Semper Ubi Sub Ubi

readme:

Way to go, Downton Abbey. Your show’s been staggering around on crutches since Matthew stood up from his wheelchair, and you blithely kick them away. This has not gone over well with either viewers or critics, quelle freakin’ surprise. The best analysis I’ve read (I’ve lost the source, sorry) is that the writers, having trod the well-worn path forged by Jane Austen, et al., had reached the point where Austen and the gang usually stopped, i.e., the happy ending/wedding.

But Fellowes & Co. forged bravely on, realizing too late they hadn’t a clue as to a proper plot beyond thwarted love, and wound up wandering in circles, spinning ludicrous subplots that went nowhere, and sporadically killing people. Literally in circles. Seriously, that’s the third maid canned for inappropriate romantic behavior, Daisy has unwanted suitors stacked up like incoming flights at LaGuardia, and why can’t poor Lady Edith get a boyfriend who isn’t a simpering wooden weirdo on wheels? (“Yes, you’re right, I am actually married … but my wife is in an asylum because she watched this show.”)

And now they’ve done away with arguably the most appealing character (Lady Sybil) and Matthew, who Slate dubbed “the Magical Middle-Class Guy,” the audience proxy and primary pivot in the arc of the show. Well done, chaps. That leaves Daisy the dramatic elbow room she’s always lacked, and the path is greased for another chapter in the treacle-sodden adventures of Bates and Anna. Perhaps they can open a Thomas Kincaide poster shop in town. But hey, no harm, no foul. Most of the audience probably shows up primarily to admire the furnishings and fantasize about how nice they’d be to their servants, so the fewer yammering actors in the way, the better. Not for nothing is PBS selling replica tiaras.

Yes, I know that Jessica Brown-Findlay and Dan Stevens, playing Lady Sybil and Matthew Crawley, both declined to renew their contracts. But either Dan Stevens should have been replaced (it is a soap opera, after all, and that’s how soap operas handle such moments), or the entire series should have been rolled up and ended. But is life without Molesly, Little Jimmy, Thomas, et al., really necessary? Bewitched replaced Darrin and went on for another three years. It’s not too late to patch things up for next season. Why not go Full Gonzo and hire Charlie Sheen?

While we wait to see what lies in store for our plucky band, I recommend these two spirited and well done parodies made by the BBC back in 2011: Uptown Downstairs Abbey Part One and Part Two.

Oh well. It occurred to me the other day that if I ever won the lottery I’d probably watch a lot more TV. I see online discussions and I’m amazed that perfectly normal, intelligent people can actually DVR and watch 19 series episodes every week and be devoted fans of shows I’ve never heard of. But when you work at home, you really never leave the office, so there’s always a nagging feeling you should be doing something productive, which makes it difficult to really relax and veg out.

I’m also reluctant to watch any new series because I seem to cast a hex on whatever I decide to like and — bam — it’s immediately cancelled. Carnivale on HBO, The Event on NBC (I think), some weird thing about aliens in Florida a few years ago, and Last Resort on ABC have all fallen prey to my baleful interest. I started watching Law & Order UK on BBC America a while back, and in the third episode I saw they offed a major cast member. Seemed like a warning. Disheartening, to say the least.

For the moment, anyway, we’ve been watching The Americans on FX (an awful channel, judging from the ads they run), which centers on two KGB sleeper spies operating as a married couple with children in the suburbs of Washington in the early 1980s. The series was dreamed up by an ex-CIA agent and is predictably implausible, but does have some nice touches, such as a sly allusion to Soviet numbers stations and a plot involving an umbrella with a deadly tip, clearly modeled on the 1978 murder of Georgi Markov by Bulgarian and/or KGB agents in London. Note to the production designers, however: I seriously doubt that the Soviet embassy in DC in the 1980s actually decorated its walls with Bolshevik recruiting posters. But you can make up for that by showing the spies’ kids watching Rocky and Bullwinkle outwitting Boris and Natasha. Moose and squirrel forever!

OCD Update: OK, now we have our early 80s anti-hero crouched in the woods with a 21st century mini Maglight LED flashlight in his mouth, using what appears to be an early 2000s Kenwood transceiver and a small UHF Yagi antenna to communicate with somebody, hopefully somebody close by. Fifteen miles maybe, Moscow not so much. BTW gang, if you’re looking for authentic 1980s tech gear, eBay is full of it.

Here are some goats expressing their opinions.

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By the way, Hugh Beaumont played Beaver Cleaver’s father. Just sayin’.

Dear Word Detective: The words “hew” and “cleave” both have the same odd combination of meanings: “to cut,” or “to stick to.” Are they related? — Ken Lerner.

Um, yes and no. Next question. Oh, all right. No, they’re not really related in the sense of “having an etymological relationship” or “having some family connection that Cleave takes advantage of by borrowing Hew’s lawn trimmer.” The only attribute shared by “hew” and “cleave” is membership in the weird little club of English words known as “autoantonyms,” words with two opposite meanings (“auto” self, “anti” against, and “onyma,” Greek for “name”). Autoantonyms are also known as “contronyms,” “contranyms,” “antagonyms” and, sometimes, in a refreshing break from all those “nyms,” as “Janus words.” Janus was the Roman god of doorways and beginnings (thus “January,” the first month in the Roman calendar), and was depicted as having two faces (as doors can be used from two sides).

