readme:

June, moon, boon, loon. Much better month than May, dontcha think? Aren’t you actually sort of glad I skipped that nasty old month?

Besides, every recent monthly issue of this little circus has contained eighteen columns, six more than the twelve I write every month, so I’m really only a half a month late, right?  Furthermore, at this rate, sooner or later I’m going to catch up with myself and disappear into some sort of ink-stained singularity unless I take a month off every so often.  So I’m actually doing y’all a favor by goofing off.  If this seems a bit confusing, you’re probably better off subscribing to TWD-by-Email, which will ensure the prompt arrival of my deathless prose in your e-mailbox every two weeks like clockwork. And by subscribing you’ll also be helping to pay the hosting bills of this site and buy food for the kitties.  You do like cats, don’t you?  They like you.  Several of them mentioned you just today.

[Note: I wasn't really goofing off. Warm weather makes my ms much worse, and my energy level has been in the negative numbers lately.]

By the way, if you have problems reading actual content on the web (as opposed to, for instance, spending all day browsing LOLcats, like some people I could mention), check out Readability.  It’s a browser bookmarklet that transforms the typical cacophony of type and ads on a page into one eminently readable column of nice, simple type.  I have problems with my vision from the ms, and it has saved my sanity many times.  If you just want to see the page as is, but with type large enough to read without messing with magnification settings every time you go to a site, NoSquint (an add-on for Firefox) is the ticket.

Onward. Three cheers for the Guardian’s “writer’s room” series, in which scribblers you’ve often only vaguely heard of describe their lairs and the intimidating tsochkes to be found therein.  For example:

It’s the spur of a barn, and only three years ago stars shone between the pantiles while the floor was ankle-deep in guano. I love the light and long views on three sides. Who says Norfolk is flat? True, the room’s often chilly, but warmth addles my brains.

I’ve painted a primrose frame round the little window, and write by hand at the table in front of it. The chair was made by John Makepeace.

The bookends are stacks of my Scandinavian editions to bring me good luck, because I’m just beginning a novel about a Viking girl en route to Byzantium. On the window ledge stands the upended incense-burner my grandfather brought back from pre-revolutionary Russia.

On top of the shelf containing my essential reference books is an Anglo-Saxon burial urn and a lustrous Roman perfume bottle – both from my childhood museum in the Chilterns. And there’s an unholy mix on the small table: a pre-Columbian dog, a Nelson-era snuff-box and a cobalt pot thrown by Mark Walford.

I bought my desk when I was 22 with the advance on my first book, and that’s where I do my admin. The kneehole isn’t really large enough, but I jam myself into it. There’s a photograph of my daughters Eleanor and Oenone on the desk, and in the corner an 18th-century embroidered double-hemisphere map. Muscovy, Eastern Tartary, Caffreria, Negroland … everything in the study either relates directly to my work or is rich in personal association. Nothing’s here by accident.

via Writers’ rooms: Kevin Crossley-Holland | Books | The Guardian.

Hey, what a coinkydink! — nothing’s in my office by accident either, unless you count the 27 cats.  While we wait for London to call, here’s a sneak peak:

It’s on the second floor of our 1860s farmhouse in Fairfield County, Ohio, where we grow apples, pears, peaches, corn, carrots, lettuce, spinach, blackberries, cherries and concord grapes, all of which are eaten by various ungrateful animals every year before we get a chance to taste them.

The window behind my writing table looks out on a vast field stretching to the horizon, containing only corn, coyotes, and the occasional wandering meth-head in search of anhydrous ammonia.  Sometimes I see things on fire from my window, mostly houses because incinerating one’s own home is a popular pastime around here. The precursor to the house with the red roof about a mile away over there, for instance, burned down last year due to an overloaded insurance policy. Unfortunately, the owner had stored so much ammunition in the closets that the Fire Department had to wait a ways down the road for an hour while the rounds “cooked off.”  Fortunately, it was all fairly small-caliber stuff and we were well out of range.

