Semper Ubi Sub Ubi

readme:

May, we hardly knew ye….  Seriously.  I guess we’ll just call this the Late May Issue, eh, kids?  I’d call it the June Issue, but there are people out there paying by the month to read this on Kindles and Nooks and iPhones and iPads and iLord-knows-what other satanic devices, and I don’t want to upset Steve Jobs, ’cause he’s already nuts enough.  Anyway, there will also be a June issue sometime before July. Honest.

There is, however, a case to be made for not updating this site at all, ever. I have come to the reluctant conclusion that it is, in fact, my frantic attempt to stick to something resembling a monthly schedule that has actually caused a recent series of disasters around here. It started a few years ago when I took a break from formatting this site to go downstairs and install a window air conditioner and was promptly struck by lightning. Then, just a few weeks ago, I was sitting on the couch in my office, again working on this site, when a sudden windstorm knocked half a large tree into the side of the house, missing the window behind me by about six inches. In late May I took a break from finalizing this issue to mow the lawn, and the mowing deck on the tractor went kafloozie, necessitating my spending several days on my face in the driveway trying to fix the damn thing, which isn’t fun when you have only limited use of your left arm and you really need said left arm to pull an idler pulley against a big spring so you can get the goddamn drive belt back on the deck. I ended up wrapping a steel cable around the pulley and getting Kathy to stand ten feet away and pull on it real hard. That was a separate ordeal, incidentally, from the day I spent unwinding the steel cable from the blades last month. Then the guy from DirecTV showed up to replace the satellite dish and turned out to be a major jerk who glared at us silently while he bent our brand-new gutters. Then the basement flooded and I had to stay up all night pumping it out through a garden hose. Then the well pump died on a Friday afternoon, and by the time we got it replaced we were (a) very thirsty and (b) in the hole for $1100 just to get back to where we’d been 36 hours earlier. And that appears to be the theme around here: even the most modest status quo cannot hold. If we could box and market high-speed entropy, we’d be rich, but we can’t and thus aren’t, so please subscribe.

In moments of reflection, which I do my best to avoid, Kathy and I often pine for our old fourth-floor walk-up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, an insanely cheap (at that time) duplex with a terrace, half a block from Central Park. She came up with a good, if very depressing, analogy a few days ago. Living in this 1860s house with all this land is like being responsible for the physical state (wiring, plumbing, roof, etc.) of our entire old apartment building plus being charged with the grooming of a sizable chunk of Central Park, trees and shrubs included. It’s nuts. No one without pots of money and a full-time lawn crew could manage it properly.

But hey, we now have a bunch of deer living in the big thicket of brush down by the road. I sit out on the front porch in the morning and wave at them. And I know where the chipmunks’ burrows are and where the snakes live. It’s just like the Upper West Side, except that all the people are wearing fur suits. Or feathers.  Or scales.

Lastly, thanks as always, for your financial support of this site, and a special my-jaw-dropped thanks to whoever sent me the nifty Acer netbook.  It is truly awesome and very useful.  In fact, I plan to use it to update this site next time, from a coffee shop safely miles away from here at Disaster Central.

p.s. — It came with Windows XP installed, but I set it up to dual boot with Ubuntu Linux Netbook Edition, and it’s truly a thing of beauty.

And now, on with the show….

Tee many martoonies.

Dear Word Detective:  Whenever I drink alcohol, which has become all too often as of late, my nose always becomes “stopped up” for lack of a better term.  One night I told my husband that I know where the term “snoot full” came from because my nose was congested (I found a better term after all).  I was just joking at the time but then began to ponder where the term actually did originate.  Can you help? — Sally.

I’ll sure try.  But I’m operating at a disability, I realized when I read your question, because I’ve done it again.  First I forgot to get into sports, then I forgot to watch TV to the extent I’m supposed to (129 hours a week, I gather), and now I realize that somewhere along the way I forgot to take up drinking.  It sounds like fun.  So, if you’ll bear with me, I’m going to pop out to the truckstop and pick up some joy juice.

I’m back.  Hey, this “gin” stuff ain’t bad.  But is the room supposed to tilt like this?  My feet feel funny.  Why is the cat looking at me that way?  You got a problem, cat?

