Oh, hi.  What time is it?  I must have fallen asleep.  Sorry about that.

So, did Hillary win yet?  Anybody ever figure out what kind of batteries Mitt takes?

Ralph Nader is running?  That’s a bad sign.  Wake me when it’s over.

As you may have noticed, I’ve been away for a while.  On a spiritual quest to determine the meaning of life, if you must know.  And now I’m back, and yes, I know the answer.

But first, Grasshopper, you must mow my lawn.  Using your own gasoline.  Good luck.  The perpetual rain here in Central Cowland has transformed our seven acres of Midwestern scrubland into Amazon North, complete with weird clinging vines, exotic avian species, and, my personal fave, clouds of biting insects. We also seem to have become the local animal sanctuary, and are now providing a habitat for hundreds of rabbits, platoons of raccoons, a major underground city of groundhogs, several skunks, two humongous turkey vultures, a large owl, a redtailed hawk (a very cool looking critter, by the way), an endless parade of squirrels and chipmunks, frogs, snakes both great and small, and (this is new) a small herd of deer, which Brownie the Dog enjoys chasing across the front yard several times a week.  We also have, not surprisingly, a pack of coyotes living in the field across the road, who come right up to the house late at night.  When the fire engines start up in town several miles away, they start to howl along with the sirens.

Anyway, here is the July issue of TWD, formerly known as the June issue, rumored to have been originally intended as the May issue.  I am compelled (by the rising cost of cat food, if nothing else) to point out that folks who subscribe to TWD-by-Email have been receiving these columns like clockwork throughout our recent web hiatus.

Oh, right.  The meaning of life. Be kind.  Beyond that, beats me.  But as Pogo said,  Don’t take life so serious.  It ain’t nohow permanent.

 And now, on with the show….

Just enough.

Dear Word Detective:  When I was a child, I frequently heard the word “oodles,” meaning “lots of,” as in oodles of money, oodles of people, even oodles of worries.  I think the word is used less often now, but I wonder about its derivation. — Jim Donovan, Chesterfield, MO.

Hey, you’re right.  Whatever happened to “oodles”?  Time was that “oodles” was a perfectly acceptable way to enumerate an abundance of all sorts of things (“Woolworths has oodles of Slinkys”), but the last time I tried to use it with our accountant in explaining our deductions, he seemed peeved at my use of the term.  I blame the rise of computers and spreadsheets.  While once we would be happy to gesture broadly and brag, “We have oodles of cats,” now people want to know precisely how many, down to the whisker.  But in my book there’s more to life than taking an endless inventory, so I don’t have to answer that question.

There seems to be a perverse principle at work in the English language that says that the more fun a word is to say, the less we know about it.  “Oodles” is, at least to non-accountants, an entertaining word, so you can guess where this is going.  What we find when we go looking for the origins of the “oodles” is a few dates and a lot of theories.  But at least the theories are interesting and involve some similarly amusing words.

We do know that “oodles” first cropped up in print in English around 1867, meaning “a large or unlimited amount of something” (“All you lack’s the feathers, and we’ve got oodles of  ‘em right here,” 1887).  The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that “oodles” is a short form of “scadoodles,” US slang of the same period also meaning “a lot.”  This leads to the logical suspicion that “scadoodles” is an elaboration on the word “scad,” more common in its plural “scads,” which was also common slang of the time meaning, you guessed it, “lots” (at first of money, later of anything).  Unfortunately, we have no more idea of where “scad” came from than “oodles” or “scadoodles.”

Another theory, equally plausible, traces “oodles” to “boodle” or “caboodle,” one-half of the phrase “kit and caboodle,” meaning “all and everything” (“The Sheriff seized the house, the land, the dog, the whole kit and caboodle”).  The “kit” in the phrase is 18th century English slang for “collection” or “necessary items” (as in a soldier’s “kit bag”).  The “caboodle” harks back to the Dutch word “boedel,” meaning “property.”  The phrase “kit and caboodle” also became popular in the mid-18th century, so the timing is right for “caboodle” to have been shortened to the simpler “oodles.”