“Contranyms,” which is the simplest name for the breed, actually come in two flavors. Some are simply one word which has, over time and in a linguistic process called “polysemy” (Greek for “many signs”), developed two opposite meanings. The other kind of contranyms are homographs, two separate words that happen to share the same spelling, and are also antonyms, words that have opposite meanings. The result in both types of contranyms is a word which seems to have two meanings, but in the case of homographs, that’s because it actually is two separate words. “Hew” and “cleve” are actually good examples of the two kinds of contranyms. (However, the fact that the two opposite meanings of “hew” are essentially synonymous with the two opposite meanings of “cleave” is deeply spooky and ought to give us all the creeps.)

“Hew” is the first kind of contranym, the “gradual change in meaning” kind. We inherited “hew” from Old English (where it was “heawan”), and its basic meaning was “to cut or strike with a cutting tool or weapon; to chop, hack, etc.” Trees and the like have often been “hewed” with axes (or “hewn,” if a poet is doing the job), but the verb has also often been used in descriptions of battles in a depressingly non-metaphorical sense (“The front lines, hewing at each other with their long swords,” Sir Walter Scott, 1828).

But from day one, “hew” also had a more constructive meaning, that of “to shape, smooth, trim or form with an axe or a hammer and chisel, etc.” This sense is most often found today in the adjective “rough-hewn,” meaning something which has been shaped by chopping, etc., but lacks precise shaping and polish (“A long oaken table formed of planks rough-hewn from the forest … stood ready prepared for the evening meal,” Scott, Ivanhoe, 1819). But even such “hewing” required following a design for the finished product, and “to hew the line,” which first appeared in print in 1891, meant to cut closely along the line of a pattern. In a metaphorical sense, “hew the line” meant, and still does, “to stick to a plan and to obey instructions,” and “to hew” to something (e.g., your family, your principles) means to remain steadfast in your allegiance. So a verb which originally meant “to split apart” came to be its own antonym meaning “to conform, obey, adhere to.”

“Cleave” also means both “to split” and “to adhere,” but in this case the explanation is simpler, because the two opposite senses of “cleave” are actually two separate words and always have been. Both “cleaves” come from Old English and derive their base meanings from proto-Germanic roots. One “cleave” in Old English was “cleofan,” meaning “to split or separate,” especially by a blow from a sharp instrument. The past participle of this “cleve” is “cleft” (or “cloven”), meaning “split,” as in a “cleft palate” or the “cloven hooves” of a goat.

The other “cleave” was “clifian” in Old English, meaning “to stick, to adhere” (the same Germanic root gave us “clay”), and in literal use it’s essentially a synonym of “stick” (“Water in small quantity cleaveth to any thing that is solid,” Francis Bacon, 1626).  In modern English, this “cleave” is usually used in a figurative sense to mean “to remain faithful or devoted to” a person, cause, etc. (“We exhort you … to cleave for ever to those principles,” Edmund Burke, 1777). The two “cleaves” were originally clearly two separate words, but they had such a wide variety of forms that, beginning in the 14th century, they were commonly confused, which led to a common spelling, which only made things much murkier.

So in “cleave” and “hew” we have two (or three) words that are, in a sense, both double antonyms and double synonyms, and only by close attention to context can a reader or listener be certain of the meaning meant. That’s a prescription for bewilderment, and that potential for confusion is probably the reason that neither “hew” nor “cleave” is very popular outside of historical fiction today.

Don’t try this at home.

Dear Word Detective: I’m reading through (and performing soon) an adaptation of Henry James’ “Turn of the Screw.” There is a riddle in the play/novella, said by the young boy Miles: “One can possess me without seeing me. One can carry me without feeling me. One can give me without having me,” and the answer he gives to the riddle is “A cuckold’s horns.” From what I can find a “cuckold” refers to a husband who is aware of or allows his wife’s infidelity. I am still not sure the meaning of the term “cuckold’s horns” and how that is the answer to the riddle. I know that the term, in the story, shocks the governess to whom Miles is speaking the riddle. Any help? — Adie Williams.

Oh boy, a riddle. We love riddles (heads for the door). No, riddles are cool, being, as the Oxford English Dictionary explains, “A question or statement intentionally phrased to require ingenuity in ascertaining its answer or meaning.” Riddles have been around a long time; many ancient cultures revered riddles, and the word “riddle” itself can be traced back to an old Germanic root closely related to our word “read.” (The verb “to riddle,” meaning “to perforate with many holes,” comes from a different source, an Old English word meaning “sieve.”) The one riddle I can remember from my riddle-loving childhood is “What’s black and white and red all over,” which only works when posed aloud, since the answer is “the newspaper” and the whole thing depends on “red” and the participle of “to read” being homophones. It also depends on there being actual newspapers, so sic transit good riddle. Damn you, internet.

“Cuckold” is not a term that you run into very often, which is surprising since marital infidelity, if it doesn’t make the world go ’round (and we all hope it doesn’t), certainly keeps a flock of newspapers, several million websites and at least two “celebrity news” TV shows up and running. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “cuckold,” which first appeared in English in the 14th century, as “A derisive name for the husband of an unfaithful wife.” The feminine equivalent of “cuckold” is the seriously obscure “cuckquean,” which appeared in the 16th century. The “quean” there is related to our English word “queen,” which originally simply meant “woman,” especially the wife of an important man.

