Whatever.

Dear Word Detective: Does “slack,” as in “cut me some slack,” have anything to do with the body covering we call “slacks”? Am I a “slacker” if I wear slacks … no, don’t answer that! Is the word “lax,” which is very similar in meaning and in sound to “slack,” related in any way? Which language do these words come from? In German “Lachs,” which sounds exactly the same as “lax,” means a salmon, not exactly a lazy fish, maybe just a laid back one? — Margherita.

Funny you should mention salmon. I was compiling a mental list the other day of all the bizarre jobs I’ve ever held, and I realized that one of the strangest was an offer I didn’t take — sitting by a river in Alaska, counting the salmon swimming upstream to breed. It seemed kinda creepy and intrusive to me at the time, not entirely fair to the salmon. Of course, that was before they (you know, Them) put surveillance cameras on every parking meter. Speaking of our shiny new Panopticon, am I the only one who assumed that having everyone read “1984″ in high school would inoculate us against that sort of thing? Silly me.

The etymology of German words is a bit beyond my bailiwick, but I can report that “slack” is indeed related to “lax,” albeit in a rather roundabout way.

Although we might assume that “slacker” invokes a relatively modern sense of “slack,” the original meaning of “slack” as an adjective in English was, in fact, “lacking in energy or diligence; inclined to be lazy or idle.” “Slack” is based on the Proto-Germanic root word “sleg,” meaning “careless” or “lazy.” “Slack” first appeared in Old English (as “slaec”), meaning “careless in personal conduct,” and that meaning has persisted steadily to this day, when “slacker” is used as a noun synonymous with the old-fashioned “lazybones.”

It wasn’t until the 14th century that “slack” as an adjective took on the meaning of meaning literally “not tight or snug,” and loose trousers weren’t called “slacks” until the early 19th century. “Slack” as a noun meaning “the part which hangs loose, especially of a rope, etc.” (e.g., “Take up the slack in that cord so someone doesn’t trip”) didn’t come into use until the 18th century. But “slack” as a verb meaning “to be remiss; to waste time” dates all the way back to the 16th century.

Now if we rewind a bit to that Germanic root word “sleg” (specifically its alternate form “leg”), we find that it is also the root of “lax” (via the Latin word “laxus”). In English, as with “slack,” the first uses of “lax” were in regard to people whose attitudes were perhaps more relaxed than they should have been (as well as to the intestinal tracts of people, which gave us our English “laxative”). It was only in the 15th century that “lax” was first applied to laws and rules.

Full boor.

Dear Word Detective: Where does the word “rude” come from? Is someone who is “rude” someone who is “rue-ed,” as in one regrets his or her company because they are annoying? Or is there a completely different origin? — Aimee.

Well, it’s time to say it again — I have the smartest readers on the planet. That explanation would never have occurred to me. Then again, it never occurred to me to release the parking brake before driving to the Post Office last week. But I do think “ru-ed” is truly inspired. However, I notice from your email address that you’re writing from France, so you have an advantage, since almost every street sign there includes the word “Rue.” Incidentally, do you folks have a “Rue de Rue,” perhaps some run-down alley where Parisians go to wallow in regret? I know Edith Piaf (“Non, je ne regrette rien”) wasn’t big on second thoughts, but surely “if only” has its tear-stained equivalent in French. Somebody is drinking all that absinthe.

Oh right, you had a question. How rude of me. No, there is, sadly, no connection between “rue” and “rude.”

There are actually two “rues” in English. One is a sort of evergreen shrub, “Ruta graveolens” to its friends, the leaves of which were once used to make medicinal tea which tasted terrible and made for equally terrible puns on the “regret” sort of “rue” (“Least time and triall make thee account Rue a most bitter hearbe,” 1583).

The other “rue,” a verb today meaning “to feel regret,” first appeared in Old English from Germanic roots (as “hreowan”) meaning “to make someone feel regret or penitence.” It wasn’t until the 13th century that “rue” took on the modern meaning of “feel sorry about.” There is also a noun form of “rue,” meaning “a regret or misgiving” but it is now considered archaic. Another noun formed from “rue,” namely “ruth” (meaning “pity”), didn’t fare much better, and is today known only in its negative form, “ruthless.”

