readme:

Well, it’s been a quiet month here at TWD World Headquarters.

As if.  Actually, last month (September) was a major drag.  Look, I thought we had a deal.  We move to Ohio, we put up with tornadoes, blizzards, snakes, coyotes on the front porch, skunks by the back door, spiders the size of skunks, weeks without rain and then flash floods, lightning, ball lightning, power outages for no damn reason, random gunfire from our deranged neighbors all day and night, and no decent restaurants within fifty miles.  In return we get … cats?  But OK, the sunsets are pretty.

But we did not, and I cannot emphasize this too strongly, we did not sign up for hurricanes. Hurricanes?  In Ohio?  That ain’t right.

But we did end up getting the last gasp of Ike — no rain, just winds.  Seventy-five mile per hour winds, winds that tore down trees, screwed up our roof and knocked out power all over Central Ohio, in our case for four days.  That meant no lights, no TV (not a biggie to me), no internet (a biggie), and, most importantly, no water, since the well pump refuses to run without juice.  But, overall, we did pretty well for a house built during the Civil War, though we did lose about $500 in spoiled food.  So much for being prepared for emergencies.

And that, dear friends, is the main reason why there was no September issue of this little circus.

Two bits of news:  First, I have changed the commenting system so you no longer have to register and log in to comment, thus, I hope, putting an end to the ridiculous password kerfuffle. Comments must still wait to be approved, so expect a slight delay in seeing your thoughts actually appear.

Secondly, without delving into the grisly details, it would be totally awesome if more of you subscribed.  As I have mentioned before, my ms has severely restricted my income, so every little bit helps more than you would think.  To that end, until January 2009 we will be offering a two-for-one subscription deal wherein $15 bags you two one-year subs.  Make a friend happy!

And now, on with the show…

Immortal stupidity.

Dear Word Detective: I referred to someone as “dopey dilldock” the other day, and my wife said her mother used the same expression.  Any ideas on the origin of this one? — Charles.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when the odd sayings of our parents we perceive, or something like that.  Tracking down “dopey dilldock” turned into an all-day endeavor for me.

I started with the assumption that “dopey dilldock” means “a stupid person,” which seems reasonable given the usual meaning of “dopey” (originally “appearing to be under the influence of dope” i.e., drugs).  In searching online for the word “dilldock” (or “dildock”), I came across several references to a 1918 movie called “A Perfect 36,” starring Mabel Norman.   Interestingly, in the film the actor Rod La Rocque played a character named “O.P. Dildock.”  Hey, it rhymes with “dopey dilldock”!  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a plot synopsis, so whether La Rocque played a doofus remains a mystery.

Fortunately, this dead end was quickly superseded by a live hit in the form of a citation for an obscure newspaper comic strip of the 1930s called, bingo, “Dopey Dildock.”  And when I say “obscure,” I mean “virtually unknown.”  The only reason it hasn’t entirely disappeared down the memory hole is that it was an early effort by the cartoonist Gus Edson, who went on to create “Dondi,” an enormously (and inexplicably, in my opinion) popular strip about an Italian war orphan adopted by an American GI (who apparently never noticed that the kid’s eyes were just big black dots).

But while Edson’s later efforts were highly successful, it seems unlikely that “Dopey Dildock” could have become a popular catchphrase based on an obscure 1930s comic strip.  Indeed, Edson obviously chose that name for the strip because the phrase “Dopey Dildock” was already popular, and had been for decades.

“Dopey Dildock” dates back to at least the first years of the 20th century and possibly earlier.  There are various theories about the phrase, but the most plausible, to me, appeared in an article in the journal American Speech in 1981.  Etymologist Henry Stern suggested that “dildock” might be rooted in the German dialect word “dildap” or “diltap,” meaning “a silly, foolish, inept person” (the “dil” coming from the same root that gave us the English “dull”).  Stern also ventured that the term arrived in the US with German immigrants, which would explain why it is unknown in England but apparently was common at one time in areas of the US with a strong German heritage.

In any case, the alliterative (and slightly redundant) form “dopey dildock” was evidently still popular in the US in the 1950s, and “dildock” is still seen used as an insult on the internet.