The root of “cuckold” (and, by extension, “cuckquean”) is the Middle English “cokeweld,”  based on the Old French “cucuault,” which was “cocu” with the derogatory suffix “ault.” That  “cocu” is the French word for “cuckoo,” a little bird famous for laying its eggs in other birds’ nests (where, goes the cuckoo’s plan, they will be fed by the duped Mommy Bird). The cuckoo is also said, in folklore, to frequently change its mate, but the egg-swapping behavior, which is observably true, is probably enough on its own to justify “cuckold” as a description of certain humans’ behavior.

“Cuckold’s horns” is a derisive gesture many centuries old and found in most European cultures. The two common versions are holding one’s hands alongside one’s head with the index fingers simulating horns, and the one-handed form, in which the index and little fingers are pointed skyward while the other fingers are held down. Both versions are used to mock and denigrate a man behind his back by implying he is a cuckold; the common “V” gesture pranksters make behind the heads of friends in group photos is almost certainly derived from such “cuckold’s horns.”

Why horns? There are more than a dozen theories. Horns have been a symbol of marriage in many cultures, possibly referring to a wild animal being tamed. It’s also been suggested that the “horns” originally referred to horns given as trophies to Roman soldiers who excelled in battle. Since Roman campaigns often took men away from home for years, infidelity on the home front was nearly a given. It’s also been noted that a horned animal cannot see its own horns, making horns a good symbol of a wronged husband’s ignorance. Or the horn gesture may refer to a stronger man besting the husband in a battle for his wife’s affections. Whatever the source, “cuckold’s horns” remain one of the most widely recognized gestures around the world.

Turn, turn, turn.

Dear Word Detective: If “diversity” means “difference and variation,” what does “university” mean? Are these words related somehow? — Travis Williams.

You betcha. “Diversity” and “university” are indeed related, not only to each other, but to a rather large, lumbering herd of other words. The common building block in all these words is the Latin verb “vertere,” which means, literally, “to turn,” but has developed a wide range of figurative uses based on that general sense of “turning.”

“Diversity” as a noun is, in its simplest form, the quality of being “diverse,” an adjective meaning either “differing from each other” (“Despite the regulations regarding proper uniform, the volunteers showed up wearing a diverse range of clothing”) or “composed of distinct elements, qualities or characteristics” (“Columbus is a diverse city, composed of both diehard Buckeye fans and people who have better things to do in the fall, such as watching squirrels duke it out with chipmunks at the bird feeder”). The specific root of “diverse” is the Latin verb “divertere” (the prefix “di” or “dis,” meaning “aside”) meaning “to turn aside.” The same root gave us our English verb “to divert,” and a close relative, “divortere,” gave us “divorce,” wherein folks “turn away” a spouse. Meanwhile, back in Latin, the participle form “diversus” (literally “turned aside”) came to mean “separate,” and, filtered through Old French, became our “diverse” meaning “separate” or “different.” Interestingly, “diverse” was also adopted into English from Old French in the form “divers,” with the slightly different meaning of “several” (“There are directions to be given to divers workmen before I start,” 1860). “Diversity” first appeared as a noun in the 14th century with the basic sense of “varied;” for a while in the 15th and 16th centuries it actually meant the quality of “deviating from accepted behavior,” i.e., being wrong or evil, but with the rise of democracy as a governing system “diversity” acquired its modern positive connotations.

The root of “university” is “universe,” meaning the sum of everything, the cosmos, which was borrowed, via Old French, from the Latin “universum.” That Latin word combined our pal “vertere” (to turn) with “uni” (one) to give a basic sense of “turned into one,” or “all taken together.” The term “university” in our modern scholastic sense dates to the 14th century, and originally referred to the gathering of various scholarly societies, guilds, student bodies and the like within one organization of learning. The goal of such “universities” was to offer structured higher education in a variety of non-vocational subjects and award degrees to graduates.

There are, as I noted above, a wide variety of other English words that spring from that handy Latin “vertere,” including “version,” “versus,” “verse,” “adverse,” “vertigo,” “vertical,” “invert,” “pervert,” “revert,” “convert,” “conversation,” and so on until the cows come home. “Advertise,” for instance, comes from the Latin “advertere” (to turn towards), and originally meant “to warn.” The modern meaning of “offer two Big Macs for a buck” only appeared in the 18th century. Many of these words begin with standard Latin prefixes such as “in” (in), “ad” (to), “con” (against), “re” (again) and so on, but have acquired meanings substantially beyond the simple blocks of which they are built.

Anything but Meemaw is fine with me.

Dear Word Detective: I was born in Europe and grew up calling my parents “Mama” and “Papa.” In Canada, where I have lived since I was a teen, all my classmates and most kids grow up calling their fathers “Dad,” and my now-adult-friends’ babies are taught to say “Dada” also. I never paid much attention before but recently I noticed that in some older English books (like by Jane Austen) children do call their fathers “Papa.” Do you know why and when English speakers decided to veer away from calling fathers “Papa”? Is this a Europe vs. North America thing? — Diana.