“Rude” first appeared in English in the 14th century, derived from the Latin “rudis” (“unformed, inexperienced, or unpolished”) with the general sense of “ignorant, wild, or raw,” and quickly took on a wide variety of meanings, from “discourteous” to “crudely drawn” (as in “a rude sketch”). Somewhat surprisingly, “rude” is completely unrelated to “crude,” which is rooted in the Latin “crudus,” meaning “rough or cruel.” But the Latin root of “rude” did spin off two other useful words, “rudiment” (the “raw or most basic state” of something) and “erudite” (literally “brought out of ignorance”).

We’ll even throw in a “Sheep Gone Wild” DVD.

Dear Word Detective: In New Zealand we call a plastic jar a “pottle.” Who else in the world has “pottle” for this usage? Why won’t the yanks and pommies understand me? — Jimmy Langrish, Wellington, New Zealand.

Beats me. Perhaps they all watch too much TV, and their brains have rotted. Do you have TV down there in, let’s see, “New Zealand”? Do you have any oil? Answer the second question first. Anyway, if you send us your oil, we’ll send you TV, and after a while you won’t miss your oil. Want some Coca-Cola? Don’t be afraid. We like you.

I suspect that a ten-second primer on “yanks and pommies” is in order for some of my readers. “Yank” (short for “yankee”), of course, means a person from the USA, and while the origin of the term is disputed, it most likely derives from “Jan Kees” (or “John Cheese”), an insult originally used by the Dutch settlers of New York against later English arrivals. “Pommy” (or just “pom”) is Australian/New Zealand slang for an English person, and derives from “pomegranate,” word play for “Jimmy Grant,” which, in turn, was 19th century rhyming slang for “immigrant” (immigrants during that period coming primarily from England). The popular story about “pom” standing for “Prisoner of Her Majesty” (i.e., British convicts exiled to Australia) is, incidentally, bunk.

I can confirm that “pottle” is not in common use in the US, although major dictionaries do acknowledge its existence. In this neck of the woods, however, a “pottle” must evidently be of a certain size. The American Heritage Dictionary, for instance, defines “pottle” as “a pot or drinking vessel with a capacity of 2.0 quarts,” and Merriam-Webster concurs with “a container holding a half gallon (1.9 liters).”

That specific volume, it seems, is not a recent development for “pottle.” When “pottle” first appeared in English in the early 14th century, it usually meant a half-gallon pot or tankard, and “pottle” itself was used until relatively recently as a measure of volume equal to two quarts, much as we use “gallon” or “cup” today (“In measuring beer or ale, two pints make one quart; two quarts make one pottle; two pottles make one gallon,” Lima (Ohio) News, 1940).

In recent years, however, “pottle” seems to have lost that “half gallon” connotation in casual usage and serves as simply another name for “bottle” (to which it is unrelated), “cup” or “jar.” Ironically, this more general use harks back to the root of “pottle,” which was adopted from the Old French “potel,” meaning “small pot,” based in turn on the Latin “pottus,” also, not surprisingly, the root of our modern “pot.”

Cluck … cough … cluck.

Dear Word Detective: What is the origin of the expression “the pip” as in “I have the pip.” I have seen it in used in old novels by one of the characters, and my mother used to say it (she would be 100 if she were still alive). I understood it to mean “not sick, just feeling miserable for no known reason,” but maybe it was really was an illness now known by another name? — JS Rooney.

Hey, lookie there, another “pip.” English has three distinct “pip” words, perhaps four if one stretches one’s definition of “word,” and that’s not even counting “Pip,” the protagonist of Charles Dickens’ novel “Great Expectations.”

One of the oldest sorts of “pip” is the use of the word to mean the small, hard seed of an apple or another fruit (“We divide This apple of life, and cut it through the pips,” E.B. Browning, 1856). This “seed” sense is actually a shortened form of “pippin,” an old word for “apple.”

Another sort of “pip,” meaning the kind of spots found on dice or playing cards, seems as though it should be related to the “seed” kind “pip,” but comes instead from the old English dialect word “peep.” (Personally, I’m convinced that the two are related, but no one listens to me.) In any case, this “pip” is also used to mean the stars or other small insignia found on military uniforms.

