A man (bald), a plan (bold), parakeet!

Dear Word Detective: Is the phrase “wigging out” connected to “flipping one’s wig”? My students were wigging out today after their fifth day (of nine days) of standardized tests in a month. I’m getting a little wiggy myself. — Laura Maxwell.

Wow. I don’t blame them, or you. In fact, even though the last time I was in school was in the Late Jurassic, your question gave me a twinge of panic. To this day the words “pop quiz” give me the fantods, and nine days of tests would have me looking for a cave to hide in.

“Wigging out,” meaning “to show serious signs of (or to break under) stress” does indeed have a connection to “flipping one’s wig,” but that’s just a small part of the strange role wigs have played in English slang.

The word “wig” is fairly strange in its own right. “Wig” first appeared in print in English in the late 17th century meaning, as it does today, “an artificial covering of hair for the head, worn to conceal baldness or to cover the inadequacy of the natural hair, as a part of professional, ceremonial, or formerly of fashionable, costume … or as a disguise” (Oxford English Dictionary (OED)). Oddly enough, the word “wig” is actually simply a shortening of the earlier word “periwig,” which meant the kind of highly-stylized wig worn by judges and barristers in the English court system. That “periwig” was derived from the Middle French “perruque,” meaning both a “wig” as we know it and a natural full head of hair. The roots of “perruque” are a mystery, but may lie in the Middle French “perroquet,” meaning “parakeet.” The OED, recognizing that an explanation is called for, offers “… perhaps on account of the mane-like markings on the heads of some species [of parakeets].” There are other theories about “perruque,” but I really like that one.

Given that officials and nobility in 17th and 18th century Britain often wore large ornately-styled wigs as a symbol of office and power (as opposed to the more humble wigs worn by those of lesser stature), it’s not surprising that “bigwig” appeared as slang in the early 18th century for “an important or powerful person,” whether said person actually wore a wig or not (“Wagner … was considered a suspicious character, in more ways than one, by the musical bigwigs of his day,” 1892). In the late 18th century, to be rebuked or scolded by a “bigwig” came to be known as receiving a “wigging.”

That is, however, not the same “wigging” as found in “wigging out.” For that we turn to 20th century African-American slang, where “wig” was used as slang for the human head, brain or mind (“I really do think that there is something wrong with this man’s wig,” 1980). One of the earliest recorded elaborations of this slang sense of “wig” was in “to flip one’s wig,” which appeared in the 1930s meaning both “to lose one’s temper” and “to lose one’s sanity or emotional control” (“My lawyer flipped his wig on the coast and came out here to avoid being committed,” Hunter Thompson, 1967). To “flip,” “snap,” “crack” or “blow one’s wig” was a prescription for landing in “wig city” (1960), a state of mental unbalance, and being scrutinized by a “wig-picker,” a psychiatrist (“Well, dreams, you know. I never put much stock in them. […] those naval wig pickers in San Francisco used to try and worm a few of them out of me,” William Styron, 1960).

The vast array of things that could go wrong with one’s “wig” led, in the late 1950s, to the simpler verb “to wig out,” meaning “to lose control or have a breakdown” (“Some real moldy cat in a library in Alabama wigged out when she saw the white rabbits and the black rabbits on the cover of the book together,” 1959), of which the short form is “wigging.” To be severely stressed and approaching the point of “wigging out” is being “wiggy.”

Semper Ubi Sub Ubi

readme:

March already. Huh. Meh. Feh.

I’m not really complaining, you understand, but I’d like to point out that it snowed exactly three times this winter, and two times it didn’t stick at all. The third time amounted to about a half an inch, nowhere near enough to make snowballs for Brownie the Dog. Brownie likes me to throw snowballs for her to chase. Of course, the snowballs always land in the snow on the ground and become impossible to find, but as long as I make another one right away, she doesn’t mind. Brownie was deeply disappointed by that paltry excuse for snow, so I hope you’re happy, whoever you are. I ended up standing by the refrigerator and tossing her ice cubes, but that really wasn’t the same, and we ended up with little puddles all over the kitchen floor. Everything in this paragraph is true, by the way.

Speaking of little puddles, we finally finished watching Season II of Downton Abbey, about a week after we stumbled across this old article from the Daily Mail in 2011, which indicates that PBS, adjudging their audience to consist largely of enfeebleated droolers, decided to do away with the hard parts of the British version of the series, thus making time for the oleaginous Laura Linney to smooth out the rough edges with her cloying smarm. All this for a show that makes The Young and the Restless look like Hamlet. Duly noted for all concerned.

Anyway, we’re all glad everyone has been miraculously healed (Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!), except, one presumes, the horribly maimed chap who appeared claiming to be heir to the whole magilla but conveniently disappeared about ten minutes later and was, as this show is wont, promptly and utterly forgotten by the rest of the perpetually befuddled gang at the Big House. Elsewhere on Planet Gimmeabreak, I simply must remember to get one of those special ouija boards that have complete words (“Dad,” “farm,” “visit,” “happy,” etc.) spelled out across the top. I’ll bet it saves lots of time.

I kid, of course. Obviously Downton Abbey is far preferable to the vast wasteland of wretched dreck that constitutes US TV these days. People keep asking me if I’ve seen CSI or Special Victims Unit or Dexter or America’s Funniest Home Dungeons and I have to say, no, not yet, when what I really mean is no, not ever.