Just kidding, of course.  I have something better than booze, namely a brand new book by the always entertaining and awesomely erudite Paul Dickson.  In “Drunk: The Definitive Drinker’s Dictionary” (Melville House, 2009), Mr. Dickson notes that English has more synonyms for “drunk” than for any other word, and then proceeds to list more than 3,000 of them, complete with fascinating annotations and admirably strange little illustrations.  It’s impossible to pick a favorite from such a range, but “full of loud mouth soup” strikes me as true genius.  I’m also glad to see that Mr. Dickson includes “tired and emotional,” a euphemism invented by Spy magazine to describe, within the bounds of Britain’s strict libel laws, politicians discovered in a state of public intoxication.  Mr. Dickson notes that the US media similarly employs the terms “outgoing” for a happy drunk and “ruddy-faced” for a completely marinated public figure.  Now we know, eh kids?

“Snoot full” is here as well, while the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) prefers the spelling “snootful.”  The term “snoot,” meaning the human nose, is actually just a very old dialectical variation of the word “snout,” which comes from the same Germanic root that gave us “snot.”  Interestingly, the first recorded written use of “snout’ in English, from around 1220, uses the term  to refer to the trunk of an elephant.

The earliest citation for “snootful” in print in the OED is surprisingly recent, from 1918, but the term is almost certainly several centuries older than that.  There doesn’t seem to be any connection between “snootful” or “snoot full” and nasal congestion.  “Having a snoot full” is simply one of a number of terms for “drunk” that conjure up an image of the drinker’s body as being literally either partially or completely filled with alcohol (“had a skinful,” “drunk to the gills,” “full to the brim,” etc.).  The popularity of “snootful” may also be due to the fact that consumption of alcohol, in some people, can cause a reddening of the face, especially the nose, thus making the “snoot” a highly visible barometer of inebriation.

Get that thing away from me.

Dear Word Detective:  My wife and I were having a discussion during which we both used the word “untoward” to describe unwanted or disagreeable results of some action. It occurred to me that this is a very odd word.  Does it have anything to do with the common “toward” as in an “untoward” result being something that I move away from (un-toward) because it is undesirable?  That sort of makes sense, but seems kind of goofy for an etymology. Is that really how the word came to be?  Some on-line references give “untowardly” and “untowardness” as related words, neither of which I’ve ever heard, and both of which sound even goofier than their parent. — Rich.

By gumbo, you’re right.  “Untoward” is a very odd word.  And the longer I look at it, the odder it gets.  Of course, reading or speaking any word over and over again can make the  word seem odd and meaningless.  There’s actually a term for this phenomenon: “semantic satiation.”  You can try it yourself by simply picking a word, even “dog” or “cat,” and repeating it aloud.  After thirty seconds or so, the word will seem completely disconnected from Fido or Fluffy.  Psychologists used to assume this effect was due to simple cognitive fatigue, but neuroscientists have discovered that hearing or saying a word causes specific neural pathways in the brain to activate, and repetition actually provokes a desensitizing “inhibition” effect on these neural reactions (much as your third slice of pie never tastes as good as the first, I suppose).

In any case, “untoward” may be an odd little word, but it’s also a very interesting one.  The first element of “untoward” is, of course, our helpful little friend the prefix “un,” meaning “none” or “not.”  The meat of “untoward” is the word “toward,” which has its own story.    We inherited “toward” from the Old English “toweard,” which was a combination of “to” and “weard,” which came from a prehistoric Germanic root meaning “to turn,” and which we know today as a suffix used to mean “in the direction of,” as in “homeward” and “backward.”

We usually use “toward” as a preposition, describing position (“He kept his back toward me”), actual motion (“We drove toward home”), or figurative progress (“I have twelve dollars toward the mortgage payment”).  As an adjective, however, “toward” has a number of now rarely-used meanings, among them, describing people, “willing to learn” and “compliant” (“Miss hath hitherto been very tractable and toward,” 1713) and, of things, “favorable” and “propitious.”  The general sense of this “toward” is “making progress, moving forward toward a goal.”

It was these rosy adverbial senses of “toward” that “untoward” popped up to counter in the 16th century.  Its original meaning was “not showing an inclination or aptitude for something” (“The Captains were yet not skilled in managing their Men, and the Men were untoward to be commanded,” 1665).  “Untoward” was also used to mean “difficult to manage, unruly and perverse,” as well as “awkward,” “unlucky” and “ungraceful.”  Eventually, all these senses also produced “untoward” meaning “unseemly or improper” (“They came to a very wicked man’s house, where they had very untoward entertainment,” 1658).  Today we use “untoward” to mean “unruly,” “unlucky,” “not favorable” and “improper.”  The forms “untowardly” (unbecoming or improper) and “untowardness” or “untowardliness” (the quality of being “untoward” in its various senses) are rarely seen today but not much weirder than “untoward” itself.