There’s also the interjection “pip-pip,” popular at one time in Britain, which was simply a stylized imitation of a bicycle horn. And then there’s “pipsqueak,” an insignificant person, which is probably imitative in origin, i.e., represents the kind of sad little sound such a loser would make under stress. Again, all these “pips” have a common sense of “something very small,” so it’s hard to say that they are not ultimately related.

The “pip” your mother used, however, is definitely an entirely different word. This “pip” is actually a disease of poultry and other birds, a respiratory illness that produces large amounts of phlegm in the poor birdie. This “pip” first appeared in English in the 15th century, adopted from the Middle Dutch “pippe” (mucus), ultimately from the Latin “pituita,” meaning “phlegm.” (The “pituitary” gland in humans was once thought to be the source of phlegm, thus the name, but it is not.)

Almost as soon as this “pip” appeared in English, people began humorously accusing each other of having the chicken disease, and “pip” came into use meaning “an undefined disease or malaise, especially one involving mucus,” the sense in which your mother apparently used it (“Of a person with a short hecking cough it is often said ‘Her’v a got the pip,’” 1879). In the 19th century “to get the pip” also meant “to become depressed,” and “to give someone the pip” meant to severely annoy the person. Both uses are still occasionally heard today (“This camp musical about a monster child star is harmless and amusing enough, assuming you can stomach the little girl. She gave us the pip,” The New Yorker, 1992).

Get offa me.

Dear Word Detective: What’s the origin of “piggy back” as in, “I’ll just piggy back my new process onto your existing process”? It seems to imply that by piggy backing, you can take a shortcut, particularly by using something that has already been created. — Doug Phillips.

Well, that’s strange. I knew for a fact that I had written about “piggyback” (usually treated as one word) years ago, but when I checked my archive page, it wasn’t there. After tearing out about ten percent of my hair, I finally realized that I had actually written about “piggyback” for a children’s word-origins book. (Which is, as yet, unpublished. If anyone’s interested, drop me a line. We’ll do milk and animal crackers.) But something tells me that you’re not looking for an explanation that begins “One of the coolest things you can do when you’re a little kid is to get a grownup to give you a piggyback ride. You get to see what it’s like to be a lot taller, and you also get to find out how fast grownups can run when you shout ‘Giddyup!’ in their ears.”

Your mention of “process” in your question leads me to suspect that you are a computer programmer or software engineer, and that “piggybacking” in your field means using code that is already in place rather than beginning from the dreaded square one. But “piggyback” in that sense is a metaphorical extension of the literal meaning of “to carry something, especially another person, on one’s back.”

“Piggyback” has been around for quite a while, since at least the 16th century, and, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, “the expression has clearly been analyzed in many varying ways from a very early date” (translation: “many theories, no clear answer”). The earliest forms of the term, including “pick pack,” “pick back” and “pick-a-pack,” make no mention of pigs, so we can assume the bacon came later. The common element in these early forms, “pick,” is an old English dialect word related to “pitch” meaning “to throw or place” (as we “pitch a tent” today). The “pack” was most likely the load carried, whether inert or human, so “pick-a-pack,” for instance, might mean to “pick (put) the load on the bearer’s back.” The use of “back” in some early forms reinforces this interpretation.

By the 18th century, “pickaback” had become the dominant form, but there was a problem. The “back” part was clear, but no one at that point understood where the “picka” came from. So through a process fairly common in language known as “folk etymology,” people replaced the part of the word that made no sense (“picka”) with one that sorta, maybe, kinda did (“piggy”). Voila, “piggyback.” Of course, it didn’t really make sense, since pigs would vigorously resist transport in such fashion, but at least it sounded like normal English.

Figurative uses of “piggyback” are fairly recent, dating back just to the 20th century, and most of those have involved carrying one thing on another (e.g., trucks on flatbed railway cars).

Lock, stock and balderdash.

Dear Word Detective: I’m a historical re-enactor and often give public demonstrations. For years I’ve shown my matchlock musket and explained that the match was usually lit at both ends to in case one end went out. I’ve told groups that the the phrase, “burning your candle at both ends” comes from this when it was originally “burning your fuse at both ends.” Please let me know if I’m correct and expound on this if possible. — Lloyd.

