readme:

Well, here we are again, a mere month after the last issue.  Such an unseemly rush.  I may have to go lie down for a month or two.  Just kidding, maybe.

Speaking of such things, as you may know, people who subscribe to TWD-by-Email receive these columns at the same time actual newspapers do, which is some time before they are posted to this website, “some time” around here usually meaning anywhere from two to six months.  At the moment, however, due to a few lapses in my posting schedule, we are running about eight months behind, meaning that the columns in this issue were sent to subscribers back in November and December of 2007 (which explains the Christmas and Thanksgiving references you may notice in a few columns).

I have been posting more columns each month (18) than I write (12), so the gap will narrow eventually, but it will never vanish entirely.  There will always be at least a two-month delay.  So it behooves me to note that you can jump this tedious queue and read this stuff in real time by simply subscribing for a measly fifteen bucks per year.  It’s a win-win deal — you get to read the columns right away, and I get to pay my gas bill and buy cat food.  What’s not to like?

But wait, it gets better!  As soon as you subscribe, you’ll receive your super-secret password to our restricted Subscriber Content right here on the website.  What’s “Subscriber Content”?  It’s the past eight months of columns that haven’t yet been posted to the free public part of this site!  It’ll be like you actually subscribed eight months ago!  It’ll also be like you’re getting a 20-month subscription for the price of a 12-month sub!  Yay!  Sign me up!

By the way, the price of TWD-by-Email hasn’t increased since Day One, which was back in 1995.  If this site were a gas station, there would be lines around the block. So fill up now!

Lastly, I have started a “sideblog” (the link is over there in the right sidebar) where we can post links to interesting language-related stuff, so feel free to send me links.

And now, on with the show…

Swing low, stale guest.

Dear Word Detective:  A few years ago, I toured the Oakley Plantation house within the James Audubon Memorial Park south of St. Francisville, LA.  During the tour they showed us a bed with ropes supporting the mattress.  They mentioned that when a guest had outstayed their welcome, the servants were instructed to loosen the ropes so the mattress sagged.  My memory escapes me, but it seems this act was associated with a phrase.  The phrase would be ancient since ropes are no longer used to support a mattress, but perhaps someone has heard of this before.  If you have never had the opportunity to visit the Oakley Plantation House, I highly recommend it.  The best time to visit is late February or March when the Azelas are in bloom. — Bill Jones.

Thanks for an interesting question.  I looked up the Oakley Plantation House on the internet, and it does look fascinating.  It also seems to make quite an impression on visitors, because I found quite a few mentions of the place on personal blogs.  Serendipitously, several of these folks had evidently taken the same tour as you did, and they just happened to mention the story that the tour guides told you about the beds.  I was already fairly certain that I knew what phrase you were having trouble remembering, but it’s nice to get such precise confirmation of my hunch.

So let’s go to the tape and quote the story directly from one of these blogs: “The beds at the time did not have box springs, but instead had ropes tied tightly underneath the mattress to keep it firm and tight, hence the phrase, ‘Sleep tight.’  When a guest had overstayed their welcome, the household slaves would be instructed to loosen the ropes night by night, causing the mattress to sink in, rendering it more and more uncomfortable.”

Unfortunately, this story shows strong signs of being concocted as an embellishment of the popular theory that “sleep tight” originated as a reference to the “rope beds” mentioned above.  Such beds did indeed exist, and it was important to periodically tighten the ropes to prevent mattress-droop.

But the “tight” in “sleep tight,” meaning “sleep soundly,” almost certainly comes from the use of “tight” and “tightly” to mean “soundly, securely, properly,” a use that dates back to Shakespeare.  The phrase “sleep tight” also first appeared in the mid-19th century, a bit after such beds were popular, and from the first was most commonly heard in variations on the classic rhyming bedtime salutation “Good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”  The impulse of tour guides to tie the phrase “sleep tight” to beds sporting ropes that had to be kept tight must be nearly irresistible, but I’m afraid that doesn’t make it true.  The good news is that the part about driving guests away by loosening the ropes probably isn’t true either.

Herd word.

