While cooling my heels in the next room (I can hardly wait to see what FedEx delivers to Mister Boots next week), I’ve been paying entirely too much attention to the End of the World and am now on first-name terms with Nouriel Roubini, Joe Stiglitz and Yves Smith (who I had been assuming until recently is a man but is rather obviously not).  Anyway, I’m finally to the point where I kinda sorta understand credit default swaps, which is pretty scary in itself and which

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Dear Word Detective:  Growing up in New England from English and Scottish heritage, the merry-go-round was referred to in my family as riding the “Darby (or Dobby) Horses.”  Where did that term originate? — Elizabeth.

Whoa, flashback time.  I must have been to dozens of carnivals and amusement parks in my life, but nothing can compare to my first love, Playland in Rye, New York, just across the state line from where I grew up in Connecticut.  Playland, located on the shore of Long Island Sound, first opened in 1928, and retains a

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Dear Word Detective:  Over the years I have frequently puzzled over the origin and actual meaning (if any) of the interjection “why,” as in “Why, you dirty, rotten, no good….”  The noun and adverb seem obviously related, but the interjection does not.  Why “why?”  When I was about 20, I had a buddy, Al, with whom I would get into long, detailed, abstract conversations exploring utter nonsense at great length (mostly while drinking coffee at the Waffle House).  One evening, I made a particularly penetrating metaphysical conjecture, asking “why is so and

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Dear Word Detective:  As I was tidying up my desk, I stopped to ponder the word “tidy.” It means “neat and orderly” but it can also mean a considerable amount of something, as in “she inherited a tidy sum of money.”  Wouldn’t that be nice?  The dictionary says that it comes from “tidi” meaning “in season or healthy.”  Can you shed some light into this history? — Margherita.

Why, sure.  Incidentally, you and I are birds of a feather.  I’ve been attempting to

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Dear Word Detective:  When most people are looking for work they are trying to “get hired,” but when a musician or band is looking for employment, they are trying to get a “gig.”  What gives?  Where did “gig” come from? — Ron J.

Dude, get with the program.  Every job is a “gig” today.  Calling your job a “gig” is a way of saying “I’m not really emotionally invested in my job, which I find boring and soulless, and I’m only doing it so I can act/write novels/play jazz saxophone on the

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Dear Word Detective:  While this is not of earth-shaking importance, I hope you can “hope” me out of this quandary.  As I was growing up during the Great Depression in rural East Texas, my grandmother used the word “hope” to mean “help.”  She also used the word “help,” but maybe with a slightly different meaning.  Was this just ignorance on her part, a holdover from her Irish heritage or is there an etymological basis for this usage?  She wasn’t the only one who used “hope” in this sense; many aunts

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Dear Word Detective:  Why do we say that someone is “going to Hell in a handbasket”?  Why a “handbasket”?  What exactly does the full expression mean? — Sharm.

Well, it means that person is in a heap o’ trouble, on a slippery slope, circling the drain and on the road to perdition.  But before we all get to gloating, we should note that a lot of us seem to be “handbasketeers” today.  A quick search of Google News turns up more than 300 recent news media uses of “hell in a handbasket,” including this

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Dear Word Detective:  Recently in reading a P. G. Wodehouse story I found him referring (twice!) to someone as “twiddling his fingers.”  I always thought that one could only twiddle one’s thumbs.  Did the British of Wodehouse’s era discover some new talent?  And what does “twiddle” mean anyway? — FJW.

Oh, no, there are all sorts of things one can twiddle.  As a child, I used to pass hours twiddling my toes, my fingers and my ears, sometimes simultaneously.  And when I worked in an office, I mastered the art of twiddling a

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Dear Word Detective:  Every now and again it is my utmost pleasure to “run across” your website.  At this juncture I am looking for the origin of the term “scott free” and, alas, you do not have the answer.  I hope that you will come through for me soon. — ncarolinafran.

