Semper Ubi Sub Ubi

readme:

Just under the line again. It’s spooky, isn’t it? Especially because in real life I’m pathologically early for everything. I used to show up at my job every day at least 1/2 hour before my shift started.

Thanks again to all the folks who have subscribed or contributed over the past few months. It’s been a huge help.

As usual, we seem to have skipped spring again this year and plunged straight into summer, with all its attendant horrors. I hate summer. Hate. We went for a walk down our road one evening about a week ago. (Actually, Kathy walks and I sort of hobble/shuffle along.) Just as we turned around to go back, I saw one of the local honor students driving his daddy’s pickup down the middle of the road at us at an insane speed. So I stepped off the side of the road to play it safe, lost my balance (quelle surprise), and landed face down in a drainage ditch, which happened to lie close to, and directly downhill from, a pig pen (with real pigs). I am never going outside again.

Then again, indoors has its own problems. We don’t watch a lot of TV around here, certainly nowhere near the national average of twelve hours a day or whatever (more like six hours a week, in fact), but I’ve noticed that there seems to be some sort of grand conspiracy afoot to prevent me from even approaching a proper patriotic level of grazing in the Vast Wasteland. No sooner do I start watching a show by myself (i.e., a show Kathy shuns) than said show is cancelled. Abruptly and with no hope of return.

It happened recently with an NBC show called Allegiance, which centered on a young CIA analyst who discovers that his parents are evil Russkie spies. It was, I’ll admit, a howlingly silly show, but it grew on me, right up to when they cancelled it after only five, yes five (of 13), episodes. This being the internet age, they let you watch the remaining episodes of the season online, but it still stings.

Not that this hasn’t happened before; a few years ago I was watching a sci-fi thing called The Event, which was not only very silly but occasionally completely incomprehensible. It finished its first season with a truly shocking cliffhanger. And was then cancelled. Before that there was some weird thing about aliens in a Florida swamp. Cancelled. And some time-travel dinosaur thing I barely remember. Kaput. C’mon, guys, if I can suspend my disbelief to watch your shows, at least wrap up the story line before you kick me to the curb. Right now I’m watching (on NBC — yes, I’m a slow learner) American Odyssey, which I think is kinda a blend of Homeland, Three Days of the Condor, The Bourne Identity and Homer’s Odyssey. It’s OK, but I try not to be too enthusiastic or look directly at the screen so they won’t notice me watching and cancel it.

Speaking of TV, how is it that the simpering soap opera Downton Abbey grinds on for six years, i.e., at least 40 episodes, while the brilliant Wolf Hall is crammed into only six episodes by the BBC? The two books by Hilary Mantel on which it is based (Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies) together top 1000 pages. They could easily have gone with 12 episodes, maybe even two seasons, and had far fewer viewers looking stuff up on Wikipedia trying to follow it. As is, it was like watching a long trailer for a wonderful series that will never be made. But the idiotic Game of Thrones is bulletproof. Oh well, I was halfway through Wolf Hall (the book) when the series started, so I guess I’ll just finish reading the books.

Elsewhere in the Vast Wasteland, I was not a huge David Letterman fan for the last ten years or so (although I will say that the show was far better on NBC), but I was quite sad when he closed up shop. End of an era, blah blah, but true. He really was the last great broadcaster, the end of a line that stretched back to Dave Garroway (whom I, obviously, only vaguely remember). Conan’s too frantic and arch, “the Jimmys” are utter ciphers, and Stephen Colbert seems too tightly wound, a really bad choice to succeed Dave. But I am often wrong, so there’s that.

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And now, on with the show…

Dear Word Detective: When our forefathers arrived in America some of the first buildings they built must have been “pubs,” “taverns,” and “inns.” Then, as they headed out west seeking their fortunes, suddenly they wanted to drink in “saloons.” These days we mostly cannot be bothered with any of those places and drink in “bars.” Is there a difference between all these places, and why the sudden switch to “saloons” and then “bars”? I’m parched now, time for a drink. Cheers! — Pete Ivkovic.

Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place. My complete ignorance of all things alcoholic is unmatched in North America. What can I say? I just never got into drinking. Of course, that didn’t stop me from writing a column for a bartending magazine for several years, so fasten your seatbelts.

