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.”

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.”