Cross at the green, not in betw…

Dear Word Detective: What is the origin of the phrase “to throw one under the bus”? — Brenda Varney.

Good question, and, it would seem, a timely one as well. It’s hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV these days without hearing of someone being “thrown under the bus.” Last year CNN’s Jack Cafferty declared that “Rather than face Senate confirmation hearings over his reappointment as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Bush White House has decided to simply throw General Peter Pace under the bus.” Elsewhere, the E-Commerce News warned that a new song royalty scheme would “… throw large webcasters under the bus and put an end to small webcasters’ hopes of one day becoming big.” And a letter to the New York Times cautioned the paper not to “throw doctors under the bus … as the cause of health care costs.”

“To throw someone under the bus” is defined as meaning “to sacrifice; to treat as a scapegoat; to betray,” but I think the key to the phrase really lies in the element of utter betrayal, the sudden, brutal sacrifice of a stalwart and loyal teammate for a temporary and often minor advantage. There is no retirement dinner, no gold watch, for poor schmuck “thrown under the bus.” On the contrary, the scapegoat’s name is liable to disappear from the website overnight.

The earliest solid example of “throw under the bus” found in print so far is from 1991, although a 1984 quote from rock star Cyndi Lauper where she uses the phrase “under the bus” (without “throw”) may or may not count as a sighting. Incidentally, by far the best compilation of citations for the phrase can be found, as usual, at Grant Barrett’s Double-Tongued Dictionary website (www.doubletongued.org).

The exact origin of “thrown under the bus” is, unfortunately, a mystery. Slang expert Paul Dickson, quoted by William Safire in his New York Times magazine column, traces it to sports, specifically the standard announcement by managers trying to get the players to board the team bus: “Bus leaving. Be on it or under it.” The phrase does seem to be popular in sports circles, but few of the citations I have seen from sports publications carry the same overtones of casual, callous betrayal that one finds in non-sporting uses.

Consequently, I have my own theory. I don’t think the “bus” was ever the team bus. As someone who spent a lot of time standing on Manhattan street corners and narrowly avoided being expunged by speeding city buses on several occasions, to me the phrase conjures up the classic urban nightmare of being pushed in front of a bus. As a way to quickly and irreversibly get rid of someone, “throwing” them under a bus in this sense would be the ideal solution and would satisfy the connotations of sudden, cold brutality the phrase usually carries. So I suspect that the phrase has urban origins, and migrated into sports world via players from big cities.

Get me out of here.

Dear Word Detective: I came across this expression while reading Treasure Island, and I thought I’d try asking you about it, even though it’s probably old-fashioned. It’s used in Chapters 6 and 8. Page references below are in the Oxford Classics edition. “I’ll go with you [in search of treasure]; and, I’ll go bail for it, so will Jim, and be a credit to the undertaking” (34). “…I would have gone bail for the innocence of Long John Silver” (45). I think it means something like “to risk oneself in an undertaking,” “vouch for,” or “stand security for,” but the two uses in the story are different from each other. I’m curious where the expression originated, and what the meaning of “bail” is here. Is it related to the legal use of the term (i.e., paying bail for someone’s release from custody), or perhaps to the action of bailing water out of a boat (though I can’t see the connection right now). — Steve.

“Bail” is quite a word. We “bail” our friends out of jail, the government “bails out” the airlines and automakers every few years, people “bail out” of airplanes or bad relationships, and we “bail” the water out of a leaky boat as fast as we can. As a noun, “bail” also means a cross-bar, especially the one forming the top of a wicket in the game of cricket, as well as being an archaic term for the wall of a fortress or the like. Several of these senses are definitely related, and some authorities believe they all are.

The root underlying several senses of “bail” is the Latin “bajulare,” meaning “to carry” or “to bear a burden,” which begat the French “baillier,” meaning “to take charge of” or “hand over or deliver.” This “take charge of” sense produced the most common sense of “bail,” that of “release of a person who would otherwise be in jail” either upon payment of a security deposit (also known as “bail”) or into the charge of one who swears to ensure the accused’s appearance at trial. This use of “to bail” meaning “to vouch for” or “to guarantee” produced, in the 16th century, the senses in the passages you cite, both of which amount to a solemn commitment to see the task through.