I thought the first sentence of your question might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but you’re right. Evidently, the first Europeans to land in North America were deeply into drinking. There was said to be more beer aboard the Mayflower than there was drinking water, even the Puritans loved a good snootful, and, according to the official Colonial Williamsburg website, folks there were hammered pretty much 24/7. Who knew?

“Tavern” is one of the older of the terms you cited, and first appeared in English in the 13th century meaning “a place where wine is sold to the public.” English had borrowed “tavern” from the Old French “taverne,” which in turn was derived from the Latin “taberna,” meaning “a shed constructed of boards, a hut, workshop.” That “taberna,” by the way, eventually also gave us the English word “tabernacle,” which is a definite step up from “hut.” Today “tavern” is exclusively used to mean “drinking establishment,” and, at least in the US, “tavern” has a somewhat more refined connotation than “bar.”

“Bar,” perhaps the most basic term for such places, dates to the late 16th century and comes from the barrier or counter over which drinks are served. This is the same “bar” as in common use meaning “long rod or barrier” and comes from the Latin “barra,” meaning “barrier.” A similar railing or bar separates lawyers, et al., from the public in courtrooms, and aspiring lawyers must pass a “bar exam” to join their ilk.

“Inn” comes from the Old English “inn,” probably related to our preposition “in,” and originally meant simply “house.” By the 14th century, “inn” meant “lodging house,” usually offering drinks as well. Today many places with “Inn” in their names are merely bars putting on airs.

“Pub” is simply short for “public house” (dating to the early 17th century), an establishment that is licensed to sell alcohol to be consumed on the premises by the public (as opposed to private clubs, etc.). In the US, “pubs” ordinarily also serve food.

“Saloon” (early 18th century) is an Anglicized form of the French “salon,” originally meaning a large reception room or hall, often in a hotel. That “big room” meaning has been carried over into “saloon” used to denote private railroad cars, large automobiles, or deluxe cabins  on ocean liners. “Saloon” meaning “place for drinking” dates to the mid-19th century. “Saloon” does imply a larger establishment than a simple “bar,” but the words are otherwise interchangeable.

As to why “tavern” and “inn” sound cozy to us, but “bar” seems seedy and “saloon” reeks of cowboys and breaking chairs, we can probably thank Hollywood. All these terms are essentially synonymous.

Dear Word Detective: I have noticed, while listening to TV, that almost everybody now uses “replicate” instead of “duplicate” no matter what they are replicating or duplicating. I always tended, perhaps incorrectly, to use “replicate” when one was talking about a physical structure like, say, a boat model. But I used “duplicate” when I duplicated a paper (on a duplicating machine perhaps!). Are these synonyms and interchangeable or is there a real difference between them? — John Sellars.

Well, “replicate” is cooler, y’know. Reminds folks of “replicants,” the artificial humans in the 1980 film Blade Runner, which was the first known use of the term in that sense. (The Philip K. Dick book on which the movie is based, “Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?”, used the more familiar sci-fi term “android”). Back in the 17th century, however, “replicant” meant simply “new applicant.”

“Duplicate” and “replicate” are considered synonyms, but they do have slightly different meaning in some uses.

“Duplicate” first appeared in English in the 16th century as an adjective meaning “double” or “of two corresponding parts,” as well as a noun meaning “exact copy,” and then as a verb (in the early 17th century) meaning “to double, to multiply by two” or “to create an exact copy” of something. The root of “duplicate” is the Latin “duplicatus,” past participle of the verb “duplicare,” combining “duo” (two) and “plicare” (“to fold or turn back,” also the source of our English “ply”).

“Replicate,” which can, like “duplicate,” be a noun, a verb and an adjective, arose a century or so earlier from roots parallel to those of “duplicate.” In this case it the root was the Latin “replicare,” meaning “to repeat” (“re,” meaning “again,” plus our friend “plicare,” to fold or turn over). In Latin, “replicare” meant to fold, bend back, unroll or, metaphorically, to “turn something over in one’s mind, to consider”). In post-Classical Latin it meant “to repeat; do again,” and that meaning carried over when the verb “to replicate” first appeared in English in the 15th century. In practical use thereafter, it overlapped to a great extent with “duplicate.”

