Dear Word Detective: I heard from an old salt that the expression “run amuck” comes from losing control of a boat and running a boat aground on the bank and into the “muck.” It makes some sense. – Nick Burford.

Yes, it does make some sense. But I know what makes even more sense. I suggest that we pass a small law making it illegal for anyone who has ever spent more than a week afloat on a boat to spread etymological hooey upon their return from the bounding main. I would especially like to ban all those “Old Salts” (as they often sign their letters) from berating me when I stray from the mission statement of that shadowy sailors’ cabal known as CANOE, the Committee to Assign a Nautical Origin to Everything. Ahoy, maties, “posh,” “brass monkey” and “the whole nine yards” have nothing to do with ships.

And neither does “amuck” have anything to do with running aground. I should say that, as a sailing aficionado in my youth, I had extensive experience with running aground, and spent many unpleasant moments up to my waist in the dark gray goo known as “muck” around Long Island Sound (from the Old Norse “myki,” meaning “cow dung”). Then again, it was preferable to growing up on a farm, where the verb “to muck” means to clean stables, etc., of livestock dung.

“Muck” has also given us several useful modern idioms. “To muck with” something, meaning to tinker, fiddle or interfere with it, dates to the 1920s, and “to muck about” (or “around”), meaning “to goof off or fool around” is actually a relic of the mid-19th century. The irony of that story about boats running aground in muck is that the original “proper” form of word “amuck” in English was “amok,” still often used along with “amock.” And although we often use “run amuck” today to describe small children, for instance, running wild in daycare, the original meaning of the term was quite grim. “Amok” comes from the Malay word “amoq,” meaning “a state of murderous frenzy.” In English, the word “amok” dates back to the 16th century and the first contacts between the Malay people and European explorers. The Europeans reported that the Malays were “susceptible to bouts of depression and drug use,” which then led them to engage in murderous rampages known as “running amok.” Of course, it’s likely that the Europeans’ accounts of the phenomenon may have been overly melodramatic and culturally biased, but the word entered English with the same general meaning, that of “murderous frenzy.”

Dear Word Detective: I came across “cock-a-hoop” while reading an article by a British sportsman. I’d appreciate hearing the history behind this combination of words and its use and meaning. – Jayesh.

Thanks for a great question. This reminds me of those “Antiques Roadshow” or “Cash from Trash” TV shows where people invite antique appraisers to take a gander at that weird dusty old thing Aunt Milly always claimed was worth pots of money. Sometimes it is, often it isn’t, but the interesting part is always the explanation of the gizmo (”This was found in every colonial household, usually placed in the doorway to frighten away wolverines.”).

“Cock-a-hoop” is a very old English phrase, dating back to the early 16th century, with two meanings as an adjective in common usage today: “being in a state of elation or boastful high spirits,” and “being askew or crooked.” But the original meaning of “cock-a-hoop” as a verb was a bit livelier – “to drink without restraint; to celebrate drunkenly.” The modern meanings seem easily explained – obviously, drinking without restraint can lead to both high spirits and finding oneself “askew.” Searching for the origin of, and logic behind, “cock-a-hoop” is where the real fun begins. The Oxford English Dictionary, in an unusually long speculation on the etymology of the phrase, calls it: “A phrase of doubtful origin, the history of which has been further obscured by subsequent attempts … to analyze it.”

In other words, people have been proposing theories about “cock-a-hoop” for so long that the trail may have been hopelessly muddied. Probably the most popular theory is that the “cock” of the phrase is the spigot on a keg of ale or liquor (”cock” being a term for “spigot” since the 15th century, possibly referring to the resemblance of a spigot and tap to the head of a rooster). To “cock-a-hoop,” in this theory, originally meant to remove the spigot and place it atop the keg (”on the hoop”), allowing celebrants to drink directly, and without restraint, from the barrel. One of the problems with this theory is that names of pubs featuring other things “on the hoop” (”Falcon on the Hoop,” “Angel on the Hoop,” etc.) were common in England during that period.

Another theory, a bit more plausible to me, suggests that “cock-a-hoop” is simply a transliteration of the French phrase “coq a huppe,” meaning a rooster displaying its crest (”huppe”) in a pose of proud defiance. Thus, “cock-a-hoop” would simply liken a drunken man to a boastful and aggressive rooster. If true, this theory would explain all those other “on the hoop” tavern signs as simply imitations of the original confusion of the French “huppe” with the English “hoop.”