Incidentally, “toward” is the more popular form in the US, while in Britain you’re more likely to encounter “towards.”  There is no semantic difference between the forms, and both are equally proper.  “Untoward,” however, has no “s” form.

Gloom and doom r us.

Dear Word Detective:  My friends and I were wondering, morbid as it may be, where  the word “pallbearer” came from.  I remember being eight at my first funeral and thinking they’d misspelled the word “pole,” though I’m sure this is not correct.  My friends have never seen the Word Detective at work before, so don’t fail me — I know you can do it! — Sarah.

Thanks for the vote of confidence.  But you do realize that I, uh, get to pick the questions I answer, right?  Shocking, I know.  But the alternative is far worse.  Back when I was young and masochistic, I used to occasionally appear on radio call-in shows where the host would invite listeners to ask about any word that wandered into their addled little heads.  There are approximately 600,000 words in English, and that’s not even counting phrases and idioms.  Guess how many origins of those words and phrases I happen to know off the top of my own addled little head, especially while I’m talking to a drive-time shock-jock in Des Moines at 7 am.  Right.  Welcome to Mortification City.

Speaking of mortification, that is a pretty morbid question you’ve come up with, but an interesting one as well.  The “pallbearers” at a funeral, of course, are the people, often friends and family of the deceased, who carry the casket (or, in some cases, just walk alongside it).  One might assume that the “pall” in “pallbearer” is some archaic word for “casket,” or, as you noted, perhaps a form of “pole.”  But “pallbearer,” which first appeared in print in 1707, is actually just one of the uses to which the very interesting word “pall” has been put.

The root of “pall” is the Latin word “pallium,” which means “cloak,” and in Ancient Greece and Rome “pallium” referred to a fairly simple garment, more humble than the Roman toga, for instance.  When “pall” first appeared in Old English, however, it was used to mean fine fabric or a robe or cloak made from fine fabric, often the sort of robe a monarch or high religious official would wear.  In such cases the “pall” was frequently made of purple velvet.

During the same period, “pall” was also used to mean a piece of fine cloth used as a covering or ornament, especially a covering for the altar in a Christian church.  By about 1400, “pall” was being used to mean the cloth, again often purple velvet, placed over a casket at a funeral.  During a funeral procession at that time, it was customary for one group of people (the “casket-bearers”) to carry the coffin itself, and another group, the “pallbearers,” to hold the pall over the coffin.  The tradition of having separate “pallbearers” eventually largely faded away, and the term was thereafter applied to the group actually carrying the coffin, or, in cases where the coffin rides on a carriage or cart, to whoever accompanies the coffin in the procession.

“Pall” had also been used in the 15th century in a neutral figurative sense to mean something that covers or conceals as a cloak or drape would.  But the use of “pall” to mean “coffin covering” led to the metaphorical use of “pall” to mean “an atmosphere of gloom,” a sense we use today when we say that something “casts a pall” (“Bob’s arrest for aggravated mopery cast a pall over his election as Senator”).

Incidentally, while we’re on the subject of cloth, “pall” has another interesting relative — “tarpaulin.”  The humble “tarp” we know today as a heavy plastic sheet used to protect damaged roofs, etc., was originally made from heavy cloth impregnated with tar to make it waterproof.  The “paul” in “tarpaulin” is simply a variant of “pall.”

You’d be amazed, by the way, how much more productive you become simply by removing the batteries from the remote control.

Dear Word Detective:  With the latest Sarah Palin book, the term “barnstorming” has come up in the media more than once.  It got me to thinking about the phrase, which, when you stop to think about it, doesn’t make much sense.  I believe the phrase refers to stunt piloting in the early age of aviation — but why?  And even if it had something to do with flying through, over, under or around barns, how is it “storming”?  I know there’s some military terminology about “storming the walls” and the like, but it would make more sense if it were “swarming the walls.”  At least as I understand the phrase.  Did the “storming” part of these phrases evolve from “swarming.”  Or is it something else?  Could you make some sense of this? — Barney Johnson.

Sarah who?  Y’know, your question reminded me of how much saner I’ve felt ever since I completely stopped watching TV news last year, a move I heartily recommend.  I actually felt a little shiver of glee the other day when I realized that I’ve never heard Levi Johnson’s Johnston’s voice.  Seriously, the guy may sound like Elmer Fudd and I’d never know it.  I figure that one bit of blessed ignorance alone has saved me four or five million brain cells.