All of which brings us back to “duplicate” versus “replicate.” The shade of difference between the words in modern use lies in the slightly “after the fact” or “in a different form or context” sense that “replicate” carries. If I run the minutes of a meeting through a copy machine as soon as it adjourns, I’d usually say I “duplicated” them. If, however, I mistakenly feed them into the shredder, not the copier, I’m faced with a late night of trying to “replicate” them from chopped paper and my memory. Similarly, a “replica” (which has largely replaced “replicate” as a noun) of a ship will probably be a detailed, but much smaller, model. “Replicate” implies an attempt to re-create an object, action, etc., at some remove of time, space or purpose. As such, it contains a bit more wiggle room than “duplicate.” This makes it ideal for TV commentary, where a bit of vagueness implies good judgment and moderation.

Dear Word Detective:  As I understand it, “weary” means “tired” and “wary” means “not trusting.” Increasingly, it seems I’m seeing people use the former for the latter in a way that would pass the grammatical test, but changes the meaning, e.g., “By the late 1990s, the numbers indicated crime had indeed dropped in New York City. While Giuliani and other supporters of broken windows have long cited it as the reason behind the decline, critics have been weary for some time.” Merriam-Webster seems to indicate that this usage is incorrect, and notes that the etymology comes from different Middle English words, “wery” vs. “war/ware,” but I also know that spelling changes can happen, c.f. “insure” vs. “ensure” where we tend to assume different meanings these days. So, is there any tie between “weary” and “wary”? Or are they just plain wrong? Or alternately, are they just tired? — Sean Duggan.

Good question. Speaking of crime in New York City, I find it odd that it dropped precipitously at just about the time I left. Perhaps my departure (and consequent un-muggability) robbed the city’s malefactors of the ultimate incentive, the brass ring on the merry-go-round of crime, that gave them the will to go on.

Had I been the editor charged with smoothing your example sentence (which seems to come from a website called Urbanful.org), I would have changed “weary” into “wary,” stared into space for a moment, and then changed it to “dubious.” “Wary” is a bit too emotive; the critics are doubtful, not fearful.

“Wary,” is an adjective meaning “cautious, on one’s guard, suspicious, circumspect” (“After several bad experiences on eBay, Bob was wary of the seller offering a MacBook Pro for $49″). “Wary” first appeared in English in the 16th century, drawn from the Old English “waer,” meaning “careful” and “aware,” which in turn came from the Germanic root “waraz” (“attentive”), from which we also developed “aware.”

“Weary” is both an adjective, meaning “intensely tired or fatigued,” and a verb, meaning both “to become fatigued” or “to cause to become fatigued” (“By drawing out the War in length, they might think to weary and disorder the Enemy.” 1657). To “become weary” or “to weary” another person tends to imply a long, tedious ordeal; one might be “tired” after a fast game of ping-pong; one is “wearied” by a protracted lawsuit.

So there’s no etymological or sense connection between “weary” and “wary,” only a strong resemblance in spelling. Given that the arguments over the “broken windows” theory of policing (suggesting that strictly enforcing “quality of life” laws cuts serious crime) have been going on for years, everyone involved must be “weary.” But the logic of the sentence makes “wary” more appropriate, and I think we can chalk that “weary” up to a typographical error. As for the other uses of “weary” for “wary” that you’ve encountered, I think it’s a case of simple confusion based on the similarity in spelling, a close resemblance in sound, and, perhaps, a limited vocabulary.

Dear Word Detective:  I tripped over one of our cats on my way to the kitchen last night, and after I recovered my balance, I started to wonder about the word “trip.” As a verb, it means to stumble and perhaps fall, perhaps hurting yourself. But as a noun, it means a journey, often a pleasant one (usually more pleasant than beaning yourself on the stove, anyway). Are these really the same word, and, if so, how did they end up with such different meanings? And what about “trip an alarm”? How does that fit in? — Larry.

Those darn cats. Trust me, they’re doing it on purpose. I have calmly and patiently explained to our cats that if they do eventually succeed in incapacitating me by running between my legs as I come downstairs, I will be unable to open those pricey cans of cat food. But it did no good. It makes me wonder if they have ulterior motives quite apart from trying to get my attention. Perhaps they’ve all chipped in, bought a life insurance policy on me, and are getting impatient.