My hunch is that all of these words, “oodles,” “scadoodles” and “caboodle,” are mutations of “boodle,” if for no other reason than the greater age of “boodle,” which was actually a legal term meaning “estate” a century earlier.  There are also other dialectical elaborations on “boodle” floating around out there, especially in the American South, including “boocoodles,” a mix of “boocoo” (from the French “beaucoup,” meaning “much” or “plenty”) plus “oodles.”

Pittsburgh with palm trees.

Dear Word Detective:  Mike Royko did several humorous columns about southern California.  I recall one in which he felt that the USA was tilted so all the strange stuff ended up there.  He also coined the moniker “Governor Moonbeam” for Jerry Brown for proposing that California have its own space satellite.  Did he have anything to do with coining the phrase “La La Land”?  (Or is it “LA LA Land”?)  What is the origin of that useful phrase? — Maxwell M. Urata.

Good question, but I’ll have to be careful with my answer.  I might as well admit, right off the bat, that I’m a bit afraid of California.  For one thing, I can’t even type the word without hearing it as pronounced by Governator Ahnold (“cally-FOR-nee-ya”), which makes it sound like either an esoteric legal maneuver or a very unpleasant fungal disease.  I also can’t shake the memory of a science fiction story I read as a child in which California begins spreading eastward and farmers in Iowa suddenly start wearing sunglasses and reading Variety.  I guess that’s two votes for fungus.

There was a time when I wouldn’t have had to explain who Mike Royko was, but it’s probably a good idea to do so now, which is a real shame.  From 1959 until his death in 1997, Royko was the quintessential big city newspaper columnist, the city in this case being Chicago.  Mike Royko’s beat was the lives of working people and the world as viewed through their eyes, rendered with his own wit and fearlessly sharp tongue.  His characterization of then-Governor Jerry Brown as “Governor Moonbeam” in 1978 is perhaps his most famous creation, but Royko later said he regretted coining the term and considered it unfair to Brown.

“La-La Land,” by which is generally meant Los Angeles (although occasionally all of California), certainly has the ring of Royko, but it’s not one of his inventions.  The earliest appearance of the term (in reference to Los Angeles) so far found comes from 1979.  Interestingly, at about the same time, “la-la land” came into use as a slang phrase meaning “a state of dreamy disconnection from reality,” whether due to drunkenness or dementia.

The match of “la-la” to “LA” as an abbreviation for Los Angeles has certainly contributed to the popularity of “La-La Land.”  But “la-la” by itself has long been used to mean “to sing a song by substituting ‘la la’ for the words” (as a child or childlike adult might), which may have fed into the “demented” meaning of “la-la land.”

And while Los Angeles wears the “La-La” crown today, there is evidence that it was not the first winner.  Linguist Ben Zimmer, writing on the American Dialect Society mailing list two years ago, noted a headline from 1925 (in the Los Angeles Times, no less) in which Paris goes by the name “La-La Land.”  Evidently this “La-La” was drawn from the stereotypically French interjection “Ooh-la-la!” (meaning literally “Oh, there, there!”), a phrase popularized by American comedians and cartoons when France was considered the epicenter of all things risque.

Bottom of the barrel.

Dear Word Detective:  I would like to know if the words “drek” and “dreg” are derived from the same base word.  They mean similar things. — Melissa K.

Good question, and it reminded me of something I learned recently.  This will seem like a complete non sequitur, but bear with me.  From talking to someone who works there, I discovered that the Olive Garden (an “Italian cuisine” restaurant chain in the US), while it charges about nine bucks for a glass of decent wine, charges only twenty-five cents for a quarter-glass “sample” of that same wine, four samples maximum per customer.  It doesn’t make the foam-rubber bread sticks any more palatable, but for a buck a glass, it can’t hurt.

Now that all the winos are on their way to the mall, onward.   “Dreck” (which is how it’s now usually spelled) and “dreg” do share a common, shall we say, ambience.  Both connote things that are generally considered unpleasant, usually unwanted and almost always useless.  But aside from their resemblance, the two words are unrelated.