In the corner of my office is a schoolteacher’s desk from the 1920s which I bought in 1969 for five bucks at a thrift store in Chillicothe and have been dragging around the world for 40 years.  The tooth marks on the front edge there are a souvenir of Trevor, a foul-tempered Shetland pony I bought from some gypsies and kept in my rooms at Oxford.  Eventually the college administrators noticed that neither Trevor nor I were actually enrolled, whereupon Trevor, Oxford and I parted ways.  I haven’t been able to get the drawer on that desk open since 1976, and I fear that whatever’s in there is now even more illegal than it was back then.  But I can’t actually sit at the desk anyway because I put a kitty-litter pan in the kneehole in a futile attempt to teach the cats proper office decorum.

The bookcases over to the left there are actually perfectly plumb — it’s the floor that tilts.  Yes, it’s very disturbing, as if the whole house were sinking, which it is, but I try to avoid thinking about it.  Atop the bookcase you’ll notice my collection of plastic lobsters, the legacy of an ill-advised vacation many years ago in Maine.  Apparently the primitive tribes there worship the damn things, but you couldn’t pay me to eat one.  The gargoyles were acquired during my Dark Period in the early 1990s, when I listened to nothing but requiems and lay prostrate on the settee all day, weeping bitterly.

On the shelves are books that people send me, mostly the folks at Oxford University Press, who got confused a few years ago and input my name into their database three or four times, so now I get multiple copies of every flipping book they publish. Lately someone over there has apparently sold my name(s) to Random House, because I received three copies of P. O’C.’s latest book last month and there are probably more in the mail as we speak.  No, I haven’t read it, but I enjoyed the cover(s). Over there on the lower shelves are stacks of my own books (the barn being full), which I buy because it makes my agent happy.  But lately I’ve been thinking my money would be better spent on ammunition.

Of course it’s true. Most of it, anyway.

And now, on with the show….

I’ve always been partial to “Gracious Snakes,” myself.

Dear Word Detective:  I grew up in Mississippi hearing my mother say, usually in exasperation with me, “Oh my stars and garters!”  I moved to Vermont years ago and forgot this expression, which had always mystified me.  Last month, I phoned someone up here to tender profuse apologies for some minor discourtesy.  The response was, “Oh my stars and garters, Shelby.  Don’t be silly.”  That’s the way it was always used — as a more colorful version of “Oh, for pity’s sake!”  Whence this phrase, please? — Remystified, Shelby Grantham.

It’s funny how things like that pop up after all those years, isn’t it?  I remember as a child encountering the phrase “I swan” in books and movies (mostly set in the South, as I recall).  I gathered that it was an antiquated expression of surprise, but since no one I knew in Connecticut used the expression, I filed it away under “Weird things grownups say that you don’t have to understand.”  It was only many years later, when I heard my mother-in-law in Ohio say “I swan” in nearly every conversation (she was perpetually appalled by modern life), that I finally got around to looking it up.  “I swan” turns out to be simply the somewhat slurred northern English dialect pronunciation of “I shall warrant” in the sense of “I declare” or “I swear.”

“Oh my stars and garters” serves much the same purpose as “I swan” as an expression of surprise, but adds a jocular twist (“and garters”) to signal that it’s not to be taken too seriously.  “My stars!” (no garters) has been an expression of mild astonishment since the late 16th century, rooted in a time when astrology was taken very seriously and certain stars were thought to rule one’s fate.

I had initially assumed that the “and garters” part of the phrase was purely a joking extension of “my stars,” chosen for the “stars/garters” rhyme and perhaps for the slightly risque overtones of “garter.”  But Michael Quinion of World Wide Words (www.worldwidewords.org) points out that “stars and garters” has a history all its own in Britain.  Knighthoods and such honors usually come with star-shaped medals, and the Order of the Garter is the highest rank of knighthood.  Thus “stars and garters” has been slang shorthand in Britain since the early 18th century for all the trappings of knighthood (“He … Despised the fools with stars and garters, So often seen caressing Chartres,” Jonathan Swift, 1731).

At some point, probably early in the 19th century, someone familiar with both the idiom “stars and garters” and the exclamation “Oh my stars!” fused the two, producing “Oh my stars and garters,” which must have struck quite a few people as enormously silly and clever, which it was.  So what we have in “Oh my stars and garters” is, essentially, a 200-year old one-liner.