Onward. “Trip” as a noun comes from “trip” as a verb, so it’s probably easiest to begin there. Our English “to trip” comes from the Old French “treper” or “triper,” meaning “to strike the ground with the foot to show joy or impatience; to leap, dance, skip, stamp, hop or trample.” Appearing in English in the late 14th century, the general sense of “to trip” was “to dance or move lightly on one’s feet in a lively manner.” This is the sense used in the hoary (and, to me, intensely annoying) phrase “Trip the light fantastic.” The phrase was coined by the poet Milton in 1642 (“Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both his sides, Come, and trip it as ye go, On the light fantastic toe.”), but is probably best known from the 1894 song “The Sidewalks of New York” (“Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O’Rourke / Tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York.”).

Of course, not everyone is Fred Astaire, and early in the 15th century “trip” took on the additional meaning, now the most common, of “to strike the foot against something so as to stumble or fall.” In the late 19th century, a sense of “trip” meaning “to release or set into operation” arose, probably from the motion of a mechanical switch or lock. This “set off” sense is used today when we “trip an alarm.”

Given all this dancing around and falling down, “trip” as an enjoyable (maybe) journey might seem unrelated, but it’s not. The original sense of “trip” as a noun in the 16th century was “the act of tripping,” i.e., dancing, skipping, etc. This led in the 17th century to “trip” meaning a short journey (originally by boat), a short “run” to some point and back, especially if routinely taken (e.g., a “trip” to the supermarket). By the 18th century, a “trip” could mean any sort of journey taken, originally one taken for pleasure, but eventually coming to include the dreaded “business trip.”

Incidentally, the use of “trip” to mean, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, “a hallucinatory experience induced by a drug, especially LSD” is an extension of this “journey” sense dating back to 1959 (“I took some mescaline… At the end of a long and private trip which no quick remark should try to describe, the book of The Deer Park floated into mind.” Norman Mailer). “Trip” in this sense has also been used since the 1960s to mean “an exciting experience” (“Visiting my old high school was a real trip.”) and “a delusional, obsessive or self-indulgent state of mind,” as in “ego-trip” (“I shouldn’t bother — politics was a sixties trip.” 1979).

Dear Word Detective:  Back in central Pennsylvania, some of my relatives (mother, grandmother) would say that “It is close in here” meaning that it was stuffy, usually more specifically meaning hot, humid, with no moving air. The expression was also applied to conditions outside as well. Thoughts?  — Steve Benning.

Tell me about it. I grew up in coastal Connecticut, and I still remember visiting my grandparents in Columbus, Ohio in the summer as a child. It got hot in Connecticut, of course, but not like Central Ohio. Ohio was awful. Not a breath of wind, insanely high humidity and suffocating heat. The tar on the street melted and we wrote our names on the curb with it. I swore I’d never live in Ohio myself. Guess where I live now. Oh, well.

“Close” is an interesting old word. In English, we use “close” as a verb, as two separate nouns, as an adverb and as an adjective. The verb “to close” is actually the oldest in English, first appearing around 1200 and derived, via Old French, from the Latin “claudere,” meaning “to shut, to confine, to surround with walls, etc.” The verb “to close” in English also carries the figurative senses of “to end, conclude” (as in “close a deal”) and “to bring or move into close proximity or contact” (“close ranks”).

When “close” appeared as an English adjective in the late 14th century, it meant primarily “closed up, shut in or shut up,” with associated senses of secrecy, concealment or exclusivity (“When close plots faile, use open violence.” 1607). By about 1500, “close” began to develop its now-common sense of “in proximity in space, time, etc.” In this sense of “close” it is the spaces between things that are “closed up,” reduced to a minimum, making the things as near to each other as possible. Thus in a “close call” something (usually something bad) comes very “close” to happening, but does not. A “close shave” leaves no stubble, and a “close friend” is, in theory, never socially or emotionally distant. The adverb “close” is used in much the same sense (e.g., “I always sit close to the door”) but in many situations the form “closely” fits better (“I follow the playoffs closely”).

