Semper Ubi Sub Ubi

readme:

Well, here we are, back at what we like to call the Holiday Schlepping Season, and we have a very special super-duper Gift Subscription deal that will solve all your problems.  For a limited time (until January 1st, 2010, which sounds like it’s really far away but is actually only mere days from now), one year subscriptions to The Word Detective by Email, normally $15, will be two for $20.  Yeah, that’s it.  Best I can do, I’m afraid.  But heck, in giving a gift subscription or two, you’re telling the recipient(s) that you think they’re sophisticated enough to enjoy a lively year-long expedition exploring the outer fringes of our mother tongue, interspersed, of course, with strange little stories and jokes about things that have absolutely nothing to do with the ostensible subject of the column.  You don’t see that every day, you know.  Most editors won’t allow it, probably because it’s like getting two columns for the price of one, or, in the case of this offer, four columns for the price of one and a half, or something.  Anyway, if you decide to spring for this FABULOUS DEAL, just click on the second PayPal link on the Subscription page, fill in $20, and then send me an email via the Question/Comment form letting me know the email addresses of the lucky people, and whether the subs should start immediately or after the holidays.

Onward.  I’ve been deluged lately (maybe that’s overstating it — it’s more of a drip, drip, drip) by emails from folks asking me why I’m not “on Facebook.”  Actually, they ask why right after they say You’re not on Facebook? the way I might say You’re not eating your garlic bread?, i.e., implying (a) that the person must be either ill or insane, but (b) that still doesn’t constitute an adequate excuse.

I feel the same way about pizza, by the way, and was once apprehended gnawing on cold pizza in a darkened conference room because I couldn’t bear to see it go to waste.

But no, I am not and will not for the foreseeable future be “on Facebook,” and, since you all asked, I very much enjoy not being “on Facebook.”  So you’ll all just have to soldier on without me, I’m afraid, but give my regards to the herd.  And about that “friending” thing, not to worry.  You’re all my friends, each and every one of you, and I love you all to bits.  Honest.

So, OK, since you asked, here’s why I don’t want to be “on Facebook”:

1. It reminds me too much of AOL, and I think it’s bad for the internet and the people on it.  We don’t need any more walled gardens stifling serendipity.
2. It’s ugly.  Seriously ugly.  I’ve seen defense contractors’ websites that were warmer and more welcoming.  The whole thing looks like one of those pre-fab corporate sites that script kiddies selling “computer security services” out of their mom’s basement use in an effort to look respectable.  I know we don’t want another GeoCities, but c’mon.
3. The “friending” thing is creepy and reminds me of junior high school.  I do not need more things reminding me of junior high.
4. I don’t have time, because I’m already trying to run six or seven web sites.
5. Someday soon the world will decide that Facebook is and always has been unspeakably lame.  Extrapolating from my experience with such things, this is almost certain to happen within hours of my joining it.  People will desperately try to delete their accounts, friends will de-friend lifelong friends, and there will be weeping and wailing through the night.  None for me, thanks, and if you enjoy Facebook, you ought to be grateful to me for not joining.  OK?

——————————————

A good idea.

Elsewhere in the news, I’m spending a lot of time sitting on the couch in my office because the ms has screwed up my legs so badly that they hurt like hell nearly all the time and have developed a nasty tendency to buckle without warning.  Most vexatious.  Anyway, it even hurts to sit in my desk chair.  So I have an ancient Dell Trinitron CRT monitor set up on the coffee table, but using a regular keyboard and mouse in this setup is a drag.  Fortunately, I found this on eBay and I’m thrilled.  It’s an IBM Ultranav travel keyboard, essentially the keyboard from an IBM Thinkpad notebook computer, sans computer but with a ten-foot cable.  This one’s pretty old (note the PS-2 connectors), but IBM (actually Lenovo) still makes a USB version.  This one has both a touchpad and the nifty Thinkpad pointing stick thingy, which I have always loved.  So now I can sit back with this on my lap and work.  This one was new-in-the-box for about $30.  I’ve always wanted a Thinkpad, but this is as close as I’m likely to get and it’s pretty cool.