The “bailing” one does on a sinking boat comes directly from the French “baille,” meaning “bucket,” but that word may hark back to the “carry” sense of the Latin “bajulare” as well. “Bailing out” of an aircraft probably echoes the sense of bailing water from a boat (although in the UK it is often spelled “bale,” as if a bundle of something were being jettisoned).

Wild thing.

Dear Word Detective: I am trying to find out the origin of the word “gnu.” It is an alternate name for the wildebeest, a large African antelope. — Jason.

That thing is an antelope? Looks to me like a buffalo that’s been through the rinse cycle once too often. But your email address indicates that you’re writing from Zambia, so I’ll take your word for it.

OK, a “gnu” is indeed an antelope, but it sounds like one put together by a committee. According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, the gnu’s “heavy head and humped shoulders resemble those of a buffalo, while the compact hindquarters are like those of a horse. The gnu has a beard, a short, erect mane, and a long, flowing tail.” Well, I suppose something had to balance out the butterflies.

Onward. As you note, the gnu is otherwise known as the “wildebeest,” which is Dutch for “wild animal,” the Dutch having been a powerful colonial presence in Southern Africa at one point.

“Gnu” itself is the word for the animal in the language of the Khoikhoi ethnic group of southwestern Africa. Early European settlers called these folks “Hottentots,” a name, now considered offensive, which in the settlers’ Dutch dialect meant “stutterer,” a reference to the Khoikhoi use of “clicks” as consonants. The word “gnu” is presumed to be echoic in origin, an imitation of the snorting grunt of the animal itself.

Although in Khoikhoi the “g” of “gnu” is pronounced (“g-noo”), in English it is generally not and the word is pronounced simply “noo.” One notable exception, which has been running through my head since I started answering this question, is the immortal song “The Gnu” by the British comedy team of Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, who made a point of stressing the “g” right over the edge: “I’m a G-nu, I’m a G-nu, The g-nicest work of g-nature in the zoo; I’m a G-nu, How do you do, You really ought to k-now w-ho’s w-ho’s; I’m a G-nu, Spelt G-N-U, I’m g-not a Camel or a Kangaroo; So let me introduce, I’m g-neither man nor moose, Oh g-no g-no g-no, I’m a G-nu.”

p.s. — There is also a free, open-source computer operating system called GNU, commonly encountered as part of the GNU/Linux operating system.

Hooray for whatsisname.

Dear Word Detective: What is the origin of the word “kitty” when used to mean a “collection of cash between several people”? — Alan West.

Good question. I’m more familiar with the plural form, “kitties,” which are small hairy creatures that collect cash from your pocket in return for shredding your furniture and sleeping in the sink.

But most of us are also familiar with a “kitty” in the sense you mean. Among the delights (cough, cough) of working in a large office, as I did for many years, are the incessant collections of such “kitties” to throw office birthday parties for people you’ve never met. After a while you begin to wonder if Larry in the fax room even exists. The only certainty is that if you fail to kick in a buck or two, you’ll never get another fax. “Kitty” is also often used as a synonym for the “pot” of money at stake in a poker or other card game.

Since I mentioned cats, the first step in our kitty-quest is to note that “kitty” in the “money” sense has no connection to “kitty” in the cat sense, a form of “kitten,” which in turn is derived from the French “chaton,” the diminutive of “chat” (cat). And although, as fans of “Gunsmoke” will remember, Miss Kitty was often seen hovering in the vicinity of poker games in the saloon, her moniker was simply a derivative (along with “Kate” and “Katy”) of the name “Katherine,” and thus unrelated to either gambling or cats.

Now as to the origin of “kitty” in the “collected money” sense, which first appeared in the late 19th century, the Oxford English Dictionary has an interesting theory, tracing it to “kidcote,” a dialect term from northern England for a prison. The OED is silent on the exact logic of this “kitty-kidcote” connection, but Michael Quinion (at the excellent www.worldwidewords.org) notes a related theory that the money in a gambling “kitty” is “locked up” for the duration of the game as if it were in prison. Mr. Quinion rates this theory as not credible, and I agree.

Far more likely is a connection between “kitty” and “kit,” an 18th century English slang term for “outfit” or “collection,” also found in a soldier’s “kit bag” and “kit and caboodle” meaning “a collection of everything.”

Hey fella, looking for a swim upstream?