“Barnstorming” is indeed a strange word, one of those words that we see or hear so frequently that we rarely realize just how weird they really are.  A word such as “barnstorm” is especially vexing because the constituent parts are simple words in their own right, yet the combination doesn’t really make sense.  Who would want to “storm” a barn (aside from the Bovine Liberation Front, of course)?

An examination of the history of “barnstorming” clears things up a bit, at least as to the “barn” part.  The term “barnstorming” first appeared in the early 19th century, applied to theatrical troupes that toured in rural areas, often mounting their shows in, you guessed it, rented barns.  Such tours were commonly conducted in the summer, and often featured actors who would be engaged in established urban theaters during the rest of the year (“Miss Helen Bancroft, who recently played in this city, was announced as with a barn-storming company,” 1883).

The “storm” in “barnstorming” is a bit more difficult to untangle.  “Storm” as a verb means, logically, to act like a storm, either literally (rain, wind, etc.) or figuratively (to rage, rail, menace or attack).  This figurative use led to the military sense of “to storm” meaning “to attack and attempt to take a fortified position,” as well as more generally meaning “to capture or take over” (“A hundred swords Will storm his heart, Love’s feverous citadel,” Keats, 1820).  The use of “storm” in “barnstorm” is apparently a playful, slightly sardonic use of the term, referring to the need of the troupe to “conquer” one barn full of bumpkins after another in the course of their tour.  (By the way, my ownership of a tractor entitles me to use the word “bumpkin.”)

“Barnstorm” was so evocative of a rapid march through the boondocks that the term was quickly adopted to describe the tours mounted by politicians campaigning in the sticks in the late 1880s, who often held town meetings in those same barns.  The use of “barnstorming” in reference to traveling air shows dates to the 1920s, but the practice had absolutely nothing to do with barns.  Pilots flew from town to town, performing acrobatic maneuvers for paying audiences, and then flying on to another town, often later that same day.  It was this incessant “puddle-jumping” routine that, by analogy to those peripatetic acting troupes, gave these pilots the name “barnstormers.”

Pavarottis of the sea, in fact.

Dear Word Detective:  I’m just wondering where and when we began to use the word “whale” as a term to mean “to beat someone in rapid fashion” (e.g., “Tommy was whaling on Mike’s face”). — Donnie.

Met many whales?  Didn’t think so.  Vicious, savage creatures, those whales.  Look what they did to that nice Ahab fella.  That’s why I’d never be a missionary.  Call me Ishmael?  Fish-meal’s more like it.  Yeah, I know they’re not really fish, supposedly.  You know what else aren’t really fish?  Canada geese.  But they’re making a heck of a mess on my lawn, strutting around like they own the place, honking in some foreign language.  Canadian, I guess.  Won’t even let me get to the mailbox, and I’m expecting an important prize notification.  I may already be a winner!

But probably not.  Whales are, of course, actually very nice creatures with lovely singing voices.  Our modern English word “whale,” the Moby Dick kind, comes from an ancient  Germanic root, “khwal,” which also produced the modern German word for the critter, “walfisch” (meaning literally “whale-fish”).  The question, of course, is whether this not-fish sort of “whale” has any connection to the verb “to whale,” meaning “beat severely.”

“Whale” meaning “to beat, flog or thrash” first appeared in print in 1790, but, since that appearance was in a glossary of English provincial usage, we can assume that the word was in common usage in England long before that.  “Whale” has also, since the mid-19th century, been used figuratively to mean “to do something continuously and vehemently,” often meaning a verbal attack or a rant about something (“You remember that one that come round a spell ago a whalin’ away about human rights,” 1852).

The one possible connection between the literal “beat or flog” kind of “whale” and the “Thar she blows” leviathan is no reflection on the whale’s noble character.  It is possible that “whale” in the “beat” sense originally meant “to flog with a whalebone whip.”  The “whalebone” in such whips was actually what we now call “baleen,” flexible cartilage from the mouths of certain whale species.