Dear Word Detective:  In reading internet news sites and web pages analyzing the various presidential candidates’ standings in the various polls (none of which ever seem to agree, by the way), I keep coming across the term “outlier,” which I don’t remember encountering before the last few years.  It seems to mean something like an “anomaly”  in the poll data, but with overtones of “something bizarre and meaningless.”  I’ve also seen the word applied to a few of the candidates themselves.  What does it mean and why are we seeing it everywhere all of a sudden? — Rick Carter.

It means that the herd is on the move again.  When European settlers arrived in the New World, the western plains were blanketed by gigantic herds of bison, so numerous that the land itself seemed alive (and covered, the settlers noticed after a few moments, with smelly brown fur).  Unfortunately, the noble bison was hunted nearly to extinction in the decades thereafter, and today only a small remnant of those mighty herds remains.

Nature abhors a vacuum, however, and the massive herds of bison were gradually replaced by massive herds of political pundits.  Like bison, pundits are slow-witted, unimaginative  creatures with a passion for conformity. Their primary activity consists of repeating the words of their herd-mates with minor variations and occasionally stampeding as a group, eyes firmly shut, over the nearest cliff.  Between bouts of cliff-jumping, the pundits pass the time by glomming on to popular buzzwords and catch-phrases and slowly gumming them to death.  Having driven readers to distraction by invoking “at the end of the day,” “stay the course” and “in harm’s way” ad nauseam for the past few years, the herd has now moved on to “outlier.”

“Outlier” (which is pronounced simply “out-ly-er,” although it looks vaguely French) was originally, when it appeared in English in the early 17th century, simply another word for “outsider,” “nonconformist,” or “weirdo.”  An “outlier” was, in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary, “an individual whose origins, beliefs, or behavior place him or her outside a particular establishment or community.”  The roots of “outlier” are as simple as its pronunciation: it’s just a combination of “to lie” with “out,” carrying the sense of someone rooted outside the norms of a given community.  In a physical sense, we commonly speak of “outlying” houses a bit beyond the edge of town.

The uses of “outlier” by political pundits seem to fall into two categories.  One is an extension of the original “outsider” meaning, in which “outlier” is applied to a candidate whose views and pronouncements fall outside the mainstream of party orthodoxy (i.e., the guy at the far edge of the debate stage).  The other sense commonly seen today is borrowed from the field of statistics, where an “outlier” is a data point or result that falls substantially outside the boundaries of the distribution expected or predicted by other results, and is usually disregarded.  Answers to a survey that revealed that ninety percent of Iowa voters favored invading Mars at the earliest opportunity, for example, would probably be considered an “outlier” by pollsters.  Then again, it’s still early in the year.

From drink to think.

Dear Word Detective:  My kids think the word “noggin” is hilarious.  I have used it, in reference to their heads, and wondered about its history. Where, when and how did this word come into being? — Juliet.

Well, it was a dark and stormy night in the 1930s as Elwood Noggin, a retired stoat salesman in northern Nebraska, tinkered in his basement with his latest invention, an electric divining rod for locating lost car keys.  As Noggin reached for the switch to test his invention,   suddenly….  One moment please.  I have just been informed that the foregoing story is not true.  Oh well, that sort of fable almost never is.  One might (as I sometimes do) view human history itself as being one long dark and stormy night, but few of our words have identifiable “moments of origin.”  Like Topsy, they just sort of grow.

But the results in cases such as “noggin” are nonetheless splendid.  As slang for the human head (or any creature’s head, I suppose, although references to a cat’s noggin in classic literature seem rare), “noggin” is a wonderfully silly word.  It’s difficult to imagine using “noggin” when genuine anger is involved, and “noggin” seems far more likely to crop up in an S.J. Perelman story or a Three Stooges episode than in a crime report.