And now, on with the show….

Mystery meat.

Dear Word Detective: I am a college student graduating this June. Last summer I received a grant to teach English in a rural minority village in SW China. On the 4th of July, I was explaining about American holidays. We had just finished a unit on food, so my students wanted to know what food Americans eat on the 4th of July. One of the things I told them was hot dogs. Now while some people in China eat dog meat, this minority group does not and, as a result, stared at me with horror. It probably didn’t help that, as the classroom was rather rustic, I had a collection of local canines flopped around the dirt floor and a puppy at my feet. When I tried to explain to my incredulous students that hot dogs were not made out of dog meat, they wanted to know why the food is called “hot dog.” My drawings of dachshunds and hot dogs were unconvincing and my students were so upset by the idea of dog sausages that I eventually made up a story about the summer being hot, dogs panting, and eating hot dogs, and then tied it all together in Chinese. They bought it, but I would like to have the real story, particularly because I will be spending the next two years teaching college English in China. Also, I am going back to the village next summer, and I would like to tell my former students the truth. — K., currently of Wellesley, MA, soon of Nanjing, China.

Wow. And to think I was feeling guilty over some of my funkier tax deductions. That’s a long (although very interesting) question, so we’ll have to go with a fairly short answer.

The origin of the term “hot dog” has been debated for well over 100 years, with many of the theories centering on the resemblance of the sausage in the bun to a dachshund dog as the source of the name. You’ll find many sources online and in print that credit the invention of the term “hot dog” to the early 20th century newspaper cartoonist T.A. Dorgan, who did draw at least one cartoon of “hot dogs” as dachshunds in buns in 1906.

But “hot dog” had been slang for the long sausage sandwiches since at least 1895, and the term had nothing to do with dachshunds. After years of dogged research, the indefatigable etymologist Barry Popik (www.barrypopik.com) proved that “hot dog” originated as college slang, apparently first at Yale, as a sardonic reference to the then-popular belief that “hot dogs” contained actual dog meat. Such rumors were not entirely irrational, since in 1843 there had been a major scandal in New York City when dog and other “unconventional” meats were discovered in a meat-packing plant. By the late 1850s, the “dog meat in sausage” rumor was widespread in the US, and proved so hardy that sixty years later, in 1913, the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce forbade vendors from using the term “hot dogs” for their wares. But the actual consumers of “hot dogs” continued to use the name, and hot dogs today, certified Fido-free, remain one of America’s favorite foods.

Incidentally, the use of “hot dog” to mean a “show off,” as an adjective meaning “excellent,” or as an interjection expressing delight (“Satisfied customers, huh? Hot dog!”, Fawlty Towers, 1979) all also come from college slang of the late 19th or early 20th century. Apparently, to college students, hot dogs were the pizza of that era.

Time’s up.

Dear Word Detective: The other night at dinner my wife used the phrase “bring the hammer down.” My 10 year old son asked what that phrase meant. I explained to him that it meant to deal in a severe, decisive way. We then began to wonder what the etymology of this phrase would be. My wife suggested that it related to a judge’s gavel, but I have a feeling that the phrase is older than that. Could you please bring the hammer down on this question? — Edward.

You’re probably right, although “gavel” is a pretty old word, first appearing in print in the early 18th century. There are actually four separate “gavel” nouns in English: two very old terms having to do with intensely boring things like rent payment and division of estates, another one meaning corn harvested but not yet bound in sheaves for collection, and our common “gavel,” meaning the small hammer or mallet used to call meetings or judicial sessions to order, etc. “Gavel” meaning “mallet” is actually an American invention, but no one seems to know exactly how we came up with the word.

Unclear on the concept.

“To a man with a hammer,” Mark Twain famously said, “everything looks like a nail,” and as a metaphorical tool of construction, destruction, suppression or oppression, the ever-handy hammer has few equals in the English vernacular. The word “hammer” itself comes from Germanic roots with the general sense of “stone weapon” or “tool with a stone head,” and our modern “hammer” first appeared in Old English already with its current modern meaning of a tool with a stone or metal head and a wooden handle used to pound things.