Huh. I was born in New Jersey and grew up calling my parents Vito and Estelle. Just kidding, except that I really was born in New Jersey, so I’m allowed to joke about it. But this is a fascinating question; so fascinating that I’m going to “answer” it even though I don’t really have a slam-dunk definitive answer to give you. In my case, I grew up calling my parents “Daddy” and “Mommy” until I became a teenager, when I switched to “Father” and “Mother,” at least when speaking of them in the third person. (What can I say? The New England Wasp Force was powerful in my neighborhood.) I’m pretty sure my older sisters stuck with “Daddy” and “Mommy,” but at least one of my older brothers used to refer to my father as “Pop” with an insouciance I envied. My mother loathed “Mom,” so no one used it. Our own grown son calls us “Dad” and “Mom,” which is just fine with me.

The first thing to note about “Mommy,” “Mama,” “Mom,” “Daddy,” “Dada,” “Dad,” “Papa,” “Pappy” and all the rest of such familiar forms is that none of them actually “mean” anything beyond “Mother” or “Father.” Yes, similar forms can be found in the ancient roots of language, but they didn’t mean anything back then, either. But wait, it gets weirder. Words similar to “Mama” and “Papa,” with minor variations, pop up in many widely different languages (though in some languages the terms are reversed or rearranged somewhat, e.g., “father” is “mama” in Georgian, while “mother” is “deda” and “papa” means “grandfather”).

Linguists believe that the explanation for the popularity of this small set of words serving as familiar terms for “mother” and “father” lies not in the past of the words themselves, but in how infant humans acquire language. The first vocal efforts of a baby almost always involve the sounds easiest to make: the “bilabials” p, b, and m, repeated, as babies often do. The parents, witnessing the child’s first forays into vocalization (beyond screaming and gurgling), modestly assume that the kid is addressing them by name. Lather, rinse, repeat a few billion times, and you’ve got an entire planet using variations on “Mama” and “Papa.” The Latin “mater” (mother) and “pater” (father), and, to go way back, the Indo-European roots that produced them, almost certainly spring from this same source. Of course, the interpretation by the parents of the child’s noises as a form of personal address is a classic case of “confirmation bias,” and the infant cannot possibly know that “Mama” means “Mother” (or whatever the local custom is). But he or she soon will.

The specific form “Papa” was introduced into English from French in the 17th century, and was used by adults primarily in the social elite as well as by their children. Use of the term in Britain has actually been falling since the mid-19th century, and the Oxford English Dictionary notes that “Papa” today is largely a North American usage (in which case, it must be nearly extinct among English-speakers). The “native” English form has always been “Dad/Daddy/Dada,” and I’d be willing to bet it outranks “Papa” in North America today by a country mile.

To the extent that Europeans speaking English are influenced by other languages, I think that the greater traditional popularity of “Papa” in French, Italian, etc., is the reason you may have heard it more over there. The relative lack of traction of “Papa” in North America may also be partly due to immigrants in the 20th century wishing to shed the “old ways” and get with the “Daddy and Mommy” pattern of the New World.

“Speak no nonsense” is the important one.

Dear Word Detective:  Let’s get down to brass tacks … or is it “brass tax”? Where does this term come from? — Matthew Cary.

Gee, that time already? This question is one of the hardy perennials of the word-origin-answering business, and about every fifteen years I take another stab at it (which is to say that this is exactly the second time I’ve tackled it, the first being in 1998). But it set me to wondering when I last saw anything (apart from screws, etc.) actually made of brass (which is an alloy of copper and zinc notable for its rich yellowish sheen). I had a little cannon made of brass when I was a kid (henceforth to be known as “Roseboom”), and the replacement faucets I installed in our ancient shower last year were made of brass (and cost nearly $100 a pair), but most of the metal you meet these days is either low-grade steel or some weird ugly aluminum alloy. But brass is cool. Brass has heft. Brass is permanent. Bring back brass! Fun fact: our word “brass” comes from the Old English “braes,” but the metal it referred to at that time was actually the alloy of copper and tin we now call “bronze.”

The durability of brass has long made it a popular metaphor for personal fortitude, although not always in a positive direction. Since the late 16th century, “brass” has been used figuratively to mean “courage,” “boldness,” and especially “impudence” or “shamelessness” (“I entered the Room without astonishing the Company by my Brass,” 1740), and “bold as brass” has meant “impudent” since the late 18th century.

Incidentally, if I may digress for a moment, the phrase “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” almost certainly refers to the “Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil” kitschy brass monkey statuettes popular as home decorations in the 1800s, and not to an imaginary contraption called a “monkey” that supposedly held cannonballs on a Royal Navy warship. Comparisons involving heat and brass monkeys were also common at that time (“Under a sun which, as Shorty said, ‘was hot enough to melt the nose [off] a brass monkey’.” Omoo, Herman Melville, 1847). Sorry to rant, but that stupid story about the cannonballs drives me (and Roseboom) crazy.

To “get down to brass tacks” has meant “to deal with basic questions; to face the facts and deal with reality” since the early 1860s (“This bold sister was the first … to get down to brass tacks in a discussion of the scandal…” 1903). There have been a range of theories proposed to explain the connection between “brass tacks” and unvarnished truth, such as one tracing it to the unpleasant chore of reupholstering a chair or sofa, a fairly arduous process that requires removing the brass tacks holding the fabric to the frame. A more plausible theory traces the phrase to the old general store of 19th century America, where a line of brass tacks (or nails) were set into the counter (usually a foot apart) to aid in measuring fabric or other materials to be cut. Thus, to “get down to brass tacks” would be to finally pick a fabric from among those in stock and have it measured and cut for purchase. This theory has the advantage of being rooted in what was a very common practice at the time, as well as being a plausible match for the sense of the phrase.