Oddly enough, when “noggin” first appeared in English in the late 16th century, it had nothing to do, at least directly, with the human head.  It mean “small cup or mug,” and by a hundred years later, had taken on the meaning of “a small drink of alcohol.”  The roots of “noggin” are a mystery, but that second meaning of “small drink” may provide a clue.  “Nog” at that time was a term used in England for a type of strong ale (or, by extension, any sort of alcoholic drink).  It’s that “nog,” in fact, that underlies our modern “eggnog,” which combines (in its proper form) eggs, cream, sugar, nutmeg and rum.  It’s possible that, since liquor affects primarily the head, that “noggin” was originally meant to refer to a head made woozy by drink.  In any case, by the mid-18th century “noggin” had come into use as slang for the head, at first as a boxing term, but by the 19th century as a generalized slang term.

It is also possible that the transferred use of “noggin” from “cup” to “head” paralleled the evolution of “mug” in slang.  In the 16th century, a “mug” was, as it is today, a heavy cup used for warm drinks.  But in the 17th century it became common to decorate mugs with grotesque caricatures of human faces (such creations are still found in many curio and souvenir shops).  By the early 18th century, “mug” had become popular slang for the actual human face, a sense we still use in “mugshot” (as well as in “to mug,” which originally referred to hitting a person in the face).

Like a scrapbook full of beets.

Dear Word Detective:  I recently bought one of those home vacuum-sealing gizmos, which has proven quite useful since I’m on a special diabetic diet and often work long hours.  Now I can do lots of cooking on one weekend a month and bag up and freeze or refrigerate a bunch of portion-controlled meals.  Result: All the convenience of store-bought microwave dinners without the boatloads of sodium, sugar, fat and other things I’m supposed to keep away from.  For my birthday I got a jar-sealing attachment, and that leads me to my question.  The jar thingy is designed to work with “mason” or “canning” jars.   So, why are the jars used for preserving fruits and veggies and the like called “mason” jars and why is the process of sealing such stuff in glass jars called “canning”? — Joseph DeMartino.

Well, there you go.  At least some people appreciate useful gizmos as gifts.  A certain person I seem to have married received a very nice paper shredder for Christmas a few years ago.  Her reaction, contrary to my expectations, did not peg the enthusiasm meter.  But now, without fail, she mentions said gift within twenty minutes of meeting anyone.

What makes this especially odd is that she has yet to open the box.

The use of “can” to mean “seal food in a glass jar” does seem illogical, until we note that the process of preserving food in cans uses roughly the same method you use in “putting up” food in jars, namely heating the food in the vessel to eliminate bacteria and then sealing the container with a vacuum.  This method of preserving food was invented in the late 18th century by Nicolas Appert in France in response to a call by Napoleon Bonaparte for a system of supplying French troops with preserved food that could both be easily transported overseas and actually eaten.  (Existing methods relied on drying, smoking, and/or salting the food.)  Appert’s invention used fragile glass bottles, however, and it was only with the substitution of durable tin cans by Peter Durand of England that the process really took off and led to a worldwide revolution in preserving food.  The word “can,” by the way, comes from the Latin “canna” (meaning “container”), and is unrelated to “can” meaning “to be able,” which comes from a Germanic root meaning “to know.”

Sealing food in metal cans, however, has never really proven practical in the home kitchen (sealing the cans pretty much requires soldering, for instance), so the use of glass containers has been far more successful.  With the success of commercial canning, it was natural to use “can” as the verb for “putting up” food in jars (perhaps especially since “jar” as a verb in this context raises the specter of broken glass on the floor).  The Mason jar, a heavy glass jar with a threaded lid sealed by a rubber grommet, was invented by tinsmith John Mason in 1858, and the simplicity and durability of his design has made the Mason jar the de facto standard of home canning ever since.

The human touch.

Dear Word Detective:  What does “grifter” mean?  I hear it often but it’s not in any dictionary. — Debbie W.

Um, exactly how often do you hear “grifter”?  I ask only because I almost never hear it, and while that may be because I swore off television last year, I’m worried that hearing the word “grifter” too often bespeaks an unhealthy environment, unless one works for the FBI.  On the other hand, if you worked for the FBI, you’d know what “grifter” means.