Well, there you go.  More evidence that I’m just a digital wallflower, waiting patiently by the side of the web, hoping that strangers will happen by my rickety little stand and read my glittering prose, perchance to tell their friends and someday propel

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Dear Word Detective:  We are renovating our 1926 beach cottage in Laguna Beach.  Two of our workmen have used the word “screed” for a long straight board used to ensure the flatness of a surface.  Is this word the same as the word used for a “lengthy speech” or “harangue”?  If so, what is the connection? — Jim Brown.

“Screed” is a great word, isn’t it?  Of course, like many great words, “screed” is a heavily loaded term, which is what makes it so much fun.  Used in its primary modern meaning of

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Dear Word Detective:  My mother is fond of calling the nervousness one feels the night or day before a trip as being “journey proud.”  She says it is a Virginia (especially Richmond) anachronism, but I cannot find its derivation anywhere.  I would appreciate your help on this matter. — Clay Witt.

Good question.  I hadn’t heard “journey proud” before, but it’s a great expression, and I certainly know the feeling.  I remember as a kid being so wound up the day before we went on vacation that I couldn’t sleep. 

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Dear Word Detective:  Where did the words “hoos-cow” and “pokey” originate as slang for jail? — Siobhan Taaffe.

Oh boy, jail.  Also known as the slammer.  The tank. The big house.  The clink.  The joint.  The Graybar Hotel.  The cooler. Stir. Inside.  Gosh, you’d never guess that the US has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, would you?  So it’s not very surprising that we have so many slang synonyms for “correctional institution.”  By the way, every time I hear the euphemism “correctional institution,” I picture a training school

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Dear Word Detective:  I’ve just heard a new one that I can’t find in most of the usual authorities, while it appears plainly in others: a group of crows described as a “murder of crows.”  Any clues? — KT, Albuquerque, NM.

Thanks for a great question.  I’m surprised that you haven’t run into “murder of crows” before — the internet is full of compilations of such collective nouns, colorful terms for groups of animals, people or things.  Some of the terms collected on websites, such as “an absence of waiters” or

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Dear Word Detective:  Recently, on the way to a boxing class, my co-worker jokingly told me to “put up your dukes.”  We both immediately wondered where that expression comes from, and I thought, of course, of you.  Any insight? — Loren.

Boxing class, eh?  Is that a college course?  Things must have changed quite a bit.  When I was in school, we took Tear Gas Studies and Advanced Annoyance of Authority Figures.

My attitude towards boxing, I should note, was formed at an early age when I discovered that you needed another

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Dear Word Detective:  While looking up something only peripherally related to my question, I was struck by the term “bobby socks” or “bobbysoxer.”  As a whole phrase it was defined on Wikipedia, which mostly explained the “socks” part.  What it didn’t cover was “bobby.”  Was this a term in reference to rolling the socks down?  Or was it in reference to a “hair bob” or the bounciness (”bobbing”) of the “soxer”?  I’m curious to know. — Jerry.

Me too.  I was only vaguely aware of popular culture in the 1950s, being quite small

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Dear Word Detective:  Can you find the etymologies of both “snicker” and “snickerdoodle”?  My friend and I have been wondering about both words, and I think he’s probably forgotten to ask.  I strongly suspect that they are of different origins of course, especially as their meanings appear to be unrelated.  But the best I’ve found for “snicker” is a guess that it might be an onomatopoeia, which would make me snicker even if it turned out to be right, because it’s such an easy way out; as for “snickerdoodle,” it’s

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Dear Word Detective:  I was wondering if you could help me find the origin of the phrase “blue streak” as in “talk a blue streak” or “curse a blue streak.”  The only thing I could find was that it might have something to do with lightning. — Eric.

Good question, but before we begin, I would strongly advise against having anything to do with lightning, and I speak from personal experience.  Three years ago this month I had a close encounter with ball lightning (yes, it most certainly does exist),

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Dear Word Detective:  My husband and I do spinning and weaving demonstrations at Scottish festivals in Colorado and Wyoming throughout the summer months.  This year, for the first time, we have been asked, not once but several times, as we sat down at our loom if we were “looming.”  I patiently explain that “looming” would entail standing menacingly over someone in an impatient or threatening manner, while we were weaving cloth to make into scarves.  So why do we not “loom” at a loom? — Darla.

Hmm.  And you say

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