“Dreg,” while it does exist in the singular form, is almost always seen in the plural “dregs.”  In a literal sense, “dregs” are the the thick sediment that settles and accumulates in the bottom of a bottle (or a tanker truck on its way to the Olive Garden) of wine or other liquor.  Given that humanity has been hitting the sauce pretty much since forever, it’s not surprising that “dregs,” which appeared in English back in the 14th century, harks back to an ancient Old Norse word (“dregg”) meaning the same thing.  “Dregs” is most often encountered in its figurative sense of “the most worthless parts” (as in “the dregs of humanity”) or “the last traces” (“He sacrificed the last dregs of his self-respect by taking the job”).  Incidentally, “dregs of humanity” is considered a hoary cliche, but, then again, “hoary cliche” is a hoary cliche.

“Dreck” is in the same ballpark as “dregs,” but even less attractive. From the Yiddish “drek” (in turn from the German “dreck”), meaning “filth or dung,” “dreck” is generally used to mean “worthless trash, garbage,” most often in a figurative sense.  So a cheap knockoff of a Rolex watch might be dismissed as “dreck” or the season’s offerings in new TV shows summed up by critics as “dreck.”  The first appearance of “dreck” in English found so far occurs, interestingly, in James Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses, used as a personal insult (“Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck!”), but such ad hominem use is not very common today.

Just call me Snakeyes.

Dear Word Detective:  I read that you are a native or at least previous resident of New Jersey, as I am also.  I was gone for around 10 years, from 1995 to 2005 and upon retuning, I’m hearing a word that just wasn’t part of the vernacular when I left.  The word, “dicey,” is used here in NJ in the sense of things being a bit “touchy” or “critical” or something. But I was wondering if there’s an origin to this word as it applies now.  My guess is it’s like dicing up a tomato — it gets sloppy and mushy, sort of like the situation it’s used in. — Bill Becker.

Yes, it’s true.  I was born in Princeton, but I learned to walk early and left shortly thereafter.  I also lived in a suburb in northern New Jersey for one ill-advised year in the late 1980s, surrounded by what were then called yuppies.  I still break out in hives when I see Burberry plaid.

That’s an interesting theory you’ve come up with about “dicey” and dicing tomatoes, which does indeed make a nasty mess.  Incidentally, I’ve found that if you leave them in the freezer overnight and then just drop them on the floor, you get nice little pieces without all that bother.

I received another question about “dicey,” meaning “risky or dangerous,” from a reader a few years ago but never got around to answering it (sorry, Bill P.), which is a shame because he included an interesting story he had heard about the word.  “Dicey,” the story went, originated among Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots during World War II.  When the weather at their home fields was too bad to permit landing when returning from a mission, they would fly north to an airfield called Dice, where the skies were almost always clear.  Thus bad weather came to be known as “Dicey,” a term later expanded to describe anything risky.

Two bits of that story are true.  “Dicey” did begin as RAF slang during WWII.  And, as Bill P. discovered in his research, there is indeed a “Dice” airfield at Aberdeen, Scotland, evidently known for its clear weather.

But the roots of “dicey” lie, not in the clouds, but on the gambling tables (or the floor of an RAF hangar).  “Dicey” comes from “dice,” the plural of “die,” the little spotted cubes of chance used in many games.  A mission that was “dicey” to the RAF pilots was fraught with danger, and their safe return was as uncertain as a roll of the dice they often used to pass their time on the ground.  This sense of both chance and danger has carried over to our modern use of “dicey” to mean “seriously risky,” often with overtones of disaster if the effort fails.

Couching potato, tattered settee.

Dear Word Detective:  I’ve recently bought a new house and am getting ready to move my furniture, which has given my mom occasion to use (and even write out) the word “chesterfield” about a million times.  I now find myself in a fascinating love/hate relationship with word.  On the one hand, hearing my mom use it is like listening to a nail on a blackboard.  On the other, I am finding it particularly hilarious for my own personal use with friends.  I am wondering if you can tell me where the word “chesterfield” and, for that matter, “sofa” and “couch” originated. — Sean Kells.