Almost as soon as we began using “hammer” in a literal sense, we developed a wide range of figurative uses for both the noun form and “to hammer” as a verb. In the 14th century, a “hammer” was “a person or agency that beats down or crushes opposition,” a usage echoed in recent years in the US government, where leaders (most recently Rep. Tom DeLay) known for their ruthless suppression of opposition cultivated the nickname “the Hammer.” We still speak of “going at” a difficult task “with hammer and tongs,” as a blacksmith would pound hot iron while holding it with metal tongs. The metaphor of a blacksmith’s forge also crops up when we speak of “hammering out” an agreement or plan, exhaustively discussing or arguing over it until it takes the desired shape.

Literal hammers (or gavels) have also given us metaphorical uses, such as “to go under the hammer,” meaning to be sold at auction (from the auctioneer’s rap of the gavel ending the bidding). It is possible that “bring the hammer down” refers to this process as well, especially as it carries a sense of “put an end to something with conclusive action.” But the fact that “bring the hammer down” invariably invokes severe, unpleasant action tends to indicate that it originally referred to the “ruthless suppression” sense of “hammer,” a crushing action that has been delayed for a time for some reason, but that is finally decisively exercised. The hammer that is being “brought down,” in this saying, has been poised over the victim’s head for quite a while.

It’s unclear on when “bring the hammer down” appeared, but a similar phrase, “to drop the hammer on,” first appeared in print in the late 1970s. Both phrases, however, are probably much older than that.

I’ll wait in the car.

Dear Word Detective: In reading Donald E. Westlake’s classic crime novel Good Behavior for the fifth time, I noticed a phrase that hadn’t caught my eye before — “stood chicky,” in a context that implies the individual in question was serving as a lookout. I haven’t found a clear definition of this phrase, although several other examples (some spelled “chickie”) pop up via search engine. Can you enlighten us on its origin? — Bob Armstrong.

Fifth time, eh? Maybe I should read it. I figure that if someone not overtly crazy (and obviously you’re not) reads something over and over again, it must be worth reading at least once. On the other hand, I once had a friend who was obsessed with Malcolm Lowry’s novel “Under the Volcano” and seemed to read it about every six months. I think you only have to read Under the Volcano once to know how weird that is.

Cheese consutant

I hadn’t run across “stand chicky” before I read your question, but it seemed likely to me that the phrase probably harbors a chicken somewhere in its family tree. After all, English has dozens of phrases and metaphors honoring our little feathered pals. Unfortunately, our linguistic tributes to what the Oxford English Dictionary calls “the domestic fowl” are rarely complimentary. As I noted about a year ago while discussing “chicken pox,” when we notice the less attractive aspects of our own nature, we pin it all on the poor chicken, the Rodney Dangerfield of the animal world. We call those without courage “chicken-hearted,” “chicken-livered,” or just plain “chicken.” We deride small amounts of money as “chicken feed” and when we call someone a “chickenhead,” we mean “dolt.”

More to the point of your question, “chick” and “chickie” have long been used as demeaning slang terms for young women and girls. Assuming that acting as the lookout is the least confrontational role in a criminal gang pulling some sort of “job,” it seems possible that “standing chickie” might be a reference to this role usually being given to female members of the group, perhaps a mocking jibe at men assigned lookout duty. Makes perfect sense to me.

Fortunately, my little theory is all wet, and the truth is far more interesting. To “lay” or “play” or “stand chickie” has meant “to act as lookout” since at least the 1930s in the US, and comes from the use of the cry of “Chickie!” as a warning of the approach of the police or similar authorities (“Chickee the cop, behin’ de rock,” Roth, Call It Sleep, 1934). The word “chickie” in this use is a variant of the equivalent cry “chiggers!”, which is itself a modification of “jiggers,” which dates back to at least the 1890s. “Jiggers!” was used as a cry to warn of approaching authority, but it was also an all-purpose interjection to express surprise or shock, and may have begun as a euphemism for “Jesus.” Interestingly, the somewhat older (early 1800s) underworld expression “cheese!” or “cheese it!”, also meaning “Beat it, here come the cops,” sounds as if it too might have begun as a euphemistic alternative to “Jesus.”

