Semper Ubi Sub Ubi

readme:

Well, that was un-fun. So, when we left our intrepid heroes last time out, they were just about to experience a weather phenomenon known as a derecho, which is apparently Spanish for Didn’t there use to be a big tree over there? and involves 80 mph straight-line winds arriving with very little warning. Unlike tornadoes, which usually can be seen gathering on the horizon out here and generally move a bit slower (allowing time for NWS tornado alerts, getting Dorothy down in the root cellar, etc.), these derecho things are more like a shotgun blast or some awful cosmic chainsaw ripping through the landscape. The entire storm at our house (which involved no — zero, nada —  actual rain) lasted 90 seconds, tops. But the blast of the wind bent major trees almost to the ground and filled the air with a mixture of dirt and vegetation that made it look like we were underwater. Very impressive.

Our appreciation of this stirring demonstration of  the Majesty of Nature was interrupted early on in that 90 seconds, however, by an explosion on the north side of the house accompanied by a very dramatic shower of sparks coming from up near the roof. A power pole on our property (we have four carrying the line back to the house) had snapped in two, breaking another pole up the line and slicing a 30 ft. pine tree (a former live xmas tree, in fact) in half vertically. More importantly, the force of the pole falling had ripped the power feeder cable out of the side of our house (thus the sparks) and draped it across our yard and driveway, and, in what I think was a particularly nice touch, suspended it a few inches above our ancient (and only) car. Power to our house was broken about nine different ways. No power out here means no water, by the way, since we depend on an electric well pump.

Long story short, everyone else on our road had power again within 24 hours. Because of the damage to the poles and lines on our land, we got our power back eight days later, during which time daytime temps were over 100 F. What made this more than extremely uncomfortable in my case is that people with ms can get hyperthermia — heat stroke — at fairly low temps, so we spent as much time as possible in supermarkets and coffee shops with a/c, all of which involved a 35-mile round trip from what was left of home. Giant Eagle, we discovered, has a “cafe” that closes at 7 pm, but they leave the wi-fi on 24/7 and don’t care if you sit there in the dark all night. (Not that we had the money for a week in a motel, but the few near us were booked solid the whole time, and were charging extortionate “emergency prices” to boot.) Driving down our road at night for a week and seeing every other house lit up with the a/c running and the Blue Glow of Happy Potatohood flickering in the windows was, I must say, a bit disheartening.

Eventually the power came back on and we began the grim task of cleaning up. My favorite part was emptying the freezer full of food out in the garage. The power line had fallen in such a way that it blocked access to the garage door, and the result, after a week in high heat, was the stuff of nightmares.

But within a few days it was mostly a bad memory. And then it happened again. Seriously. About a week after the power came back, another derecho with 80 mph winds hit us. Miraculously, it didn’t take out the power, but it did knock down a huge old tree which is still lying across our front yard.

While we’re on the subject of help, thanks to all the folks who have contributed to our continuing existence by subscribing to TWD-by-Email, and special thanks to those two wonderful people (you know who you are) who have sent us Holy-Cow-Level contributions in the past month or so. It’s no fun having electric power if you can’t afford to turn on the lights, and we really appreciate your generosity.

It has lately occurred to us here at TWD World Headquarters, and I’m being only slightly facetious, that our house, which was built during the Civil War and is verifiably haunted, may actually be trying to get rid of us by manipulating space, time, the weather, and various public utilities companies. As I write this, for example, we have no natural gas service (thus no stove or hot water) for the third time in as many months. Columbia Gas is yet again “fixing” the ginormous interstate gas pipeline that runs about 1/4 mile from our house, which seems to spring a leak with every full moon. A few months ago they “blew out” the yard-wide pipe one morning to clean it, creating a giant cloud of natural gas that predictably drifted down the road and settled suffocatingly on our house, leading to a brisk run for the car and an afternoon wandering through Walmart.

This morning I put water on to boil for coffee, got in the shower, and, upon walking through the kitchen ten minutes later, noticed the water wasn’t boiling. Weird. But the kettle was hot. Weirder. And the burner control was on. Weirdorama. But there was no flame. That ain’t right. Since I had, by definition, not yet had my morning coffee, I stood there for a full minute before I realized that this is what passes for advance notice from the utility companies around here. Or maybe they did call to notify us, but the house erased their message.

Anyway, I think I’ve definitely earned the right to say It’s always something. So here’s this issue, and I hope to get back on schedule next month, because that will mean that (knock some termite-ridden wood) at least most things around here are working.

Thanks for your help. Now go stand over there.

Dear Word Detective:  I just got an email where someone referred to “on our behalves.” Is this correct? I’d always thought it would be “on our behalf,” even if it’s on behalf of multiple people. — Rosemarie Eskes, Rochester, NY.

Oh boy. What you’ve asked seems like a simple yes-or-no sort of question, but it isn’t. The story of “behalf” begins with our common English word “half,” which first appeared in Old English, from common Germanic roots, as “half” or “healf.” Today we often use “half” to mean “one of two equal parts of something,” but the oldest meaning of the word in English is “side,” as in the right or left side of a person. In the ninth century this sense of “half” was expanded to mean “one of the two opposing parties to a conflict,” much as we use “side” today. Thus to say that you were “on the half of” someone meant that you were on their side and supported their cause, and phrases such as “on the half of,” “in the half of,” etc., became common English idioms in this figurative sense. “On (or in) the half of” could also mean “acting in place of or as agent or representative of” another person.

