Dock

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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.

 

 

Push the envelope

Filed Under January 2008, columns | Leave a Comment

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).

 

 

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