For whom the Clue Phone rings.

Dear Word Detective: We’re wondering when the word “detective” was first used. My daughter thought it might have been used by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for Sherlock Holmes, but I wasn’t able to verify that. — M. Holeman.

That’s a good question and a fine hunch. I’m actually mildly surprised, come to think of it, that I’ve never been asked this question before, given the name of this column. On the other hand, I do receive a steady trickle of email from people who gaily disregard the modifier “Word” in “Word Detective” (not to mention the content of my website) and implore me to slip them the secret to a lucrative career as a private detective. Hey gang, improving your reading comprehension is a good place to start.

Quiet, children. Daddy's watching an irregular verb.

“Detective” is an agent noun, a noun which performs the action of the verb on which it is based, in this case the verb “to detect.” A “detective,” in other words, detects. “Detect,” in turn, comes from the Latin verb “detegere,” meaning “to uncover, discover or detect,” and “detegere” itself is a combination of “de” (meaning “un” in this case) and “tegere,” to cover. “Detect” is one of those fairly rare Latin-derived English words that means roughly just what its Latin roots mean and not much more.

“Detective” actually first appeared in English as an adjective in the 1840s, usually in the phrases “detective police” (“Intelligent men have been recently selected to form a body called the ‘detective police’ …at times the detective policeman attires himself in the dress of ordinary individuals,” 1843) or “detective camera” (a type of small hand camera newly invented at the time). By 1850, “detective police” had been shortened and “detective” was being used as a noun to mean either a member of the police detective bureau or a “private detective” for hire. Conan Doyle had his creation Sherlock Holmes call himself a “consulting detective,” which is a bit classier.

While Sherlock Holmes is without doubt the most famous detective, fictional or real, in history, and certainly popularized the term “detective” in the popular lexicon, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle cannot be credited with the first use of the term in reference to an individual. That distinction goes to Charles Dickens, who was so fond of the term that he used it twice in his own magazine “Household Words” (“To each division of the Force is attached two officers, who are denominated ‘detectives’,”1850), then again in his novel “Bleak House” (1852). Sherlock Holmes first appeared in print in 1887, more than thirty years after Dickens had used the term.

Man’s real best friend.

Dear Word Detective: You’ve explained the word “cool” but the latest rendition seems to be “cool beans.” Do you have any idea why “beans” need to be added to “cool” to mean “excellent” when “cool” alone suffices? Emphasis? But why beans? — Barney Johnson.

Well, why not beans? After all, in the English language, as in life itself, all roads lead to beans. Take the past twenty years of economic life, for instance. First we had the dot-com boom, when many people apparently became rich, and Aeron chairs and four-star restaurants became the rage. Then the “apparently” part kicked in with a vengeance and we found ourselves sitting on packing crates, dining on what? Beans. Then lather, rinse, repeat with the housing boom, but this time we’re plotzed on the curb in our skivvies, chowing down on our little legume pals again. If we’re lucky.

The Great London Bean Exchange, 1775

The English language has never lacked beans, that’s for sure. As the most humble of human foods, beans have long been used as symbols of the trivial aspects of existence, often with reference to the negligible value of a single bean, as in the use of “bean counter” to mean someone obsessed with minor details and ignorant of the “big picture.” Even in large numbers the bean gets no respect, and since the 19th century we have used “hill of beans” to mean something of little or no value (“He didn’t care a hill o’ beans fer no gal,” 1901). “Not to know beans” is the nadir of ignorance, and “not to care beans” is the apex of apathy. “Tough beans!” is another way of saying “Tough luck. Who cares?”

But every dog has his day, and even the lowly bean can prove valuable. So we speak of revealing a secret as “spilling the beans” (from the fact that a basketful of beans, once spilled, are difficult or impossible to retrieve). And while “not to know beans” means to be completely ignorant, “to know beans” has, since the 1800s, meant to be knowledgeable and “with it.” Our ambiguous attitude towards beans is reflected in the expression “full of beans,” which in the 19th century meant “lively, full of energy,” but by the 1940s was also being used to mean “full of nonsense.”