This use of “half” to mean “side” eventually died out, but not before the rise of “behalf” in the 14th century. “Behalf” (which had first appeared as “behealfe” in Old English) was simply a combination of “half” in the “side” sense with the prefix “be” meaning “by,” giving us the meaning of “by one’s side, for one’s benefit.” Although the Old English “behealfe” acted as an adverb and a preposition, our modern “behalf” is purely and simply a noun, a thing. And there’s the rub.

As a noun, “behalf” needs a preposition (“on,” “for” or “in one’s behalf”) in order to make sense. There is a school of thought that regards “on behalf of” as meaning “for the benefit of,” and “in behalf of” as connoting representation of another person (“Bob negotiated in behalf of Sam, who was in the hospital.”), but this distinction is not commonly observed. “On behalf of” is the standard form for all uses in Britain, but “on” and “in” are used interchangeably in the US.

Historically, “behalf” has also had a plural form, either “behalves” (modeled on the plural of “half”) or, more commonly, “behalfs.” When multiple parties are involved, I think the question is whether their interests (i.e., “behalfs”) are the same or separate. Ordinarily, you’d say “The attorney appealed to the bank on behalf of Tom and Mary, the homeowners.” But if Tom and Mary were divorcing and had separate lawyers, their lawyers might appeal to the bank “on their clients’ behalfs,” because their interests would be separate. Personally, I’d draw the line at “behalves,” simply because “on one’s behalf” is such a fixed phrase in English that “behalves” looks weird. And obviously, if you have a single entity, such as an athletic team, that is composed of multiple individuals, there’s no need to say “on the team’s behalfs” (or even “on the players’ behalfs,” unless they’re suing each other).

For the memories.

Dear Word Detective: The word “tank” is mentioned so very much in your column, I was surprised to find no origin for it. There are so many uses: a tank-top, an army tank, a gas tank, a tankard, I am sure there are more that I am neglecting. Are all of these tanks related to each other? What is the connection between a tank-top that you wear and your gas tank? — Diana T.

Hey, you’re right. After I read your question, I went and searched my website for instances of the word “tank” in my columns and there are scads. Interestingly, none of them (as far as I could tell, given my short attention span for my own work) referred to the military vehicle type of “tank,” which is odd. When I was a kid I was mildly obsessed with tanks, and my dream was to have my very own M4 Sherman tank, which may have been one reason I got to know the school guidance counselor so well. But when the Zombie Apocalypse hits, you’re all going to realize I was prescient, not nuts. Have fun in your little tin Corollas.

(Hey, I guess it’s never too late. This one is only $325,000.)

“Tank” as a noun has all the senses you mention and several more (“think tank” among them), except that there is no apparent connection between “tank” and “tankard,” meaning a large mug or cup. “Tankard” comes from the Dutch “tanckaert,” from “kantard,” which in turn came from the Latin “cantharus” (a kind of deep cup used in Ancient Greece). “Kantard” became “tanckaert” (and then “tankard”) probably through a weird, but not unprecedented, transposition of letters.

“Tank” is also a bit weird in that it seems to have both Indian and Portuguese roots. In India, the Gujarati “tankh” (possibly from the Sanskrit “tadaga”) means an underground reservoir of water, but the Portuguese “tanque” means “pond” (ultimately from the Latin “stagnum,” pond). Whether the Portuguese influenced the Indian word or vice-versa, “tank” first appeared in English in the 17th century meaning “a cistern or storage place for water.”

Most of the ways we use “tank” today are, at least tangentially, connected to that original meaning of “a container to hold liquid or similar substances.” “Tanks” in that original sense can range from the gas “tank” on your car to the huge “tanks” of natural gas or fuel oil you sometimes see near cities. Scuba divers depend on “tanks” of air, and pet fish depend on their “tanks” of water.

It’s when we use “tank” in figurative senses that the word starts to wander away from that literal “container for liquid” meaning. “Tank tops” are called that because they resemble “tank suits,” close-fitting women’s bathing suits commonly worn in the 1920s in “swimming tanks,” what today we call “swimming pools.” The term “think tank,” today meaning “an organization of purported experts who come up with fancy ways of explaining what everyone already knows,” was originally, in the late 1800s, simply slang for “the human brain,” also known as “the think box.”

The military “tank,” a tracked armored vehicle carrying a heavy gun, got its name in 1916, during the First World War. The term “tank” was adopted as a code word for the vehicles while they were being developed in secret by the British Army, but the name stuck after their public debut on the Western Front, probably because early tanks resembled large metal oil tanks.

When we say that something has “tanked,” meaning “failed miserably,” we’re using a phrase which is several steps removed from any real “tank.” This slang “to tank” started out in the boxing ring, where a crooked fighter who agreed to intentionally lose a match was said to have “taken a dive” (in this case, literally falling to the canvas floor of the ring). Taking off from the “dive” usage, and with “swimming tanks” in mind, people began speaking of fighters “going into the tank” when throwing a fight, or “being in the tank,” i.e., having been bribed to lose.

Sometime in the 1970s, as these “tank” phrases began to be adopted by the general public, they lost their “did it on purpose” meanings and “to tank” came to mean simply “to fail utterly,” with no implication of corruption. But there must have been a few old boxing fans left in the early 1990s, because “to be in the tank for” then reappeared in political jargon, with its original meaning of “in the pay of” or “secretly in favor of or committed to” (“NBC is clearly in the tank for Clinton”).

Save room for desserts.

Dear Word Detective:  In the sentence “The player had been on the field just eight minutes when he opened the scoring,” what word type would “just” fall under and why is it used? — Tom.