Lloyd, Lloyd, Lloyd. I have one question. Did someone tell you that story, or did you cook it up yourself? If it was a gift, I would disregard any stock tips that person offers you. If you arrived at that explanation yourself, I commend you for your inventiveness, and implore you to stop. All around the world, innocent tourists are eagerly swarming to historical theme parks, roadside museums, ancient ruins and modern reenactments of famous events, only to stagger away hours later in a daze, their tiny, tender minds stuffed full of misinformation in the form of just such colorful anecdotes. Then they go home and write me to ask if “sleep tight” really comes from the days when colonists snoozed lashed to the rafters, or some such nonsense. I say “no,” and bam, I’ve retroactively tarnished their vacation. Everyone loses. And that’s not even counting the death threats I get from the gang at Colonial Williamsburg.

Just kidding about the threats. But the story of “candle” originally being “fuse” isn’t true, although it did prompt me to research matchlock musket technology. The “match,” of course, is really a bit of “match cord,” a slow-burning fuse (originally hemp cord) that was touched to the powder in the “pan” atop a musket, leading to the main charge exploding and the gun firing. Keeping both ends of the match burning makes sense to me, but, then again, I didn’t know a musket from a muskrat an hour ago.

One of the most basic things wrong with that story is that it doesn’t match the sense of “burning the candle at both ends” as the phrase is commonly used. A matchlock “match” lit at both ends would apparently be a good idea, but “to burn the candle at both ends” means to consume one’s energy with excessive work, little sleep, etc., a lifestyle generally considered a bad idea.

The earliest uses of the phrase in English (it was adapted from a French saying in 1611) also make it clear that a candle, at that time an expensive household necessity, was involved. The original meaning, in fact, was specifically financial — a couple in which both the husband and wife were spendthrifts was said to be “burning the candle at both ends,” wasting precious money in two different directions at once. The more general sense of “to burn oneself out through excess work or play,” though now the most common usage, was a later development.

For peanuts.

Dear Word Detective: My paternal grandfather and father both used the term “work-brickle,” usually to describe what a lazy person wasn’t, as in “Don’t count on it being done today — that feller ain’t exactly workbrickle.” Somehow that term popped back into my head the other day, and I asked Unca Google where it came from. Unc had no real idea. So I’m turning to you. Do you know where the term “work-brickle” or “workbrickle” comes from? — Gregory Bloom.

Ah yes, good old Unca Google, bottomless well of … something. We’re not sure what. Sometimes searching Google produces quick and accurate answers, but much of the time it’s like peering into a huge room where everyone is shouting nonsense and bouncing off the walls.

As you probably gathered from the few mentions of “workbrickle” you found in your Googling, the word seems to be a major mystery. Everyone agrees on its meaning, “willing and eager to work; industrious,” but no one seems to know where it came from. One source suggests that “to brickle” a horse is antiquated slang for “breaking” it, i.e., taming it enough to be ridden. Thus “workbrickle,” goes the theory, would mean “resigned to or recognizing the necessity of work.” It’s a nice theory, and it may even be true, but I think the origin of “workbrickle” lies elsewhere.

While the Oxford English Dictionary makes no mention of “workbrickle” or “brickle” as a verb, it does have an entry for “work-brittle” with the same meaning of “eager to work, industrious,” dating back to 1647. This is obviously the same word, “brickle” being the Scots and English dialect form of “brittle” and a form common in the Midwestern US and Appalachia. But as far as the origin of “work-brittle” goes, the OED throws up its hands, noting that the “brittle” part appears to be the same word as “brittle” meaning “easily broken,” but “the sense-development remains obscure” (i.e., “beats us”). No dictionary of slang or dialectical terms I own offers any further information.

At this point in my research I sat for a while staring at my computer screen, and then suddenly realized where I had encountered the “brittle-brickle” pair before. “Peanut brittle,” easily breakable (thus “brittle”) hard toffee containing peanuts, is also known, in the US, as “peanut brickle.” There are other sorts of “brickle,” containing cashews, chocolate bits, etc, but in each the featured element is embedded in a sheet of not-terribly-exciting hard toffee “brittle.” The essence of a “brittle” is that added ingredient.