More likely, however, is that “whale” in the “beat up” sense is a form of “wale,” a very old verb rarely seen today.  In Old English, the noun form of “wale” meant “ridge of earth or stone,” but by the 12th century it was also being used to mean “the marks or ridges on the skin left by a lash or rod.”  By the 15th century, the verb “to wale” meant to whip someone hard enough to cause welts or wounds (“O my blessed Saviour, was it not enough that thy sacred body was stripped of thy garments, and waled with bloudy stripes?” Bishop Joseph Hall, 1634).  This meaning of “wale” is so close to the current meaning of “whale” that a connection is almost certain.

The same “wale” as a noun, by the way, is still around in its original meaning of “ridge,” and is commonly used when we speak of “wide-wale corduroy” and the like.  But none of these “wales” have any connection to the country of Wales.  “Wales” was the Anglo-Saxon name for the country, in Old English “Wealas,” which meant “land of the foreigners.”  The Welsh people themselves know their land as Cymru.

How does he make his voice do that?

Dear Word Detective:  What is the root and meaning of the word “ventriloquist”? — Joe Parsons.

That’s a good question, but in the course of researching it, I began to wonder how many of our younger readers have actually ever seen a ventriloquist.  In the 1950s and 60s, of course, they seemed to be everywhere.  Ventriloquists were a staple of the Ed Sullivan TV show, ranging from Edgar Bergen and Charley McCarthy, to Paul Winchell with his wooden pal Jerry Mahoney, to Senor Wences, whose sidekick Johnny consisted of a face drawn on the side of Wences’ hand.  My absolute favorite was Shari Lewis and the immortal Lamb Chop, a sheep hand puppet sporting abnormally long eyelashes.  I actually own a replica of Lamb Chop that I drag out of the closet every so often to annoy the cats.  I also have a duplicate of the rubber dog hand puppet that appears on Conan O’Brien’s show as Triumph the Insult Dog.  My dog puppet actually predates Conan’s show, though I’m not sure I should brag about that.

Meanwhile, for the benefit of our benighted readers who have never seen a “ventriloquist,” the word means a performer who, usually working with a wooden dummy or puppet, appears to make the character talk by speaking without moving his or her lips.  A good ventriloquist can not only pull off this basic parlor trick, but create such a complete character in the “dummy” that the dialog between the two seems entirely natural.

Although “ventriloquy” (or “ventriloquism,” the words are interchangeable) is today a form of humorous entertainment, the origins of the term lie in a practice that was deadly serious and more than just a little creepy.  The word “ventriloquism” comes from the Latin “ventriloquus,” meaning “speaking from the belly” (“venter,” belly, plus “loqui,” speak).  So far, so good.  “Speaking from the belly” is a plausible metaphor for ventriloquism.

But “ventriloquus” was no metaphor.  It was believed by the Ancient Greeks (who called the phenomenon “eggastrimuthos”) and Romans that noises emanating from a person’s belly could be the voices of the spirits of the dead or, in the worst-case scenario, a sign of demonic possession.  A “ventriloquist” (later called a “gastromancer”) was a seer or psychic who interpreted the sounds coming from the person’s abdomen and, depending on the supposed  source, passed along predictions of the future, messages from great-grandma, or bad news about the spiritual future of the patient.

Ventriloquism and gastromancy as a means of divination persisted through the Middle Ages and even up to the 18th century in Europe and America.  Eventually, however, as the public ardor for spiritualism flowered into the age of stage magic, the term “ventriloquism” came to be used for the trick of “throwing one’s voice” in front of an audience.   By the late 19th century, “ventriloquy” was a standard act in the repertoire of vaudeville, and the wooden ventriloquist’s dummy had become an icon of popular culture.  Interestingly, however, ventriloquy has never been able to completely shed its overtones of creepiness, as the number of horror movies involving a ventriloquist’s dummy which moves around quite well on its own attests.

“Evil ferret king,” however, is quite believable.

Dear Word Detective: When I was a young sprog, I was a great fan of Brian Jacques’ Redwall novels, and some of the characters frequently used the word “fizzer,” which seemed to designate some kind of military discipline. I haven’t been able to find a clear definition for it anywhere, nor have I been able to illuminate the mystery of its origin. So, please relieve my mind. What is a “fizzer”? — Elizabeth Lightwood.

Mousies and bunnies and hedgehogs, oh my! To be honest, I had never heard of Brian Jacques until I read your question, but I have since learned that he is a very popular UK children’s author whose stories are set in the English countryside and populated by a wide range of anthropomorphic critters. I’ve always been a sucker for talking hedgehogs, but, judging by the publisher’s summaries (e.g., “Enslaved by the evil ferret King Agarnu of Riftgard, and his cruel daughter, Kurda, the brave squirrelmaid Triss plans a daring escape by sea”), I think I’ll have to pass on these books. I read that passage an hour ago and I’m still trying to get the image of a squirrel in a dress in a rowboat out of my mind.