Good question. “Just” is a Swiss Army knife word. Consider how any times a day we use the word “just” in senses ranging from asking a caller to wait “just a minute” while we stop the dog from climbing into the refrigerator, to explaining that we mailed the check “just yesterday,” to pronouncing the porridge “just right.” And that’s not even counting the obnoxious ads exhorting us to “Just Do It.” Despite what you’ve heard about “the sleep of the just,” “just” never sleeps, and when it paces the room muttering to itself, we may beg, “Just leave us alone,” but it won’t. Is this making anyone else feel slightly queasy?

Never mind. Must have been the tuna omelet. Anyway, the “just” in your example of “just eight minutes” is an adverb, as is “just” in all of the uses I cited above except “sleep of the just,” in which it is an adjective (technically an “adjectival noun,” an adjective acting as a noun, as in “the poor” or “the meek”). In your example phrase “just eight minutes,” the word “just” is being used to mean “only” or “no more than.”

The adverbial “just” first appeared in English right around 1400, derived from the adjective “just,” which had entered English earlier in the 14th century. The root of “just” was the Latin “jus,” meaning “right or law” (which also underlies “justice” and is related to “jury,” “injury,” et al.). This Latin “jus” seems to have originated in religious cults (possibly originally meaning “sacred formulas”) and was separate from the mainstream Latin “lex,” meaning “law.” So it’s not surprising that the early uses of “just” as an adjective in English centered on moral and religious rightness and fidelity. The religious overtones had largely dropped away by Shakespeare’s day (“He was my Friend, faithful, and just to me,” Julius Caesar, 1616), and “just” as an adjective ever since has meant “true, fair, proper, reasonable and right” in various secular  senses.

“Just” as an adverb followed this semantic trail, initially meaning “precisely, properly, appropriately,” as we use it today in such phrases as “just as” (exactly as), “just so” (in precisely this manner or fashion). Somewhat more loosely, we use “just as” to denote the extent or degree of something (“I’ll be your friend just as long as you lend me money”). “Just” can also indicate likeness or being appropriate (“You seem to be just the thing for him,” 1809), or denote a specific amount or quantity (“It is just a fortnight since Mr. Gladstone embarked,” 1883). “Just” is also used to introduce an implied question (“One wonders just how biased a view we develop of the human ecology of tropical Africa,” 1974) or statement of fact (“Just how many bushels a man will place on an acre depends upon both his means and his judgment,” 1884). In both those sentences “just” could be replaced by “exactly” or “precisely.”

One of the uses of “just” that seems to have drifted furthest from its original meaning is “just” used in matters of time to mean “almost at that point; not long before or after” (“The apostle had just been speaking of Jesus Christ,” 1758) or “in a moment, very soon” (“Presently the Captain reply’d, Tell his Excellency, I am just a coming,” 1719). It can also mean “barely,” “merely” or “no more than” (“Everard had but just time to bid Wildrake hold the horses,” 1826).  “Just” is also used as an emphatic modifier meaning “absolutely,” as in “Bob’s arrest for mopery was just the final straw.” In the advertising slogan “Just Do It,” the “just” is, as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes in its exhaustive entry on the word, being “used to extenuate the action expressed by a verb, and so to represent it as a small thing” (“Mother! Do just get in with me for a few minutes till the train starts,” 1898) or, in this case, simply a matter of initiative and discipline.

Many of these sub-senses of “just” overlap, obviously, and trying to finely parse the differences between the senses is asking for a fierce headache. But to say a player has been on the field for “just eight minutes” clearly invokes sense Five of the OED definition: “No more than; only, merely; barely.” That’s still in the ballpark with the original sense of “just” meaning “exactly,” but in this sense, with its overtones of “Gimme a break, it’s only been eight minutes,” it’s become an adverb with attitude.

Gopher broke, can I borrow yours?

Dear Word Detective:  As a youngster in Minneapolis, I used to hear my classmates use “borrow” to mean “lend,” as in “I borrowed him five bucks and he hasn’t paid me back.” I had always written this off as the usage of children, but within the last two or three years I have heard it so used by adults on the “Judge Judy” program. And the curious thing is (cue the “Twilight Zone” music), whenever I have been able to note the origins of said persons, they have always been from Minnesota. Is this actually a gopherism that I missed out on by moving away before the age of 25? — Charles Anderson.

Judge Judy. That is all. Actually, I just realized that not only have I never watched Judge Judy, but I’ve been confusing her with Dr. Laura, whom I have also never watched (possibly because, as Wikipedia just pointed out, she’s a radio host). I also tend to confuse Sanjay Gupta with Doctor Oz. I probably just need to sit closer to the TV. Anyway, my impression of Judge Judy and her penitents is wholly based on clicking past her show on my way to the digital sub-channel that shows old sitcoms around here. (Mister Ed rules!) But there seems to be a whole slew of apparently fungible kangaroo court shows on the upper broadcast channels in the afternoon, and I’ve always wondered how people pick a favorite. Maybe they just go with the one their nephew was on.

I’ve never been to Minnesota, but I would have made more of an effort if I’d realized you guys worship gophers. Awesome. Here in Ohio the people call each other Buckeyes, which is a type of tree nut. No comment. People in Ohio say some strange things, but so far I haven’t noticed anything quite on the level of using “borrow” to mean “lend.” Maybe there’s something in those 10,000 lakes.

At first glance, there’s something profoundly disturbing about reversing the meaning of “borrow,” much more jarring than, say, using “literally” as an emphatic modifier of a figurative statement (“I opened the gas bill and literally had a heart attack”). Shakespeare’s advice in Hamlet, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry,” kinda loses its point if you don’t observe the difference between the words.