Dear Word Detective: I’ve just discovered how hard it is to do your job. I know that the phrase “mack daddy” came originally from the word “mack,” meaning “pimp,” and that “mack” was short for “mackerel,” the fish. I also know that the word “mackerel” has been slang for “pimp” in other languages for a long time (e.g., French “maquereau”), but how did this rather innocuous-looking fish come to be associated with procurement and how did the word get into the English language? — Jackie.

Well, it wasn’t that hard until you came up with this question. This one gives me a headache.

“Mack daddy” is US slang, primarily in African-American use, currently used to mean a successful, influential and stylish man, especially one popular with women. It is true that “mack daddy” was formerly (and sometimes still is) understood to mean a prosperous pimp or other criminal. But usage has shifted over the past decade or so, and “mack daddy” (or “mac daddy”) is now often used as a more positive and generalized term, as in this citation from Ebony magazine in 1999: “[Comedian Chris] Rock … remembers … staying up late on school nights to watch the Tonight Show. ‘Especially when Bill Cosby used to host …,’ Rock says. ‘He was like so cool. He was a Mac Daddy back then.’”

The phrase “mack daddy” itself seems to date to the early 1950s, when an anonymously-composed song called “The Great MacDaddy” became popular in the African-American community. The element “daddy” is fairly straightforward, having originally been slang for “pimp” that later, like “mack daddy” itself, broadened into a more general term for a man with a commanding presence.

The “mack,” however, is where the headache comes in. It does appear to be short for “mackerel,” but the root of “mackerel” itself is in some dispute. And some fairly weird dispute at that. The standard theory suggests that the root of “mackerel” in French reflects an old Germanic word for “broker” or “pimp” because it was believed that the mackerel fish either has some odd reproductive habits itself or (I swear I am not making this up) assisted somehow in the reproductive antics of herring.

In any case, the French have been using their equivalent of “mackerel” to mean both the fish and a pimp for several centuries, and “mackerel,” which appeared in the “fish” sense in English in the 14th century, has also been used in the “procurer” sense in English since sometime in the 15th century.

Down and dirty.

Dear Word Detective: I was doing a crossword puzzle recently, and to my surprise the four-letter word for the clue “Works hard” turned out to be “moil,” a word that I was not familiar with. When I looked it up, this was one of the definitions listed (the other was “turmoil”). Apparently the origin of the word was the old French “moillier,” “moisten, paddle in mud,” from Latin “mollire,” “soften.” Do you have any idea how this word came to mean “hard work” in our muddled language? I realize that paddling in mud is not an easy task, but wonder if there was also some confusion with the similar word “toil.” — Michael Hooning, Seattle, Washington.

Indeed. Had I been doing that puzzle, I’d have been stumped as well, which is one reason why I gave up crosswords years ago. Even on those rare occasions when I emerged from one not feeling like an idiot, I always wondered why there wasn’t some sort of prize for finishing the thing. A free lottery ticket. A cupcake. Something.

In a perfectly logical language, “moil” would be related to “turmoil,” and probably to “toil” as well. After all, they rhyme, right? And “turmoil” actually has “moil” smack dab inside it. That should count for something. Unfortunately, English apparently didn’t get the memo, and all three words have their own unique origins.

“Turmoil,” meaning “a state of disturbance, commotion or agitation,” has a murky past, but the leading theory traces it to the French “trémie de moulin,” which is the hopper that holds the grain to be ground at a mill. Apparently the grain is stirred up in this process, making a plausible metaphor for any sort of disorder.

“Toil,” which first appeared in English in the 13th century with the meaning “to dispute or argue; to struggle,” has a remarkably similar origin. Its ultimate root is the Latin “tudicula,” a machine for crushing olives. From the original sense of a struggle between people, “toil” came to mean “struggle to make a living,” and finally simply “to labor very hard.”

“Moil” does indeed come originally from the Latin “molliere,” to soften, usually by moistening, also the root of “emollient.” An early meaning of “moil,” in the 16th century was “to make oneself wet and muddy,” presumably in the course of menial and unpleasant labor, the equivalent of “getting your hands dirty” today. The sense of “moil” meaning “turmoil or distress” apparently arose by a confused association with “turmoil” in the 16th century. In fact, the cross-pollination between the two unrelated words worked both ways. A sense of “turmoil” appeared about the same time with the meaning “to toil or drudge,” i.e., “to moil.”

Dethspicable.

Dear Word Detective: Can you say what “snollygoster” and “snurge” mean? — David.