The use of “close” as an adjective to describe hot, stifling weather (or the hot stale atmosphere in a house or room) comes from the sense of a house or room completely “closed up,” with no circulation of fresh air. This use dates back to the 16th century (“We had now for several days together close and sultry weather.” 1748).

Synonyms for “close” in this “suffocatingly stale and hot” sense have included, at various times, “muggy,” “sulky,” “sticky,” “soggy” and, oddly, “faint” (here meaning “likely to cause fainting”). My favorite, however, is “pothery,” a 17th century English regional term formed on the noun “pother,” of unknown origin, meaning both “a disturbance” and “a smoky or dusty atmosphere” (“It wuz mighty pothery about three o’clock this onder — I thought we shoulden a ‘ad thunder, but it cliered off.” 1879).

Dear Word Detective: Not sure if I have the spelling right, but what’s the origin of “conipshin,” meaning a tantrum over some unfavorable event? — Steve K.

The word you’re asking about is usually spelled “conniption.” Not a lot is known about it, but you’ve got the meaning right; a “conniption” is “a fit of rage, alarm, anxiety or frustration” about something. A “conniption,” however, is more than a simple tantrum. The key word here is “fit” in the sense of an inarticulate and dramatic outburst of emotion; citations for “conniption” from the 19th century, in fact, are often in the form “conniption fit.” In 1848, the Dictionary of American English defined “conniption” as “a fainting fit,” and the very earliest use of the word found so far, from 1833, made a “conniption” sound quite serious: “[Aunt] Keziah fell down in a conniption fit.” Another citation, from the Troy, NY Daily Times in 1888, reinforces the sense of a physical “fit”: “Here the bard is supposed to have gone into ‘conniptions’ and collapsed.”

What we do know about “conniption” is that it first appeared in the early 19th century, and it’s almost certainly an American invention because it never caught on in Great Britain. The source of the word is, unfortunately, unknown. But it’s been plausibly suggested that “conniption” arose as a variant of “corruption” in the antiquated sense of “anger” or “temper” (“‘Let alone my goods’ … exclaimed I, for my corruption was rising.” J. Galt, 1830). This sense of “corruption” viewed anger and frustration as the dark, evil side of human nature, as Anne Bronte used it in her 1848 “Tenant of Wildfell Hall”: “I am no angel, and my corruption rises against it.”

While many 19th century uses of “conniption” seem to involve swooning or fainting, with or without foaming at the mouth, today the word has calmed down a bit in popular usage, and is often used to describe a person simply “acting out” when expectations are not met. The boss who wanted your report yesterday, the passenger landing in Detroit whose luggage is apparently en route to Seoul, the diner whose replacement French fries are colder than the first serving (that’s me) are all conniption candidates.

Perhaps because I normally have eerily low blood pressure, I tend not to visibly freak out when things go wrong, preferring to remain quietly nonplussed, which brings me to today’s Princess Bride moment (“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”). “Nonplussed” did not, as many people think, originally mean “unfazed” or “impassive.” It meant “perplexed, confounded or overwhelmed” and comes from the Latin “non plus,” meaning “no more,” as in “I can’t take any more.” Many people, however, see the “non” prefix and assume it signals “having no reaction.” This “wrong” use is rapidly gaining on the etymologically “correct” use, which is how language changes, but I kinda like “nonplussed” in the “no more” sense. I’d throw a conniption about the “proper” meaning of “nonplussed,” but I doubt it would make any difference.

Dear Word Detective:  I’m a huge P.G. Wodehouse fan; he is a virtuoso of the English language. I usually get all the allusions sprinkled throughout his fiction and can usually make sense of unfamiliar “Wodehouse-isms,” but one term employed in “The Code of the Woosters” leaves me scratching my head. Google has been quite useless in furnishing me with any shadow of a clue. The term is “tooth-bottle.” — Roderick Spode.