Then again, this “borrow/lend” business has a history of confusion. The curious thing about the word “borrow” is that it originally meant something close to “lend.” A “borrow” (the now-obsolete noun, from Germanic roots meaning “to protect”) in Old English was a thing given as security or a guarantee, and “to borrow” was to take something of value as security for a loan, as pawnshops do today. The senses reversed early on in English, with the emphasis of “borrow” shifting to the “thing” taken as collateral, and eventually “to borrow” came to mean to take something belonging to someone else with a pledge, not necessarily involving money, that it would be returned in the future.

Elsewhere in the mix, “loan” and “lend” both come from the Old Norse “lan,” which meant “to let have.” Interestingly, as a verb, “to loan” is largely confined to the US; if you’re broke in London you’ll be looking for someone to “lend” you money.

Semantically, “borrow” and “lend” are a matched pair, like “come” and “go,” and “here” and “there,” two sides of the same conceptual coin. Some languages, in fact use one word to mean both actions and let context indicate the meaning (as some languages use one word to mean both “teach” and “learn”). The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) notes that the non-standard use of “borrow” to mean “to lend” is “scattered” across the US, but especially found west of the Great Lakes, i.e., in Gopherland. DARE also notes that this usage is found “especially among young speakers and speakers with [only] grade school educations.” This usage, however, is far from new; the first citation in DARE is from New York State in 1896, and “Will you borry me some sugar?” was noted in Kentucky in 1917.

So using “borrow” to mean “lend” is simply a dialectical variation, strongly centered in Minnesota. I’m sure that even as we speak there are people out there ranting against this deviant usage as a harbinger of the lang-pocalypse and the consequent death of civilization, but I can’t get terribly cranked up about it. It’s not like the government got confused about “borrow” and “lend” and started giving trillions of dollars to big banks.

That’s all, folks.

Dear Word Detective:  I am looking for the origin of the phrase “on the brink of disaster.” Can you help? — Dorothy.

Brink of disaster? Eve of destruction? End of Days? The Big Kablooey? What the noted futurologist Walter Mitty called the Pocketa-pocketa-pocalypse?

Why do you ask? Seriously, why is everybody suddenly fixated on the End of the World as We Know It (everybody except, of course, r.e.m. (r.i.p.) and a few million Mayans)? We went to the movies a while back and saw a film, called Take Shelter, about a guy in small-town Ohio who begins to see weird, scary things in the sky and decides to prepare for The End. Thing is, his Ohio small town was a dead ringer for our Ohio small town, right down to ugly wood paneling in the Lions Club, and nothing he saw in the sky struck me as all that unusual out here, all of which worried me. I guess when the zeitgeist starts rattling the shutters it’s time to stock up on freeze-dried Twinkies and firewood.

Today we use the word “brink” almost entirely in contexts where there is imminent danger of something bad happening (current headlines on Google News include “The week that Europe stumbled to the brink of disaster,” “US and China on brink of trade war over solar industry,” and “Billy Crystal Brings Oscars Back From the Brink”). But ’twas not always so.

When “brink” first appeared in English around 1300 (from Germanic roots meaning “edge of a field, grass-land, side of a hill”), it meant either “bank of a river, edge of the sea, etc.” or “the edge of a steep place, especially one might fall into, such a chasm, pit, canyon, etc.” A “brink,” in other words, could be simply the restful bank of a slowly moving river. “Brink” was also used to mean the edge or border of anything, even the brim of a cup or hat.

But it was that second “look out below” sense that produced, around 1600, the figurative use of “brink” to mean, as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) says, “The very verge of some state, time, event, or action: now especially in the phrases ‘on,’ ‘to,’ ‘from the brink of’, a discovery, ruin, destruction, death, eternity, anarchy, revolution, absurdity, etc.”

While “brink” is used today in a few positive senses, such as “brink of a scientific breakthrough” or “brink of stardom,” the word still carries those “standing at the edge of the cliff” overtones. Thus the use of “brink” alone, without a prepositional phrase such as “of success” or the like, is almost invariably in the negative sense; one can only imagine what would happen to the Oscars if Billy Crystal had to cancel, but it doesn’t sound good.

This use of “brink” with an assumed connotation of a bad possible outcome produced, in the 1950s, the term “brinkmanship,” defined by the OED as “the art of advancing to the very brink of war but not engaging in it.” Since the potential “war” in question at that time was a full-on nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, “brinkmanship” was a very dangerous game to play (“He [Adlai Stevenson] derided the Secretary [of Defense, J. F. Dulles] for ‘boasting of his brinkmanship — the art of bringing us to the edge of the nuclear abyss’,” NY Times, 2/26/56).

Since phrases involving something or someone “on the brink” of some bad thing or another have been common for more than 400 years at this point, and since “disaster” (from the Latin “dis,” unfavorable, plus “astrum,” star, giving us literally “ill-starred”) is just about that old in English, the chances of pinpointing the first use of “brink of disaster” are nil. On the bright side, after all the various “brinks” humanity has faced, we’re still here to worry about the Oscars and their brink, whatever it may be.

But I was really good at 52 Pick-up.

Dear Word Detective:  Early in Dickens’ Great Expectations, when Pip first meets Estella, she exclaims in dismay, “He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!” This got me to wondering why the King and Queen should have a knave as their constant companion, how he came to be called the Jack, and whence the class distinction between the two terms. This might not even be a word origins question, but I’ll bet you know the answer. — Harold Russell.

