4-F

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The better to bite you with, Sarge.

Dear Word Detective: At lunch today we were speaking of the draft (the military sort, not the wind sort) and my lunch buddy claimed that the designation “4-F” came from the Civil War when they used muskets (first hogwash point) and men had to use their front teeth to dislodge the plug in the powder container they carried. Doing this task required four teeth in front, both upper and lower, and if a chap were lacking in those natural dental implements he was called “4-F” (for “four front”). The whole thing sounded like utter folk etymological claptrap. What say you, oh wise and noble Word Maven of the Western World (WMWM)? — Swami Murugananda.

WMWM? Based on some of the irate email I get, I’ve always thought of myself as more of a YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) kind of guy. Remember, kids, you can’t please all of the people all of the time, so make the Delete key your friend.

In any case, your nonsense detector seems to be working quite well. The story your buddy came up with is, as you suspect, utter claptrap. On your first hogwash point, however, I think your detector is set a bit too high. Muskets (smooth-bore shoulder-fired firearms) were indeed used in the American Civil War, along with rifles (spiral grooves in the barrel), carbines (short rifles), and a wide variety of revolvers and pistols.

The “show us your teeth” explanation of “4-F” founders on several points. Although there was military conscription during the Civil War, I can find no evidence that a detailed system of draft classification, let alone the label “4-F,” existed at that time. Even if such a system had been in effect, it’s very unlikely that a single criterion, inability to open a powder pouch, would have rated a special classification when so many other disabilities (blindness, deafness, etc.) would also have disqualified the draftee. And even if one needed, and lacked, front teeth to fire a musket, there were plenty of openings for mule drivers and clerks.

As to what “4-F” actually means, the answer is pretty much nothing. During and following World War I, there was a classification system that divided conscripts into Class I (qualified for military service) and Classes II through V (unqualified or exempt). A more detailed system during and after the Second World War included 52 separate classifications, from I-A (Welcome to the Army) to IV-A (Go home, Grandpa), including IV-F, “Rejected for military service for physical, mental, or moral reasons.” The same general categories were retained after WW II with some additions, such as the ever-popular “2-S” or “student” deferment. Although the “F” in “4-F” may have been partly inspired by “fail” (or the school grade “F”), it didn’t officially stand for anything.

 

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Crabby.

Filed Under June 2007, columns | Leave a Comment

Little nipper.

Dear Word Detective: Why is being in a cross or bad mood referred to as being “crabby”? Are crabs naturally irritable? Who makes this stuff up? — Charles.

Well, to answer your third question first, you do. More precisely, we all do. The English language, like all human languages, is a group effort, the product of a committee consisting of everyone who has ever spoken it (and a good number of folks who have spoken other languages as well). Call the process natural selection, peer review or just mob rule, we label a cranky person “crabby” today because it seemed apt to enough people. If you’re looking for a specific person who coined the term, you might as well hang it up. It was almost certainly “invented,” over and over again, by thousands of people.

Our English word “crab” comes from the Old English “crabba,” itself from a Germanic root meaning “to scratch or claw,” which is, after all, pretty much the crab’s entire repertoire right there. Our modern “crabby,” meaning “cross, irritable, cranky” is fairly recent (as such things are measured), dating to the late 18th century. “Crabby,” however, was a derivative of an earlier term, “crabbed,” which appeared with the same meaning back in the 14th century.

In both “crabby” and “crabbed,” the analogy is to a crab’s tendency to painfully nip with its claws and tenaciously hold on, as well as its tendency to walk backwards and sideways, making it an excellent metaphor for a difficult, uncooperative person. (This, of course, is not entirely fair to crabs, many of which probably have wonderful personalities and, should they one day take over the planet, will no doubt remember I said that.) One of the more popular uses of “crabby” in this sense in recent years was in the Peanuts comic strip, in which Lucy van Pelt was routinely described as “crabby.”

The peculiar locomotion of a crab actually contributed to another sense of “crabbed,” that of “crooked, knotted, complex, twisted,” which today is found mostly in descriptions of indecipherable handwriting, awkward or overly-complex prose (”Mr. Hume, who has translated so many of the dark and crabbed passages of Butler into his own transparent and beautiful language,” 1830), or the ravages of age and disease on the human body (e.g., “a crabbed old man”).

Interestingly, the “crab,” or wild, apple, takes its name from the probably unrelated Scandinavian word “scrab” rather than the crustacean. But the sourness of the “crabapple” probably reinforced several senses of “crab” as applied to humans, especially the use of “crab” to mean “complain bitterly.”

 

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