Sure, no problem. A “snollygoster” is a person, most especially a politician, who is motivated in all things by personal ambition and greed rather than admirable principles of duty and self-sacrifice. Regarding politicians, that description is, of course, largely redundant, but while most politicians may be “snollygosters,” not all “snollygosters” are politicians. Many of them sell things on eBay, for instance.

A “snurge” is a despicable person, especially a sneaky little toady whose greatest joy comes from ratting out other people to the teacher, boss or other authority figure in order to curry favor with those in power. It seems reasonable to assume that (if they survive their childhoods) many “snurges” grow up to be “snollygosters.”

But while defining “snollygoster” and “snurge” is a piece of cake, determining their origins is a bit more difficult. “Snollygoster” is an American invention, first appearing in print, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), in the mid-19th century. The OED pegs the first appearance of “snurge” in print as being in 1933, but such slang terms are frequently commonly used in speech for years or even decades before they turn up in print. “Snurge” appears to be more commonly heard in the UK than in the US.

The most likely origin of “snollygoster” is another, very similar, word — “snallygaster.” From the German “schnelle (quick)” plus “geister (spirits),” a “snallygaster” was a mythical monster (a giant reptilian bird, according to one source) said, among residents of Maryland, to attack and eat livestock as well as the occasional child. Just how Maryland’s version of Rodan came to be associated with avaricious politicians is anyone’s guess, but the resemblance of “snollygoster” to “snallygaster” is too striking to ignore. There is a slight dating problem with this theory, in that “snallygaster” has (according to the OED) first been found in print in 1940 (versus 1846 for its presumptive descendant “snollygoster”), but it’s entirely plausible that the “snallygaster” had been used to cow disobedient children for at least 100 years before the word made it into print.

The origin of “snurge,” unfortunately, is more of a mystery. Perhaps influenced by “sneak,” it may well be onomatopoeic or “echoic,” invented as an unpleasant little word for a unpleasant little person. According to the eminent etymologist Eric Partridge, “snurge” dates to the 1920s and originally was used in England as slang for a workhouse for the poor, eventually becoming students’ and armed services slang for a “twerp.”

Tell them it’s called the Garden State because
so many wiseguys are pushing up daisies there.

Dear Word Detective: Being from New Jersey and growing up in the 1950′s and 60′s, it seems like the only people who have heard the term “cutting a chogie” are also from N.J. I now live in Georgia and am often ridiculed when using the term to mean “moving fast.” Sometimes it is used facetiously to refer to someone with an unusual gait while walking. I have found a few references from the Vietnam war and some go back to the Korean war and both seem to refer to “moving out fast” but I am unsure of the origin. Can you shed any light on this? — Gordon.

Making fun of people from New Jersey, eh? Haven’t those clowns seen The Sopranos? I was born in New Jersey, as it happens, and I have a foolproof non-violent revenge for such disrespect of the Garden State as you describe. I just quietly meditate on the fact that residents of Podunk (or Georgia, whatever) will never, ever, know what real pizza tastes like.

Although I grew up during the same period as you did, my adolescence was spent in Connecticut, and I never, as far as I can recall, encountered “Cutting a chogie.” Of course, even if I had, that wouldn’t guarantee success on the question of its origin. I’ve been searching for the story behind “pediddle” (or “perdiddle” or “padiddle”), slang for a car with only one working headlight, since I was about 15 years old. No one, as yet, has come up with an even vaguely plausible source for that one.

In the case of “chogie,” fortunately, we have a fairly clear source, the Korean War. Apparently the Korean word rendered in English as “chogie” meant a Korean laborer in the service of the US or UN armed forces, either utilized as part of the supply chain (to carry food and ammunition, etc.) or as a personal attendant (“chogie boys”) to US troops. I don’t speak Korean, but apparently the term was drawn from a phrase, something along the lines of “kara chogi,” meaning “go there,” making “chogie” the rough equivalent of the English “gofer” (an assistant who fetches, “goes for,” various things). The wars in Korea and Vietnam were close enough chronologically that some personnel served in both, so “chogie” also turns up in glossaries of Vietnam-era services slang. According to my son, who served with the U.S. Army in Korea in the early 1990s, the term is still used among US troops in that country to mean “over there” when pointing.

With the root meaning “go there,” it was logical that GIs would also use “chogie” to mean “leave” or “move quickly,” which apparently came home, at least to New Jersey, in the form “cut a chogie.”