Now, it seems to me that if one were to take “brickle” as a metaphor for “full of” or “characterized by large amounts of,” then someone said to be “workbrickle” (perhaps originally “a workbrickle”) would be full of eagerness and dedication to the job, much as we speak of a “workaholic” today but without the negative overtones. Granted, it’s just a theory, but I find it very tasty.

Before dirt.

Dear Word Detective: Newsweek and the NY Times have both recently used the word “ur-text” in articles with no indication of its meaning. Example: “Principals had ordered Payne’s books and DVD’s by the boxload, mostly her ur-text, ‘A Framework for Understanding Poverty,’ . . .” What does it mean? — Kate Simpson.

Well, what do we mean when we say, “What does it mean?” Do we mean “What is the literal meaning of the word?” Or do we mean the meta-meaning, the cultural significance, of “ur”? And what, after all, is “meaning”? “Meaning” is subjective, of course, but “meaning” is “meaningless,” so to speak, without collective agreement on its objective value, which is almost always less than five bucks.

OK, onward. What “ur” means, in a cultural sense, is that you have stumbled over a line of cultural demarcation, the one separating folks who nod knowingly at buzzwords like “heuristic” and “semiotic” and “trope” and “ur,” and the rest of us schlubs who have to look this stuff up. “Ur” is, at least when it’s used in the mass media, the sound of a writer showing off, and I, for one, find it intensely annoying. Academics, of course, are free to torture each other with this stuff (knock yourselves out, please), but the rest of us just wanna read the paper before the parakeet needs it.

What “ur” means in a literal sense, used as a prefix (ur-text, ur-cow, ur-toaster, etc.), is “original or earliest,” with the sense that the ur-thingy presages or underlies what comes later. “Ur” is a German prefix found in several German terms imported into English and used primarily in scholarly and scientific contexts, e.g., “Ursprache” (“sprache” meaning “speech”) or proto-language, and “Urheimat” (“homeland”), the place of origin of a people or language. One of the earliest uses of “ur” in English was in the early 20th century in “ur-Hamlet,” the long-lost 16th century play on which Shakespeare supposedly based his version. The use of “urtext” in English dates to the 1930s (“In these volumes … we have the nearest thing possible in Chopin’s case to an Urtext,” Times (London) Literary Supplement, 1932), and subsequent use has usually carried the implication that the “urtext” is either a “purer” form than later versions or is the clearest statement of the author’s thesis or vision before the derivative sequels and DVD deals cluttered things up. Kinda like when James Bond was still Sean Connery.

Speaking of early things, by the way, there is (or was) another “Ur,” an ancient city in Mesopotamia thought by some to be the birthplace of Abraham. The remains of Ur, an important archaeological site, can be found today near Nasiriyah, south of Baghdad, Iraq.

Cleans up good.

Dear Word Detective: I recently purchased some DVD’s of the old “Little Rascals” TV shows for my three year old. One of the shows was entitled “Sprucin’ Up,” and I realized, while explaining what that meant to my son, that I had no idea where that might have come from. Webster’s was not very helpful, saying the word spruce is perhaps related to a middle English alteration of the Anglo-French “Pruce” for “Prussian.” Did they consider Prussians very neat and tidy, thus getting the sense of the phrase today? — Chris Lenz.

Gee, I always figured “spruce up” referred to the piney odor of popular household cleansers. Speaking of things piney, today I saw a commercial in which the people who make Pine-Sol (the main ingredient of which is, hold the phone, pine oil) announced that they are holding a contest to pick their “new fragrance.” Say what? Isn’t that akin to picking a “new fragrance” for lemonade? Isn’t the whole point of Pine-Sol that you can smell pine oil a block away?

By the way, although you and I saw the “Little Rascals” series on TV, it was originally produced by Hal Roach as an immensely popular series of “shorts” (under the name “Our Gang”) and released to movie theaters between 1922 and 1944.