A “grifter,” simply put, is a con artist, a swindler, a petty criminal who runs scams, schemes and flim-flams on unsuspecting “marks” (con artist lingo for victims).  Often a grifter exploits human weaknesses and vulnerabilities, especially greed and loneliness, to extract money from the mark, and does it with a routine so convincing that the police frequently have a hard time convincing the mark that he or she has been the victim of a crime.  The categories of “con artist,” “swindler” and “grifter” are not precise and overlap, but generally a “grifter” tries to forge a personal relationship with the victim and then extracts loans and other expensive favors.  A case a few years ago in New York City made headlines when a “mother and son grifter team” lost control of their scheme and murdered their victim, an elderly society heiress.

“Grifter” is an American invention, dating back to the early 20th century, but appears to be based on the slightly older slang term “grafter,” also meaning “swindler,” “con man” or simply “thief.”   Some authorities believe that “grifter” is actually a combination of “grafter” and “drifter,” reflecting the rootless, peripatetic nature of many grifters’ lives.

“Grafter,” in turn, comes from the noun “graft,” meaning, as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it, “the obtaining of profit or advantage by dishonest or shady means; the means by which such gains are made, especially bribery, blackmail, or the abuse of a position of power or influence.”  If “graft” sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen it in the all-too-common phrase “graft and corruption” applied to crooked politicians.  The roots of “graft” in this sense are uncertain, but it may be based on an old British slang use of “graft” to mean “dig” or “work,” based on the same root that gave us “grave.”

A fowl canard.

Dear Word Detective:  Do you know the origin of the name “chicken pox” in reference to the virus?  Why chicken? — Chris Smith.

That’s a darn good question.  Why chickens, indeed?  I think it’s high time to put an end to the linguistic abuse of the noble chicken, a humble creature whose only ambition is to float lazily in a bowl with some noodles.  It’s a scientific fact that not only do chickens not spread “chicken pox,” but they themselves are immune to the disease.  But no, when something unfortunate happens or we notice the less attractive aspects of our own nature, we pin it all on the poor chicken, the Rodney Dangerfield of the animal world.  We call those without courage “chicken-hearted” or “chicken-livered,” or speak of them “chickening out,” especially when challenged in a dangerous game of “chicken.”  We deride small amounts of money as “chicken feed” and declare those past their prime as “no spring chicken,” but you’ll notice that no one seeks the positive form of the metaphor (“quite the spring chicken”).

Chickens get no respect either coming or going.  Chickens are criticized for having “flown the coop,” but on returning find that “the chickens have come home to roost” is a popular way of saying that someone is getting a deserved punishment.  It’s no wonder we’re advised not to “count our chickens before they’re hatched.”  There’s not much of a sunnyside up to being a chicken.

A “chicken” is (for all you vegans living in caves, I suppose) a domestic fowl of the species Gallus gallus.  The word “chicken” comes from the Old English “cicen,” which originally meant only “young fowl.”  There’s a fairly developed chicken nomenclature (capon, pullet, hen, rooster, etc.), but for our purposes we’ll just imagine a generic chicken.

“Chicken pox,” which, to reiterate, has nothing to do with chickens, is a virus more precisely known as Varicella zoster, a member of the herpes family.  Chicken pox is a very common childhood disease that produces itchy bumps (“pocks” or “pox”) on the skin and can be very unpleasant for a week or two.  But while chicken pox can produce serious complications in adults (especially pregnant women), most cases resolve themselves fairly quickly and thereafter confer lifelong immunity to the disease.

The relative mildness of chicken pox is striking in contrast to another “pox” disease, smallpox, probably the deadliest disease in human history before it was eradicated (at least “in the wild”) in the 1970s.  This contrast probably explains the name “chicken pox,” which connotes mildness and safety as opposed to the virulence of smallpox.  It has also been suggested that “chicken” in the name refers to a supposed resemblance of the pox to chickpeas, or that the skin of a sufferer looks as if it has been pecked by chickens.  But the “not dangerous” sense of “chicken” is the most likely source, especially given that chicken pox was for many centuries considered an innocuous form of the deadly smallpox.

Are we there yet?

Dear Word Detective: I am wondering about the origin of the phrase “the pits.” My friend is moving to Pittsburgh and I am wondering if there is any relation (though I doubt it). — Dustin.