Bad horsie.

Dear Word Detective:  While composing an email, I recently used the word “roughshod,” as in “to ride roughshod” over someone.  I was surprised when the spellchecker did not disagree with my first hack at spelling the unusual word, as it just looked wrong.  Despite having used the word verbally on many occasions, I didn’t recall ever writing it or having seen it in print.  I know the meaning of the phrase is to be domineering.  I can only guess the phrase is an allusion to being run over by someone or something outfitted or “shod” with something rough, shoes or tires perhaps. — Major Thomas Bauchspies, Baghdad, Iraq.

Well, that’s the problem with computer spellcheckers.  You never know whether they (and you) are spelling the word correctly, whether someone has made a mistake in the dictionary file they check things against, or whether they’re just messing with your mind.  I have mine set to just underline suspect words, and it usually flags typical errors like “teh.”  But occasionally it will quietly accept something one of the cats types while I’m out of the room (such as “WiDdl3e9lim” or “7thtro!!”), which are interesting words but usually not what I had in mind for my next sentence.  It really makes me wonder what else it’s considering perfectly acceptable.

For an idiom that’s been around since the late 18th century, “to ride (or “run”) roughshod” remains remarkably popular today.  A search for the phrase on Google News returns 113 hits from current news sources.  The phrase seems especially popular in sports coverage (“Rangers ride roughshod over Falcons”), where it’s used as a synonym of “vanquish” or “decisively defeat.”  But it’s also popular in political coverage (“Now, after years of being allowed to run roughshod over Wisconsin’s political process, these ‘independent expenditure’ groups may find themselves forced to compete on a level playing field,” Green Bay Press-Gazette, 11/13/08).  This is more in line with the full modern meaning of “to ride roughshod,” which is “to act without any consideration for legal constraints, norms of behavior, or the feelings of others.”

All of these meanings are, however, figurative, not literal.  The original literal meaning of “to ride roughshod” was far more brutal.  In the 17th century, a horse that was “roughshod” was shod with horseshoes with the nailheads, or sometimes metal points, projecting from the bottom of the shoe.  This gave the horse better traction on slippery ground or ice.  But when cavalry horses were “roughshod,” they became brutal weapons in a charge against foot soldiers.  As bad as being trampled by a horse must be, being struck by “roughshod” hooves is apparently far worse.

Thus “to ride roughshod” began as a synonym for “to brutally crush or tyrannize,” and only after several centuries was it diluted to its modern metaphorical meaning of “to charge ahead with no regard for the rules.”

A thousand times no.

Dear Word Detective:  All through my adolescent and adult life I have used the word “renege” when it comes to someone backing out of a deal or situation.  As I try to look around Google and others I find I have no clue how to find what you find and cannot on my own understand where and when this word became common knowledge.  I beg of you to help me and my wife understand the full depth of this one single word. — Dan Drenberg.

This is interesting.  I’ve been getting an increasing number of questions from my readers couched in tones of near-desperation, imploring me to explain words or phrases so that the questioner might snatch a moment’s sleep for the first time in a month, get their housework done before the dog hair suffocates the goldfish, or just generally go back to leading a normal, ho-hum existence.  My hunch is that it’s really all about what the folks on the TV call, with unseemly perkiness, “the global economic meltdown.”  Understandably reluctant to meditate too long on the prospect of fighting the cat for the last can of Fancy Feast, people offload their anxiety into worrying about the provenance of “ampersand” or “pedigree.”   Hey, it’s OK with me, and I’m glad to help.  Your cloud is my tiny silver bailout.

All things considered, “renege” is actually a pretty straightforward word, snapped together from solid Latin roots.  “Renege” first appeared in English in the mid-16th century (with the now-archaic meaning of “to deny, renounce, abandon or desert”), but it wasn’t until the late 18th century that it acquired its modern meaning of, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, “To change one’s mind, to recant; to break one’s word; to go back on a promise or undertaking or contract; to disappoint expectations.”  Incidentally, “renege” is sometimes spelled “renegue” outside the US.