Keep back 200 feet.

Dear Word Detective:  I’ve been trying to find the definitive origin of the expression “fire in the hole,” but only can find hypotheses, not a substantiated origin.  Can you help? — Barbara Garrett.

Let’s make a deal.  I’ll tell you where the phrase comes from if you solemnly promise never to use it yourself.  Same goes for anyone reading this column.  Stop reading right now unless you agree.  You in the Star Trek pajamas with the Doritos, was that a yes?  OK, we’re on.

Sorry to be cranky, but there are some popular language fads that really boil my bunny, and the apparent rage for shouting “Fire in the hole!” at every opportunity is at the top of my list right now.  It seems to be on the tip of the tongue of every aging frat boy, the type who ten years ago was still punctuating every third sentence with “Not!”  There’s even a genre of “Fire in the Hole” YouTube videos that showcase twerps shouting the phrase as they throw soft drinks at hapless fast-food clerks at drive-through windows.  It’s the title of a Steely Dan song, for Pete’s sake.  So don’t be lame.  Just say no.

As commonly used as a catchphrase today, “fire in the hole” means “watch out,” “stand back,” or “something exciting and/or important is about to happen.”  It’s become an all-purpose synonym of “heads up!”

But the origins of “fire in the hole” lie deep in the history of perhaps the most dangerous civilian occupation on earth, underground coal mining.  For much of its history in the US, such mining has depended on the use of black powder or dynamite to loosen the rock.  When the charges had been placed, just before detonation, the cry “Fire in the hole!” was a warning to miners to clear the area and prepare for the explosion.  Far from being an antiquated custom, the phrase is still legally required to be shouted in many states (Illinois mining regulations specify “The shot firer must give a loud, verbal warning such as ‘fire in the hole’ at least three (3) times before blasting”).  “Fire in the hole,” like coal mining itself, is deadly serious business, which is why the current frivolous use of the phrase ticks me off.

“Fire in the hole” dates back at least to the early 20th century, and was adopted in the 1940s by military bomb disposal teams, as well as by soldiers tossing grenades into enclosed spaces (such as tunnels) where “blow-back” might be expected.  Interestingly, moonshiners in  Appalachia in the 1920s (many of whom were from mining communities) also shouted the phrase to warn of the approach of “revenuers” (government agents), occasionally detonating sticks of dynamite for emphasis.

The nose speaks.

Dear Word Detective:  Long ago and far away from here, for my hair is white where it remains, and my beard is full to hide the sparseness of teeth to fill out my jowls, I was introduced to the words of Marriott Edgar by the voice of Stanley Holloway. These recordings played at 78 rpm, and brought great puzzlement to a young Canadian ear. Time and repetition and valiant puzzlement brought a modicum of understanding, but one phrase remains lost to me to this day. The tale title is “Three Ha’pence a Foot” and the expression for which I seek assistance is “So Sam put his tongue out at Noah and Noah made long bacon at Sam.”  What say ye, sir, to this, my tale?  Hopefully I remain expectant of an answer swifter than the back hand of my Mam when I asked her if it were a rude comment. — Mikey, who is much older than the name suggests.

Have no fear.  I almost never physically strike my readers, and I can’t imagine what your mother was thinking.  But I must note that one need not be elderly to remember Stanley Holloway’s wonderful recordings of Marriott Edgar’s monologues rendered in a heavy Northern English accent.  I especially adored “The Lion and Albert,” the story of a lad visiting the zoo who annoyed the King of Beasts with his “stick with an ‘orse’s ‘ead ‘andle” (horse’s head handle) so much that he was “et” right up.  (“Then Pa, who had seen the occurrence, And didn’t know what to do next, Said, ‘Mother! Yon lions ‘et Albert,’ And Mother said ‘Eeh, I am vexed!’”).  An apparently complete collection of Marriott’s monologues, I am happy to report, is available at http://monologues.co.uk/Marriott-index.htm.

