Lookie there.

Dear Word Detective: Recently, the British television show “Antiques Roadshow” did a series from Australia. I was astounded to hear the English presenter show confusion and ignorance at the statement of an Australian guest saying she had found a particular item at a junk shop whilst “fossicking” through the shelves. The words “fossick,” “fossicker” and “fossicking” are used so regularly in polite conversation in Australia that I was under the impression that it was in common use throughout the entire English-speaking world. Obviously not! It is not considered slang or idiom here. I am fully aware of its use: the words “search,” “searcher” and “searching” can be used with equal value. I am also aware that it came into use here during the gold rush days of the mid 1800’s, but I am unable to find its derivation. Can you help? — Ian Webley, Australia.

Whilst! You said “whilst.” That is such a cool word, and I wish it were commonly used here in the US. I’m tempted to try it out at the local mini-mart (“Please make me a Slurpee whilst I use your loo”), but I’m already under suspicion for wearing glasses. Real men don’t wear glasses around here. They either get laser eye surgery or suck it up and bump into things, which is why it’s always a good idea to stay inside during deer hunting season.

That episode of “Antiques Roadshow” must have made quite a splash in Australia, because one of your countrymen sent a similar question to Michael Quinion, a British lexicographer who runs the excellent World Wide Words website (www.worldwidewords.org). It sounds as if the presenter (what we call a “host”) nearly had a nervous breakdown when confronted with “fossick.”

“Fossick” is indeed a quintessentially Australian word, and its original meaning does hark back to your country’s gold rush in the 19th century. “Fossicking” was essentially what we would call “scrounging” for gold — searching unattended, abandoned or depleted gold mining sites for the bits left behind, small nuggets that had to be pried out of crevices or picked from streams. Judging by the citations for this sense of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), “fossicking” was considered marginal behavior and “fossickers” were not loved by more established miners.

By the late 19th century, “fossick” had made the leap into general usage with the modern meaning of “to search by rummaging around; to hunt for something.”

The origin of “fossick” is not known with certainty, but it appears to be rooted in the English (most likely from Cornwall) dialect word “fossick” meaning “to search.” The OED points to the same dialect word in another sense, that of “a troublesome person,” and the late etymologist Eric Partridge tied it to “fuss.” So evidently an English dialect word that originally meant “an annoying person” perhaps one who “fusses” over small things, was carried to Australia, probably by English immigrants, and became a term for searching for small items of value.

Family feud.

Dear Word Detective: The word “internecine” is typically followed by words such as “struggle,” “feud,” “conflict,” etc. Isn’t this redundant? — Jacqueline Cohen.

Only mildly, if at all, and that depends on how one defines “internecine.” I knew I should have gone to law school.

“Internecine” (in-ter-NESS-een) is an interesting word because, among other things, its modern definition is the product of a mistake. And it wasn’t just a little mistake, the sort your weird uncle makes when he uses “rotate” to mean “revolve.” This was a mistake made by the most famous dictionary in the English language.

It all started with the English poet Samuel Butler (not to be confused with his grandson of the same name, the author of the satirical novel “Erewhon”). The elder Butler’s “Hudibras,” a satirical poem (satire ran in the family) published in 1663, contained the word “internecine” (“The Egyptians worshipp’d Dogs, and for Their Faith made internecine war.”), which was Butler’s transliteration of the Latin phrase “internecinum bellum,” meaning “savage war of extermination.” The Latin root of “internecinum” is “internecare” (to destroy), formed from “necare” (to kill) plus the intensifying prefix “inter,” giving us a result of “to kill thoroughly,” i.e., exterminate. So Butler introduced the adjective “internecine” to the English language with the meaning “savage and to the death.”

About two hundred years later, in 1755, Samuel Johnson published his seminal “A Dictionary of the English Language,” the first true dictionary of English. In defining “internecine,” however, Johnson misunderstood the prefix “inter” as used in this particular word. In most cases of English words derived from Latin, “inter” signifies “between” or “among” (as in “intervene,” to “come between”). But in “internecine,” the “inter” is an intensifier, meaning “very” or “completely.” Johnson, mistakenly assuming the “between” meaning, defined “internecine” in his dictionary as meaning “endeavouring mutual destruction.”

Johnson’s dictionary was followed by others, of course, and most of them deferred to his definition of “internecine,” making the “mutually destructive” meaning the accepted definition of the word, eventually with the added sense of “between groups with something in common” (“The internecine struggle between the party’s two wings pleased the opposition”). While a few “purists” over the years have objected to this “mutual destruction” meaning, Johnson’s mistake was actually a good thing. English has many words meaning “savage” in this sense (“destructive,” murderous,” etc.), but only “internecine” carries the sense of “mutually destructive.”

So, to return to your question, while one could say that using “internecine” in the old sense of “savage” might be redundant in a phrase such as “internecine slaughter” (because slaughter is always savage), in its modern “mutual destruction” sense it makes perfect sense. Ironically, “internecine” is most frequently used today in a non-violent sense (“The cheerleaders were engaged in internecine squabbling”).