One other intriguing theory, however, suggests that “brass tacks” is actually Cockney rhyming slang. Rhyming slang, originally a “secret language” of the London criminal underworld, uses unrelated words and phrases (“trouble and strife”) to stand in for the word actually meant (in this classic example, “wife”). “Brass tacks,” in this theory, stands for “facts,” which makes perfect sense, but there is a problem. “Get down to brass tacks” is almost certainly a US coinage (it seems to have originated in Texas, in fact), and rhyming slang has never been very popular in the US. On the other hand, the near-perfect rhyme of “tacks” and “facts” is a heck of a coincidence if it isn’t rhyming slang. In any case, the jury is still out on “brass tacks,” though I tend to favor the “general store” theory.

Get a grip, Muldoon.

Dear Word Detective: I’ve been trying to find any differences in the connotations of “capricious” and “mercurial.” They both deal with inconsistencies, but the only difference seems to be in their etymology: “capricious” started with the inconsistencies of goats, whereas “mercurial” started with the inconsistencies of the god Mercury. Is there anything more to these two words’ meanings? — Danielle Then.

That’s an interesting question. Say, do you mind if I borrow “The Inconsistencies of Goats” for the title of my next book? Usually I’d think of one myself, but all these goats are driving me crazy. I’ve tried to convince them they’d be happier outside, but they get halfway out the door and change their minds. Aside from a touch of agoraphobia, however, goats are just about the coolest animals going, much cooler than sheep, who are, let’s be blunt, total idiots. Goats are actually a lot like cats. Except for the horns, of course. I’m glad cats don’t have horns, aren’t you? Oh yeah, you had a question.

“Capricious,” which today we use to mean “impulsive,” “unpredictable” and, therefore, “unreliable,” is, appropriately, a word with a somewhat convoluted history. The noun behind the adjective “capricious” is “caprice,” meaning “whim, impulse, sudden urge or unusual action.” English borrowed our “caprice” in the 17th century from the French, who had adapted the Italian “capriccio,” also meaning “whim,” etc. But the earlier and original meaning of the Italian word was not “whim,” but “sudden shock” or “horror.” And the animal behind the word was not a goat, but a hedgehog. The Italian word is thought to be a blend of “caput” (head) with “riggio” (hedgehog), describing a person whose hair was standing on end, like a hedgehog’s, from fright or surprise. When “capriccio” eventually lightened up in Italian and came to mean “playful, whimsical,” the fact that it resembled the Italian word “capro” (goat) led people to associate the frisky play of young goats with “capriciousness,” which made much more sense than trying to rationalize “friskiness” with the torpid behavior of hedgehogs.

“Mercurial,” meaning “lively, volatile, given to quick changes of mood,” does indeed hark back to the Roman god Mercury (who was based on the Greek god Hermes), messenger of the gods and a notably fleet fellow (due in part to his winged shoes). Interestingly, Mercury was also the god of trade and travel, and his name comes from the Latin “merx,” meaning (and the root of) “merchandise.” “Mercury” today is best known as the name of a planet, an element, and a brand of car made, until 2011, by Ford. The adjective “mercurial,” which first appeared in English in the 14th century, can refer to anything having anything do do with Mercury, from the planet to the element, various plants, and medicines containing the element. The use of “mercurial” to mean “highly changeable” in reference to people dates to the mid-17th century and was apparently originally a reference to the fickle personality of the god Mercury. The modern use of “mercurial,” however, is more a reference to the metallic form of mercury (also known as “quicksilver”), which is the only metal which is liquid at room temperature. Apart from being extremely toxic, mercury is known for its highly fluid and quick movement, which is what makes it a good metaphor for swift change and unpredictability.

Every thesaurus I’ve checked considers “capricious” and “mercurial” to be synonyms, but I think there is a slight difference between the two. To describe someone as “mercurial” is not necessarily at all derogatory. Great artists and similar sensitive types are often lively, impulsive and given to “quicksilver” changes of mood. But to describe someone as “capricious” marks the person as undependable, flighty, and possibly petty, likely to disregard the effect of a sudden change in plans, etc., on other people. It’s not a distinction that can be traced to etymology or the broad definitions of the words, but I do think “mercurial” and “capricious” have developed that shade of difference in modern usage.

My personal Muse is Caffeinia, goddess of staring vacantly out the window.

Dear Word Detective: I know that “bemused” means “puzzled, confused, or bewildered.” But in most “modern” contexts, I tend to hear it used as a sort of “amusedly bewildered.” I assume this comes from the fact that “amuse” and “bemuse” sound alike. I find this new meaning useful, as it’s nice to have a word to attach to that particular feeling, and there are plenty of other ways to say “confused.” But would you consider this common enough to use in speech and written works today without being misunderstood? Also, as a side note, is “bemused” related to “mazed?” — Michael Duggan.