“Cool beans” in the sense of “excellent” or “that’s great” apparently originated as college slang in the US during the 1970s, but many people probably picked it up from the 1980s TV sitcom “Full House,” in which one character habitually used the phrase. It was also apparently used in a Cheech and Chong movie during the same period. I think that what we have in “cool beans” is actually an updating, unconscious among its users, of the colloquial US expression “some beans,” which has been used since the mid-19th century to mean “quite something” or “excellent, awesome” (“By golly, you’re some beans in a bar-fight,” 1850).

Untucked.

Dear Word Detective: My love of language and crossword puzzles started with my grandfather. As an English major with a Latin minor my interest grew. My two children have always gotten the answer, “Look it up” when asking questions about word meanings and they have developed the habit of trying to confound me with a word they have discovered. The latest question is the origin of the word “skirt” as in “to skirt an issue.” I found nothing in your archives and I hope you will have better luck. — Marsha Orson.

Me too. Incidentally, I should probably explain that the archives to which you refer are available absolutely free at the Word Detective website (www.word-detective.com). There you’ll find more than a thousand back columns, helpfully indexed in something very close to alphabetical order. I go there myself from time to time, and I’m always surprised at how smart I used to be. Seriously, I don’t remember writing half of that stuff.

A typical Viking.

“Skirt” is an interesting word with some interesting connections to other words. The root of the English noun “skirt” is the Old Norse word “skyrta,” which is not very surprising, given that the Viking invasions of Britain that began in the 8th century left behind all sorts of words rooted in Old Norse. What is a bit surprising is that the Old Norse “skyrta” doesn’t mean “skirt.” It means “shirt,” and, if you go a bit further back in history, you’ll find that the Germanic root that produced the Norse “skyrta” (which became our English “skirt”) also produced the English word “shirt.” In other words, “skirt” and “shirt” are basically the same word, except that “skirt” was filtered through Old Norse before it entered English, and “shirt” wasn’t.

But wait, there’s more. The Germanic root (“sker”) that eventually produced “skirt” and “shirt” meant “cut,” and also eventually produced our English adjective “short” (as well as “score,” “share,” “shear” and several other English words). The original sense of both “shirt” and “skirt” was, in fact, simply “short garment.” The question, obviously, is how a “shirt” came to mean a loose tunic worn above the waist, primarily by men, and “skirt” came to mean the part of a woman’s dress below the waist (or today usually a separate garment). The answer probably lies in the fact that the modern Icelandic word “skyrta” means a long shirt that hangs well below the waist, so perhaps the Viking “skyrta” was even longer.

In the centuries since “skirt” appeared in English around 1300, it has acquired a variety of figurative meanings, the most important, for our purposes, being “the border, rim, boundary or outlying part” of anything, including a town or village. This sense comes by analogy to the loose bottom edge of a skirt, and we most often encounter it in the modern English term “outskirts,” meaning the outlying parts of a town or city.

As a verb, “to skirt” (which first appeared around 1600) reflected this “boundary” sense from the beginning. In its earliest uses, “to skirt” meant “to border or form a border around something: (“Those vast and trackless forests that skirted the settlements,” 1820). But “to skirt” was also used to mean “to travel through the outskirts of a place,” and specifically to pass around, rather than directly through, a town, village or other place (“Then I set off up the valley, skirting along one side of it,” 1869). It is this sense of “skirt,” with the figurative meaning of “evade or dodge,” that we use when we speak of a politician “skirting” sensitive issues in a press conference, for instance.

One paper jam over the line.

Dear Word Detective: “Out of whack” doesn’t make any sense to me (but it might just be me). I asked a friend, and she suggested that it might come from old cars (mostly Russian) that started up if you gave them a good whack. This explanation makes sense; after all, my (broken) pencil sharpener needs to be whacked before it will start … but I think it might be too perfect. Can you give me some information? — Aife.