Well, congratulations on your new house.  Here at Go Figure Farm, we often spend Sunday morning watching a local real estate “showcase” on TV.  Mostly we just quietly make fun of the homeowners’ taste, but lately I’ve begun to wonder at the agents’ grasp of architectural taxonomy.  How in the world can a trapezoidal monstrosity with a two-story “great room” rightly be called a “classic Cape Cod”?  What makes a humdrum 1960s split-level eligible for the label “Colonial”?  The ornate pillars some doofus erected in the rumpus room?  The Early American foosball table?

It’s a tribute to the natural human need to lounge that there are so many names for what we often call simply a “couch.”  The term “couch” itself comes from the French “coucher,” meaning “to lay in place,” reflecting the original sense of a couch as a place for sleeping, not just sitting.  “Sofa” comes from the Arabic “soffa,” which meant a raised part of the floor covered with carpets and pillows for seating.  “Divan,” a term for “couch” your grandmother might have used, comes from the Persian “devan,” which originally meant “assembly of rulers,” but in English came to mean the padded platform upon which the leaders sat.  “Settee,” yet another antiquated  word for “couch,” is just a jocular form of “settle,” which as a noun used to mean “a place to sit.”  The term “davenport” apparently comes from the name of a furniture manufacturer.

All of which brings us to “chesterfield,” meaning a style of couch with upright arms, one of which may be adjustable to allow the user to recline comfortably.  It was named after the Earl of Chesterfield (a now obsolete title) in 19th century England, but the name is probably more evidence of clever marketing than any actual connection to nobility.  The term “Chesterfield” is also used for a type of long single-breasted coat, often sporting a velvet collar.

While we’re on the subject, I recently received another “couch” question from a reader which is driving me slowly nuts.  She grew up in Detroit in the 1950s, and her grandmother used the term “dufo” or “dufoo” for a couch.  If anyone has any knowledge of the term, or anything remotely like it, please let me know at words1@word-detective.com.

And, of course, Princess Summerfall Winterspring.

Dear Word Detective:  Where does the expression “Boy Howdy!” come from?  Any connection to Howdy Doody? — Carol.

Well, ultimately, yes, of course.  It’s pretty hard to think of a single aspect of modern life that isn’t connected to Howdy Doody in some way.  To those of you born after 1960, “Howdy Doody” may have been just a wildly popular 1950s kiddie TV show, but the rest of us know that time and space began with Buffalo Bob and Clarabell the Clown.  Someone should tell those physicists that they’re wasting their time searching for that Grand Unified Theory of Everything.  It’s Howdy Doody all the way down.

All kidding aside, “Howdy Doody” and “Boy Howdy” are, in fact, related.  The “Howdy” in “Boy Howdy” is the same word as in “Howdy Doody,” the name of the marionette that starred in the TV show.  “Howdy” is a short form of the phrase “How do you do?”, a social greeting that dates back to 16th century England.  The form “Howdy” took root in the Southern US in the 19th century and was carried West by veterans of the US Civil War.  “Howdy Doody” is simply another jocular form of “How do you do?”  Although “Howdy” as a greeting is usually associated with the West, it’s actually used all over the US today, and I often hear myself blurt “Howdy!” when I’m passed on the street by someone who has a stronger memory of me than I have of them.

“Boy howdy” is another Southernism, usually attributed to Texas and evidently popular in that state.  It’s a simple combination of the exclamation “Boy!” (indicating surprise) and our friend “Howdy,” together used to mean “Wow!” or to indicate strong agreement with a statement or question (“Was your mom mad at you?”  “Boy howdy!  I’m grounded for a month.”).  The phrase seems to have been popularized in the years after World War I, when returning soldiers who had heard it from Texans in the service brought it back to civilian life.  A related form, “boy hidy,” is a fairly weird but nonetheless popular variation.  Texas, land of mystery.