That’s an optimistic but not unreasonable bet, although I must tell you that I just called my broker and short-sold myself on this one. But my answer, even if hilariously wrong in the parts that make any sense at all, won’t be a total loss. I plan to bundle all my flops into a book at year’s end and sell it on Amazon. I already have friends lined up to give it four-star reviews, the cover, featuring Anna Chapman in a deerstalker and cape, is awesome, and Angelo Mozilo has promised to write the foreword.

Y’know, come to think of it, book publishing does bear an uncanny resemblance to the whole collateralized debt con. Perhaps that’s why my agent lives in the Hamptons and I, to put it mildly, don’t.

Onward. This is the point when I caution that my only experience with playing cards was an inexplicable winning streak in Go Fish when I was eight. I don’t even know how to play Solitaire. Yes, I am sad. But I do know that the terms “knave” and “jack” in cards both refer to the lowest-ranking court card in each suit, just below the King and Queen.

The “knave” cards in a modern deck of cards usually depict a rather dashing fellow, in full face or profile depending on the suit, nattily attired but absent the crown worn by the King and Queen. The “knave” is actually a young man or boy serving as an attendant in the royal court, which fits nicely with the original meaning of “knave.” Derived from Germanic roots, “cnafa” in Old English meant “a boy, a young male servant,” and in modern English its descendant “knave” settled into meaning “a male servant, usually of humble origin and menial station” (as opposed, for instance, to a knight). “Knave” in this sense was a fairly neutral term, but gradually underwent a process of “pejoration” and took on its modern meaning of “scoundrel, unscrupulous man” probably due to class prejudice against the low origins of most knaves. Interestingly, both the “court servant” and “dishonest creep” senses of “knave” were in use when the character of a knave first appeared on playing cards in the mid-1500s, but the card name definitely reflected the dutiful kind of “knave,” a recognized member of the royal court.

“Jack” is a familiar form of the common proper name “John,” and has long been used as a stand-in name for “the common man,” just about any worker (as in “lumberjack,” “steeplejack,” etc.), and even common tools (as in the “jack” that lifts a car). The use of “jack” as an alternative name for the “knave” on playing cards first appeared around 1674, or just a century after the “knave” itself appeared in the deck. That was, oddly enough, also just about a century after “jack” had undergone a process of “pejoration” parallel to that of “knave” and was commonly used to mean “a low-bred or ill-mannered lout.”

While “knave” and “jack” were used as names for the same playing card, “knave” was long considered the more “proper” name for the card (and still is more commonly used in Britain), most likely because it reflects an awareness of the original royal court origin of the character. “Jack” by that time had already been in use for so long in various forms of slang that even if it didn’t conjure up visions of a ruffian, it probably still reeked of the streets to many people. Thus Estella, adopted daughter of the extremely proper Miss Havisham, would have considered Pip’s use of the term “jack” an amusingly lower-class locution, worthy of her derision.

What I really need is a liger.*

Dear Word Detective: Any dog owner can well-understand such metaphors as “dogs” for feet (especially dog-tired feet), “dogging” somebody for pestering them, and even “dirty dog” (when I see my best friend rolling in the grass, I know it is bath time). But “dogs of war” for soldiers? I know it comes from Shakespeare, but did he make it up out of whole cloth? Was it a pure metaphor from having seen vicious dogs fighting? Or did they train attack dogs way back then? — Steve Ford.

So when they roll in the grass, that means they need a bath? Live and learn. I always figured they cleaned themselves, like cats do. Just kidding, of course, but I did discover a few years ago that dogs are much easier to bathe if you shave them first. Last summer I gave Pokie a lion cut, with a regal mane and just a tuft of fur left at the tip of her tail. People love lion dogs. There was one that used to live near us in Manhattan, on West 83rd Street, and guys sitting out on their stoops would shout, “Here comes the lion dog!” Then again, I think that dog’s owner was a drug dealer, so maybe they weren’t really excited about the lion dog, per se. But it was a cool dog.

I haven’t done a rigorous count, but I’d be surprised if there weren’t more phrases and idioms in English involving dogs than any other animal, although cats are obviously also very popular, followed by the ever-popular livestock idioms. But from “dog eat dog” to “a dog’s life” (not a happy one) to “dogleg” (a sharp bend in something) to “hair of the dog that bit you” (a hangover remedy containing alcohol) to “putting on the dog” (possibly from aristocrats who carried small dogs as fashion accessories) to “going to the dogs” (falling to ruin, but originally, according to Plutarch, simply meaning “in an uproar”), it’s apparent that man’s best friend is also man’s most convenient metaphor. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) mentions a nifty one I’d never heard, “to keep a dog and bark oneself,” meaning “to do the work for which one employs others” (“Investors can monitor their portfolios … but mainly let the chosen professionals do their job. After all, why keep a dog and bark yourself?” UPI, 2001). Words to live by, if you can afford them. I guess the rest of us will have to go bark ourselves.

The phrase “dogs of war” does indeed come from Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, Act III, in Mark Antony’s soliloquy after Caesar’s assassination. Consumed by foreboding after the murder, Antony predicts chaos for Rome as Caesar’s legacy: “And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge, With Ate by his side come hot from hell, Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice, Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war.” (Ate, incidentally, was a Greek goddess who personified ruin and destruction.)

By “dogs of war” Shakespeare meant destruction, chaos and death on a mass scale, but he was aware, in concocting the metaphor, that dogs had been used in warfare since ancient times, including in Greece, Rome and even Egypt. As sentinels and guards outside encampments, scouts and trackers, and even as weapons of attack, dogs have been employed by armies just about as long as there have been armies, and many military forces (including those of the US) still use dogs for a variety of tasks.