A minor adjustment often helps.

Wow. You own a pencil sharpener? I’m not certain that I still even own a pencil. I do have some pens that followed me home from the office about fifteen years ago, but I use them mostly just to write checks. (They’re a special type that writes on rubber.) What never fails to amaze people, however, is the fact that I don’t own a computer printer. If I need to save something from the web, I usually copy it by hand or just draw a picture of it.

All of which brings us back to “out of whack.” Almost every gizmo found in modern life goes kablooey at some point. The toaster decides you like your bagels “cajun style.” The dishwasher suddenly starts bending all your forks. Sometimes the cure for an “out of whack” appliance is as simple as placing it on the curb the day before trash pickup. This method is especially effective on toasters, which are easily intimidated. Other machines, however, are utterly incorrigible. My last printer, for instance, refused to print even after being tossed out a second-floor window.

“Whack” as a verb first appeared in the early 18th century meaning “to beat or strike sharply and vigorously,” and was probably formed in imitation of the sound such a blow would make. As a noun, “whack” started out meaning just such a blow, but soon developed a range of secondary meanings. One of the odder uses was “whack” meaning “a portion, one’s share,” originally slang in the criminal underworld meaning “a share of the proceeds of a crime.” Just how this sense developed is uncertain, but it may have been coined as a play on the “splitting” of the loot. This “fair share” sense then went on to mean “an agreement” (“‘I’ll stay if you will.’ ‘Good — that’s a whack’,” Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer), and, in the 19th century, “in fine whack” and similar phrases appeared meaning “in good order” or, of a person, “in good shape.”

By 1885, the opposite sense had predictably appeared, and a person (or body part) in bad shape was described as “out of whack” (“His liver is out of whack and no mistake,” 1918). Almost immediately the phrase was also applied to mechanical devices (“Being able to get at any part of the mechanism which may be ‘out of whack’ is important,” 1906), which is the most common sense in use today.

Pencil me in.

Dear Word Detective: I was reading nothing in particular about television scheduling the other day when I had one of my word moments, that is, when a word leaps out of the page and begins to play odd tricks in my mind. The word was “slot” and, within moments, it became a description of some kind of Eastern European, perhaps an obscure currency or perhaps even a breed of dog. It certainly looked most peculiar and reeked of Old Norse or something. However, my dictionary could only come up with a feeble stab at something to do with a breastbone, but labeled it “origin obscure.” Any ideas about a word that is probably used a thousand times a day in Las Vegas alone? — David, Ripon, England.

Obscure currency? I assume you’re thinking of the “zloty,” the currency of modern Poland. “Zloty” is actually pronounced something close to “zwah-teh,” and comes from “zloto,” the Polish word for “gold,” which is related to our English word “gold,” both being derived from the Indo-European root “ghel,” meaning “yellow.” As for “breed of dog,” beats me.

There are actually five, count ‘em, five kinds of “slot” in English, each considered a separate word. The oldest, from the 14th century, means “a bolt or bar that secures a door.” Another “slot” means “the track of a animal,” from the same Old Norse root that gave us “sleuth.” Yet another “slot,” now obsolete, meant “a muddy place.” A fourth “slot” means “castle,” but it’s also obsolete and was just a development of the “door bolt” kind of “slot” anyway.

Finally, we have the sort of “slot” you mention, and here things get a little weird. The original meaning of this “slot” when it first appeared in English in the 14th century, adapted from the Old French, was (as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) puts it) “the slight depression or hollow running down the middle of the breast,” especially the hollow at the base of the throat. Interestingly, the Old French word that gave us “slot” was “esclot,” which meant literally “hoofprint of a horse,” which seems a singularly unromantic, if technically plausible, way to describe the hollow at the base of your sweetie’s throat. Incidentally, that same “esclot” root underlies the other sort of “slot,” mentioned above, that means “track of an animal.”