Roderick Spode, eh? Did you know you have a Wikipedia page? Quite a fetching picture, though you look a little peeved. In any case, you’ve put me in a bit of a bind with your question. I too am a huge P.G. Wodehouse fan, and “The Code of the Woosters” (1938) is peak Bertie and Jeeves. But I haven’t the space to explain much of anything about the Jeeves and Wooster canon except that Jeeves is Bertram Wooster’s valet (and much smarter than his boss). Wikipedia offers a decent summary of that story, one of Wodehouse’s more intricate creations, but folks should really read Wodehouse; the man was both a superb stylist and a true comic genius. The 1990 Stephen Fry/Hugh Laurie ITV series “Jeeves and Wooster” was also very good, although they did mess with the stories a bit.

In the relevant passage of “The Code of the Woosters,” Bertie is attempting to question his friend Gussie Fink-Nottle, newt-fancier and career wet noodle, as to why Sir Watkyn Basset has suddenly forbidden Gussie’s impending marriage to his daughter, Madeline Bassett. Midway through his explanation, Gussie expresses a desire for a drink, and Bertie replies, “The tooth-bottle is at your elbow,” to which Gussie replies, “Thanks! … Ah! That’s the stuff!” Bertie then suggests that Gussie “Have a go at the jug,” but Gussie declines, saying, “I know when to stop.” So it’s reasonable to assume that the “tooth-bottle” contains a small quantity of liquor, far less than “a jug.” But why was it called a “tooth” bottle?

After a long and fruitless search through books and online sources, I decided to turn to the smart folks at ask.metafilter.com, who quickly came up with a variety of theories and helpful links. It seems, for instance, that Enid Bagnold, playwright and author of “National Velvet,” had used “tooth-bottle” twice in a 1930 play (“Alice and Thomas and Jane”), in both cases meaning a small bottle containing wine. So it wasn’t a one-off “Wodehouse-ism.”

As for “why a tooth,” I strongly suspect that such small bottles or decanters took their name from their resemblance to the small glass toothpowder bottles of the era (“toothpowder” being the precursor of toothpaste). During the same period many home bathrooms also sported “tooth glasses,” small tumblers used for rinsing and storing one’s tooth brush. Since everyone was familiar with toothpowder bottles, it seems entirely plausible that “tooth bottle” would have gained currency as a slightly jocular name for a small “personal size” bottle of liquor or wine.

Dear Word Detective: Howdy. I was just reading an article on cornbread, apparently written by a British person. She wrote, “in the US, almost everyone reckons they know what makes good cornbread.” I never “reckon,” but my sister, who has lived in Georgia for 15 years, “reckons” constantly. What is the deal with this word? — Valorie in WA.

Howdy? Thereby hangs a tale. Many years ago, when I worked as a lowly scrivener at a large, evil New York City law firm, I would often run into coworkers coming down the hall, who would usually greet me, quite reasonably, with “Hi.” I would, however, almost invariably blurt out “Howdy” in reply. I have no idea where that “Howdy” came from, and though I tried to break myself of the habit, I kept saying it. I grew up in Connecticut, not a “Howdy”-rich environment, and outside the office I usually went with “Hiya.” Weird. Not that there’s anything wrong with “Howdy,” of course; it’s just a compressed dialectical form of the very polite greeting “How do you do?”

“Reckon” is another word that probably would have sounded odd in a Manhattan law firm. In its modern sense of “to calculate or guess” (“I reckon it’s about two miles away”) or “to suppose or believe something” (“I reckon he’s just not the marrying kind”), “reckon” is a vague but very useful word. Nobody ever got popped for perjury using “reckon.” It’s got a built-in “maybe.”

When “reckon” first appeared in English around 1200 (as “recenen”), it meant “to calculate, estimate, explain,” and came from the same Germanic base word that gave us “right.” Early senses included enumerating things, counting money, compiling lists and settling accounts (including a “divine reckoning” after death, when one would be called upon to explain one’s failure to recycle).

From the sense of a persnickety bean-counting, “reckon” developed a more laid-back subjective sense of “to regard” a person or thing as possessing certain qualities, importance, etc. (“Fortius would have been reckon’d a Wit, if there had never been a Fool in the World.” 1712). “Reckon” also developed the sense of “estimate, judge or predict” (“They reckon that this …Work will be finish’d in about fifty Years.” 1745). Other senses included “to plan,” “to intend,” and “to expect.”