And as annoying as I find PBS 90% of the time, occasionally they show something like the BBC’s Little Dorrit a few years ago, which I would gladly watch again and may be just about the best thing I’ve ever seen on TV. It even made up for those New Age infomercials and ghastly Celtic Woman things I keep clicking past on PBS.

Onward. We now have a Twitter feed over there in the right column, but don’t expect much beyond pointers to the columns here unless I suddenly get a prescription for something very powerful. You might check the people I follow on that feed and find many of them interesting, as I do. Most of them have some connection to language or books.

We’re still on Facebook (sortof) and Google Plus (barely). I think Google blew it, frankly. The place is a ghost town, and trying to compel people to join when they sign up for Gmail is just obnoxious.

By the way, I do my best to keep up with comments on this site, but it might be a day or two before I get to yours, so please be patient. I approve almost everything, no matter how tangential or odd it may be, as long as it doesn’t abuse other commenters. As for email, I read everything but not always promptly, because my eyes have become sufficiently wonky that to read things I frequently have to crank up the font size to “ginormous” and park my nose about six inches from the screen.

So forward into Spring, I guess. Please remember (you asked me to remind you) to subscribe.

And please send in your questions. I know you have them. And I need them.

And now, on with the show….

There’s a diplosaurus in your disk drive.

Dear Word Detective: Talking with my family some time ago, we somehow got to the subject of those ‘X-off’ combinations which seem to have become fairly commonplace in recent years. You know, “dance-off,” “sing-off,” “rap-off,” “nerd-off,” what have you — it appears that any sort of competitive confrontation can be fit into that mold. So we got to wondering where it all started. Thinking of it a bit, I guess it makes sense that it would stem from “face-off” (Oxford Concise: “[1] a direct confrontation. [2] [Ice Hockey] the start of play.”), but the more I think about it the more I’m puzzled by the word “off,” there. I mean, you have two teams facing each other, that seems clear, but why are they facing OFF? I know that adverbs can be kinda arbitrary, so there might not be an answer for that. Still, it bugs me. I’d appreciate any insight you might offer on that subject. — Yael.

There’s a “nerd-off”? Does it involve fixing computers while reciting the names of obscure dinosaurs? Speaking of prehistoric trivia, does anyone else see the term “face-off” and immediately think of the 1997 John Travolta/Nicholas Cage movie? No? You’re lucky. For the life of me, I can’t imagine what compelled me to see that nonsensical schlock-fest (starring my two least-favorite actors), but something did, and I still, obviously, bear the scars.

“Off” is a daunting word with a dizzying array of uses. It began as an emphatic form of the preposition “of,” which in Middle English carried the sense of “from, or out of,” in the way we might say that a person is “Mr. Edwards of London.” The form “off” gradually took on a stronger meaning than “of,” connoting “away, away from” (e.g., “drive off”) or “at a distance from” (“off the coast of France”). By the early 18th century the two words had completely separated and “off” came to be used not only as a preposition but an adjective, adverb and noun as well.

“Off” in modern English carries those senses of motion, direction or distance from a place, thing or person, but it also is used to express resistance to motion towards a place, thing, etc., as in “ward off” or “keep off.” In “dance-off,” bake-off,” etc., we’re seeing a verbal phrase used as a noun, with the “off” signifying resistance in the form of confrontation or competition. The earliest use of this sense seems to have been in “face-off,” appearing in 1889 and originally meaning the moment in a game of ice hockey or lacrosse when play is started by dropping or placing the puck or ball between two opposing players who are literally facing each other. It wasn’t until the 1950s that “face-off” came into use in the more general sense of “direct confrontation.” (In that awful Cage/Travolta movie, the confrontation between the two involved actually swapping faces. Yeah, it was that stupid.)

Meanwhile, a slightly different sense of “off” had been dumped into the mix. In 1870 the phrasal noun “play-off” first appeared in print meaning a game played to decide a tie at the end of a previous game (“The tie game of yesterday was played off to-day,” 1880). This “play-off” invoked a very old sense of “off” meaning “exhaust or finish completely” (as in our modern “finish off”). It wasn’t until 1932 that “play-off” came to mean (first in the US, of course) “a series of games, matches, or contests played to decide a championship, competition, etc.” (Oxford English Dictionary).

The precedents of “face-off” and “play-off” subsequently served as models for all the little “X-offs” you’ve noticed, from “cook-off” (1936) to “bake-off” (1949) to the more recent “dance-off,” “sing-off,” etc. These terms all employ both the “confrontation or contest” sense and the “finish” sense (in that there is only one winner) of “off.”

Take a message.