Before we proceed, I am legally required to explain that “sprog” is British slang for a young child. “Sprog” first appeared as British armed services slang for a new recruit during World War II, and appears to be rooted in the old English dialect word “sprag,” which meant both “a lively young fellow” and “a young salmon.” Unfortunately, no one knows the origins of “sprag.”

“Fizzer” in its most basic sense means “something that fizzes,” the word “fizz” being an “echoic” word meant to duplicate the sound of something hissing and sputtering. As slang, “fizz” most often figuratively invokes either effervescing (“sparkling”) drinks such as champagne or firecrackers that fail to explode (and only “fizz”). The “effervescent” or “sparkling” sense of “fizz” produced “fizzer” as slang for “anything excellent or first-rate” in the mid 19th century (“If the mare was such a fizzer why did you sell her?” 1866), as well as “fizzer” as a term for a fast ball in the game of cricket.

The use of “fizzer” as British military slang meaning “roster of men to be disciplined” is a small mystery. The great British etymologist of slang Eric Partridge suggested that it may have come from the earlier use of “fizzer” to mean “military parade ground,” a usage which may have referred to the need for troops to practice their marching drills until they were perfect and “fizzed.” You’ll notice that there are two “mays” in that sentence, but it seems plausible to me.

Whatever the logic of terming a parade ground a “fizzer,” the use of the word to mean “punishment list” is clear. One of the most common methods of disciplining soldiers is to force them to practice marching drills for hours on end. So to be “put on the fizzer” meant that you were in trouble and probably in for a hard time (“I got back after … twelve, and they shoved me on the fizzer!” T.E. Lawrence, 1935).

According to Partridge, the phrase “on the fizzer” eventually percolated out of the armed services and was used in civilian life to mean “in trouble with the boss,” but it doesn’t seem to be very common.

Fruit of the Look?

Dear Word Detective: What does “the apple of my eye” mean?– Beth.

This is an interesting question for two reasons.  I’ve received it many times before, and I first answered it several years ago, but the story of “apple of my eye” is definitely worth repeating.  But now I’m wondering where people are hearing this phrase.  Although it’s a staple of word origin books, I can’t recall seeing or hearing “apple of my eye” used “in the wild” (outside of historical fiction and old movies) by an actual human since, well, forever.  I suspect that it’s one of those phrases that have survived purely because of their weirdness, like “the bee’s knees” and “the cat’s pajamas,” rather than because people actually use them in everyday speech.  On the other hand, there are more than nine million Google hits for forms of the phrase, so I guess it’s not in real danger of extinction.

To be “the apple of someone’s eye” means to be their “favorite,” the cherished object of their affections, and to be regarded as especially precious and dear to them (“He can’t live without you. You’re the Apple of his Eye, the Joy of his Heart, the Lamp of his Life,” 1693).  The phrase can be applied to anything, even inanimate objects (“He parked his 1932 Mercedes-Benz (he called it the apple of his eye) outside A Block,” 1987), but it’s probably most frequently used in reference to a favorite child or an unrelated but fondly regarded younger person (“Poor Richard was to me as an eldest son, the apple of my eye,” Sir Walter Scott, 1816).

As English idioms go, “apple of one’s eye” is about as old as they get.  It first appeared in print in the writings of King Aelfred way back in the ninth century, and crops up, in the modern sense of “cherished favorite,” in both the King James Bible (numerous times) and Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

But before “apple of one’s eye” was used to mean “favorite,” it was used literally, as an anatomical term.  The “apple of the eye” was the pupil, the aperture at the center of the human eye.  At the time the phrase came into use, the pupil was erroneously thought to be a solid, round object, and it was called the “apple” because apples were the most commonly encountered spherical objects.

Because sight has always been considered the most important of our senses, and the center of the eye is thus arguably the most valuable bit of our anatomies, “the apple of one’s eye” quickly came to be used as a metaphor for “that thing which is most precious.”

Elsewhere in the wonderful world of ocular imagery, it’s worth noting that the word “pupil” for the aperture in the eye comes from the Latin “pupilla,” meaning “little doll,” referring to the tiny reflection one sees of oneself when looking into another person’s eyes.  The same root, in the broader sense of “child,” gave us “pupil” meaning “student in school.”  And when we say that we’d “give our eyeteeth” for something we desperately desire, we’re referring to our upper canine teeth, located directly under our eyes.  Not only are these teeth immensely useful in eating, but damage to them can cause severe pain in one’s eyes.