Many senses of “reckon” are now considered colloquial and are thus unlikely to be encountered in standard or “business English,” which is odd, because some of the most refined literature in the 17th through 19th centuries used them with no hint of informality (“I shall have a good deal of trouble, I reckon, .. to be decent on the expected occasion.” Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, 1748). But “reckon” eventually came to be regarded as typical of southern and rural dialects in the US (and of regional dialects in the UK), and became stereotyped as a “hayseed” usage.

Dear Word Detective: An employee asked me to have a document expunged from his file. “Expunged” is a queer sounding word for “removed.” The sound of it made me want to remove the document vigorously, almost violently. Can you expunge my ignorance of this word by explaining the origin of “expunge”? Many thanks. — Hughe, Vancouver, Canada.

Wow. You can do that? I’m gonna call my old job and have a bunch of stuff nuked. I guess this is the age of rewriting history. I grew up when kids spent the first 18 years of life being threatened that every tiny transgression would go on their “permanent record.” Permanently. Like, you’d be buying a house at age 42 and the guy would say, “Wait, you Superglued the principal’s office door shut when you were 12? Fuhgeddaboudit, pal.” But it occurs to me that, in this age of digital delights, nothing is ever truly deleted because it’s all in the cloud. Many people, I’m told, are afraid of clowns; they ought to be more afraid of clouds.

“Expunge” does have a forceful sound to it, largely because of the explosive “sp” beginning the second syllable (and “exp” reminds you of “explosive” itself). To me, the word has always conjured up the action of vigorously scrubbing something, perhaps day-old eggs in a pan with the scratchy side of a dish sponge.

The modern meaning of “expunge” is “to remove completely; to obliterate; to destroy.” Almost anything can be “expunged.” Houses can be “expunged” by tornadoes, countries can be “expunged” by annexation by a larger neighbor, markets can be “expunged” by technological change, and whole civilizations can be “expunged” by war (“Neither had there ever been so many cities expunged and made desolate.” Hobbes’ translation of Thucydides’ “Peloponnesian War”).

But all these uses of “expunge” are figurative sense of the original meaning of “expunge,” which first appeared in English in the early 17th century. The root of “expunge” is the Latin verb “expungere,” meaning “to mark for deletion from a list, etc., by poking holes above and below the item” (“ex,” out plus “pungere,” to prick or puncture). In a Roman manuscript or list, rather than simply obliterating an item, a scribe would set it off with tiny punctures, indicating that it should be deleted. (That Latin “pungere” is also the root of our English “puncture,” and comes from the same source as “point.”)

In English, “expunge” lost the “puncture” sense and has been used since the 1600s to mean “to strike out, delete, erase,” usually applied to data on a list, on a register, or in a book, file or record (“These words … were ordered by the Court to be expunged or blotted out.” 1602). Of course, those were the days, almost four centuries before Google, when “gone” meant “really, truly gone.”

Dear Word Detective: What is the origin of “a feather in your hat”? — Chris.

Ah yes, feathers. Where would we be without feathers? Hopeless, that’s where, for, as Emily Dickinson said in everyone’s 7th grade English class, “Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.” I’ve always wondered, incidentally, how many birds Emily knew up close and personal, because in my experience they tend to be very judgmental and vindictive. Miss a day filling the feeder and they’re at your window at 6 am, screeching and spitting like little banshees.

Feathers, of course, are the epidermal growths that characterize birds (and apparently certain kinds of dinosaurs) and allow them to fly and supposedly find their own freakin’ food. Sorry. Anyway, feathers are a unique appendage among animals, and as such have caught the linguistic attention of humans pretty much since day one, resulting in a wide range of feather-based idioms and metaphors.

We speak, for instance, of “feathers flying” in an energetic fight between people (whether literal or verbal), by analogy to the effects of an actual bird fight. We say that we are “in fine feather” when we are in good health or sound fortune, from feather condition as an indicator of a bird’s health. “Birds of a feather flock together” draws on the flocking behavior of birds of one kind (“feather”) to describe the “like bonds with like” social habits of humans. The lightness and insubstantial nature of feathers themselves give us “feather merchant” for someone, such as a public relations agent, who dispenses nonsense, and when we are very surprised by something we say “You could have knocked me over with a feather.”