Dear Word Detective: “Dock” is a place to park and obtain access to a boat, what was done to my Schipperke’s tail in order to meet the AKC breed standard, and what a deep dish pizza recipe told me to do to the crust before baking it (stab it gently and repeatedly with a fork). “Dock” might even be a plant, too. Is this coincidence or one of those wild word stories that make reading so much more fun than the stupid TV? – Sarah.

Hmm. Interesting. Am I the only one around here who, upon hearing the word “dock,” automatically thinks “Otis Redding”? Now I have an apparently endless loop of “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” playing in my head. Not that I’m complaining, of course. It certainly beats the theme from “Jeopardy.”

Onward. Hey, coincidences can be fun, too, and that’s what we have here, a five-layer historical coincidence. With cheese. There are actually five separate “docks” in English. The oldest is indeed a kind of plant called a “dock,” a term usually applied to members of the genus Rumex, although other species of plants are also called “docks.” This sort of “dock” takes its name from the Old English word for the plant,”docce,” which harks back to a Germanic root and has relatives in several other European languages.

The sort of “docking” done to your dog’s tail is the second oldest use of the word. As a verb meaning “to cut short,” “dock” first appeared in the late 14th century. It was derived from the noun “dock” meaning “fleshy part of an animal’s tail,” which had appeared earlier in the century, apparently derived from a Germanic root meaning “bundle or bunch.” This verb “to dock” is the same one encountered when the boss “docks” your pay.

The third kind of “dock” to appear in English, in the early 16th century, is the sort Otis was sitting on, a wharf or pier for loading or unloading ships and boats. Our modern “dock” had humble beginnings. Originally, borrowed from Germanic roots, the word simply meant the rut or hollow created by a boat lying on a beach at low tide. Some sources trace this “dock” back to the Latin “ducere,” meaning “to lead,” suggesting that the name comes from leading or pulling boats up onto the beach.

“Dock” number four is the little pen in the courtroom where the accused sits during trial in many countries, and comes from the Flemish word “dok,” meaning “rabbit cage.” This “dock” first appeared in English in the late 16th century.

The final “dock” is a cooking term, first used around 1840, meaning “to pierce with holes,” a practice apparently usually employed in baking biscuits to keep them from swelling up in the oven. The origin of this “dock” is a complete mystery, but I suspect it may be related in a roundabout way to “dock” in the “cut short” sense.

Dear Word Detective: I have somehow gotten the impression that “pushing the envelope” means encroaching on forbidden territory in a conversational sense. I would like to know if this is so. If I am correct or not, from where did the expression come? – Rene Guggisberg.

Good question. I think I know what you mean, as when you say something like “Lovely engagement ring, Debbie. Is that the one Dave got on eBay?” Conversations can be tricky. Personally, I have a tendency to answer people’s rhetorical questions literally, and folks who make the mistake of asking “Why me?” in my presence often get five or six good suggestions.

I have actually answered a question about “pushing the envelope” before, but I see by the clock on the wall that it’s been almost exactly ten years, so we’ll take another run at it. To “push the envelope” does include straining the boundaries of polite conversation, but more broadly it means to approach, exceed, or even extend the limits of what is considered possible or permissible in any context. This can be a good thing, as when a race car driver sets a new world’s record time, or a bad thing, as when an office worker sets a new record for calling in sick. In both cases, the attempt itself carries a risk considered too great by most people.

“Pushing the envelope” comes from a field, however, where tremendous risk is the whole point. It’s drawn from the lingo of test pilots, whose job consists of pushing their aircraft right up to and often beyond the technical specifications and theoretical limits of their craft. While “pushing the envelope” (originally in the form “pushing the edge of the envelope”) has probably been in use among test pilots since World War II, it was propelled into general usage by Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book about test pilots and the early US space program, The Right Stuff. The “envelope” being pushed in “pushing the envelope” is a mathematical construct, what is called the “flight envelope” of a given aircraft: combinations of speed and altitude, range and speed, or speed and stress on the aircraft’s frame, that are considered the limits of the plane’s capabilities. Within the “envelope” formed by these parameters, you’re (at least theoretically) OK. Push those limits and you’re asking for trouble, which is what test pilots do for a living. In the process, they verify the safety of the aircraft within those limits and pinpoint possible points of failure if the “envelope” is pushed too far.

Given the popularity of Tom Wolfe’s book (and the movie made from it), it’s not surprising that by the early 1980s “push the envelope” was being used in non-aviation contexts with the diluted meaning of “experiment, innovate, take risks” (”Steven Bochco is offering a new series this fall on ABC, ‘NYPD Blue,’ that … will ‘push the edge of the envelope’ of profanity, nudity and artistic violence,” 1989).