Dear Word Detective: At most recent biennial family reunion, a cousin asserted that “rings a bell” (triggers a memory) stems from practice of including mechanisms with coffins to prevent being buried alive and attributes such “fact” to tour of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum. Thanks in part to your tutelage, I’m among the “Nots.” I didn’t find phrase in your archives or other sources, but Bill Bryson (in recent book “At Home”) does note the practice (during 19th century) of adding bells, flags (and breathing tubes!) to coffins/graves, mentions Poe’s “The Premature Burial” and the fact that the term “taphephobia” was coined to describe this (popular?) fear. World Wide Words, in discussion of term “ringer” (in sense of “more adept than expected substitute”) also notes the burial practices, but explicitly denies any connection with phrase “dead ringer.” My guess would be that “rings a bell” is much older than 19th century, bells having been used to “call attention” probably almost from their inception. (There’s a bit in Macbeth about ringing bells in alarm.) I’d further surmise the evolution of the phrase includes the physical practice of slapping one’s (or other’s) head to stimulate cognitive processes which could easily be compared to a clapper striking a bell. (Oddly, though, to “have one’s bell rung” — from a stunning blow to the head — apparently dates only to 1960s.) In any case, I’m hoping your resources far exceed mine and that you can once again sort the facts from the fictions. — Stephen C. Hess.

My, what a long question you have. Yet you managed to omit my favorite response when asked for my name: “Does the name ‘Quasimodo’ ring a bell?” Yes, I slay myself, and no, I’m not planning to grow up anytime soon.

To begin at the beginning, your choosing to be counted a “Not” regarding that “Believe It Or Not” story is richly justified. I loved Ripley’s illustrated newspaper feature as a child, but I suspect that at least 80% of the “facts” we were asked to believe were nonsense. It is true, as Bill Bryson says, that there was widespread fear in the 19th century of being buried alive, and many bizarre gizmos to avoid that grim fate were invented. “Taphephobia” isn’t in the Oxford English Dictionary, so it must not have been a very successful invention, but it appears to be simply “phobia” (fear) preceded by the Greek word “taph,”meaning “grave or funeral” (also found in “epitaph,” literally “above the grave”).

Nineteenth century “taphephobia” is understandable, given the primitive state of medicine at the time (“Hey, he looks dead. Start digging.”). But the popular belief that such phrases as “dead ringer,” “saved by the bell” and “graveyard shift” (supposedly referring to people hired to sit and wait for the bell to ring) all refer to the fear of being buried alive is simply preposterous. I don’t have the space to debunk the sillier stories here, but explanations of all three phrases can be found by using the search box at www.word-detective.com.

I suppose the addition of “rings a bell” to that roster of flapdoodle was inevitable, but, as usual, there is no evidence for that theory. Mental bells have been figuratively ringing for people for centuries in a variety of senses, though many of them are remarkably recent coinages. “To ring the bell,” for instance, has meant “to be the best” since 1900, “to ring a person’s bell,” meaning to please someone (“Brasserie Cognac’s version of macaroni and cheese rings my bell,” 2008), first appeared in the 1970s, and “to ring one’s own bell,” meaning “to boast or brag,” dates to 1859. “To ring a bell” meaning “to awaken a memory or prompt recognition” is similarly recent, first showing up in print in 1933. The phrase simply likens the sudden moment of remembering or recognizing to a bell being rung. No graveyard or ungrateful dead needed. Your hunch about it referring to smacking one’s own head to stimulate cognition is a good one, but apparently unnecessary.

Stuff it with stuff.

Dear Word Detective: What is the origin of the word “stop”? — AJ.

Well, there’s a small but interesting question. Deceptively simple, too. After all, we all use “stop” at least a few times every day, whether at home (“Please stop chewing the dog’s ear, Timmy”), at work (“I don’t know. He was doing my annual evaluation and he just stopped, like someone had poisoned his coffee”), or on the road (“That’s the third stop sign you’ve blown through, Ralph. Either put down the sandwich or hang up the phone”). Speaking of stop signs, I happen to know people who seriously maintain that stop signs and speed limits are nothing more than informational “suggestions” supplied by helpful government agencies, on a par with signs that say “Hidden Driveway” or “Troll Under Bridge.” Yet another reason to shop online.

But while “stop” is a simple little staple of everyday life, it’s also a very old word, and very old words, as we’ve seen, can be hiding some fairly weird stories.

“Stop” first appeared in Old English as “stoppian,” which has, so far, only been found in the written record in the form “forstoppian,” meaning “to stop or stifle,” usually referring to someone’s breath. Many European and Scandinavian languages (German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, et al.) developed similar “stop” words, all of which probably came from the Late Latin “stuppare,” meaning “to stop up or stuff with tow or oakum.” This “stuppare,” in turn, came from the Classical Latin “stuppa,” which meant “tow or oakum,” which, for many of us, raises the question “What the heck are tow and oakum?”

Both “tow” and “oakum” are the coarser, shorter fibers of flax, hemp or jute, separated out from the longer, finer strands used in spinning cloth. Oakum in particular was also used to mean short fibers of hemp obtained by picking apart lengths of old rope, a tedious activity often assigned to convicts and inmates of workhouses (“He had heard of a work-house, in this city, into which refractory servants are committed, and put to hard labour; such as pounding hemp, grinding plaister of Paris, and picking old ropes into oakum,” 1804). The resulting bits were used to caulk ships (“Ships, Barks, Hoyes, Drumlers, Craires, Boats, all would sink, But for the Ocum caulk’d in euery chink,” Praise of Hemp, 1620), seal pipe fittings, and even as dressings for wounds (“Who should it be but Mr. Daniel, all muffled up … and his right eye stopped with Okum?” Samuel Pepys, Diary, 1666).