As I said, “renege” is built from Latin roots, the prefix “re” plus the verb stem “negare,” meaning “to deny” (and which also gave us our modern English “negative,” “deny” and several other words).  The only slightly sticky part is that “re.”  Ordinarily, “re” appended to a verb signals repetition or restoration, as in “renew” (make new again), “recreate” (make again), “refer” (literally “to carry back”), and so on.  In this case, however, the “re” acts as an intensive modifier, meaning “strongly,” so “renegare” carries the meaning of “to deny strongly or completely; to refuse.”  Thus to “renege” on a promise is to flatly refuse to keep it.

“Renege” doesn’t play a large role in most people’s vocabularies (unless you’re a banker, I suppose).  It’s the slightly strange hat or clunky shoes we almost never wear.  But “renege” has a famous relative.  When that Latin “renegare” worked its way through Spanish, it became the noun  “renegado,” meaning  someone who denies or renounces their religious faith (specifically, in medieval Spain, a Christian who became a Muslim).  Brought into English in the late 16th century, “renegado” became our “renegade,” eventually arriving at the more general meaning of “one who deserts a party, person, or principle; a turncoat.”

Return to sender.

Dear Word Detective:  Where did the name “potter’s field” come from? — Denise Caldara.

Gee, I’m glad you asked that question.  I’ve been watching the financial news a lot lately, and I’ve noticed that I’ve been waking up every day in the kind of wide-eyed euphoria I remember from my childhood Christmas mornings.  I can hardly wait to go online and see what hijinks those little scamps on Wall Street have been up to while I slept, which hitherto ho-hum sector of our so-called economy is suddenly circling the drain and only salvageable with the last of the change hiding under my couch cushions.  My neighbors, in fact, have begun to complain about my constant giggling.

So it’s a good thing that you picked this moment to raise the specter of burial in an unmarked pauper’s grave.  I feel better already.

A “potter’s field” is a piece of land used as a burial place for the poor or, in some places, strangers to the community.  Most large cities in the world today have a “potter’s field.”  New York City, for instance, has used Hart Island, in Long Island Sound off the eastern edge of the Bronx, for burial of the indigent since the Civil War.  Several New York City parks, including Washington Square Park, had previously been used by the city as “potter’s fields.”

I suspect that many people assume that the “potter’s field” takes its name from someone named Potter, and occasionally you’ll see the term incorrectly capitalized.  Personally, I can’t help associating “potter’s field” with the character of mean old Mr. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the cruel tycoon who, in the film’s “what if” segment, transformed cozy Bedford Falls into the dismal “Pottersville.”

But the term “potter’s field” comes from the Bible, specifically the Gospel of Matthew.  When Judas Iscariot was overcome with remorse for accepting thirty pieces of silver to betray Jesus, he returned the coins to the temple.  The priests, however, could not accept “blood money” (money used to purchase the death of a person), so they used it to buy land on which to bury the poor and foreigners.  The land they bought was rich in clay and had been owned by a pot-maker, so it was known henceforth as “potter’s field.”  The actual site of the original “potter’s field,” although its location is in dispute today, was also known as “Aceldama,” which is an Aramaic word meaning “field of blood.”

Apart from its use in translations of the Bible, the first appearance of “potter’s field” in English dates to 1777 (“I took a walk into the Potter’s Field, a burying ground between the new stone prison and the hospital,” John Adams).  By 1906 the phrase was being used figuratively, as it still is, to mean a place of dishonor and abandonment (“When I wrote a letter … you did not put it in the respectable part of the magazine, but interred it in that ‘potter’s field,’ the Editor’s Drawer,” Mark Twain).

Does a fanatical devotion to Cool Whip cause dementia, or is it the other way round?

Dear Word Detective:   My wife and I were wondering what the origin of the word  “potluck” is.  Please do tell us, so we can actually get some sleep and have more joy in our lives. — Marcus Givens.

Chill, dude.  “Potluck” is nothing to worry about.  Unless, of course, you live where I do and can’t weasel out of an invitation to one.  The first time I went to a potluck around here I had  pictured hearty soups, fresh-baked rolls, home-made pies and maybe even cake.  I live for cake.  Unfortunately, it turns out that there are people walking among us who do not regard the words “White Castle Casserole” as a joke.  These are, incidentally, the same people who believe that what most cakes lack is lots and lots of salt.  And possibly bacon.  Everything goes with bacon.  Hey, everybody, Tammy brought her bacon ice cream!