Meanwhile, back at your question, whichever dictionary you consulted was being a bit too cautious with that “perhaps.” The verb “to spruce” meaning “to make neat and clean” and the related adjective “spruce” meaning “neat and dapper in appearance” are both definitely related to Prussia, once a kingdom of northern Europe and now a region of modern Germany. The original English name for Prussia was “Pruce,” borrowed from the Old French, but at some point in the 14th century that was altered by English-speakers, for some unknown reason, to “Spruce.” The “spruce” evergreen tree was originally called a “spruce fir” and thought to have originated in “Spruce,” i.e., Prussia.

The connection between neatness and “spruce” is a little more roundabout than simply a tribute to the legendary Prussian penchant for fastidious organization. During this same period England was importing a wide variety of goods from Prussia, many of which were popularly known by their country of origin, e.g., “Spruce canvas,” “Spruce beer,” “Spruce iron,” etc. Apparently “Spruce leather” was an especially high-grade product, and it came to be used in a particular style of leather jerkin (a short, sleeveless jacket) that became very popular and was known as a “Spruce jerkin.” This led to “spruce” breaking free of its tie to Prussia in popular speech and becoming, instead, a synonym for “neat, trim, fashionable” in the 16th century. By the late 17th century, “spruce” as a verb had been joined with “up,” and we’ve been “sprucing up” our households and ourselves ever since.

I believe.

Dear Word Detective: I’m always fascinated by a word that evolves with two entirely different meanings. Today at work, we were discussing the word “ream,” as in a ream of paper — but this can also refer to a machining process. Since I’d presume paper-making is mechanical in nature (and I’m just guessing here; for all I know, paper really *does* grow on trees), is there any connection between the two? — Tina Stanley.

We all have our weaknesses, and a biggie for me is my lifelong inability to tell when people are goofing on me. My wife Kathy, for instance, never tires of regaling total strangers with the story of the time many years ago when she convinced me that the top of the Williamsburg Bank tower in Brooklyn is covered with green velvet. (It isn’t.) And then there’s the time, just last year, when I forwarded a parody ad for do-it-yourself home Lasik eye surgery to all my friends. I knew it was a joke, of course. After Kathy told me.

But just in case you’re serious, yes, paper does sort of “grow on trees,” in much the same way one might say hamburger “grows on” cows.

In any case, English is chock full of homonyms, words that are spelled (and often pronounced) the same but which have radically different meanings and usually entirely separate origins. “Bark,” the sound a dog makes, and “bark,” the outer layer of a tree, are spelled and pronounced exactly the same way. But they come from entirely different sources, as does “bark” meaning a type of small sailing ship. The two “reams” in your question are also utter strangers to each other, and come, in fact, from different parts of the world.

“Ream” meaning “a certain quantity of paper” (480, 500 or 516 sheets, depending on the type of “ream”) first appeared in English in the 14th century, adopted from the Old French word “remme,” which in turn was derived from the Arabic word “rizmah” meaning “bale or bundle.” The Arabic source of this “ream” makes perfect sense, since paper itself, invented in China, was introduced to Europe via the Middle East.

The other sort of “ream,” a verb meaning “to enlarge a hole or other opening,” is a much more recent addition to English, first appearing in print in the early 19th century. But “ream” was probably drawn from the earlier Old English word “ryman,” which meant “make room, enlarge,” itself based on a Germanic root word meaning “spacious.” In addition to its literal meaning in carpentry and machining metal, “to ream” has also taken on figurative meanings of “to cheat or swindle” and “to severely reprimand.”

Get a grip, Foley.

Dear Word Detective: When football players in England are speaking of their coach they refer to them as “gaffer.” I’m an American who just doesn’t understand English slang sometimes. — J.C.D.

Welcome to the club. Personally, I think the Brits are being inscrutable on purpose. I suspect that at some point, maybe back in the 16th century, their government tourism ministry got the bright idea of inventing a range of “quaint” but nonsensical locutions for innkeepers and the like, designed to charm tourists (and, more importantly, to befuddle them so they wouldn’t whine for cold drinks and warm toast). Unfortunately, things got out of control and the frankenwords spread like kudzu until even small children were calling each other “guv’nor” and shrieking “Bob’s your uncle!” at anyone who looked even vaguely American.