In using the concrete “dogs of war” as a metaphor for the chaos of warfare, Shakespeare created a powerful and vivid phrase, which, not surprisingly, tends to pop up whenever essayists bemoan humanity’s predilection for self-destruction. But the publication in 1974 of Frederick Forsyth’s novel The Dogs of War gave a new currency and a slightly different meaning to the phrase. In Forsyth’s book, set in post-colonial Africa, the “dogs of war” are professional mercenaries, soldiers-for-hire hired by a British industrialist to overthrow the government of a country in order to gain access to its mineral wealth. The popularity of Forsyth’s book and its subsequent Hollywood film adaptation popularized the phrase “dogs of war” as a synonym for “mercenaries” or, a bit more loosely, “enthusiastic and amoral proponents of military action.” Oddly, neither definition has yet made it into the OED.

Incidentally, “to cry havoc” in Shakespeare’s time (and Caesar’s, too) was a specific military command ordering soldiers in battle to loot and seize spoils from the enemy. “Havoc,” from the Old French “havot” (looting), may have been derived from the Latin “habere,” to have.”   Shakespeare’s use of the phrase as part of his metaphor probably contributed to the broadening of “havoc” (often combined with “play” or “wreak”) to its modern meaning  of “confusion, disorder, or destruction” (“The noise and clatter of high-revving engines can play havoc with a driver’s nerves,” 1969).

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* Napoleon Dynamite: It’s pretty much my favorite animal. It’s like a lion and a tiger mixed… bred for its skills in magic.

Now we avoid looking directly at it and leave an offering of carrots once a week.

Dear Word Detective: What is the origin of the term “hairbrained”? Which is the correct spelling: “hairbrained” or “harebrained”? — Lori Cash.

Aw, gee, why ask me when we have the internet? I’ll just plug “hairbrained” into Google News and push the magic button. Hmm, 43 hits, which isn’t a lot, but some of them are for reputable sites such as The Los Angeles Times (“The concert’s punk portion consisted of happily hair-brained and hair-raising arrangements…”), Discovery News (“Sounds like a hair-brained theory…”), and Esquire (“Torio takes a fatherly approach with the dim-witted Al, urging him to ‘leave him out’ of Al’s hair-brained schemes.”). The LA Times citation might, of course, be a lame pun, but the others are apparently guileless uses of that spelling. “Harebrained,” on the other hand, garners 127 results, many of which are from similarly august sources (“And yes, some of what he spouts is harebrained,” Washington Post). Hyphenation of both spellings, incidentally, varies.

So I assume we can agree not to let Google pick our next president, and now it’s time to open the envelope. The etymologically proper spelling is “hare-brained,” and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) seems to prefer that hyphenated form, although Merriam-Webster likes “harebrained,” as do I.

I said that “harebrained” was the “etymologically proper” spelling because the logic of “harebrained” is that the person so described acts as if he or she had no more brains or sense than a “hare,” which is, of course, an animal similar to, somewhat larger than, but not usually considered notably smarter than, the common rabbit. The product of such low-wattage thinking can also be rightly described as “harebrained,” as in the ever-popular “harebrained scheme.”

Ironically, in the mythologies of several cultures around the world, the hare is portrayed as a “trickster,” a supernatural entity which plays tricks on people, which would imply high intelligence. We happen to have a large stone figure of a hare outside the door to our house, which may be why the internet and telephone keep going out. But the thing is way too heavy to move, and anyway I’d be afraid of annoying it.

Probably the most famous hare in literature is the March Hare of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, named from the old English folk-saying “Mad as a March hare,” meaning very mad (insane) indeed. Hares mate in the spring, and the saying refers to their highly agitated dating behavior during the month of March. Our modern English word “hare” (in Old English, “hara”) comes from Germanic roots, possibly carrying the sense of “gray,” which many hares are. The adjective “harebrained” first appeared in written English in 1548, simultaneously with the appearance of the noun “harebrain,” meaning a witless or reckless person.

Many words change their spellings over time, and “hare” is among them. (You can see where this is going, can’t you?) The first citation for “harebrained” in the OED is from 1548 (“My desire is that none of you be so unadvised or harebrained as to be the occasion that [etc.]“). The second citation is from 1581, and contains something interesting: “If his sonne be haughtie, or haire brained, he termeth him courageous.” Yup, “haire brained,” because early on “hair” was an accepted spelling of “hare,” and this spelling remained common in Scotland well into the 18th century. Examples in the OED alternate between the “hare” and “hair” spellings, including “hair” samples from such un-harebrained writers as the great essayist William Hazlitt (“The excesses of mad, hairbrained, roaring mirth,” 1818).

If you’re feeling charitable (and credulous) at any given moment, you might imagine that people who spell “harebrained” as “hairbrained” today are simply employing this antiquated Scots spelling, perhaps even jonesing for some tasty haggis while they do so. But it’s far more likely that they’re laboring under the impression that the word implies that the “hairbrained” person has a head full of light, fluffy and useless hair where their brains should be. Given our culture’s obsession with hair, that’s entirely understandable, but it’s still off the mark. I suggest we stick with “harebrained,” even if in doing so we risk the wrath of hares.

Let’s blame Billy.

Dear Word Detective: It “got my goat” that I was the “goat” for the team matches at my golf club. Actually, I was told I “laid down like a dog.” That last label I fully understand and need no etymological assistance. Besides my obvious need for putting lessons I was curious why “goat” is used in these apparently diverse ways. (By the way, while I was looking up “goat” I noticed the slang usage meaning “Greatest of All Time.” I am pretty sure that is not what they meant at the club.) — Bob.