As English words go, “potluck” is actually pretty straightforward.  It’s simply a combination of “pot,” in the sense of “cooking pot,” and “luck,” in the standard sense of “chance or fortune.”  When “potluck” first came into use in English in the late 16th century, it carried the sense of “whatever is available to eat” (i.e., already cooked in the pot), specifically in the context of a guest invited to dine on the spur of the moment, without special preparations having been made.  Early on, the form “to take potluck” became popular (“I accepted Mr Leeke’s invitation to take pot-luck with him and returned to Page’s in the evening,” 1810), a usage still heard today.  By the 20th century, “to take potluck” had acquired a more general sense of “to take what comes” or “to take one’s chances” in nearly any context (“Don’t be content to take ‘pot-luck’ on the future,” 1943).

In mid-19th century America, “potluck” gained a new meaning, that of a communal meal where each guest brings a dish to be shared.  The Oxford English Dictionary adds “… sometimes without arranging beforehand which dish to bring,” but most potlucks I’ve been to have involved at least some rudimentary planning (“… and Larry will bring his beer-battered Twinkies”).  Potluck dinners are popular as fund-raising occasions and at family reunions.

One popular “urban legend” about the word “potluck” is that it is drawn from the Native American (Chinook) word “potlatch.”  There is, at first glance, a spooky similarity between a “potluck” dinner and the “potlatch” of the tribes of the northwestern United States and Canada.  The “potlatch” is a ceremonial feast where, in addition to dining, dancing and singing, participants distribute their possessions to others and share their wealth with their community.  But while the two words resemble each other, and the humble “potluck” dinner and the far more elaborate and meaningful “potlatch” ceremony share a communal theme, there is no actual connection between the words.

Maybe it’s a form of “baffling.”

Dear Word Detective:  Please tell me the meaning and origin of “boffin.” — Elisabeth McCrea.

Ah, you make it sound so simple.  I suppose I should just put down my snifter of brandy, slowly rise from my chaise-longue, straighten my silk robe, and amble over to the towering bookshelves that line my study.  Then I instruct my assistant to fetch the “B” volume from the top shelf, lift my antique magnifying glass, and we’re on our way.  In reality, however, my assistant is standing by the window, barking furiously at an innocent bird.  Badly distracted by the noise, I have just accidentally deleted a week’s worth of email.  And the only thing at the top of my bookshelves is a demented cat who is apparently planning to leap onto my head just for fun.

Still, one must go on.  “Boffin” is a great word, British slang for a scientific or technical researcher.  “Boffin” is a favorite of the popular press in the UK and Australia, often found in slightly snarky headlines (“Boffin hearts aquiver over pro-science president,” The Australian, 11/12/08).  In popular usage, “boffin” carries a connotation of grudging admiration for a group who, while they probably lack fashion sense and may be socially inept, still hold the keys to our next cool gizmo.  “Boffin” is also sometimes loosely applied to any sort of expert in any field, although the more obscure the field, the more likely you are to be labeled a “boffin.”

Unfortunately, the origin of the term “boffin” is a mystery.  Our only consolation is that it is considered a very big mystery by etymologists.  In fact, “boffin” was included on a list published in American Speech (the journal of the American Dialect Society) back in 1981 of words with particularly mysterious origins (“Etymology Unknown: Toward a Master List of Words of Obscure Origin”), a list that also included such puzzlers as “malarkey” and “moolah.”

We do know that “boffin” first appeared in print in Britain during World War II, most often applied to the technical experts working to develop radar (although, strangely, at one point it was also Royal Navy slang for an older officer).  There are only a few theories about the roots of “boffin,” and most of them are so unlikely that they are not worth repeating.  The most intriguing lead (and to me the most probable source) is literary.  The late British etymologist Eric Partridge pointed out that Charles Dickens, in his novel Our Mutual Friend (1865), describes his character Mr. Boffin as “a very odd-looking old fellow indeed,” and William Morris, in his News from Nowhere (1891), has his own Mr. Boffin, described as a “dustman” (trash collector) interested in mathematics.  It’s possible that either of these characters inspired the term.  Or, since “Boffin” is an actual surname in Britain, it may have been a real Mr. Boffin working on a war-related technical project who is now lost to memory but immortalized in the slang term “boffin.”