Lather, rinse, revulsion.

Dear Word Detective:  My sister recently recommended to me a product that has to be in the running for the worst product name of all time — “No-Poo,” a chemical-free shampoo.  Contemplating the name got me to thinking about the origin of the word “shampoo.”  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word comes from the Hindi for “to press,” but that hardly explains how such an odd-sounding word came to be used for such an everyday item.  Can you please elucidate? — Jackie.

Well, there you go.  Who needs CNN?  All I have to do is read my email and I learn all sorts of things I’d never have otherwise known about.  I just Googled “no-poo” and discovered that there is, evidently, a widespread semi-underground “no poo” movement to eschew shampoo, promoted by people who believe that the chemicals in commercial shampoos are harmful to both your scalp and the planet.  The most popular substitute for shampoo seems to be a concoction made with baking soda and vinegar, and the commercial “No Poo” product your sister endorsed is probably a variant on that mixture.  I’d give no-pooing a shot myself, but I’m a bit put off by this warning from MSNBC:  “In the beginning stages of a no-poo experiment, most people seem to go through a two- to six-week period when their hair looks like, well, poo.”  After that, presumably, your hair looks great but your friends are hiding from you.  Maybe I’ll just shave my head.

It is true that the root of our modern “shampoo” is the Hindi word “campo” (or “champo”) which is the imperative form of the verb “campna” (or “champna”), meaning “to press.”  As far as we know, the word “shampoo” first appeared in print in English in 1762, and the tone of that first use is interesting: “Had I not seen several China merchants shampooed before me, I should have been apprehensive of danger.”  The reason the writer was somewhat anxious is that the original “shampoo” involved much more than the hair.  It was a full-body deep massage, apparently involving quite forceful rubbing and kneading of the limbs and torso (thus the relevance of “to press”), administered as part of the standard Turkish bath routine.  Only at the end of the process was the shampoo-ee’s hair washed.

The word “shampoo” was brought back to England in accounts of British colonial life in India, but the custom of beginning one’s day with a full “shampoo” was understandably a non-starter in Britain.  So by the early 19th century “shampoo” had been narrowed to its current modern senses of simply “the act of washing the hair with a cleaning agent” or “the soap, etc., used to clean one’s hair.”

Interestingly, there was an earlier (but now obsolete) term in English, a bit closer transliteration of the original Hindi “champo,” which was “champing,” meaning the whole full-body “shampoo.”  The earliest use of this term found so far in print, from 1698, mentions a mechanical massage apparatus noted by Western travelers in China: “A kind of Instrument, called, in China, a Champing Instrument.  Its use is to be [rubbed] or [rolled] over the Muscular Flesh.”  The term “champing” may be gone, but I believe the same sort of gizmo can still be seen today in late-night TV infomercials.

Awesome.  Will it work with American Idol?

Dear Word Detective:  I know that “vanish” seems like such a simple word; but somewhere between 1967 (when I was in high school and my dictionary was published) and 1983, this simple intransitive verb became transitive.  It was in 1983 that David Copperfield “vanished” the Statue of Liberty.  That was the first I had ever heard it used transitively, and I am curious when the transitive use first appeared. — Charles Anderson.

Whoa.  1983?  We need to get you a new dictionary.  It’s true that most of the really useful words are in your trusty old friend, and I totally understand loyalty to old books.  I still use the Latin dictionary I was given in high school.  But the great thing about Latin is that they’re not adding many new words to it.  That’s not true in English, where new words and new uses for old words are popping up like worms on the sidewalk after a rainstorm.  Good heavens, man, don’t you want to be able to look up “crowdsource” and “googlebomb”?  “Moofing”?  “Unfriend”?  “Overshare”?  Yeah, me neither.  Wake me when we go back to Latin.

I must have slept through Mr. Copperfield’s “vanishing” of the Statue of Liberty in 1983 (I’m assuming he eventually put it back), as well as whatever usage the transitive “vanish” has enjoyed since, because here in 2009 it strikes me as jarring and strange.  The first thing that popped into my mind when I read your question, in fact, was the use of “the disappeared” to mean the victims kidnapped by the Argentine military junta in the 1970s and never seen again.  The original Spanish term, “los desaparecidos,” translates as “those who have been disappeared,” invoking a similarly unusual transitive use (“to disappear someone”) of a normally intransitive verb.