Wow. I knew I wasn’t a golfer (I’m sure I’d remember something like that, and a glance in my closet revealed an absence of those club-thingies you use), but when I stumbled over the word “putting” in your question I realized how far out of the links-loop I am. I didn’t recognize it at first as the golf term, and instead read it as a form of the verb “to put,” as in “Putting on his coat, Bob realized he should also wear a hat.” As it turns out, I wasn’t too far off course. The verb “to putt” in golf, meaning “to make a light stroke on the green,” is actually just an antiquated form of “to put,” which is derived from Germanic roots. It’s the same sense of “to put” as we use in “shot putting,” that of “push, shove, move by force.” I guess we can blame the Scots who invented your infernal game for the pronunciation difference between “put” and “putt.”

I’d never heard of “goat” being used as an acronym for “Greatest of All Time,” but if that usage takes off I’ll begin to suspect that the goats have hired a public relations agent. They could certainly use one. Our modern term “scapegoat,” for instance, referring to someone who is unfairly made to bear the blame for something, comes from the Bible. In an ancient ritual once observed on the Hebrew Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), the high priest transferred the sins of his people onto a goat, which was then taken into the wilderness and allowed to escape, symbolically taking all the sins with him and giving everyone a fresh start. This goat was known as the “escape goat,” or “scapegoat.”

Another “goat” crops up in the phrase “to get one’s goat,” meaning to severely annoy someone. The origin of this phrase is a mystery, although we do know that it first appeared in print in the early 20th century. The only even remotely plausible theory we have about the phrase ties it to horse racing. Trainers apparently used to believe that placing a goat in a racehorse’s stall would calm the steed before a race. Unscrupulous gamblers might, the tale goes, seek to sabotage the horse’s chances by stealing (“getting”) the goat. The best we can say is that this theory is not absolutely impossible. H.L. Mencken liked it.

Goats must have their lighter side, however, because “to play the giddy goat” and “to act the goat” have meant “to behave foolishly” since the late 19th century. In the early 20 century, “goat” appeared in print as slang for “a fool” or “a dupe, a patsy” (“The drarmer’s writ be Shakespeare, years ago, About a barmy goat called Romeo,” 1916).

The use of “goat” to mean “loser” or “butt of jokes” may well be a further development of this slang sense. A reader of Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words website (www.worldwidewords.org) noted earlier this year that “goat” in this sense was a staple of the old Peanuts cartoon strip (“If I catch it, we’ll win the championship, and I’ll be the hero! If I miss it, I’ll be the goat! I can hear it now … ‘Charlie the goat Brown!’”). Another of Quinion’s readers pointed out that graduating cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point traditionally play an intramural football game where the teams are selected according to academic standing, the top half of the class being known as “the Engineers” and the lower half as “the Goats.”

None of this, of course, really answers the question the goats are probably asking themselves, “Why a goat?” Well, they are funny-looking, and, for most people, goats tend to rank low on the Cuddle Scale of Animal Cuteness. I actually think goats are awesome, but whatever. Then there’s that “Hey it’s Tuesday, let’s sacrifice a goat” thing in several major world religions. And the ancient drawings of Satan with a goat’s head — not good. But maybe “goat” as slang for “loser” or “object of ridicule” ultimately goes back to the “scapegoat” scampering off into the woods. Nothing says “loser” like having the sins of the entire world pinned to your tail.

I prefer a gunny sack and a wheelbarrow.

Dear Word Detective: I got to wondering about the current popularity (especially in LL Bean catalogs) of the use of “tote” as a noun (e.g., “Pop your beach gear in one of our handy totes”). I know of “tote” as a verb (e.g., “Tote your beach gear in one of our handy canvas bags”). But before sneering too much at another case of “nouning a verb,” I thought to look up the origin of “tote” to see if it actually started as a verb. Alas! I hit the “origin uncertain” wall — the etymologist’s shrug. Any insight to share? — Danny.

Nouning verbs? Be careful or you’ll provoke a new crusade. The usual complaint among people who complain about such things is directed at “verbing nouns,” using nouns as verbs (“chair,” “host” and “gift” being notorious examples). It’s an ancient complaint, but a few years ago Calvin, of the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes, revived the ruckus by famously declaring that “Verbing nouns weirds language.” That line was a big hit with folks who were apparently unaware that approximately one-fifth of our modern English nouns started out as verbs (including “pepper,” “strike,” “divorce” and “fool”). This sort of role-change for words is called “conversion,” and it’s not at all uncommon. As for “nouning verbs,” if it were really such a bad idea, gerunds would be illegal.

Onward. “Tote” was, at least in English, originally a verb. It first appeared in English around 1677, and from the beginning it had the same general definition it has today: “to carry by hand, or to haul or lug on the person (as in a backpack, etc.).” “Tote” is also used to mean “to routinely carry as part of one’s usual equipment” (“Each officer totes a sidearm, pepper spray, a two-way radio and emergency doughnuts”). In the 18th century, “tote” was also used in two slightly wider senses: “to accompany or escort another person” as on a visit (“At Baltimore I made a stay of two days, during which I was toted about town,” Washington Irving, 1807) and “to carry or transport,” not necessarily on one’s body (“I … cart all the wood, tote the wheat to the mill,” 1803).