Take your pick.

Dear Word Detective: The talking heads use the phrase “take on” often, as in “What is your take on this situation?” or “Let’s hear from Susan and her take on what happened.” Any idea where this started and why it’s so prevalent? — Jon King Keisling.

That’s a good question. I know the usage you mean, which has been popularized on TV news discussion shows such as “Hardball.” The phrase “your take on” is used on such shows to mean “your opinion of” or “your understanding of,” as in “So what’s your take on the decision by the Flubber campaign to push voter registration for domestic pets, Andy?”

The problem in pinning down the origin of this usage is that the word “take,” although it has only four letters, has literally dozens of meanings, especially as a verb. Derived from an ancient Germanic root meaning “to touch,” the verb “to take” can mean “to grasp, seize, grip” (to “take prisoners,” for instance) or “to be seized by illness” (“to be taken ill”), “to swindle,” “to capture the attention or affection of” (“I was quite taken by her”), “to show an effect” (“We waited for the antibiotic to take”), “to put something into one’s own hand” or the like (“I took the sword from him”), “to swallow” (“Take two aspirin”), and so on. The Oxford English Dictionary lists more than 94 separate senses and sub-senses of the verb “to take.”

The noun “take” (which “your take on” contains) is a bit less complex than the verb, but still carries ten major senses, including “take” meaning “a section of motion picture film taken at one time” (“Let’s try another take, this time with feeling”) and “take” as “money obtained by theft or fraud” (“We’ll split the take four ways”).

It is possible that the “take” in “your take on” is drawn from the movie use of “take,” with the sense of “version” or “interpretation.” But I think it’s more likely that the “take” we’re looking for is the use, as a noun, of one sense of the verb “to take.”

As a verb, “to take” has, since the 14th century, carried the sense of, to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, “To receive and hold with the intellect; to grasp mentally, apprehend, comprehend, understand.” This is the sense of “take” we use in phrases such as “I take it you’re not coming to the party” or “What kind of idiot do you take me for?” It seems clear that this is the sense of “take” in “your take on,” since it fits nicely with the meaning “to comprehend, to understand.”

Unfortunately, although some dictionaries now acknowledge this use of “take,” they furnish no background on its history. My guess (based on personal memory) is that it probably started as slang in the 1970s and gradually began appearing in the mass media in the 1980s. As for why it has become so widespread, especially on TV news shows, I think that it provides the informality such shows crave. Ask a guest for his or her “interpretation” or “opinion” of a news event, and you’re likely to get a windy dissertation. Ask for “your take,” and you’ve made it clear that what is wanted is a quick impression, not a detailed analysis. It’s the perfect phrase for a genre of “news coverage” that consists largely of snap judgments of sound bites.

Get cracking.

Dear Word Detective: My question is about a phrase I heard while growing up in Kansas. After dinner, my Mom would say, “it’s time to rid up the dishes.” Where did this expression come from? — Candy.

Ah yes, doing the dishes. I learned something recently about doing the dishes. Last month [referring to Oct. 2008] Hurricane Ike knocked out our power for the better part of a week, which meant that we had no lights, TV, etc. More importantly, it meant, because we have a well, that we had no water. Naturally, the night before we lost power, we had decided to let the dinner dishes slide. Big mistake. After the second day of the outage, I began to dream about being able to wash dishes.

“Rid up” in the sense that your mother used it, “to tidy up or clear a room, to clean,” is not uncommon in the American Midwest, although it certainly isn’t as popular as it once was. But while “rid” in this sense is now considered a dialectical usage restricted largely to the rural US, it was once standard English and in common use way back in 16th century England (“Take off, boy, rid the table, and bring those fritters,” 1599).