Speaking of exclamations, the interjection “boy!” (“Boy, that sauce is hot!”) is short for “Oh boy,” used to introduce and emphasize a statement since the early 20th century.  The original lexical function of the phrase was simply to catch the listener’s attention, equivalent to saying “Hey, mister…”, but today “boy” used this way signals that the speaker considers what follows to be important or surprising (“Boy, I never thought they’d actually fire me”).

Probably coined by Jack Webb.

Dear Word Detective:  From where does the name “pot” come from when referring to marijuana?  I have asked several users of the substance but they seem to have forgotten. — Barry Longyear.

Ba-dum-bump.  I feel like I’ve wandered into someone else’s act here.  But I’m afraid that in making a good joke you’re perpetuating an unfortunate stereotype of potheads as forgetful space cadets.  From what I’ve seen (from a distance, through binoculars, with Melvin the Drug Dog at my side, of course), the drug (or, as the Governator calls it, “the leaf”) actually improves its users’ memory.  They remember, for instance, how remarkably funny late-night reruns of Chuck Norris in “Walker, Texas Ranger” can be.

There’s nothing like making something illegal to spawn a wide range of slang terms for the item, and illicit drugs have spawned hundreds of such names.  Much of this slang is ephemeral and largely generational, changing through the years along with styles in hair and music.  A few core slang terms, however, persist for decades or far longer (such as “junk” for heroin and “speed” for amphetamines).  In the case of marijuana, “grass” and “pot” are the perennial standards, so widespread that major US newspapers have lately taken to using “pot” in news stories without the quotation marks that usually signal a slang term.

“Pot” as slang for marijuana has been in common usage since at least the 1930s and the subject of lively dispute among etymologists pretty much since day one.  The most popular theory about the origin of “pot” traces it to the Spanish phrase “potacion de guaya,” or “drink of grief,” supposedly referring to a concoction of wine in which marijuana buds have been steeped.  It is also said that “potiguaya” or similar words are used in Spanish to mean marijuana leaves.  The only problem with these theories is that no one has yet found “potacion de guaya” or its relatives actually being used in Spanish.  That, to put it mildly, is a pretty big problem.

None of the other theories that have been proposed for the origin of “pot” are as enticing  as that one, although the simple substitution at some point of “pot” for “pod” (meaning, presumably, the seed pods of the plant) is certainly plausible.  Unfortunately, “pod” as slang for marijuana seems to have appeared more than twenty years after “pot” did, so there’s another problem.

If I had to pick a likely candidate for the actual origin of “pot,” I’d go with one that harks back to another venerable slang term for the stuff: “tea,” referring to the similarity in appearance between dried “pot” leaves and tea leaves.  It’s easy to image someone making a pun on “teapot” (especially since “pot” is sometimes made into tea) and adopting just “pot” as slang for the drug.

The Crying of Lot 43046.

Dear Word Detective:  Why is a letter or parcel delivery service called “mail” or “post”? — Ray Earl.

That’s a darn good question.  Speaking of the US Postal Service, I discovered something odd the other day.  When we moved to this little town in rural Ohio a few years ago and I went to rent a Post Office box, the folks downtown gave me Box 1, which had recently been vacated.  Cool, thought I.  But some of the locals apparently thought I had pulled devious strings in Washington (or Zurich) to score such an exalted address, and they’ve evidently been seething with resentment ever since.  Who knew?  I figured they squinted at everyone that way.  Oh well, it’s all fodder for my memoirs, after which I’ll probably need a whole new zip code.

“Mail” and “post” in the “Oh look, here’s a letter from the IRS” sense are both very old words related to the process of sending a letter or package, but they spring from two separate aspects of that process.