If you look up the origin of “tote” as a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), you’ll find that they label it as “origin unascertained.” They go on to declare that “There is no foundation for an alleged origin in the black slave communities of the Southern States (and ultimately Africa).” Yet at least two other perfectly reputable dictionaries, Merriam-Webster and American Heritage, find just such a theory plausible, introducing it with “probably” and “perhaps,” respectively.

The specific assertion of the theory is that “tote” harks back to a word in a West African language brought to the American South by slaves, possibly something akin to “tota” (“to pick up”) in Kikongo or “tuta” (to pile up or carry) in Swahili. The time period of first appearance is certainly right, and the spotty written record of creoles spoken by early-generation slaves would make a slam-dunk documentation of a transition from “tota” to “tote” hard to come by. But, given the exact correspondence in the meanings of the words, it certainly doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch. However, considering the apparent lack of any solid evidence at all, I’m not surprised that the OED plays hardball on this one. It’s their job.

Meanwhile, back at the LL Bean catalog (which should be plural, or perhaps something beyond plural, since we receive at least three different versions per day, the latest being “LL Bean for Pets”), “tote” first appeared as a noun in the early 20th century, meaning simply “an act of carrying or transporting.” The use of “tote” to mean “a large canvas carrying bag given in return for money sent to a radio station” is simply a convenient shortening of “tote bag,” which dates back to around 1900 (“The Watson Tote Bag … best thing … for carrying coat, camera, …lunch, &c.,” 1900). For the record, I am the proud owner of precisely zero tote bags, though I do have a dandy messenger bag I used to wear when I rode the subways in New York City. Unlike a tote bag, it leaves your hands free to deal with the things you have to deal with.

Stop it right now.

Dear Word Detective: My daughter learned in elementary school that a group of jellyfish is called a “smuck.” This is suspiciously close to the jelly and jam company called “Smuckers.” Can you tell us if there is any relationship between these two words? — Margaret.

Suspiciously close indeed, and perhaps yet more evidence of the commercialization of childhood. On the other hand, it’s a bit hard to imagine why the Smuckers people would want their product associated in tiny minds with nasty stinging sea creatures. Children are impressionable, and names matter. I myself waited until I was thirty years old before I tried eggplant, simply because I found the name itself so repellent. But then I tried it, and discovered that I should have trusted my prejudice, because eggplant is the most revolting so-called food on the planet. Yuck. But the point is that early impressions can leave a lasting legacy of loathing. So I guess the moral of all that is that, if you’re Smuckers, don’t use a jellyfish as your mascot. And please don’t ever make eggplant jam.

Collective nouns, terms for groups of animals, people or things, are a perennial subject of questions I receive, and when I post my answers on my website at word-detective.com, the resulting discussion can become weirdly contentious. A column I posted a few years ago about “a murder of crows” has garnered 20 comments so far, several of which seem to consist of one reader snarling “Sez who?” at another. The tussle about such terms is usually over whether they are “real” terms commonly used by experts (even if in the misty past), or frivolous new inventions (such as “a brace of orthodontists” or “a disputation of lawyers”) concocted by modern chucklemongers.

As I explained at the time, many of the terms we use today, such as “a host of angels,” date back at least to the 15th century and were first documented in a compilation called The Book of St. Albans,” which was (we think) written by Dame Juliana Barnes, prior of a convent in England. The modern interest in such terms was spawned by James Lipton’s marvelous 1968 collection “An Exaltation of Larks,” which divided such terms into three categories: terms found in the 15th century collections that remain in use today (such as “an exaltation of larks” and “a string of ponies”); old terms (such as “a cast of hawks” and “a knot of toads”) that were once common but have fallen into obscurity, and, lastly, oddities from old collections of such terms. That last category offers such weirdness as “a rage of maidens” (employing “rage” in the 14th century sense of “jesting, fun; riotous or wanton behavior”) and “a cete of badgers,” which may come from the Latin “coetus,” meaning “meeting, assembly.” Lipton called such names “terms of venery” (from the Latin “venari,” to hunt), though the category is broader than merely game animals, unless there’s a hunting season for lawyers, in which case you can make up your own joke.

Since most ancient lists consisted simply of such terms defined without explanation, Lipton and other modern scholars have speculated about the origin of the term where it seems reasonable (such as with “cete”), but are, more often than not, as mystified as the rest of us, which brings us to jellyfish. Lipton lists not “smuck” but “smack” as a term for a group of jellyfish. But even “smack” in this sense is absent from the Oxford English Dictionary, so I’m going to assume that the “smack/smuck” contradiction dates back to those misty pasts and bad proofreading in the 15th century. Determining which is “real” and historically accurate won’t get us any nearer to an explanation of why in the world anyone would call a bunch of jellyfish a “smack” or a “smuck.”

And now it’s time to don my Mister Grumpy cap and fulminate. Teaching a small child that a group of jellyfish is called a “smuck” is not a good idea because it’s not really true. Today, as opposed to back in the 15th century, a group of jellyfish is called either a “bloom” or a “swarm.” In practical use you can get by with a “school” or a “bunch.” Calling such a glob of the unpleasant little critters a “smuck” is cute, but not a good way to communicate with anyone not in the mood for cuteness.

Furthermore, as long as I’m being cranky, I understand that the fact that jellyfish are not actually fish (quelle surprise!) has led some aquariums in the US to adopt the term “jellies” or “sea jellies” instead. Oh, please. Newsflash: crayfish aren’t “actually fish” either. And groundhogs aren’t really hogs, prairie dogs aren’t even close to being dogs, and woodchucks, alas, don’t actually chuck wood. Somebody needs to get a grip.