The use of “rid” to mean “clean up” is a specialized sense of the same verb “to rid” we use to mean “to make a person or place free of something annoying, troublesome or dangerous” (“If you put the laws in execution, …you would soon rid the country of these vermin,” Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, 1749). Probably the most common use of “rid” today is in the verbal phrase “to get rid of,” as in “If only Janet would get rid of that doofus Tony, she might meet a nice guy for a change.”

The roots of “rid” lie in Old Norse, but very early in the word’s history in English it became entangled with another word, “redd,” which is a Scots and northern English dialect word also meaning “to clean, tidy up.” Like “rid,” “redd” arrived in the US via immigrants from Great Britain, but “redd” now tends to be heard primarily in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Over time the parallel usage of “rid” and “redd” to both mean “clear out” or “clean up” has led to the two words nearly merging in their definitions, although “rid” in the more general sense of “make something go away” is far more common than “redd.”

As if all that isn’t complicated enough, there are actually two “redds” lurking out there, one derived from a Middle English root meaning “to clear an area” and the other from a different root meaning “to free or rescue.” But in practical usage the meanings of the two overlap so much that they might as well be considered the same word.

Not our sort, Angus.

Dear Word Detective: Some time ago I encountered the word “clamjamfry,” which I was told referred to “the worthless masses.” I’ve consistently used it as an alternative to “hoi polloi.” One thing that has me nonplussed is that I have never discovered this word in any kind of reputable dictionary. The word certainly sounds as though it has a heck of an origin. Can you shed any light on this term, which appears to be a poster-child for recondite speech? — Topher D.

I must admit that there are times, writing this column, when I feel a bit like a performing hamster. Someone asks a question, I jump into the wheel, work my little paws furiously until I find the answer (or, occasionally, don’t), jump out of the wheel, trot over to my tiny hamster typewriter and put it all down with the old hunt-and-peck. Then I have a Lilliputian cup of joe and pick another question. It can get a little monotonous.

But I found this question instantly intriguing. I am, it is true, easily intrigued (you should see the junk I’ve bought on eBay), but I eagerly went looking for “clamjamfry.”

The first stop in my search was, as usual, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), where I found no listing. Bummer. But I then found some internet references for “clamjamfry” indicating that it might be a Scots dialect term, so I checked the excellent online Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk). Bingo! “Clamjamfry” is defined as “A company of people; generally used contemptuously, hence a mob, rabble, the riff-raff of a community.” It can also mean “Hurly-burly, row, commotion” and “Worthless odds and ends, rubbish,” a sense now largely obsolete. As a verb, “clamjamfry” means “to crowd or clutter up,” “to chatter or gossip” and “to roam about aimlessly, to loiter.”

The Dictionary of the Scots Language also listed a variety of alternate spellings of “clamjamfry,” so I went back to the OED and discovered the word was indeed listed, under “clamjamphrie,” with the same basic definitions. It seems to have first appeared in Scots and Northern England dialects in the early 19th century, and its exact roots are a mystery. The OED, however, suggests that “clamjamfry” is a combination of “clan” (in the Scottish sense of “ancestral group”) plus “jampher,” a Scots dialect word meaning “trifler, idler.” That would give “clamjamfry” the meaning of “the riff-raff or rabble of a clan,” which would certainly match the sense of “hoi polloi” (“the common people,” from Greek for “the many”).

The best thing about “clamjamfry” is that it is still very much in use in Scotland and the rest of the UK today (“As the last of the children’s banners swept down the Mound the guests, by now a wholly disordered clamjamfrey, ambled back up the hill for their lunch in Parliament Hall,” 1999). So now we have a great new word to play with.

“Digress” is my middle name.

Dear Word Detective: How did the “polka dot” get its name? — Chris Owens.

That’s an interesting question, but there was something about the way you phrased it that struck me as odd, and it took a moment before I realized what it was. One does not often, if ever, see the phrase “the polka dot.” As a matter of fact, you could argue (and I love to argue, which may be why I don’t get invited to more parties) that a single “polka dot” is not a “polka dot” at all, but merely a “dot,” and usually a pretty boring dot at that. Not like a microdot at the center of a spy story, or a suspicious dot on a satellite photograph, or even a dot of marinara sauce on your glasses after you’ve been eating spaghetti. Just a boring old dot.