Well, let’s not be hasty. Have you ever actually been to Pittsburgh? Just kidding. It’s a lovely city. There’s an Ikea store there, and the locals call bologna “jumbo.” What’s not to like? The only bad experience I’ve ever had in Pittsburgh was many years ago, when I was taking a Greyhound bus from Ohio to New York City. First the driver got lost in Zanesville, then he clipped a telephone pole in West Virginia, and finally he drove us into a deserted garage in downtown Pittsburgh at 3 a.m., dismounted the bus, and disappeared for good. Sometimes I suspect that I’m still sitting on that bus and all the rest of this has been a hallucination. It would explain a lot.

Meanwhile, back at your question, no, “the pits” does not refer to Pittsburgh. For one thing, “the pits” as slang for the very worst, the most degraded and depressing example of something, first appeared in common usage only in the 1950s, and if Pittsburgh were all that bad the phrase would have shown up a lot sooner.

“Pit” itself is a very old word, derived from the Old English “pytt,” meaning “water hole,” and rooted ultimately in the Latin “puteus,” meaning “well or pit.” From the general sense of “hole in the ground,” our modern “pit” has developed a wide range of specialized uses, from the deepest part of a mine (as in “coal pit”) to an especially foul mood (“pit of depression”). The reprehensible practice of putting various animals in pits in the ground and forcing them to fight has given us both the name of “pit bull” dogs and the “cockpit” of aircraft, so-named because it is considered as cramped as the pits used for staging fights between chickens. Some modern uses of “pit” have completely lost their original “lower level” sense, such as the “trading pit” on the floor of a stock exchange, the gaming area of casinos, and the “pit” area at the side of racetracks, which takes its name from the sunken area of a garage that allows mechanic to work on the underside of cars.

The use of “the pits” to mean the worst and most unpleasant instance of something, however, has its source a bit closer to home. “Pits” in this sense is simply short for “armpits,” long considered an unpleasantly aromatic region of the human body. From originally meaning literally “stinky armpits,” the phrase broadened to describe anything that metaphorically stinks. As American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society, explained in 1965, “This is a slang abbreviation of the term armpits, … with an extension of meaning to entail the idea of body odor (‘He’s got the pits’) or, more broadly, something unpleasant (‘It [the party] was really the pits’).

What ever.

Dear Word Detective: Today I’ve come across what appears to be an idiom which I’ve never heard before, perhaps because it appears to be British and Australian and not American. “Take it as red” seems to mean something like “take it as given,” or at least “consider it plausible.” I was wondering if you might be able to further clarify the meaning and explain the origin of the expression? — Blyden Potts.

Oh boy, here we go again. Every time I answer a question about British idioms, I get everything right except for some obscure issue of usage that several hundred cranky limeys just happen to consider the line of demarcation twixt civilization and savagery. Then the skies blacken with flocks of their indignant emails insinuating, among other things, that I endorse the maltreatment of hedgehogs. What is it with the Brits and their weird affection for hedgehogs, anyway? They taste awful.

Yet I must forge on fearlessly. The phrase you are wondering about, incidentally, is “take it as read,” not “red” (the “read” being the past tense of “to read”). I suspect that you know that and simply made a typo in your email, but one mustn’t annoy the hedgehogians.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “to take something as read” as “to treat (a statement, a subject, etc.) as if it has been agreed, without having a discussion about it; to take for granted.” The phrase, which dates back to the late 19th century, most often seems to be used to mean “to accept something as a given or as having already been stated and heard, in order to move on to other things” (“‘It’s really I who ought to say ‘sorry,’ you know. … ‘We’ll take it all as read,’ put in Miss Wilson hastily,” 1930). “Take it as read” is a way to fast-forward past a discussion that would be pointless, painful or redundant.

