phrase that apparently was coined in England sometime around World War II (also used in the context of “shut your cake hole”). And “cake” might be a corruption of “ceg,” Welsh for mouth. Is this etymology correct? Or did “pie hole” originate from some completely other source? — James Takahashi.

Mmmm … cake. You can keep your pastrami, and the rye it rode in on. I’d be happy to live out my days on a diet of cake and pizza. I am especially fond of the classic wedding cake, but it’s hard to find except at weddings. Incidentally, is it wrong to encourage your friends to divorce and remarry just so you can get some decent cake? Oh well, too late now.

Somehow I seem incapable of hearing the words “pie hole” without thinking of the classic exchange between Homer Simpson and Moe the bartender: Homer: Hmm. I wonder why he’s so eager to go to the garage? Moe: The “garage”? Hey fellas, the “garage”! Well, ooh la di da, Mr. French Man. Homer: Well, what do you call it? Moe: A car hole!

I must say that although I’ve heard the expressions “pie hole” and “cake hole” in several movies (I have a dim memory of Bruce Willis saying “pie hole” in something forgettable), I don’t think I’ve ever heard either phrase used in casual conversation, but both apparently have been for quite a while. “Cake hole” is the older, dating back to British armed services use in 1943. The earliest printed citation we have for “pie hole,” however, is only from 1983, although it was probably in use for at least a few years before then. “Pie hole” was clearly inspired by “cake hole,” the substitution made perhaps because pie, especially apple, has long been considered a typical American dessert.

As slang for “mouth,” both phrases exhibit the sort of cheerful bluntness and vulgarity common to armed services and working-class slang, “Shut your cake hole” being far more colorful (and, given the humorous element, perhaps less confrontational) than simply saying “Shut your mouth.”

As for the possible Welsh connection, “ceg” does indeed mean “mouth” in Welsh, but the resemblance to “cake” is almost certainly simply coincidental. Among other things, “ceg hole” would be a bit redundant, and there is no record of such a phrase ever being used.

Smells like a trend.

Dear Word Detective: In the past three weeks, having read three different novels by three different authors (That’s a lot of threes, isn’t it?), I have come across the usage of the word “redolent” in all of them. Although 70 years old and fairly well educated, I must admit that neither I nor any of my friends have ever used this word before. I am sure I must be making “a mountain out of a mole hill,” but considering its frequent use lately, I am wondering if the word is the new darling of the literati (I can just visualize the author sitting there with his/her thesaurus open). I firmly believe in increasing one’s vocabulary and consequently have added this word to mine, but the seeming over-use of the word tends to render it somewhat trite and artificial to me. Or is it just my provincial Midwestern roots coming to the fore? — John E. Bowles.

Well, mountains have to come from somewhere, don’t they? Think of all the brave little moles it took to make the Himalayas.

I understand your skepticism about the apparent sudden affection for “redolent” among writers. A search of Google News produces 214 hits for the word at the moment (versus 902,000 on plain old Google), and I would bet that the count for “redolent” in news stories a few years ago would have been near zero. I too am annoyed by vogue words and phrases that whoosh in from nowhere and are suddenly popping up in one’s face every few minutes. I was ready to mount a campaign to outlaw “at the end of the day” when it swamped the airwaves and magazine racks a few years ago, but pundits are fickle critters and the phrase faded away before I had a chance.

On the other hand, I’m sort of fond of “redolent.” I’ve used it several times in this column over the years (“They were lovely big dill pickles, crisp and pungent, redolent of garlic and onion and the teeming germs from countless grubby little hands”), and I love the rolling sound of the word: RED-oh-lent.

“Redolent,” from the Latin “redolere” meaning “to emit a smell,” literally means “to smell of something.” While that odor was presumed to be pleasant in the 15th century when “redolent” first appeared in English, today a person or place can be “redolent” of unpleasant things as well. More importantly, “redolent” has also developed a figurative sense meaning “strongly suggestive or reminiscent of” a quality or feeling, whether good or bad (“On every side Oxford is redolent of age and authority,” 1856). While some uses in this sense have become trite (“redolent of wealth,” for instance, is a deadly cliche), I think it’s still a useful word.

And lots and lots of pens.

Dear Word Detective: My office is having a raging argument over the creation of the word “Brainiac.” One side says that the 1958 Superman comic coined the term, with the other side claims it was derived from the first computer, ENIAC. Any thoughts? — Mike McIntyre.