Unjust desserts.

Dear Word Detective: I have often visited your website in response to the stupid questions that wander through my mind. Today’s question is: Why is it called a “cookie”? How did that happen? I mean, we came from England where they were “biscuits,” and now we’re in America and it’s a “cookie.” But why “cookies”? You cook lots of things. Like stir-fried rice. But stir-fried rice isn’t “cookies,” and neither is a cake. Do you have the answer? — Rachael.

Yes, but first I have a stupid question of my own. If “cookies” over there are called “biscuits,” what do you call biscuits? It can’t be “scones,” because scones are different from biscuits. Incidentally, it is apparently impossible to get decent scones where we live in Ohio. The “natural foods” supermarkets sell little cakes of sour clay they call “scones,” but I wouldn’t feed them to a dog. Scones are supposed to have butter, eggs and sugar in them, all of which are apparently verboten in the Peoples Republic of Foodonia. You should see the brownies these neo-puritans produce — like little brown sponges soaked in motor oil. Anyway, if you call both cookies and biscuits “biscuits,” doesn’t that get confusing, especially for the kiddies?

The gulf between British English and American English is famously colorful, of course, and entire dictionaries have been devoted to translating common terms in one language into the other. What we call the “hood” on a car, you call a “bonnet,” our “trunk” is your “boot,” your “chips” are our “Freedom fries,” your “Prime Minister” is our “poodle,” and so on. Just kidding. Anyway, it’s rare that one term in the UK lacks an equivalent in the US, although you can certainly keep “eel pie” all to yourselves.

In the case of “cookie,” the questions you raise are valid. Most food we eat (at least outside of Foodonia) is cooked, so what’s so special about “cookies”? Some of them (known, perplexingly, as “no-bake cookies”) aren’t even cooked.

So let’s blame the Dutch. The American term “cookie” actually has nothing directly to do with the English verb “to cook.” It’s derived from the Dutch “koekje,” meaning “little cake,” a diminutive of “koek” (cake). “Cookie” first appeared in American English in the early 18th century, when the Dutch colonial presence in the New World was still a fairly recent memory.

So there you go. Just don’t ask where “Oreo” came from. Even the people who make them don’t know.

Not counting that awful Van Morrison song.

Dear Word Detective: Why in the world are there so many uses for the word “domino”? Okay, well, two. I am referring not only to the black tile thing used in the game, but also the “masquerade” wear. — Val.

Whoa, you had me going there at first. As I’ve mentioned before, the great thing about writing this column is the opportunities it affords me, nearly daily, to doubt my own sanity. Thus I paused at the end of your first sentence and began wringing my memory for a third or fourth kind of “domino,” but all I could come up with was the name of that pizza chain.

While the “domino” game tile is probably the better known of the two kinds, the “domino” mask worn in a masquerade (itself from the Italian “maschera,” mask) is the older. “Domino” in this sense today usually refers to just a mask over the eyes (a la Zorro), but originally this “domino” also included a long hooded cloak, the whole shebang often being worn by masquerade partygoers who chose not to disguise themselves as some notable character (the Devil, Sponge Bob, etc.). The name “domino” for such a hooded cloak comes from the French “domino,” a similar hooded robe worn by monks and other clergy in the 16th century. “Domino” itself is derived from “dominus,” Latin for “lord or master,” and it has been suggested that the name was an abbreviation of “benedicamus Domino,” or “Let us now praise the Lord.” In any case, the full “domino” masquerade outfit appeared in English in the early 1700s, but by the 1800s “domino” usually referred to the mask alone.

“Domino” meaning the game piece, a small black tile marked with white dots, first appeared in English around 1801, and the connection, if any, with “domino” in the mask sense is uncertain. It may be that the white dots were thought to resemble eyes behind a mask. Alternatively, the name may have nothing to do with the costume and represent a reference to the verb form of the original Latin “dominus,” perhaps from the winner of the game shouting “Domino!” (“I am the master!”).

Hunka hunka burnin’ non-love.

Dear Word Detective: During the Civil War, iron shot was heated red-hot in a furnace (aboard ship or in shore batteries) before being fired into the side of a wooden ship. These were called “hot shots.” I don’t suppose there is any connection between this incendiary practice and calling someone a “hot shot”? (Still traveling the same road, however, is “big shot” a reference to large caliber ammunition?) — Charles Anderson.