The roots of “take it as read” lie in parliamentary procedure, the conduct of meetings governed by Robert’s Rules of Order and the like. It is common, for instance, for members of a group to accept the minutes of previous meetings “as read,” meaning without objection, or to approve a resolution as presented (“read”) to the group without modification or the debate that would ensue. The minutes of nearly every organization under the sun, to judge from a Google search, are riddled with the phrase “accepted as read” (“Dr. Fister moved that the August 4, 2006 minutes be accepted as read. Ms. LaVallee seconded the motion, and it passed unanimously,” Board of Dental Examiners, Augusta, Maine, 2006). In the slightly less formal form “take it as read,” the phrase then became a popular way to move a conversation swiftly past a bump in the road.

None for me, thanks.

Dear Word Detective: What is the origin and current use of the word “scribner”? A Canadian coworker says the Canadians use this word like we do “scribe” although it has an expanded meaning of not only taking notes, but watchdogging all paperwork for a project or committee. Do you concur? Was it originally British? — Kathleen.

Hey, this is cool. I finally get to try out my Canadian dictionary. Seriously. I’ve had The Canadian Oxford Dictionary (“The foremost authority on Canadian English”), all 1700 pages of it, sitting on my shelf for almost ten years, where it has collected a formidable layer of dust. I can’t really claim any foresight on this score, however, because Oxford University Press sends me pretty much every dictionary they publish, which may explain why the floor of my office tilts so alarmingly.

Hmm, the book seems to be stuck to the shelf. I must have a word with the housekeeper as soon as I hire one. Here we go, “Scriabin,” “scribbler,” “scribe,” “scrim.” Oops, no “scribner.” Let’s give Google a shot. Nope, lots of references to Charles Scribner’s Sons, the famed American publisher, as well as “Scribner” as a common surname, but no “scribner” in the sense you mention. The Oxford English Dictionary also comes up blank.

It’s certainly possible that your Canadian friend is correct about “scribner” being used as described, but at this point I’m wondering if he or she might have misheard the word “scrivener” as “scribner.” A “scrivener” originally was (the profession being long obsolete) a copyist, a clerk who copied legal documents in longhand before the widespread advent of printing. The most famous (and disturbing) example of this breed is no doubt Bartleby the Scrivener, the subject of of Herman Melville’s short story, whose catch-phrase “I would prefer not to” has resonated with office workers since the story’s publication in 1853.  Incidentally, there has been a case made that what ailed Bartleby was Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism.

In modern use, “scrivener” (from the Old French “escrivain,” a notary or clerk,” based on the Latin “scribere,” to write,” also the source of “scribe”) is used to mean a clerk, assistant, or “amanuensis,” a lovely word originally meaning “one who takes dictation by hand” (from the Latin “servus a manu,” literally “servant from the hand”). It seems plausible that “scrivener” could be used to mean “someone in charge of the paperwork,” and, given that the word is not commonly heard, the substitution of the simpler form “scribner” seems almost inevitable.

“Amanuensis,” by the way, has also taken on the broader sense of “literary assistant,” especially to a writer. My father, who as a young man worked as a personal assistant for the journalist, essayist and lexicographer H.L. Mencken, took great pride in being introduced by Mencken as “my amanuensis.”

The word known to all men.

Dear Word Detective: Today my son was reading and asked me if “moolah” was a French word. I was pretty sure it wasn’t, said so, and then scurried off in search of etymology on the internet, as is my wont. Imagine my surprise to find it listed as “Origin Unknown” by all respected authorities and, even more incredible, no investigation done by the esteemed Word Detective! Time to put on that fedora and hit the streets, gumshoe! Seriously, though, I know that if all the major dictionaries are saying it’s “Origin Unknown,” that means just what it says: nobody has a real answer yet. But perhaps you could fill us in on the leading theories on “moolah”? — Kyle Riff.

Oh, ye of little faith! Of course I’ve researched “moolah.” And researched, and researched, poring over both hefty volumes of etymological wisdom and websites of flamboyant flapdoodle. I have researched until my fingers are cramped and my eyes are crossed, yet the journey always ends with me making another cup of coffee and picking a different question to answer. But people keep asking about “moolah,” so I guess you folks deserve at least a progress report.

What makes this quest especially frustrating is that “moolah” is one of my favorite words. As a vernacular synonym for “money” since the late 1930s, “moolah” has the swing and swagger of great slang and instantly brands its user as way too cool to sweat the small change of life.