That’s a very interesting question. Edifying, too. Until I started poking around a bit, I had assumed that the noun “muse” (as in the nine Muses of Greek mythology, of whom more in a moment) was, at a minimum, closely related to the verb “to muse” meaning “to daydream or ponder.” That makes sense, right? The poet is “musing” — staring vacantly out the window — when the “muse” of poetry shows up with a bucket full of inspiration.

But no. “Muse” the noun and “muse” the verb are two separate words, commonly associated today but of completely unrelated origin. “Muse” the noun is usually used today to mean “the guiding spirit or inspiration,” especially of music or poetry (“Whom shall the Muse from out the shining Throng Select to heighten and adorn her Song?” 1714). The original “Muses” of Greek mythology were the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. The division of labor of the Muses was Clio (history), Thalia (comedy and pastoral poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Euterpe (music), Terpsichore (dancing), Erato (love poetry), Polyhymnia (sacred poetry and hymns), Urania (astronomy), and Calliope (epic poetry). The term “muse” itself comes from Greek roots meaning “music or song,” possibly based on an Indo-European root meaning “mind.” Our modern English “music” comes from Greek roots meaning “the art of the Muses.”

The verb “to muse,” meaning “to be absorbed in thought; to ponder,” first appeared in the 14th century, adapted from the Old French “muser,” which meant all those things plus “to gape at; to stand with one’s nose in the air; to sniff.” If that sounds a bit canine, you’re on the right track. This “muse” comes from roots meaning “muzzle or snout,” and was also used to describe an animal sniffing the air for a scent.

“Amuse” and “bemuse” are very close cousins, both derivatives of the verb “to muse,” and in both cases the prefix (“a” or “be”) serves to strengthen the action of the verb. “Amuse” first appeared in English in the 16th century, drawn from the Old French “amuser,” meaning “to stare stupidly.” In the 17th and 18th centuries, “to amuse” someone was to divert or delude that person in order to cheat them. But the standard sense today is usually “to divert someone’s attention with something light, cheerful and entertaining,” with no intention of larceny. The goal of “amusing” someone is thus to make them laugh, or at least smile (“Representations of … artless innocence always amuse and delight,” 1782).

The original sense of “bemuse,” back in the 18th century, was also “to befuddle or confuse” someone, often oneself, often with alcohol (“A Prussian was regarded in England as a dull beer-bemused creature,” 1880). Until very recently, “bemused” retained more of that “utterly confused” sense than “amused” did, but, as you note, “bemused” is now more likely to be used to mean “wryly amused, with slight puzzlement,” often regarding a matter that might ordinarily be considered in a skeptical or negative light (“Bob was bemused when his elderly widowed mother married her former brother-in-law”). I think this usage is rapidly becoming the standard; using “bemused” to mean simply “confused” or “stupefied” would probably actually confuse listeners today.

Lastly, “bemuse” is not related to “amaze,” which comes from the Old English “amasian,” and originally meant “to stun or render witless.” “Amaze” is related to the noun “maze,” which meant “state of confusion or delirium” before it meant “labyrinth.” The modern sense of “amaze” meaning “to astound; to overcome with wonder” dates to the late 16th century (“Christall eine, Whose full perfection all the world amazes,” Shakespeare, 1593). But in the 16th and 17th centuries, “amaze” was also used to mean “to fill with fear or panic” (“The sight of any shadow amazes the fish,” 1653).

 There will be folderol.

Dear Word Detective: I am looking for the origin of the phrase “hot wash,” which is used in the emergency management world to refer to an informal debrief or discussion after an exercise or emergency response. So for example, “After the derecho-response exercise, the participants conducted a brief hot wash to review the results.” — Ken Lerner.

Derecho response? I’ve spent the last few minutes trying to figure out a way to convey a rueful laugh in print (“heh … hehhehheh”?), but we’ll just have to pretend this column has sound effects. We had two derechos (which is the Spanish word for “straight,” referring to the 80-plus mph straight-line winds of these storms) in quick succession last year. The first knocked out our power for eight days and the second deposited several huge trees on our lawn. Our “derecho response” consisted of sitting in the sweltering darkness eating peanut butter from the jar and chanting our ancient meditation mantra (“I can’t believe this is happening”) several thousand times. I say our mantra is “ancient” because it got really old after a few days. And I now hate peanut butter. Thanks a lot, Weather Gods.

According to the official FEMA Glossary (FEMA being the people who put the electrodes in your cousin Artie’s brain, of course), “hot wash” means “… a facilitated discussion held immediately following an exercise among exercise players … designed to capture feedback about any issues, concerns, or proposed improvements players may have about the exercise.” So a “hot wash” is a kind of “immediately after the action” debriefing, a slightly more formal “So, how’d it go?” session. Some sources use the term “cold wash” to mean a more detailed review conducted at a later date.

The term “hot wash” (which is sometimes rendered as one word, “hotwash”) originated in the US military, where it is used as an informal equivalent of “After Action Review,” the debriefing of personnel immediately after they return from a mission, patrol, etc. Grant Barrett, co-host of the public radio language program A Way with Words (www.waywordradio.org), listed “hot wash” in his Official Dictionary of Unofficial English back in 2005. The first example he found in print was from 1991 (“The day the fighting ended, senior Army aides presented to Army Chief of Staff Carl E. Vuono their first observations on the operation. Such an initial review of a just-concluded operation is called a ‘hot wash.’,” LA Times). In his dictionary entry, Grant notes that “This term appears to be migrating out of the military, where it originated,” and the years since have proven him right. “Business leadership” websites are in love with the term, and some even offer free Powerpoint (of course) presentation slides you can use to browbeat your desperate employees into pretending they value and enjoy the “hot wash” process after every meeting with clients. (Have I ever mentioned how much I detest management consultants? Good argument for Soylent Green, the lot of ‘em.)