Onward. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “polka dot” as “Any of a number of round dots of uniform size repeated so as to form a regular pattern, usually on fabric.” The term itself first appeared in the mid-1800s (“Scarf of muslin, for light summer wear … surrounded by a scalloped edge, embroidered in rows of round polka dots,” 1857), and “polka dot” fabrics have been intermittently fashionable ever since. I don’t spend a lot of time monitoring current fashion, but my sense is that polka dot designs are (except among the preciously retro) considered uncool at the moment (“Wooden cutouts of Granny bending over in her flowerbed exposing her polka-dot bloomers,” At Home in Heart of Appalachia, 2001).

“Polka dots” are obviously “dots” (from the Old English “dott,” meaning “speck”), so the question is what “polka” has to do with the pattern. The “polka” is a dance, simple and lively as dances go, which took Europe and America by storm soon after its introduction in 1835. The name “polka” is itself a bit of a mystery. “Polka” is Polish for “Polish woman,” but the “polka” dance is actually of Bohemian origin. Some authorities believe that “polka” may actually be a corruption of the Czech word “pulka” (“half”), referring to the short half steps involved in the dance.

So, what does the polka dance have to do with polka dots? Essentially nothing. The polka craze, which lasted for several decades in the 1800s, was sufficiently intense to inspire manufacturers to append “polka” to the name of a wide variety of completely unrelated products in an attempt to capitalize on polka-mania. There were several items of clothing and even food labeled “polka” at the time, much as the prefix “cyber” was slapped on everything from TV news shows to dog food in the mid-1990s. Most of such “polka” tie-ins disappeared as the dance fad faded. “Polka dots,” however, survived (as did the polka itself).

Followed by “Driving the porcelain bus.”

Dear Word Detective: Where did the expression “three sheets to the wind” come from? –Susan.

That’s a good question, but I have one of my own. “Three sheets to the wind” means, as most people know, “very drunk, extremely inebriated.” But does anyone actually use this expression today? I’ve never been much of a drinker myself (I think I last drank a beer about six years ago, for example). But I see people weaving loudly and unsteadily out of the sports bar at the local mall on weekends, dressed like overgrown toddlers in football regalia, and I find it hard to believe that at the office on Monday they say “Joe was really three sheets to the wind Saturday night.” “Blitzed,” “blotto” “hammered,” “loaded,” “looped” or “sloshed” I can buy. But “three sheets to the wind” seems a bit too ornate for a culture that worships plasma TVs.

Nonetheless (now there’s a good word), “three sheets to the wind” is a vivid and venerable phrase. The first example of “three sheets to the wind” found in print so far is from 1821 (in the form “three sheets in the wind”), but the expression is almost certainly much older. Today new slang is instantly immortalized by newspapers, magazines and TV, but before the mid-20th century, much slang circulated in oral use for decades and sometimes much longer before making it into print.

In the mood for some irony? Nine out of ten urban legends about the origins of words or phrases erroneously trace them to seafaring traditions and the age of tall ships. There’s even an acronym for the folks who propagate this nonsense: CANOE (Committee to Assign a Nautical Origin to Everything). But “three sheets to the wind” really does have a nautical origin. The “sheets” in the phrase are the lines (ropes) that hold a sail in place. If one of the “sheets” (from the Old English “sceata,” meaning the corner of a sail) comes loose, the sail flaps in the wind and causes the ship to lose power. If two sheets are loose and fluttering in the wind (or “to the wind”), you’re in major trouble, and “three sheets in the wind” means the ship is uncontrollable, reeling like a drunken sailor. Thus “three sheets to the wind” was the perfect metaphor for, at first, a sailor who had celebrated a bit too much on shore leave, and eventually anyone who was too drunk to walk steadily.

According to legend, “three sheets to the wind” was originally just one stage in a scale of drunkenness used by sailors, ranging from “one sheet to the wind” (slightly tipsy) to “four sheets to the wind” (unconscious). The Oxford English Dictionary does list “a sheet in the wind” as meaning “slightly drunk,” so such a classification system may actually have existed. Or, of course, it may just be another nautical fable.