So the verb “to stop” originally meant to block or stop up an opening as if with a plug (a “stopper”) of oakum or tow, but quickly came to be used more generally for any situation where movement was impeded by an obstruction (“The enemy sunk the ship at the mouth of the harbour, which stopped up the channel,” 1790). “Stop” was also used to mean simply “fill a hole,” as in a tooth (“One had his teeth peculiarly stopped with gold,” 1896) or a plaster wall, and even to stanch a bleeding wound.

In the 14th century, “stop” began to be used in its modern sense of “to bring a person, animal, thing or process to a halt” by one means or another (not necessarily using a physical obstruction). This “stop” now included preventing a person from doing something via law or argument, or to put an end to a process, activity or course of events (“For God’s sake stop the grunting of those Pigs!” Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1820).

“Stop” had also come into use as a noun back in the 16th century meaning “the act of halting or being halted; a cessation of action or progress,” as well as “something which restrains or impedes action,” a broad range which came to include “traffic stops,” the “stops”(graduated valves) of a pipe organ, and the “f-stops,” varying diaphragm settings, of a camera lens. “Stop” is also used, more in Britain than the US, to mean a point of punctuation, with “full stop” being, quite logically, what is in the US called “a period.”

It’s where he grows his apprehension.

Dear Word Detective: Today a British colleague of mine mentioned that he was on “garden leave.” Huh? Wikipedia to the rescue, for the meaning. But where the heck did it come from? I understand that when a Brit says “garden,” he often means “yard,” but I still don’t get it.  — Steve Ford.

They’re doing it on purpose, you know. It’s been going on since just after the American Revolution. Frustrated at having lost to a bunch of hicks who couldn’t even muster proper uniforms, the British decided to embark on a stealth attack on their former colonists’ sanity by inventing and promulgating bizarre words and phrases. So today they call trucks “lorries,” the   trunk of a car “the boot,” dresses “frocks” and sweaters “jumpers,” stoves “cookers,” and private schools “public schools” (huh?). And you’re right about “garden.” Brits use it to mean “yard,” especially the back yard of a row house. It used to really throw me to read limey authors going on about the “little shed at the bottom of the garden” where they write. I always imagined an underground bunker with turnips, but it turns out they mean a hut at the far end of their back yard.

Interestingly, the use of “garden” to mean simply “yard” is nowhere to be found in the Oxford English Dictionary definition of the word, though I suppose their basic definition of “an enclosed piece of ground devoted to the cultivation of flowers, fruit, or vegetables” could be considered sufficiently vague as to cover it. There’s also a close family tie between “garden” and “yard.” “Garden” first popped up in English around 1300, borrowed from the Old Northern French “gardin,” which was based on the same Germanic root that gave us “yard.” “Garden” is often used in the plural to mean landscaped public grounds used for recreation, as in “botanical gardens” and “zoological gardens.”

“Garden” has, not surprisingly, produced a variety of idioms and phrases ranging from the literal (“garden rake,” etc.) to the intriguingly metaphorical. We speak of “leading someone up the garden path,” for instance, meaning “to entice, to mislead or deceive,” the reference being that of someone offering a pleasant walk in an ornamental garden while secretly harboring nefarious plans. “Garden” has become a slang synonym for “common or ordinary,” especially in the phrase “garden variety,” probably originally in reference to breeds of plant found in an ordinary garden as opposed to anything more exotic (“I have — to make use of a common or garden expression — been ‘rushed’ in this matter,” 1897). And “to cultivate [or "tend"] one’s own garden” has, since the 18th century, meant to concentrate on one’s own affairs (and mind one’s own business).

“Gardening leave” (or “garden leave”) is a fairly recent British term, first appearing in print in the mid-1980s (1990 for “garden leave”). The Oxford English Dictionary defines “gardening leave” as a euphemism meaning “suspension from work on full pay for the duration of a notice period, typically to prevent an employee from having any further influence on the organization or from acting to benefit a competitor before leaving.” The “notice period” mentioned there is the time between tendering one’s resignation (or being fired) and when the action actually takes effect. Apparently Britain has laws governing how long this period must be (from one week to one week per year of employment if you’re being canned). “Garden leave” is the practice of removing the soon-to-be-ex-employee from work duties so he or she will not be able to transfer current business information to a new employer (or to actually sabotage the current employer for the benefit of one’s new gig). There’s really no specific US equivalent for the term “gardening leave,” but similar situations would probably fall under the umbrella euphemism “administrative leave.”

So, why “gardening” leave? No one actually believes the person is taking time off to garden, any more than American politicians quit to “spend more time with their families.” I think the term is probably a slightly sarcastic reference to the well-known British affection for maintaining a small garden, coupled with the sense of a garden being a place you can park someone (a child, perhaps) where they can putter around and while away the time without getting into trouble.

Low and slow.

Dear Word Detective: In my line of work (medical research), I often attend presentations by students discussing their work. Occasionally, at question time, the student’s supervisor or colleague will ask them a “Dorothy Dixer,” a pre-arranged question that the student has a pre-arranged answer for. This can give the student some confidence in answering questions (as well as perhaps leaving less time for more difficult ones). I’ve found out who Dorothy Dix was but do you have any information on when and where the term originated? — Rhys Fogarty.