Raging argument over Brainiac, eh? Well, whatever floats your boat. People in an office where I worked many years ago conducted a running feud in which everyone accused everyone else of stealing their chairs, keyboards and desk accessories, day after day. The office eventually resembled a holding pen for lunatics after people began scrawling “Evelyn’s chair” and the like in Wite-Out on everything in an attempt to discourage theft. It didn’t work, of course. In fact, I still, evidently, have Dave’s tape dispenser.

The short answer to your question is that both sides are right, more or less. “Brainiac” was indeed a character introduced in Action Comics as a “supervillain” opponent of Superman in 1958. Evidently in the years since then there have been several modifications made to the “Brainiac” character and his “backstory,” and the page dedicated to “Brainac” at Wikipedia (wikipedia.org) details the evolution of Brainiac in what strikes me as mind-numbing detail (“Pre-Crisis Brainiac in the Post-Crisis Universe”?). Then again I’m probably the only kid in America who threw out his own comic books when he hit sixteen.

Evidently, however, when the folks at DC Comics introduced their new character, there was already a “Brainiac” on the market, a small kit for building rudimentary computers, aimed at home experimenters. A 1964 note from DC editors explains: “Shortly after the first ‘Brainiac’ story appeared in Action Comics in 1956, we learned that a real ‘Brainiac’ existed..in the form of an ingenious ‘Brainiac Computer Kit’ invented in 1955 by Edmund C. Berkeley. In deference to his ‘Brainiac’ which pre-dates ours,..we are changing the characterization of our ‘Brainiac’ so that the master-villain will henceforth possess a computer personality.’” I’m not sure why they cited 1956 as Brainiac’s first appearance; all my other sources say 1958. Perhaps the folks who wrote “Pre-Crisis Brainiac in the Post-Crisis Universe” would care to sort that out.

In any case, the DC folks apparently derived “Brainiac” by blending “brain” with “maniac,” and only later, as noted above, was Brainiac depicted as being computer-like. The name of the Brainiac kit, however, was clearly modeled on ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), the first truly practical large-scale computer put into operation in 1946 and employed in the design of the hydrogen bomb.

“Brainiac” has also, since the mid-1970s, come into use, often in a derogatory sense, as slang for someone perceived as very intelligent, roughly synonymous with “nerd.”

Just don’t ever moult.

Dear Word Detective: I saw this on Ken Jenning’s website (www.ken-jennings.com) — he was looking for the origin of a phrase in his blog:

Etymology help! In an Eric Rohmer short story I was reading last night, some French expression had been translated as “my fine-feathered friend.” That’s right, with the hyphen. So my whole life, I’ve been assuming that a “fine feathered friend” is one who is both fine and feathered. Could it be that the hyphen is actually correct, and the expression is limited to a friend with fine feathers (i.e., not coarse ones)? The Web has been little help here: Google Book Search shows more hits for no-hyphen, but many of the hyphenated examples are older, more literary, or otherwise seem more likely to be correct. The expression goes back at least to “My Fine Feathered Friend” (no hyphen), an ornithologically themed 1937 standard later made a hit by Glenn Miller, but did the phrase pre-date the song? And did it originate as a way to refer to birds, or humans? In other words, what’s it for? –Anonymous.

Yikes. I went to look for the lyrics to “My Fine Feathered Friend,” but nearly every site I found prompted a warning from Google about the site being a menace to my computer. Evidently lyrics sites are a major source of spyware and the like. Anyway, the lyrics are purportedly birdy but obviously applicable to humans as well: “I’ll make just one request, my sweet chickadee, Don’t find some cuckoo’s nest and fly out on me, We do belong together, what do you intend? You’ve got me up a tree, my fine feathered friend.”

“Fine-feathered,” with a hyphen, was definitely the original form, and its first known appearance predates Glenn Miller’s recording by nearly 200 years, occurring in Robert Patlock’s decidedly odd 1751 novel “The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins.” Patlock’s story is the tale of a traveler, reminiscent of Swift’s Gulliver, who wanders into an underground world inhabited by flying people, one of whom he marries. While I don’t have a copy of the book, it seems probable that “fine-feathered friend” is used in reference to this bird-woman, Youwarkee, and, given that this hyphenated form seems to be the original, the “fine” would refer to the “feathers” and not the “friend.”

It also seems likely that he meant “fine” in the sense of “beautiful” rather than simply “not coarse.” There was also, at the time, a popular proverb, “Fine feathers make fine birds” (meaning that good clothes “make” the person), which undoubtedly influenced Patlock and makes his use of the phrase (if indeed in praise of his flying fiancée) a nicely done pun.

So, to sum up, “fine-feathered friend” seems to have been, all along, a compliment to humans by allusion to a bird with beautiful plumage. The loss of the hyphen over time has simply clouded a very nice metaphor.