The word “post,” as in “Post Office,” “postal worker” and the like (as well as the verb phrase “to post a letter”) harks back to the Medieval origins of the postal service in Europe.  The mail was carried in a relay system on horseback by riders who were “posted” at set intervals along the roads (called, naturally, “post roads”).  This “post” is not, it should be noted, the sort of pole stuck in the ground one might use to tether a horse.  It comes from the Latin “ponere,” meaning “to place,” and referred to the placing or “posting” of the riders along the route.  Speed, of course, was imperative in transporting mail by such a primitive system, and the word “posthaste,” which we use today to mean “quickly,” is a relic of the days when “haste, post, haste” was scrawled on letters to encourage quick delivery.

The “mail” we all eagerly await every day (and, around here, await, and await) takes its name not from the letters and packages themselves, but the bag used to carry them in early postal systems.  The Old French word “male” meant “bag or satchel,” and was used in the 13th century to mean the mailbag carried by the relay riders.  Eventually the term “mail” (as the spelling had developed) was transferred from the bags and applied to the letters and parcels within.  This “mail,” incidentally, is unrelated to “chain mail,” the metal body armor worn by knights, which comes from another Old French word, “maille,” meaning “mesh.”

Both “mail” and “post” are verbs as well, of course, although there are usage differences between the US and the UK.  Over here in the US, we “mail” letters, but “post” is more the British habit.

Lather, rinse, forget.

Dear Word Detective:  I am retired but substitute teach at the elementary level in Virginia.  We were using the word “hardship” and one of my fourth graders asked about the word.  I said that I seemed to remember, from a long time ago, that the word had something to do with the many terrible things endured by the Pilgrims, etc., and that the word “hard” had originally been another word.  Maybe it was “heart.”  I just don’t remember!  I have promised the kids an answer and hope you can help me out.  I have “Googled” this and that to no avail. — Sherry Anderson.

This is a good question in its own right, of course, but it also illustrates my pet theory of human memory.  You once heard a story linking the word “hardship” to the Pilgrims, possibly suggesting that the “hard” part was originally “heart.”  My guess is that it was a heartwarming, inspiring story, as such stories tend to be (especially those involving the Pilgrims).  You have, however, long since forgotten the story.  That’s because, I firmly believe, the human brain actually incorporates an excellent flapdoodle-detector, although it often works quite slowly.  Over time, your brain realized that it was storing useless nonsense and decided, quite reasonably, to delete it.  Forgetting ridiculous things you’ve heard is, in other words, a good thing.  I just wish we could speed up the process so it kicks in before Election Day.

So, in any case, the story you seem to have heard about “hardship” was bunk.  “Hardship” has always been simply “hardship” since it first appeared in English in the early 13th century.  Its original meaning was “the quality of being hard to bear; severity, painful difficulty” (as in “Her brute of a husband was a hardship”), but since the 15th century the term has been used in a more general sense for a condition or state that causes suffering (“Poverty and hardship in childhood may lead to a life of poor health”).  The “hard” part of “hardship” refers to the difficulty of enduring the circumstance;  “ship” as a suffix simply means “the state or condition of being.”

If it was indeed “heartship” that the story you heard years ago proposed as the original form of “hardship,” the idea seems to be still lurking out there on the internet.  There are a bit more than five hundred Google hits for “heartship” (“They believe that because I want to continue this relationship I am taking myself down a trail of pain and heartship”).  Almost all of these seem to be cases of simple confusion based on mishearing the word “hardship” (similar to the process that transforms “an arm and a leg” into “a nominal egg”).  I can’t find any Pilgrim-related stories about “heartship,” but if the mangled word spreads a bit more, someone is bound to invent a brand new fable about it.

And thanks for all the toast.

Dear Word Detective:  Where did the term “bread and butter letter” originate?  I do know that it is a “thank you” letter for staying in someone’s house. — Leslie Player.

Well, you’re one step ahead of me.  I thought I had never heard the term “bread and butter” used in that sense before, but then I vaguely remembered, in my childhood, hearing an older person using it.  I suppose I should have asked what it meant, but at that age I regarded it as just one more grownup mystery, like property taxes and why in the world any sane person would eat eggplant.  I still haven’t figured out the second one.