For a term that seems to have popped up in the early 1990s, “hot wash” is a bit of a puzzle, and I’ve found no authoritative explanation of its origin. One clue to the term may lie in the fact that the process is apparently often called a “hot wash-up,” which might indicate that it came from the idea of a discussion taking place while soldiers literally “washed up” (with soap and water) just after returning to base. That the participants would still be “hot” from exertion, or that their experience in the field would be “hot” in the sense of “fresh,” might also play a role in the phrase.

It’s also possible that the phrase originally referred to washing off a horse after a race or a day of hard work. The popularity of the phrase “ridden hard and put away wet” (meaning “not properly cared for,” referring to an exhausted horse being put back in its stall while still sweaty and ungroomed, which can make a horse very sick) might have contributed to “hot wash.”

Yet another possibility is that the source is a more figurative use of “wash,” specifically in the sense found in the phrase “to come out in the wash,” which first appeared in print in the early 1900s meaning, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “(of the truth) to be revealed, become clear; (of a situation, events, etc.) to be resolved or put right eventually.” The “wash” in “come out in the wash” is a metaphorical laundering process, and that figurative sense of “wash” may play a role in “hot wash.”

Miss Hard-to-Miss

Dear Word Detective: Like many four year-olds, my daughter has an unconventional style when choosing what to wear. Recently, she appeared from her room in an outfit that even I could tell violated a whole range of aesthetic norms. Caught between not wanting to sound critical and not wanting to lie, I told her she looked flamboyant, which came out sounding as though I thought she was in danger of catching fire but was unlikely to sink (possibly accurate given what she was wearing). It seems that “flamboyant” is based on the French for “flaming” but how did it gain its English meaning? — Rhys Fogarty.

That’s a great question. I must say that you seem to have a natural talent for diplomacy; I’d never have come up with “flamboyant” in that situation. When faced with other people’s unconventional fashion choices, the best I can usually offer is something like “Well, if you’re swept overboard, you’ll be easy to find.” Incidentally, it’s amazing what people are willing to wear on TV. I saw a real estate agent on House Hunters International the other night whose apparent love for the color orange had made her look like an enormous traffic cone. Then again, I should talk. I appeared on TV many years ago in a tweed jacket that, under the lights, turned out to fluoresce in shades of orange and purple. I looked like a talking migraine.

I’m very glad you asked about “flamboyant.” Like you, I was vaguely aware that it was connected to the French “flambe” (flame), but I imagined that “flamboyant” (meaning “characterized by elaborate or colorful design” or “wildly expressive”) was simply a highly figurative reference to flames or something being on fire in some dramatic fashion. The actual story is both more concrete and more interesting.

Our English “flamboyant” is actually simply the French word “flamboyant,” the participle form of “flamboyer,” meaning “to flame.” The root of that “flamboyer” is “flambe,” and the root of that is the Latin “flamma,” meaning “flame or fire.” So “flamboyant” should simply mean “flaming” or “blazing,” but it doesn’t.

The reason is that the initial use of “flamboyant” when it first appeared in English in the 1830s was as the name of a particular Gothic architectural style that was common in France in the 15th and 16th centuries. This style, particularly evident in cathedrals and large churches of the period (especially their windows and spires), featured ornate curved or wavy lines in a shape reminiscent of flames, as well as lengthened arches and windows. Compared to the more sedate styles which had been the norm, this “flamboyant” architecture was considered by many later critics to be a bit “over the top” and florid, which led to “flamboyant” being quickly pressed into service later in the 19th century as a general adjective for anything deemed “overly elaborate” or ostentatiously showy (“That flamboyant penmanship admired by our ancestors,” 1879).

During the same period “flamboyant” was also used in a sense more in keeping with its Latin roots to describe something flamingly or otherwise brightly colored (“Whose daughters, in flamboyant ribbons, were among the belles of the parish,” 1867). “Flamboyant” today is often used in a broader sense to mean “ostentatious” or “audacious” in both good (“London bade a flamboyant and madcap farewell to the Olympic Games,” Reuters, 8/13/12) and bad senses (“[F]our brothers from rural Texas who, in the 1920s, became America’s most successful, flamboyant and notorious bank robbers,” Wall St. Journal, 7/27/12).

Ahem.

Dear Word Detective: I read the following in a 2010 review of a Stieg Larsson novel: “Readers in Grenada … are going to steups when they get to page 12 in … The Girl Who Played With Fire.” “Going to steups”? I’ve tried and tried to make sense of this as a typo, nada. I gather it means something like having conniptions, since the writer goes on and on about the flora of Grenada and the apparent trajectory of a hurricane. I should also mention that the review appears to be in “Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.” (And having mentioned Grenada, I should give a shout to Kirani James.) If you can make sense of this, I’d be really glad to hear it. — Charles.