That’s a fascinating question. The name Dorothy Dix rang a small bell at the back of my mind, but, after a bit of poking around online, I realized that I was thinking of Dorothea Dix, the great 19th century crusader for the rights and welfare of the mentally ill in the US. I’m still not sure why I happen to know anything about Dorothea Dix, but I suspect it may be due to my many years of reading Reader’s Digest in doctors’ and dentists’ waiting rooms.

Dorothy Dix, on the other hand, was the nom de plume of Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer (1861–1951), a syndicated newspaper columnist and, during the 1930s and 40s, probably the most widely-read columnist on earth. Dix was an advice columnist, the forerunner of Dear Abby and Ann Landers in the US, answering readers’ questions and tales of woe with uplifting answers and no-nonsense advice. One of her most popular columns, reprinted frequently by popular demand, was “Dictates for a Happy Life,” which covered all the bases from “Make up your mind to be happy” (Dictate One) to “Don’t spend your life brooding over the mistakes you have made or the sorrows that have befallen on you.” (Dictate Eight, apparently addressed to those who flubbed Dictate One) and, if all else fails, “Keep busy” (Dictate Ten).

It is said that during her heyday Dix received 100,000 letters per week, but that fact didn’t quash the persistent rumor that she invented some of her more colorful reader questions as pretexts for “answers” she wanted to write. This particular brand of creativity is, shall we say, frowned on in journalism. Nothing was ever proven, but the “Dix makes up her own questions” rumor was widespread by the time of her death in 1951.

Now things get a bit weird. Although Dorothy Dix is largely forgotten in her native US, her column was syndicated all around the world, including in Australia, where her name lives on today in a most peculiar (and not very complimentary) way. A “Dorothy Dixer” in Australian political jargon is a “planted” (pre-arranged) question asked during a session of Parliament in order to give the respondent an opportunity to give a prepared reply. The Macquarie Dictionary (“Australia’s National Dictionary”) defines it as “a question asked in parliament specifically to allow a propagandist reply by a minister.” The Oxford English Dictionary dates the earliest print use of “Dorothy Dixer” to 1970, but use of “Dorothy Dix” by itself to mean a planted question has been found as far back as 1941. The use you’ve encountered, students being asked rote questions, is an expanded sense of the term.

Of course, “Dorothy Dixer” questions are hardly unknown in the rest of the world, and it’s a bit of a puzzle why the phrase isn’t used here in the US. Our closest analogue is probably the “softball” question posed to politicians (or their “spokescritters” in the parlance of the late and sorely missed Molly Ivins) by friendly journalists. So-called in allusion to the low and slow pitches of a softball game (compared to conventional “hardball” baseball), the “softball” question functions largely as an opportunity for the recipient to trot out the latest talking points. Softball questions aren’t actually “planted,” but they don’t have to be. They just have to be pleasingly mild and wide enough to accommodate a full load of flapdoodle.

Hunka hunka whatsis.

Dear Word Detective: The other day I was describing a new hire whom my wife knew from her nursing days. She immediately labeled her a “dingbat.” This word obviously came from the Archie Bunker school. In looking it up as to origin in the dictionary (Random House College Dictionary) it states: “Informal ‘dingus.’ Print: an ornamental piece of type for borders, decorations, etc.” So, how did it get from this definition to become “a silly, eccentric, somewhat dim person”? — Maxwell M. Urata, MD.

Good question. Most Americans probably associate the word “dingbat” with Archie Bunker, the central character in the 1971-79 hit US TV comedy All in the Family. Played by Carroll O’Connor, Archie was a deeply conservative and irascible (but amusing and lovable) working-class family man living in the NYC borough of Queens with his wife Edith, daughter Gloria, and son-in-law Mike Stivic (played by Rob Reiner). Archie was a racist, sexist, xenophobic and homophobic blowhard, but though he frequently, in moments of anger, referred to Edith as “Dingbat,” it was clear that he loved and depended on her.

In calling Edith a “dingbat,” Archie was using the word in the same sense as your wife did, i.e., to mean a “nitwit” or “kook,” a silly, stupid or flighty, frivolous person (“Miss Sternhagen’s mother increases in giddiness, even to wearing what appears to be a feather in her hair. She is, in fact, a certifiable dingbat,” 1985). This sense of “dingbat” first appeared in print (as far as we know) in 1915. An adjectival form, “dingbatty,” had popped up in 1911, indicating that the word may, in fact, be a bit older and raising the intriguing possibility that “dingbat” may be related to “batty,” which has been slang for “insane” (implying that one has “bats in one’s belfry”) since the end of the 19th century.

The curious thing about “dingbat,” however, is the fact that while it first appeared meaning “nut case” around 1911, “dingbat” had been widely used since the early 19th century with a wide variety of other meanings. At that time, a “dingbat” could be “a sum of money, or coins or bills themselves,” “an unidentifiable or nameless object or tool” (equivalent to “thingamabob” or “whatchamacallit”), a tramp or hobo, or a hard or heavy object suitable for throwing (overlapping with “brickbat,” a piece of broken brick used as a weapon). The use of “dingbat” to mean “an ornamental item of type” appeared around 1921 and is almost certainly based on “dingbat” meaning “a nameless object.”