“Bread,” being the staff of life and all, is, of course, a very old word, though it’s interesting to note that in Old English the word simply meant “piece of food, morsel,” not necessarily the stuff cranked out by Pepperidge Farm.  “Butter” is even older, and comes from the Greek “boutyron,” meaning literally “cow cheese.”  By the way, that “staff of life” business comes from the Bible, where “to break the staff of bread” means to cut off the food supply that supports a people (as a walking staff supports an individual).

“Bread and butter” has been used, since at least the early 18th century, to mean  “everyday kinds of food” (“It was strictly a bread and butter dinner, not a snail in sight”), but more often in a figurative sense to mean “means of living, basic financial support,” often of a distinctly unglamorous sort (“Sure, I dabble in tech stocks, but repossessing cars is my bread and butter”).

The logic of “bread and butter letter,” a term first appearing in print in the US in the early 20th century, seems to fall somewhere between those two uses.  The writer is thanking his or her hosts for their hospitality (and food), but the letter is also a basic social formality, not likely to contain any exciting content.  A “bread and butter” note may not be eagerly awaited, but it’s the sort of thing expected and probably noticed most in its absence.

Speaking of bread and butter, I noted a few years back that my wife Kathy had grown up in Ohio with the tradition of saying “bread and butter” whenever an object (parking meter, UFO, whatever) or another person comes between you and your walking companion.  At first I was mystified, but it turns out to be a common childhood ritualistic incantation in the American Midwest, invoking the togetherness of bread and butter to insure that the two companions are not separated for longer than a moment.

Not to be confused with fun.

Dear Word Detective:  My dad, who hails from the coast of Scotland, is a great source of idioms I rarely (if ever) hear from friends and co-workers.  Unfortunately, like most people, he uses expressions with no idea where they actually came from and has only a passing understanding of what they mean.  One of these pet expressions is “a devil of a time” which he uses to describe unpleasant tasks that must be done and put him in a bad mood such as “a devil of a time” fixing the roof or unclogging the toilet.  I’m just guessing here, but by any chance does this phrase owe its origins to the ugly business of re-caulking wooden-hulled ships while at sea?  I seem to recall “the devil” being a term for the planking around the waterline of the hull. — Steve.

Your father’s understanding of “a devil of a time” is actually right on the mark, and, as someone who has unclogged a lot of toilets, I admire his restraint.  I usually come up with far less printable ways to describe such tasks.  My personal least-favorite chore is dragging fifty-pound sacks of salt into the cellar and dumping them into our so-called water softener every month.  I hate this ritual so much that I actually feel a rush of annoyance when I see people lifting weights on TV.  Come to my house, bucko, and I’ll waive the gym fees.

“A devil of a time” is actually a very old and very widespread expression, as well known in the US as it apparently is in Scotland.  The construction “a devil of a,” meaning “an extremely irritating or difficult example of something” (“a devil of a day,” “a devil of a problem,” etc.) dates back at least to the mid-18th century.  The logic of the phrase is a comparison of the thing in question to Satan or his devilish ways, and was originally taken as a serious condemnation, i.e., a “devil of a man” was a truly bad character.  Today the phrase has softened to mean simply “unpleasant, annoying or difficult” (“I had a devil of a time programming my iPod”).

The nautical use of “devil” to mean a seam in a ship’s hull difficult to reach while caulking is often cited when explaining the phrase “the devil to pay” meaning “in a difficult situation.”  “Pay” does indeed have the meaning of “seal with pitch” (from the Old French “peier,” pitch or tar).  But no one has ever been able to establish that any particular seam on a wooden ship was called “the devil.”  Furthermore, the supposed “full” form of the phrase, “the devil to pay and no pitch hot,” did not appear until the mid-19th century, roughly four centuries after “the devil to pay” was in use by landlubbers.  It’s pretty clear that “the devil to pay” originally simply referred to the classic Faustian bargain with Satan and its unpleasant consequences.  The story about “the devil to pay” springing from an unpleasant caulking job aboard ship was a later invention based on the coincidence of “pay” meaning “caulk” and “pay” meaning “satisfy a debt.”