Kirani who? See? I told you I didn’t watch the Olympics. (Kirani James is, of course, the remarkable young Grenadian sprinter who just won Grenada’s first gold medal at the Olympics.) I’ve actually been thinking that maybe I should pay a little attention to sports after all. You know those old WWII movies where they trip up a German spy pretending to be a GI by asking him who plays third base for the Dodgers? If I ever have to prove my loyalty by naming five NFL teams, I’m toast.

“Steups”? It’s weird. Like you, I can’t shake the impulse to try to fix what looks like a typo to some deep part of my brain. “Setups”? “Stups”? “Stoop”? Part of the cognitive problem I have with “steups” is that sentence you found uses it as a verb (“to steups”), and there aren’t very many English verbs that end in a single “s.” Furthermore, a search of the Oxford English Dictionary shows that there is no common English word containing the sequence “steu,” apart from derivatives of Louis Pasteur’s name (e.g., “pasteurization”), a couple of weird biological terms, and “Steuben” used attributively to mean a product of that glass-maker.

Long story short, it turns out that “steups” is a Caribbean English slang word, Caribbean English being not one language per se, but dozens of dialects of English spoken throughout the Caribbean and on the eastern coast of Central America. Closely tracking the history of the region, Caribbean English generally follows British English in style and spelling, but includes words influenced by African languages as well as by Spanish.

In the case of “steups,” however, the source is not any particular language but the apparently universal human capacity for expressing disapproval or exasperation. According to wiwords.com, an online dictionary of West Indian terms, “steups” is onomatopoeic, or echoic, in origin; it’s an imitation of “A sucking noise made with the tongue pressed against the teeth. It is usually an expression of annoyance, frustration, or contempt.” Other regional terms for the same action are “cheups” and “kiss teet” (“kissing one’s teeth”). In standard English this action would probably correspond to “clucking” (“Betty’s grandmother clucked her disapproval when she announced her engagement to the local anarchist”), after the sound a hen uses to keep her chicks in line. There must be something fairly shocking on page 12.

Interestingly, the comments on the “steups” page at wiwords.com indicate that “steups” (and perhaps its variants) is also widely used to mean “Kiss my behind!” (to put it euphemistically). Perhaps this use as an imprecation originally developed as a retort to one too many “steups” from a stuffy relative.

The truth is that nobody understands cricket.

Dear Word Detective: I have been watching the Olympics up here in Canada, and I keep hearing about “hat tricks.” One of the Canadian women scored three goals in an important soccer match — hat trick. Another, more prominent, athlete won three gold medals — again a hat trick. So I understand that it refers to an individual doing three of something. But what does this have to do with hats? — Harold Russell.

Um, is it safe? Is it safe? I know I sound like the evil Nazi dentist in Marathon Man, but I’ve been hiding from the Olympics for, gosh, must be a couple of months now. I haven’t looked at the TV news or most of the internet at all, but the few headlines that managed to sneak through my blindfold (metaphorical, of course) tended to indicate that the Olympics had taken up permanent residence, like the second cousin who crashes on your couch for a few weeks in July and is somehow still there on New Year’s Eve. So is it over? What year is it?

Speaking of years, I just checked and it turns out that the last time I answered a question about “hat trick” was way back in 1997, which was before Facebook or Twitter or any of the other things I wish it were still before so we could stop them. The slightly mortifying aspect of the fifteen years since I wrote that column is that I still don’t entirely understand the particulars of the term’s origins. I know where and when it first appeared, but the exact situation it described remains as opaque to me today as it was then. You’ll understand in a moment.

“Hat trick” is a term used in sports to describe a single player or athlete scoring three goals (or whatever) in one game or match. So if I were to score three goals in quick succession in a hockey game (after first learning to skate, in my case), that would be hailed by the gang in the broadcast booth as a “hat trick.” The term is also used by extension for a threefold success in nearly any other activity, from selling three used cars in one afternoon to getting yourself arrested three times in a row for mopery in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is very strict about mopery. Don’t ask.

The term “hat trick” first appeared in Britain, in the late 19th century, and it comes from the game of cricket, which is where things get a little bit sticky, explanation-wise, because I have never understood cricket. But according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), a “hat trick” means “The feat of a bowler who takes three wickets by three successive balls: originally considered to entitle him to be presented by his club with a new hat or some equivalent.” I suppose a really good player would have had to rent a room to store all those nifty hats; that’s probably why they eventually switched to rewarding athletic success with buckets of money.

“Hat tricks” are noted in other sports as well, most notably horse racing, where a “hat trick” consists of a single jockey winning three races in one day. In hockey, there are two kinds of “hat tricks,” the simple sort being one player scoring three goals in one game. When a hockey player scores three goals in succession with no other scores interrupting, it’s called a “natural hat trick.” There’s also a “hat trick” in baseball, which consists of a player hitting a single, a double, a triple and a home run all in one game. This sort of hat trick is, unsurprisingly, quite rare, so it would be slightly tacky on such an occasion to point out that “hat trick” in this sense describes four, not three, events.

I should probably note, just for the record, that “hat trick” can also mean, according to the OED, “Any trick with a hat, e.g., one performed by a conjurer.” I’m hoping there’s a special term for a magician who manages to produce three rabbits from the same hat. On such an occasion, of course, a new hat would probably be very welcome.