So here we have a word, “dingbat,” that apparently appeared from nowhere and can mean darn near anything. Sorting out its origins should be a piece of cake, right? Actually, if we agree to not look too closely or get overly picky, I believe we can untangle most of the mystery.

To begin at the shallow end of the pool, the element “ding” in “dingbat” is probably the Dutch word “ding,” meaning “thing.” This “ding” is also the source of our English slang word “dingus,” meaning “gadget, contraption, thingamabob.”

The “bat” in most 19th century senses of “dingbat” is probably the same “bat” we find today in “baseball bat.” In Old English a “bat” was “a cudgel or war club,” but in Middle English it was also used to mean simply a lump or left-over chunk of something (thus “brickbat,” a broken brick). A “bat” in this sense could be almost any material, so “dingbat,” essentially “a bit of a thing,” was about as vague a word as could be imagined, applicable to any nameless object, a nameless hobo, bits of money, etc.

While the “bat” of “dingbat” was probably originally the “piece or chunk” kind of “bat,” for many people it probably prompted thoughts of the other kind of “bat” in English, the flying rodent “bat” (which takes its name from Scandinavian roots). The long association of bats with strange behavior and insanity had already given us, as noted above, the terms “bats” and “batty,” so pressing “dingbat” into service to mean “crackpot” was a natural step.

Book that book, Danno.

Dear Word Detective:  I have been reading about the meaning of the word “policeman” in a book, which says that it originated in “polis” meaning “city,” and therefore “policeman” means “man of the city.” Do you have any idea where the word “politician” comes from? I assume it also derives from “polis,” but the ending isn’t the same and I assume this means it has a different meaning. — Michelle.

Wow. That book really says that “policeman” means “man of the city”? That’s pretty seriously not true. It’s also an instance of what I’d call the Lego School of Linguistic Analysis, the belief that each part of a word has a particular meaning, usually firmly fixed, and that by snapping the bits apart the intrepid explorer can figure out what the word “truly means.”

Let’s just say that language doesn’t work that way, to put it mildly. While words often are built from roots with particular meanings to which prefixes, suffixes and other bits are added, the process usually takes centuries, the meaning almost always shifts along the way, and the results often have only a tangential connection to the original “meanings” of the constituent parts (and in the case of prefixes and suffixes, those “meanings” are notoriously vague in the first place). The “take it apart” approach also often leads to what is known as the “etymological fallacy,” the belief that if you can determine the “original meaning” of a word, you have found its “true” meaning. Thus, for example, many otherwise sane people object to the use of “decimate” to mean “severely reduce, damage or destroy” because the original word meant “kill one of every ten soldiers” (the method the Roman army used to punish mutineers). I’m not sure why people resist language change so fiercely, but, fortunately, language isn’t listening, and “decimate” in its modern sense is a very useful word.

Several years ago I received a question that also dealt with the word “politician,” in that case asking about the story that “politics” came from “poli,”supposedly meaning “many” (it doesn’t) plus “tics,” supposedly meaning “ticks,” i.e., “bloodsucking insects” (wrong again). As a joke that’s not bad, but as etymology, fuhgeddaboudit. The actual root of “politics” is indeed the Greek “polis,” meaning “city.” This produced the Greek “polites,” meaning “citizen,” which in turn produced “politikos,” meaning “regarding citizens or matters of state.” In Latin, the Greek “politikos” became “polticus,” which eventually gave us “politics,” “political,” and, with the suffix “ian” indicating action or agency, “politician” for a person whose jobs involves affairs of government or civil administration. So “politics” is simply the system of governing a society, and a “politician” is someone who works in that apparatus.

Our English word “police” was imported from the Middle French branch of the “polis” family tree, where “police” meant essentially the same thing as our modern English word “policy” in the sense of “the conduct of good government.” By the 16th century, our English “police” had come to mean “the organizing or governing body of a community,” but it wasn’t until the 18th century that “police” came to mean a specific department or agency devoted to maintaining public safety and law and order. The use of “police” as a verb meaning “to keep a place, especially a military base, clean and orderly” arose in the 19th century and harks back to the now-obsolete use of “police” to mean simply “maintain good governance.”

Speaking of things that have become obsolete, the terms “policeman” and “policewoman”  have been almost universally abandoned in favor of “police officer,” but all three forms denote a person who is an official agent of a law enforcement (“police”) agency. Interestingly, the word “constable,” formerly applied to police officers in Britain and elsewhere, comes ultimately from the Latin “comes stabuli,” meaning literally “Count of the stable,” i.e., head groom in a stable. The term later was applied to the chief household officer in royal palaces, then to military commanders, and finally, in the 15th century, to law enforcement authorities.

The foam-flecked grill is a nice touch.

Dear Word Detective:  Driving along the freeway the other day I found myself behind a Nissan — not a Nissan Murano, nor a Nissan Versa (both of which I think of as nonsense names), but a Nissan Rogue. Well, I thought, with so many models these car companies are hard-pressed to come up with names. But I always thought “rogue” implied some sort of dangerous viciousness, as in a “rogue elephant.” Are we now to think it’s simply a synonym for rebel, or something even tamer? My dictionary says the origin of “rogue” is unknown. Any idea where it came from, and where it’s going? — Barney Johnson.