One would think, with so many people wondering about the roots of “moolah,” that someone would have come up with at least one entertaining “urban legend” about the word, but no such luck. What theories do exist about its origins are both terse and far-fetched. One holds that “moolah” derives from the French “le moulin,” meaning “the mill,” referring to factory mills as a source of wealth. Color me extremely unconvinced. But while we’re stretching plausibility to the breaking point, I must mention the recent announcement, by the Times of India newspaper, that “moolah” is the Fijian (as in Fiji, in the South Pacific) word for “money.” Unfortunately, I lent my Fijian dictionary to my accountant last week, so I’ll have to wait until he gets back to check this assertion. But unless someone can explain how a Fijian word ended up on the lips of US gamblers and hipsters in the 1930s, I plan to ignore that theory. Yet another theory traces “moolah” to the Romany (Gypsy) word “mol,” meaning “to be worth,” which is not impossible but is considered unlikely by linguists.

Another theory, proposed by Daniel Cassidy in his recent book “The Secret Language of the Crossroads: How the Irish Invented Slang,” traces “moolah” to the Irish phrase “moll oir,” meaning “pile of gold.” My inclination is to consider this quite plausible, but Mr. Cassidy apparently paints with a very broad brush, also tracing “buckaroo” to the Irish “bocai rua” (wild boys). It has long been generally accepted, on solid evidence, that “buckaroo” is actually derived from the Mexican Spanish “vaquero,” meaning “cowboy.”

That doesn’t, of course, mean that Mr. Cassidy is wrong about “moll oir,” and personally I like his theory. But the quest must continue.

Farm faster, Dwayne.

Dear Word Detective: I’m a more recent reader of your work (I noticed recently that someone had been reading for seven years!), and have enjoyed it. I came cross “agflation” in the Economist last week, and I was curious to see this word. Has this been used before? — Dibyo, Bangalore, India.

Seven years, eh? Well, we all work at our own pace. It used to take me forever to eat my vegetables as a child. In fact, I still have some eggplant from 1961 around here somewhere. The good news is that as long as I keep writing faster than that reader reads, the universe won’t collapse. Can someone bring me another cup of coffee?

I’m not sure it’s the article to which you refer, but I have found a piece in the Economist from last summer that explains “agflation” in simple terms: “Aside from wheat [which has hit a new high], the prices of corn, rice and barley have all risen by over a third since 2005. Food prices around the world are rising so quickly that a new term has been coined to describe the ballooning price of breakfast staples and dinner-time favorites: agflation.” The problem seems due, at least in part, to a rush to grow corn to get government ethanol subsidies, making both corn and every other grain (of which there is now less being grown) more expensive. Combine that with bad weather in Canada (which is apparently one huge corn farm), and a box of Pop-Tarts will soon require one of those “payday” loans.

“Agflation” appears to be a genuinely new word. The earliest press citation I can find for it is only a few months old, from May 6, 2007, also from the Economist, in an article titled, oddly, “Nuns Mug Orphan.” (The Economist is known for inventive headlines. They reported President Reagan’s intestinal growth scare back in the 1980s under the headline “A Polyp Case Now.”) The writers credit the invention of the term “agflation” to the brokerage and investment firm Merrill Lynch, which issued a report titled “Global Agriculture and Inflation” on April 27, 2007.

The genesis of “agflation” is obviously a combination of “agriculture” and “inflation,” although it seems to be being used to mean both the rise in price of agricultural goods themselves and the rise in prices of other goods and services driven by rising food prices.

I don’t pretend to understand economics, but “inflation,” in practical couch-potato terms, means that both couches and potatoes become more expensive. It is the job of economists (who do pretend to understand such things) to coin clever terms to describe the particular flavor of discomfort that consumers are suffering at any given moment. The “flation” of “inflation” lends itself to such inventions, and those old enough may remember the “stagflation” (a blend of “stagnation” and “inflation”) that tormented the US economy in the 1970s. It’s been nearly forty years and I still don’t understand “stagflation,” so I don’t plan to dwell on “agflation” too much. But I am going to plant corn on the front lawn next year.