In “Three Ha’pence a Foot,” a builder named Sam Oglethwaite is arguing with Noah over the price of maple for Noah’s ark, and negotiations stall over Sam’s stubborn insistence on three half-pence per foot.  Sam’s deployment of his tongue as an insult is familiar to any schoolchild, but Noah’s “long bacon” must have puzzled even many of Marriott’s contemporaries.

Evidently, “long bacon” is Northern English slang for “thumbing one’s nose” or “cocking a snook,” but done with two hands.  “Cocking a snook” is performed by spreading the fingers of one hand, touching the tip of your nose with your thumb while sighting your opponent along the tips of your other fingers, and waggling your fingers in the most annoying way possible.  “Long bacon” adds the other hand for extra emphasis, thumb touching the little finger of the first.

Cocking a snook.

Such a gesture is certainly elaborate and “long” as such things go, but why “bacon”?  My guess is that it’s the resemblance of the finished product to a crisp strip of bacon with its waving ridges.  It’s less clear why the single-handed version is called “cocking a snook,” but the “cocking” may refer to the “comb” on the head of a rooster (which vaguely resembles a hand with extended fingers), and “snook” may be related to “snout.”

Reboot your mindset.

Dear Word Detective:  The current use of the word “paradigm” puzzles me.  My dictionary states the grammatical definition which is easily understood, and a second definition:  “an example; pattern.”  My dictionary is fairly old.  The newscasters and politicians always seem to use the phrase “new paradigm.”  Do they mean a “new pattern” and are just using a fancier word?  Or is there another meaning, by usage, that I am not aware of?  Fortunately, its use seems to be diminishing.  It is like the word “vet” which is popular these days and “to parse” and that immortal “at this point in time” which seems to be locked into the language, much to my annoyance. — MMU.

I feel your pain.  Actually, I’m somewhat ambivalent (which is better than being firmly ambivalent, I suppose) about the buzzwords and catchphrases that infest what passes for public discourse these days.  On the one hand, it’s fascinating to watch these creations pop up suddenly and stride confidently into the spotlight, all new and trendy, with the glow of the in-crowd and the magical power to make boring people sound, if only momentarily, smarter than they are.  Where would dinner parties be without them?  On the other, there’s nothing more tiresome and pathetic than a buzzword or phrase that has stayed too long at the ball.  At the end of the day, “at the end of the day” just sounds moldy and lame.

One also has to wonder whether even ten percent of the people who use these words have a clue as to their original meanings.  Do the newscasters who yammer on about “vetting” political candidates know that they are likening the process to having a cow examined by a veterinarian?  Do the pundits who “parse” (from the Latin “pars orationis,” parts of speech) politicians’ speeches actually diagram the sentences?

OK, geezer mode off.  When “paradigm” (pronounced PARA-dime) first appeared in English in the late 15th century, it was used in its original Greek sense of “pattern, model or example” (from “paradeiknynai,” literally “to show side-by-side”).  By the mid-17th century, “paradigm” had become a grammatical term meaning “a set of examples illustrating forms in an inflected language,” such as the “amo, amas, amat” (“I love, you love, he/she/it loves”) conjugation table familiar to first-year Latin students.

In 1962, however, historian Thomas Kuhn, in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, invoked “paradigm” to mean “world view,” and highlighted the role of a “paradigm shift” in transforming consciousness (as when the accepted “paradigm” of an Earth-centered universe gave way to a more accurate view of the cosmos).  “Paradigm” was inevitably pressed into service by politicians for less exalted uses, and during George H.W. Bush’s presidential administration there was much talk of a “new economic paradigm” (leading Dick Darman, Bush’s skeptical budget director, to quip “Brother, can you paradigm?”).

In today’s usage, “paradigm” can mean anything from “underlying philosophical principles forming a basis for making social policy decisions” to “marketing plan for the new breakfast sandwich.”  If “paradigm” is fading, as I agree it seems to be, it’s at the end of a long day indeed, and not a moment too soon.

Forget Shakespeare.  Cake is the pinnacle of human culture.