Nissan Rogue, eh? Awesome. Did the owner spring for the titanium tusks? Or did the car  just glower, as the current line of Dodge Ram trucks do, with massive menacing grillwork that would bring a song to Mussolini’s heart? Every time I get on the road I’m struck by the fact that choice of cars and driving style have apparently become the primary channels of self-expression for a lot of weirdly angry people. While most people don’t pick a car because of its name, motor vehicle monikers such as “Viper,” “Cutlass,” “Rampage” and “Vanquish” no doubt appeal on a subliminal level to the chronically aggrieved among us. Maybe we should encourage, in the spirit of moderation, car names that invoke that other American obsession, food. In a chapter on automotive names in his book “What’s in a Name?” (Merriam-Webster, 1996), Paul Dickson mentions a car manufactured between 1902 and 1906 called “the American Chocolate” (because it was made in a former candy factory). I know I’d feel a lot safer on the highway if I were surrounded by people driving Dodge Muffins, Toyota Tacos and Chevy Calzones.

The Nissan Rogue is a compact “crossover” SUV that was first marketed in the US in 2008, which, I guess, rules out the intriguing possibility that its name was inspired by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s 2009 memoir “Going Rogue.” I suppose she picked that title to evoke the image of an elephant (i.e., Republican) “going it alone,” but the Oxford English Dictionary defines “to go rogue” as “to behave erratically or dangerously, go out of control.” George Orwell, as I recall, wrote an interesting essay about a rogue elephant. In any case, one’s mileage may vary as to the political wisdom of that image, but it’s a scary name for a car.

“Rogue” first appeared in English in the late 16th century meaning “idle vagrant; vagabond,” as well as “a dishonest person; a scoundrel.” Almost immediately, however, “rogue” also came to mean “A mischievous person, especially a child; a person whose behavior one disapproves of but who is nonetheless likable or attractive” (Oxford English Dictionary (OED)), and the “lovable rogue,” the “bad boy” charmer of fiction and Hollywood movies, from Tom Jones to Clark Gable to George Clooney, was born. Most other uses of the term “rogue,” however, have been in the sense of either “renegade” in a negative sense (“rogue nation,” “rogue cop,” et al., even “rogue lawyer”) or “without control or discipline; behaving abnormally or dangerously; erratic, unpredictable” (OED) (“A housewife’s game of patience came to an abrupt end when a 20-ton ‘rogue’ mechanical shovel begun crunching its way through the walls of her semi-detached home,” 1979).

It has been suggested that “rogue” is rooted in the Middle French “rogue,” meaning “haughty or arrogant,” but that doesn’t strike most authorities as likely, in part because that meaning is nearly the opposite of “rogue’s” initial meaning in English of “vagabond; vagrant.” More likely is the theory that our “rogue” comes from the obsolete English thieves’ slang “roger” (pronounced with a hard “g”), which, with weird specificity, meant “An itinerant beggar pretending to be a poor scholar from Oxford or Cambridge” (OED). This “roger,” in turn, seems to have been ultimately rooted in the Latin “rogare,” meaning “to ask.”

The Oxford English Dictionary, I should note, finds this “rogare” theory unlikely, and suggests “roger” may simply come from the name of a person, and thus have no connection to “rogue.” But if “roger” from a person’s name meant “beggar,” which the OED says it did, it could still have changed form and become “rogue.”

Incidentally, although many people assume that unruly elephants are the source of “rogue,” the term “rogue elephant” didn’t appear until the 19th century. “Rogue elephant” has also been used in a figurative sense since the 1920s to mean “a person or agency whose activities are antisocial and destructive” (OED) (“Only the rogue elephants among the public utility monopolies have occasionally run amuck,” 1981).

Welcome to iHell. Here’s your iHarp.

Dear Word Detective: In my mother’s family there is a phrase that I haven’t encountered elsewhere and I’m wondering about the origin. The phrase it “to give [someone] flack (flak?)” and means, depending on the context, either “to berate” (as in “my boss gave me flack for coming in late yesterday”) or “to complain at” (“stay up late if you want to but you better not give me any flack about being tired in the morning.”). It also has the connotation that the complaint, whatever it is, is trivial and thus the person giving flack is actually harping on the victim for no reason. Oh, and hey! Why do we use the verb “to harp” to mean berate and annoy? A two-fer. Any ideas? — Gwyn.

And they say families don’t communicate these days, that each member spends all day swaddled in the solipsistic glow of their digital doodads, texting “friends” they’ve never met and agonizing over their Facebook updates. “Fie!” say I to the media mob spreading this canard, this spurious trend du jour. Families are alive, well, and driving each other nuts with constant harping and flocks of flack, just as they always have. In fact, the profusion of iPads, iPhones and other iRubbish has, no doubt, exponentially increased the occasions for face-to-face familial conflict. After all, television, the previous locus of much household discord, never hit you with overage charges or introduced your kid to aging sickos pretending to be Justin Bieber’s cousin. So rave on, Ward and June.