In any case, by the 15th century “slot” had begun to develop its more familiar modern senses, beginning with “an elongated depression or hole in a piece of lumber, etc., where another piece is inserted.” The use of “slot” for the opening in a vending machine where you put coins dates from the late 1800s, and meaning “parking space” from the 1940s.

Perhaps the most dramatic development of “slot” also came in the 1940s, when it was first used to mean (again quoting the OED) “a position in a list, hierarchy, system, or scheme; a position to be filled; a category; a place or division in a timetable, especially in broadcasting” (“Suitable slots are normally of 90 to 120 minutes, with time for commercials to be taken out of this,” 1976). This figurative use of “slot” was almost certainly an outgrowth of the modern mania for organizational and scheduling charts in which predefined categories or spaces (“slots”) remain fairly constant while the data that fills them varies.

HA ha.

Dear Word Detective: Have you seen the word “cully” used to mean “trick” or “deceive”? Where does it come from? Was it in use in the mid-1800′s? — Deborah L.

A bitter disappointment.

That’s an interesting question, but I’d really like to know, as the late Paul Harvey used to put it, the rest of the story. Are you reading a book set in the mid-19th century and trying to determine whether the word “cully” is genuine slang of the period or perhaps just a typographical error? If so, your concern is well-founded. The gentle art of professional proofreading, at which I myself labored for several years in my youth, is in eclipse these days. This is especially true in book publishing, where the production budget for a given book, including proofreading, is mercilessly tied to an estimate of its future sales. So if you want a letter-perfect read, stick to Stephen King and Tom Clancy. For anything without embossed lettering on the cover, however, bring your own dictionary and several large grains of salt.

In any case, “cully” is indeed slang for “to deceive, trick or make a fool of” someone, and, while considered obsolete today, it was in common use from at least the late 1600s onward (“Having for some time being cullied out of his money,” Life of Muggleton, 1676). The noun form of “cully,” meaning “one who is cheated” or, more generally, “a fool, dupe, sucker, or simpleton,” is a few years older, its first appearance in print (so far discovered) coming in 1664. Both the noun and the verb forms may well be substantially older, however, because “cully” was originally thieves’ cant, slang of the criminal underworld, a species of speech which often took many decades to appear in print during that period.

Interestingly, the noun form of “cully,” which primarily meant “fool” or “dupe” when it first appeared, was also used to mean “pal, friend, workmate,” a meaning that became more common in the 19th century. Incidentally, “cully” in its various forms and senses has no connection to “cull” meaning “to select and eliminate members of a group,” as in “culling a herd of livestock.”

“Cully” is, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, “of uncertain origin.” A connection has been suggested to the Romany (Gypsy) term “chulai,” meaning “man,” but evidence is lacking so far. “Cully” may also be connected to “cullion,” a fairly obscure English word that originally meant “testicle” and later was used to mean “rascal, knave, vile fellow.”

Um, OK, I’ll take “frantic and shallow.”

Dear Word Detective: Can you tell me the origin and meaning of “swamp Yankee”? I have heard a few versions; the meaning is sometimes nice, sometimes not so nice. — Evelyn.

Every so often I wonder what Marcel Proust would have come up with had he been exposed to American popular culture. I suspect he would have read your question, dipped his Twinkie in his Yoo-Hoo, and been instantly reminded of the ditty that goes, “Oh be kind to your web-footed friends, for a duck may be somebody’s brother; be kind to the birds of the swamp, where the weather is cold and damp” (pronounced “dahmp,” of course). Or maybe that’s just me.

Not our sort, dear.

Onward. I vaguely recall encountering “swamp Yankee” prior to receiving your question, but I can’t claim to have given the phrase much thought. That’s a bit odd, since “swamp Yankee” is usually used to mean a resident of Southeastern New England, particularly Rhode Island and Connecticut, and I grew up in Connecticut. I did know I was a Yankee, of course, and assumed I fell in the middle of the spectrum delineated by an aphorism usually attributed to E.B. White: “To foreigners, a Yankee is an American; To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner; To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner; To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander; To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter, and in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.” But nobody mentioned swamps.