Dear Word Detective:  Probably everyone knows what “a piece of cake” means.  As a figure for something that is not only done easily, but is also enjoyable, it is a pretty  straightforward metaphor.  My question is about its origin.  The first I recall hearing it was in the song “A Spoonful of Sugar” from the musical “Mary Poppins.”  When you find the fun in a  particular job, so the song says, “then every task you undertake becomes a piece of cake.”  Is this the origin of the phrase, or was it in use previously?  (Apologies for setting your head  humming.) — Charles Anderson.

No problem.  That song can’t get stuck in my head because I’ve never heard the song.  That’s right, I’ve never seen “Mary Poppins.”  I’ve also never seen “The Sound of Music.”  Appalling, I know, but it gets worse.  I’ve also never seen”Titanic,” “Shrek” (any of them, or any big-screen cartoon, for that matter), or any of the “Lord of the Rings” movies.  You name it, I haven’t seen it.  Come Saturday night, you’ll find us poring over the newspaper, deciding what movie not to see.

But while I’m not exactly an avid movie-goer, I do love cake, and, judging by the number of cake metaphors, proverbs and aphorisms out there, the English language agrees with me.  We speak of something easily accomplished as a “cakewalk,” we say that something extraordinary “takes the cake,” and we even caution that “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” as a way of saying that life demands choices.  And yes, I know that “purists” insist that “you can’t eat your cake and have it too” is the supposedly “proper” form.  But I’d like to point out that the last person to make a stink about that (Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber) is spending his life in a very small room.  (See the Wikipedia entry on the phrase for the story.)

To say that something is “a piece of cake,” of course, is to say that it is very easy or pleasant, or, often, pleasantly easy.  If, for example, I brace myself going in the door of the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew my license, but find that there are only three people in line, I would almost certainly declare “Piece of cake!” (after recovering from fainting).  Of course,  just how “cakey” a task is depends on whether one is the “doer” or “sender.”  I learned early on in my work career that any boss who described an assignment as “a piece of cake” was almost certainly lying.

“Piece of cake” had been around for a while before Mary Poppins sang that song.  The phrase first appeared in print in the 1930s, and its exact origin is uncertain.  One theory traces it to the “cakewalk,” a contest popular in the African-American community in the 19th century, in which couples competed strolling arm in arm, with the prize, a cake, being awarded to the most graceful and stylish team (giving us the phrase “to take the cake”).  Although the “cakewalk”  demanded skill and grace, the term came to be used as boxing slang for an easily-won fight, and then for any “sure thing.”  It is very possible that “piece of cake” followed a similar route from the sophisticated art of “cakewalking” to meaning “the easiest thing imaginable.”

We are family…

Dear Word Detective:   I could have sworn you’d answered this question already but it isn’t in the archives.  How did the main prelate of England, the “primate,” come to share a name with a monkey?  The Oxford English Dictionary says the zoological usage came later, but every time I read a book set in the middle ages and they refer to “the primate,” I can’t help picturing a monkey in a black robe and red sash.  Please help. — Jackie.

Um, no, I’m pretty sure I’d remember writing a column connecting the Archbishop of Canterbury to a monkey.  Then again, perhaps I wrote it just before I was struck by lightning a couple of years ago.  That’s not a joke, by the way.  It was actually a very close encounter with ball lightning, close enough to numb one side of my body for a few days.  But I’m fine now, unless you count the twitching.

In any case, that’s a darn good question.  A “primate” is indeed a member of the zoological order “Primates,” which includes humans, apes, monkeys, and “prosimians” (which are not, sadly, professional simians, but critters like lemurs).

But “Primate” is also a title, in the Christian church, conferred on the chief bishop or archbishop of a given country, province or other subdivision. So the above-mentioned Archbishop of Canterbury, for example, is considered “Primate of All England” (but King Kong is not, in the ecclesiastical sense, Primate of New York).

While there were definitely monkeys before there were bishops, the church use of “primate” for its officials preceded the zoological use by about five centuries, and has a slightly different source than the monkey “primate.”  The Latin “primus” was an adjective meaning “first” (also the source of “prime” and “primary”), from which developed the Latin adjective “primas,” meaning “chief or principal.”  This “chief” sense gave us “primate” meaning “head bishop” in the 13th century.