I actually answered a query about “flack” back in 2008, but it’s worth revisiting, since we’re coming up on an election year and the political “flacks” will be out in force. “Flack” and “flak” are actually two different words, but things get a bit confusing because they tend to be used interchangeably in some contexts. “Flak” dates back to World War II, when German anti-aircraft guns (“Fliegerabwehrkanone,” literally “pilot defense guns”) were known to Allied pilots by their rough acronym “flak,” which soon became shorthand for antiaircraft fire itself. If you’ve ever seen film of Allied bombers dodging small black clouds over Europe, those clouds are flak bursts. By the late 1960s, “flak” had come to mean “adverse criticism” or “verbal abuse,” and was often spelled “flack.” In his 1970 book “Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers,” author Tom Wolfe coined the term “flak-catcher” for a public-relations aide whose job is to intercept and deflect criticism (“flak”) directed at a prominent person.

That brought the meaning of “flak” confusingly close to that of “flack,” meaning a public relations agent, which had first appeared in print in 1937. This “flack” was apparently coined by Variety, the show business newspaper, in tribute to Gene Flack, a well-known PR agent for movie stars. So “flak” means “criticism or complaining” and is sometimes spelled “flack,” and the other “flack” is a public relations person whose job consists of protecting a big shot from “flak.” And a “flak-catcher” is a flack who catches flak. Simple, yes?

A “harp” is, of course, a rather large stringed musical instrument that produces a sound thought by many to be lovely and ethereal. (Your mileage may vary. Mine certainly does. In several ancient languages, the root of “harp” was also used to mean “an instrument of torture.” Just sayin’.) The verb “to harp” appeared in Old English meaning “to play on a harp,” but by the 16th century the expression “to harp upon the same string” had come to mean “to repetitively and tediously speak about one subject” (“They are sure still harping on their old string,” 1568). This led to “harp” being used today as a verb meaning “to complain repetitively on one subject at tedious length.”

With cheese!

Dear Word Detective:  Where does the word “splurge” come from? I’m thinking “urge” plus “spending,” maybe, though that doesn’t account for the “l.” Sources say it’s a blend of “splash” and “surge,” but that doesn’t make sense to me. — George Klosowski.

Oh, “sources” say that, do they? By golly, you’re right, they do. I looked up “splurge” in several dictionaries, and every one of them suggested a blend of “splash” and “surge,” though most of them preface that with “perhaps.” It’s spooky. Elsewhere in the news (and this is relevant, honest), I read an article the other day that said that residential electric power consumption in the US is leveling off and expected to begin falling soon. That’s pretty odd, considering the multitude of electronic gizmos we have plugged into every outlet these days. Industry “sources” say the drop in consumption is because people have installed more home insulation and have switched over to those godawful compact fluorescent and LED bulbs. Yeah, right. My “sources” (eyes, ears, brain) say it’s because it’s become the standard in many American homes to “splurge” not by going to a fancy restaurant or buying a new car, but by turning on all three lights in the living room. Hey, I didn’t know we still had a dog. Land of the free, home of the 40-watt bulb.

Today we use “splurge” to mean “to spend money extravagantly,” often impulsively. The implication of “splurge” (as opposed to simply “buy”) is that the “splurger” does not ordinarily make such pricey purchases (“If you really get into omelettes, you should splurge and procure a good copper or stainless steel omelette pan,” High Times, 1975). What constitutes “splurging” is, of course, relative to one’s wealth. A hedge fund manager buying a second Lamborghini because the first one got dusty isn’t really “splurging.”

Interestingly, when “splurge” first appeared in English in the mid-19th century, it didn’t necessarily involve buying anything at all. To “splurge” was “to make an ostentatious, showy display; to show off” (“Cousin Pete was thar splurgin about in the biggest, with his dandy-cut trowsers and big whiskers,” circa 1848). “Splurging” in this sense was flaunting one’s finery, parading one’s fashionable taste, “making a splash,” “cutting a flash” or, in the wonderful 16th century phrase, “peacockizing” (behaving like a male peacock strutting about displaying its feathers). Though such ostentatious displays are far from rare today, we don’t usually describe the practice as “splurging.”

That “show-off” sense of “splurge” seems to have faded in popular usage by the time “splurge” came into use in its modern “spend way too much” sense in the 1930s (“When I got around to furnishing my office, I thought I’d splurge on a good 18th Century English armchair,” 1947). As to the origin of “splurge,” it’s possible, as many dictionaries say, that it was simply a blend of “splash” and “surge.” Your theory about “spend” and “urge” seems reasonable, but the fact that the first sense of “splurge” to appear didn’t involve actually purchasing anything does put a big dent in “spend” as an element in the mix.

The same problem, it seems to me, arises when “surge” is proposed as a component of “splurge.” You might say that the later “spend lots of money” sense of “splurge” involves a “surge of desire” for expensive things, but it’s hard to see where the “surge” is when you simply show up at a royal wedding in a silly hat. The “splash” part of that theory, however, does seem plausible, as a “splurger” in the first sense is definitely trying to “make a splash,” i.e., get noticed.

The Oxford English Dictionary prudently, if a bit mysteriously, offers an etymology of “imitative” for “splurge,” meaning that the word developed because its sound seemed evocative of the action of “splurging” in the original sense, i.e., showing off, ostentatiously presenting oneself to onlookers. I think that’s the most reasonable guess, but I’d be surprised if “splash” didn’t also contribute to the birth of “splurge.”