Feathers have been long been used as decoration by humans, of course, and the use of feathers as an element of hats or other headgear has been nearly universal among human cultures, from the plains of North America to the savannas of Africa to the forests of Eastern Europe. A feather added to a hat or headdress to mark a victory or other accomplishment has been common, although a white feather (proof of poor breeding in game fowl) has long been a symbol of cowardice (“No one will defend him who shows the white feather.” 1829).

“A feather in one’s hat (or cap)” has meant a mark of honor or accomplishment in English at least since the early 18th century (“A Feather in his Cap, was the least that was expected for him.” 1736), although a feather in one’s cap had also, somewhat earlier, meant “to be a fool” (“He wore a feather in his cap, and wagg’d it too often.” 1755). Today a metaphorical “feather in one’s cap” is firmly synonymous with “accomplishment” (“A grasp of digital innovation might seem an unusual feather in a rock singer’s cap…” Guardian, 1/11/15).

The popularity of “cap” over “hat” in current usage of the phrase is probably due to the song “Yankee Doodle,” which dates back to the American Revolution: “Yankee Doodle went to town, riding on a pony; he stuck a feather in his cap, and called it macaroni.” The song was originally a British creation mocking the rebels (“doodle” was slang for “fool,” as was “macaroni” for “fop”), and the “feather” in Yankee Doodle’s cap marked him as a simpleton. But after the American victories at Lexington and Concord, colonists hijacked the song to mock the Redcoats, and “feather in his cap” took on a deservedly triumphant meaning.

Dear Word Detective:   A few weeks ago I was walking down the hall at work with my boss when we had to stop talking and squeeze past, one on each side, some guy staring at his phone smack in the middle of the hall. As we rejoined after the interruption, my boss said “Bread and butter.” I had no idea what she meant by that, but I chuckled anyway. Ever since that day I’ve been wondering what she meant, and worrying that I’ve missed the joke and/or somehow offended her. So what does “bread and butter” mean, apart from, um, bread and butter? — B.P.

Hello, old friend. Not you, the question. I first answered this one when Bill Clinton was president and anyone blocking traffic staring at his phone would have been considered weird.

As I said back then, I’ve heard this odd phrase from my wife for many years. We’ll be walking down the street, and every time we’re separated by an obstruction in our path (parking meter, movie star, alien spacecraft, whatever), she’ll urge me to say “bread and butter.” Usually I just cave in and say it, but sometimes I reply to “Say bread and butter” with “You say bread and butter,” whereupon she says, “I just did,” and I argue that saying it as an imperative doesn’t count. I have yet to win this tussle. I have also yet to remember to say “Say bread and butter” before she says it, but that’s probably a good thing. I’d just end up saying it twice anyway.

It took me quite a while to find anything about “bread and butter” used in this sense when I first went looking. As a literal phrase (i.e., bread spread with butter) “bread and butter” has been common since the early 17th century. Beginning in the early 18th century, “bread and butter” was used in an idiomatic sense to mean “everyday food” and “the necessities of life; one’s means of support” (“I won’t quarrel with my Bread and Butter for all that: I know when I’m well.” 1738). This sense of the idiom is still very widespread (“My first love is the stage, but TV is my bread and butter”). The related “to know which side your bread is buttered on,” meaning to recognize who and what are vital to your happiness and success, is also common (“I’m tempted to tell off my rich uncle, but I know which side my bread is buttered on.”)

“Bread and butter” in the sense your boss used it is, however, largely undocumented. One source that does mention it is the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) which  explains it as “an exclamation used when two people walking together are momentarily separated by someone or something coming between them.” The earliest citation listed by DARE is from The Federal Writers Project “Guide to Kansas” published in 1939, in which the “bread and butter” ritual is described as a “ubiquitous” incantation among schoolchildren of the area. If it was ubiquitous in 1939, the ritual is probably much older, possibly dating back to at least the 19th century.

There may be a clue to the logic behind the phrase in the fact that it was at one time so common among schoolchildren. Children are (or used to be, before iPhones) fond of rituals or incantations thought to ward off bad luck (e.g., “Step on a crack and break your mother’s back”). In this case, the fact that bread and butter “go together” gives the “bread and butter” ritual power as an affirmation of togetherness, lest a momentary separation be an omen of permanent one.