The monkey family name “primates” came into use in the 18th century and is derived from the plural of “primas,” which was “primates.”  The order Primates made its debut in 1735 in the “Systema Naturae” (System of Nature) of Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy.  In his hierarchical system, apes and their relatives were classed with humans in Primates, the “highest” order, which caused quite a stir in certain quarters.  (Oddly enough, Linnaeus also classified bats as primates and whales as fish in early editions of his work.)  The use of “Primates” as the name of this order is Scientific Latin, unconnected to “primate” in the church sense, and, strictly speaking, the use of the singular “primate” to mean just one monkey is not really scientifically kosher.

Baa-baa-boom!

Dear Word Detective: First of all, is it “lambast” or “lambaste”? The question is prompted by the local sports page which used the word to describe how the local college team defeated a visiting team. I tried to find its origin by going to online dictionaries but without success: they just define it. Also, what is it with sportswriters? They either use cliches or try to use relatively little-used words: some of these they understand and others they use seemingly because they sound good. One, for example, used “penultimate” apparently to mean “the ultimate” because, I guess, that’s what it sounded like to him. I imagine he never took Latin. — MMU.

Well, to tackle (yuk yuk) your second question first, I actually find myself feeling a lot of sympathy for sportswriters. A general assignment reporter or columnist encounters and reports on a wide variety of events, furnishing them wide leeway in their quest for the perfect word. Columnists even get away with metaphors. But a sportswriter is essentially watching the same events day after day, year after year, and writing about them with a necessarily limited vocabulary drawn largely from the lingo of bar fights (“thrashed,” “vanquished,” “rolled over,” “overcame,” etc.). There’s not a lot of room for literary or classical allusions (except the chestnut about “a phoenix rising from the ashes”), so it’s hard to blame them when they venture into their personal unknown with a word like “penultimate.” I don’t know why that fellow assumed that the “pen” means “absolutely” or whatever, but it comes from the Latin “paene,” meaning “almost” (making “penultimate” equivalent to “next to last”).

“Lambaste” is a fine old word, meaning literally “to assault violently, to beat severely,” and figuratively “to criticize or scold sharply.” It’s also spelled “lambast,” and although the preferred pronunciation at the moment seems to be “lam-BASTE” (as if you were basting a lamb roast), “lam-BAST” is OK too. “Lambaste” first appeared in English in the mid-17th century in the literal “beat up” sense; the “scold” sense didn’t develop until the late 19th century.

The “baste” in “lambaste” is a bit of a mystery. It is definitely the same as the obsolete English verb “to baste,” meaning “to beat,” which appeared around 1533 and may be related to various Scandinavian root words meaning “to whip or flog.” Opinions vary as to whether this “baste” is related in any way to our common “baste” meaning “to moisten roasting food to prevent burning.”

The “lam” in “lambaste” is actually a bit redundant, in that it is also an old English word meaning “to beat,” from an Old Norse root meaning “to make lame.” Interestingly, this is the same “lam” we use in “on the lam,” meaning to be “on the run” from authorities. In that usage, the original sense was apparently that the escapee’s feet were literally beating the road in haste, making “to lam” equivalent to “to beat it.”

Cranked up.

Dear Word Detective: I’m reading the papers here on Tsunami Tuesday and I keep seeing this great word, “stemwinder,” referring to a particularly stirring speech. I looked up its origin (Merriam-Webster lists it as “stem-winder”) and saw that it refers to watches, of all things, but wasn’t able to find how this term came to be associated mainly with political speeches. Can you ascertain how that connection came about? — Rick Freyer.

“Stemwinder” is one of those grand old words that have traveled so far from their origins that nearly all traces of their beginnings have faded from popular culture. The culprit in this case is not merely the passage of time (which, after all, has been passing since about day one), but the accelerating pace of technological progress. In many such cases, the advent of the new and shiny has led to the coining of “retronyms” as a way of distinguishing the old and moldy from their more modern equivalents. Thus we find ourselves specifying “broadcast TV,” “film camera,” “brick-and-mortar store,” and the like. But in the case of “stemwinder,” if there were a modern equivalent to its source, it would be as irrelevant as a digital butter churn.