Live and learn. My initial reaction upon reading the first sentence of your question was, I must admit, “Yeah, okay, and when they ran out of ammunition they shot flaming cats and dogs at the enemy, right?” To the munitions-illiterate among us (meaning me), the idea of shooting red-hot cannonballs at ships sounds like yet another implausible seafaring scenario dreamed up by the Committee to Ascribe a Nautical Origin to Everything (CANOE).

But one should, it appears, never underestimate the ingenuity of human beings bent on expunging their enemies of the moment. The use of flaming or heated projectiles actually predates the invention of gunpowder and dates back at least to the heated clay balls catapulted by the Britons at Roman invaders around 54 B.C. “Hot shot,” solid iron cannonballs that were heated and then fired from conventional cannons, appeared in the 16th century, and were apparently used by the British against the Spanish fleet with great success at Gibraltar in 1782.

Reading up on “hot shot” answered two of my initial skeptical questions: (a) Why didn’t the hot cannonball ignite the powder charge the moment it was loaded into the cannon? (a wad of wet clay or straw separated them), and (b) Was the shot still hot enough when it reached its target to set stuff on fire? (yup — at least hot enough to set a smoldering fire in the hull of a ship). Nineteenth century “hot shot” furnaces in which the cannonballs were heated can still be seen at abandoned shore batteries in the US and elsewhere. The US National Park Service even has a web page about them here .

Now, however, it’s time to turn off the Wayback Machine and say that flaming cannonballs are almost certainly not the source of our modern slang term “hot shot” meaning “an exceptionally important or capable person.” The original meaning of “hot-shot” when it appeared in the early 17th century was “one who shoots recklessly” (essentially a “hothead” with a gun) or “a reckless or hotheaded fellow.” The modern sense, which didn’t appear until the 1920s, followed directly from this “recklessly eager” meaning of “hot shot.”

“Big shot” meaning a very important person did originally come from large-caliber weapons (initially in the form “big gun”) in the early 19th century.

The sound of silence.

Dear Word Detective: I awoke this morning with the irresistible urge to know the origin of the word “humdrum.” Although it appears on your fine website in descriptions of other similarly obscure words, I am astonished to find it has no entry of its own. I would be grateful for some seconds if you could enlighten me on this point. — A. Leslie.

Sure, no problem. Hey, wait a minute there, buster. Whaddya mean you’ll be “grateful for some seconds” if I answer this question? My dogs are grateful for longer than that when I let them lick the butter knife. Whatever became of customer loyalty? Whatever became of the milk of human kindness? Whatever became of Jerry Mathers? OK, scratch that last one. I asked about Oskar Werner last month and several people sent me his entire biography.

“Humdrum” is a great word, meaning “routine, monotonous or dull.” Dreary. Tedious. Tiresome. Dry. Boring with a capital B. “Humdrum” is a small town on a Tuesday afternoon in August, where the loudest sound is the drone of ten thousand cicadas and the barber wanders over to the Post Office just to see another human being. Come to think of it, I actually live near a town that might as well be named Humdrum, where the gas station is the de facto social center and customers have prolonged conversations comparing brands of beef jerky.

By the way, “jerky” comes from the American Spanish word “charqui,” which in turn came from the Quichua (Peruvian) word “ccharqui,” meaning “dried slice of meat.” I must remember to tell the guys at the gas station next time I’m in town.

One of the things that makes “humdrum” such a perfect (one hesitates to call it “vivid”) word to describe a boring thing, place or time is the sound of the word itself. “Humdrum” sounds boring, and that turns out to be the key to the origin of “humdrum.” It’s what linguists call a “reduplication,” or rhyming repetition, of the word “hum.”

Reduplications are fairly common in informal English, from “fancy-schmancy” and “hoity-toity” to “okey-dokey” and “itsy-bitsy.” The second element in such formations is usually just there to emphasize the first — don’t go looking for a definition of “schmancy,” because it doesn’t actually mean anything.

In the case of “humdrum,” the “drum” echoes and emphasizes “hum,” which has meant “to make a low continuous murmuring sound” since the 15th century. “Hum” is itself echoic, intended to imitate the sound of a hum, and apparently a “hum” is such a boring sound that “humdrum” appeared in the 16th century and has been a synonym for “bore you out of your mind” ever since.