In the case of “gaffer,” the word seems to have spread to Hollywood, where you’ll find the term listed in the credits of most motion pictures, up there in tiny type along with such bizarre job titles as “best boy,” “Foley artist” and “key grip.” It’s possible, of course, that those are all just fake jobs for the producer’s feckless nephews, but the whole question cries out for a congressional inquest.

While we’re waiting, I can say that “gaffer” first appeared in English back in the 16th century (aha!), applied as a term of respect among country dwellers to an elderly man, especially one accorded deference due to his experience or position within the community. “Gaffer” seems to have arisen as simply a contraction of “godfather” (or “grandfather”), the female equivalent being “gammer” (from “godmother” or “grandmother”). The use of “gaffer” broadened over time to include any older rustic male, and, by the 19th century, was being used as an informal title for the supervisor of a work crew, what we would call today a “foreman.” This use was adopted by the movie industry, which conferred the title of “gaffer” on the chief electrician on a film crew, a use which first appeared in print in the 1930s. The use of “gaffer” for the coach of a team invokes both this sense of “person in charge” and the earlier meaning of “respected older man.”

As for those other odd terms, the “best boy” on a film crew is the principal assistant to the “gaffer,” and these days may well be a woman. The “Foley artist” is the person in charge of sound effects, and the title is capitalized because it refers to an early master of the craft, Jack Foley. The “key grip” is the chief “grip,” in charge of scene rigging and sometimes the mechanical aspects of lighting. The term “grip,” which dates to the 1880s, originally referred to the fact that stagehands had to “grip” and shove heavy scenery into place between the acts of a play.

Just say oops.

Dear Word Detective: In musicians’ parlance, especially trumpet players, the word “clam” is used to refer to a missed note. A “clambake” is used to refer to a concert, piece, or part of a work with a LOT of wrong notes. I’ve no idea if this has any relation to “clam up” of the early 20th century or the use of “clambake” to refer to people smoking pot in a closed automobile. The trumpet player email list will be most appreciative. — Tim Phillips.

“Clam” is an interesting word. Most uses in English refer back in some way to “clam” as the name for the shellfish (as Merriam-Webster puts it, “any of numerous edible marine bivalve mollusks living in sand or mud”). The origin of “clam,” however, lies far from the beach, in the prehistoric Germanic root word “klam,” which meant “to press or squeeze together” and also gave us “clamp.” It was the tightly clamped shut shell of the aquatic “clam” that gave it its name.

“Clam” has developed numerous slang and figurative uses over the years, from “to clam up” meaning to remain silent, lips pressed together like a clam’s shell, to “clam” as jocular slang for a dollar, probably from a supposed ancient use of clams as currency. About once a week I’m asked for the origin of “Happy as a clam,” a saying folks find mysterious only because it is rarely quoted in its full form, “Happy as a clam at high tide,” i.e., when it is least likely to be discovered by predators. “Clambake,” originally a beach party featuring clams “baked” in open pits, has also been used as a sardonic term for any fancy social gathering (as well as, I’ll take your word for it, that ritual of “doobie parking” where participants presumably get “baked” in a car closed up like a clam).

The likening of a closed mouth, or the human mouth in general, to the bivalve sort of “clam” may underlie the use of “clam” to mean a missed or flubbed note, especially if the term originated in connection with wind instruments. This usage dates back to at least the early 1950s and since then has been applied to an error in any sort of musical or theatrical performance (“Bing Crosby … always said, ‘Leave the clams in, let ‘em know I’m human,’” New York Times, 1991). Perhaps the “error” sense of the term lies in the failure of one’s “clam,” or mouth, to perform correctly.

But another, and to my mind stronger, possibility is that the “mistake” sense of “clam” derives from a completely different “clam.” In the 18th century the sound of two bells (in a bell tower) rung simultaneously (usually a mistake by the bell ringer) was known as a “clam.” This “clam” was probably “echoic” in origin, intended to mimic the dissonant, unpleasant sound itself (the same way “clang” and “slam” were formed), and actually appears to be the source of our modern “clamor,” meaning a jumbled roar of noises or voices. It seems entirely logical that “clam” as a term for mistake in a bell tower could have become a generalized musicians’ term for any sort of embarrassing flub in a performance.