It all goes back to the humble watch. Before there were electronic battery-powered wrist watches, before there were manually wound (or self-winding) mechanical watches, before there were even watches worn on one’s wrist, there were pocket watches. And if you go way back, those pocket watches were wound with a separate tiny key. This may sound cute, but it was a major drag, because the process was awkward and the key was easily lost. So in 1842, when the French watchmaker Adrien Philippe (co-founder of Patek-Philippe) invented a “keyless” watch that was wound by turning its “stem” (a knurled knob on the side of its case, today called the “crown”), it was such an improvement that it won Philippe a Gold Medal at the French Industrial World’s Fair.

It’s hard to imagine today, but the new “stemwinder” watch became an instant public sensation of almost delirious intensity, the iPod of its day. It was so popular, in fact, that within a few years the term “stemwinder” entered the lexicon as a synonym for anything excellent and exciting. By the end of the 19th century, “stemwinder” was being used to mean, first, an energetic person, then a rousing public speaker, and finally an especially inspiring speech itself.

Interestingly, as the public memory faded of how revolutionary the “stemwinder” invention had been, the word took on the slightly more focused sense of a speech which not only impresses but galvanizes a crowd to action, perhaps by analogy to a watch spring being wound up (“After all the calls to unity, ..a stemwinder in the old tradition from Hubert Humphrey,… Sargent Shriver was formally nominated for Vice-President,” T.H. White, 1974). This is the sense in which we use “stemwinder” today.

Wake me when it’s over

Dear Word Detective: Where does the word “lackadaisical” come from? — Joe.

Ah, a short question, but one that opens a window into a world of weirdness. That’s what I love about the English language — every word bears the fingerprints of our ancestors, many of whom were seriously strange. The poet John Ciardi used to say that our words are miniature fossilized poems written by the human race, which is true, but sometimes they seem more like miniature fossilized psychiatric case reports.

Today we use “lackadaisical” to mean “lacking interest, energy or initiative; lacking spirit.” A person with a “lackadaisical” attitude is apathetic and uninterested in much of anything, and a lackadaisical employee usually produces shoddy and substandard work. In fact, a lackadaisical approach to anything rarely results in the desired outcome, as US Senator Fred Thompson recently proved in his famously torpid and now-defunct run for the Republican presidential nomination. According to the New York Daily News, “Thompson’s candidacy was widely ridiculed by party professionals for its lackadaisical quality. ‘How are you supposed to tell?’ one of them remarked yesterday after Thompson’s exit.”

Given the laid-back attitude of the truly “lackadaisical,” it’s a bit surprising that the word itself arose as a exclamation of agitated anguish, which would seem to require at least a smidgen of adrenaline to produce. Back in the 16th century, if you were faced with an alarming reversal or personal disaster, you were more than likely to express your distress with a cry of “Alack the day!” or “Alack a day!” (meaning “curse this day” or “woe this day”). Shakespeare used the phrase in Romeo & Juliet to announce Juliet’s demise (“Shee’s dead, deceast, shee’s dead: alacke the day!”). This “alack” is the same found in the phrase “alas and alack,” and comes from an old use of “lack” to mean “failure or shame.”

By the 17th century, the expression had been clipped to “lack-a-day,” and by the 18th, it had mutated, oddly, to “lackadaisy.” During this evolution, however, its connotation shifted from a serious expression of grief to a fatalistic lament, more apathetic and self-pitying than agonized, and roughly synonymous with “what the heck” or “that’s the way it goes.” Naturally, persons given to expressing what was considered such “vapid sentimentality” at every opportunity (and doing little else) were called “lackadaisical.”

Absolute maybe.

Dear Word Detective: Where did the expression “to hem and haw” come from? I have also heard it “to him and haw.” Either way, please clarify its meaning and origin. — Mark Anderson.

Well, which is it? “Hem and haw” or “him and haw”? Or is it “hum and hoo”? Ever heard the expression “hish and horp”? Me neither. But it would really help if you would pick one question and stick to it. Then again, wasn’t it T.S. Eliot who said “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”? Truer words were never spoken. Unless they were spoken by W.B. Yeats, which, come to think of it, they were. Golly, this being certain business is hard.