Then again, growing up in the suburbs, I apparently didn’t fall into the demographic group usually considered “swamp Yankee.” The term seems to have first appeared in print in the 1930s, but is no doubt much older. A scholarly article on “swamp Yankee” by Ruth Schell published in American Speech (the journal of the American Dialect Society) in 1963 defines the term as meaning “a rural New England dweller who abides today as a steadfast rustic and who is of Yankee stock that has endured in the New England area since the colonial days.”

The significance of “swamp” in the phrase is a matter of dispute. Some say the first swamp Yankees were the less desirable immigrants from England in colonial days, relegated to the outskirts of civilization (“the swamps”) by the Puritans. Others interpret the “swamp” as simply referring to the rural, old fashioned way of life preferred by swamp Yankees, in contrast to the frantic and shallow life of the city-dweller.

Whether being a “swamp Yankee” is a good or bad thing depends, as usual, on where one stands. In her article Schell noted that people who might be considered “swamp Yankees” resented the term when applied to them by outsiders, but often used it among themselves. From the “swamp Yankee” point of view, they are preserving the true independent, self-sufficient spirit of New England. Today, to the extent that the term is still used, it seems to have become the New England equivalent of “redneck,” connoting rural living and a lack of sophistication to the broader society, but embraced as a badge of pride by those so labeled.

Adventures in cutlery.

Dear Word Detective: In what year did Lord Runcible invent the Runcible Spoon? And why was it then named after him, rather than just calling it a “spork” or a “foon”? — David Paul.

“Foon”? Dare I confess that “foon” is new to me? Yea, furthermore, that it pleaseth me? Oh well, perhaps I’m just easily amused. I’ve never been fond of “spork,” however, because it sounds like the name of some “extreme” sport, perhaps one involving bungee cords and cutlery. And if one were to assume that “spork” is an onomatopoeic or “echoic” formation, a word concocted to sound like the thing or action it denotes, being “sporked” sounds distinctly painful. Of course, “spork” isn’t echoic, it’s a “portmanteau word,” a combination of two or more existing words, “spoon” and “fork” (in the spirit of “motel,” combining “motor” and “hotel”). (“Portmanteau” is an old word for suitcase, and the term “portmanteau word” was invented by Lewis Carroll.) Anyway, sporks have been in use since at least the 19th century, although the word “spork” is apparently a 20th century invention and is still a trademarked term in the UK.

"It's what's for dinner," said the Dolomphious Duck.

The provenance of “foon” (also a combination of “fork” and “spoon”) seems to be a mystery. While a Google search produces almost two million hits for the word, “foon” is apparently also a fairly common surname, so that’s no help. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “foon” was in common use as a form of the word “foe” from the 14th though the 17th centuries, which is a shame since it seems like such a friendly little word.

Meanwhile, back at your question, the “spork/foon” was not invented by Lord Runcible, who never invented anything because he didn’t exist, so feel free to change your name to Lord Runcible the First. “Runcible spoon” is today usually employed as another name for a spork, but that application is, as we shall shortly see, unwarranted.

The term “runcible spoon” was invented by the English writer Edward Lear, whose “nonsense poems” have entertained children and adults since the late 1800s. Lear’s “The Owl & The Pussy-Cat,” written in 1871, contains the first mention of “runcible” in the verse “They dined upon mince and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon, And hand in hand on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon….”

Lear used the word “runcible” in several other works, in which he mentioned a “runcible raven,” a “runcible cat” and a “runcible wall.” Unfortunately, Lear never explained what “runcible” meant or where he’d found it. One theory is that “runcible” is derived from the archaic term “rouncival,” meaning “large.” It’s also entirely possible Lear simply made up the word.

Interestingly, in another of Lear’s works, “Twenty-Six Nonsense Rhymes and Pictures,” he offers a drawing of “the Dolomphious Duck” catching “Spotted Frogs for her dinner with a Runcible Spoon.” The spoon in the drawing is simply a large, long-handled and deep spoon (resembling a ladle, in fact), definitely not a serrated “spork.” So Lear invented the term “runcible spoon,” but apparently never intended it to mean “spork.”