“Vanish” is an interesting little word, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary in the usual intransitive sense as “To disappear from sight, to become invisible, especially in a rapid and mysterious manner.”  Our English “vanish” is actually an aphetic, or cropped, form of the Old French “esvanir” (meaning “to disappear”), which was derived from the Latin “evanescere,” which also gave us the English word “evanescent” for those things which, like youth and low credit card interest rates, do not last long before vanishing.  Incidentally, within that “evanescere” lies the Latin root “vanus,” which means “empty,” and which also produced “vain” and “vanity.”

“Vanish” first appeared in English as an intransitive verb in the early 14th century, and most of its uses, with or without adverbs (“vanish away” was common usage until the 19th century), have been intransitive.  But Mr. Copperfield and his publicity minions didn’t invent or even pioneer the transitive use of “vanish” to mean “to cause to disappear.”  It turns out to have been puttering along in the background since about 1440 (“Thus are the villains … fled for fear, Like Summers vapors, vanished by the Sun,” Marlowe, 1590), although it’s never been nearly as popular as the intransitive use.  It seems, in fact, to have been used since the 19th century almost exclusively in the field of stage magic (“Then he vanishes a birdcage and its occupant … Finally, he vanishes his wife,” 1886) or in contexts where magic is used as a literary metaphor (“Lenin conjured government by mass-democracy out of sight, ‘vanished’ it as conjurors say … ,” H.G. Wells, 1934).  So Copperfield’s use of the transitive “vanish” was well within the jargon of his craft.

They’re off!

Dear Word Detective:  I’ve heard the phrase “making from scratch” or “starting from scratch” and wonder about its origin.  Can you help? — Barbara Schultz.

Sure, I’d be happy to help.  But are you sure you wouldn’t rather make up your own answer?  Many people, especially on the internet, seem to enjoy inventing their own word origin explanations “from scratch,” using nothing more than a six-pack of beer, a few half-remembered scenes from old pirate movies, and whatever details they happen to recall of a childhood visit to Colonial Williamsburg.

To start or create (especially to cook) something “from scratch” means to make it from the most basic components or ingredients, with no help from kits, mixes, snap-together parts, packets of pre-mixed spices or flavorings, anything that requires “just adding” anything, contains the word “Helper” on the box, or comes in a box itself.  Hard as it may be to believe here in Microwave Nation, there was a time when, if one wanted a cake, one went out to a store and brought home flour, eggs, sugar and a bunch of lesser ingredients and mixed it all together according to instructions in a cookbook.  The result was called, at the time, simply a “cake,” but today it’s often termed a “scratch cake.”  That’s a good example of a “retronym,” by the way, an updated name for something (e.g., “acoustic guitar”) necessitated by the arrival of  a new form of the thing (in this case, the electric guitar).

“Scratch” itself is a very old word, dating back to Middle English.  Interestingly, the verb “to scratch” apparently originated as a combination of two other Middle English words, “scrat” and “crach,” both of which also meant “to scratch.”  The origin of all these words is, alas, uncertain.  Once in use in modern English in the 15th century, “scratch” as a noun progressed from simply meaning “a cut or abrasion on the surface of something” to having a wide range of meanings.

One of the most fertile such uses was “scratch” meaning “the starting line” or “boundary” of an athletic competition, often originally simply a line “scratched” in the dirt.  In boxing, for instance, the “scratch” was the line in the middle of the ring, up to which the boxers stepped at the start of a bout, which produced the idiom “step up to the scratch,” meaning “step forward to tackle a task or responsibility.”

In foot races, the “scratch” was the starting line, and “to start from scratch” meant to run the race with no advantage, no handicap or head start, i.e., “with nothing.”  The literal sense of “from scratch” was in use by 1867, but by the late 19th century “from scratch” was being used in its modern sense of “starting with nothing” (“We’d no fishing tackle of any kind, not even a pin or a bit of string. We had to start from scratch,” George Orwell, 1939).

“Scratch” has many other slang uses, of course.  Unfortunately, “scratch” as slang for “money,” which appeared in the early 20th century, is a complete mystery.  “Scratch” or “Old Scratch” as a term for the Devil has nothing to do with “scratch” in the “cut” sense, but comes from an Old Norse word (“skratte”) meaning “goblin.”