Which is, of course, where “hem and haw” (the usual form) comes in. Depending on one’s point of view, when you are “hemming and hawing,” you are either dithering and refusing to give a definite answer, or simply (as the politicians say) “keeping your options open.”

For a species known for its willingness to leap before looking, humanity has a remarkably long history of “hemming and hawing.” The phrase in that form first appeared in the late 18th century (“I hemmed and hawed … but the Queen stopped reading,” 1786), but other forms (“hem and hawk,” “hum and haw,” etc.) are a few centuries older, and the “hem” and the “haw” are both considerably older than the whole phrase.

The basic meaning of “hem,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), is “an interjectional utterance like a slight half cough, used to attract attention, give warning, or express doubt or hesitation.” If this sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it is the same sound depicted by the interjection “ahem,” the difference being that “ahem” is an actual word used to attract attention to the speaker, rather than producing the sound “hem” itself. One uses “ahem” in situations where, for instance, making noises with one’s throat might be either rude or ineffective. The verb “to hem,” meaning to make the noise, dates to the 15th century, and is “echoic” in origin, being an imitation of the sound itself. “Hem” is also closely related to “hum,” also echoic.

“Haw,” which dates back to the 1600s, is another case of a word imitating a sound, in this case “as an expression of hesitation” (OED). There are fashions in such things, and today we are more likely to say “uh,” “huh,” or “um” when faced with a sudden decision, but the feeling is the same.

So, put together, “hem and haw” vividly describes that moment when our mouth stalls for time while our mind attempts to assess the ramifications of our possible answers, the mental “looking” before the verbal “leaping.” And while it’s annoying to ask a question and be answered with “hemming and hawing,” there’s an argument to be made that the world could do with a little less instant certainty.

Of the firm Vole, Vermin and Bungalow?

Dear Word Detective: I am directing an Agatha Christie play, “Witness for the Prosecution” and have come across some words that we would like to print the definitions for in our playbill. One is “eggbeater,” which someone told me is British slang for an automobile. The other is “bands,” which I believe is the name of the neckties British judges and barristers wear. — Cathy Van Lopik.

Good questions. I’ve never read (or seen) the play “Witness for the Prosecution,” but the movie version, made in 1957, is one of my all-time favorites. It stars Charles Laughton as Sir Wilfrid Robarts, a barrister in precarious health, Elsa Lanchester as his nurse Miss Plimsoll, Tyrone Power as Leonard Vole, accused of murdering an elderly woman for her money, and Marlene Dietrich as Christine, Vole’s duplicitous (to put it mildly) German wife. I’ve seen the film at least six times, but I’d gladly watch it again just for the remarkable cast and the cleverness of the story.

The slang of any culture can pose puzzles for an outsider, and I’m not an expert in that of Britain, but your question about “eggbeater” raises two possibilities. Literally, of course, an “eggbeater” is a handheld kitchen implement used for beating, mixing or whipping, usually involving a crank turning rotating blades. As slang, “eggbeater” has most often, since about 1930, been applied to either a helicopter or an autogiro (an early form of helicopter using a standard aircraft propeller for forward movement). According to Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, “eggbeater” has also been used to mean an old car, perhaps one that rattles like an eggbeater, but the usage seems fairly rare.

However, I’m wondering exactly where in the play (to which I do not have access) the use of “eggbeater” that puzzles you occurs. Early on, Leonard Vole (wonderful name, isn’t it?) explains to Robarts, et al., that he fancies himself an inventor and has just developed a revolutionary new eggbeater. If that’s the instance of “eggbeater” in question, Vole definitely means the kitchen implement. If there is a later reference, I suppose it could be coy use of the slang term for “car,” helicopters being notable in the play by their absence.

As for “bands,” you’re right on the money. Sometimes called “barrister bands,” they are the two hanging strips of white fabric worn as neckwear in court by British barristers and judges. These “bands” evolved from the simple neckbands worn under formal “ruffs” in the 16th century, and represent a stage in the development of male fashion, long abandoned outside the courtroom, that eventually produced the modern necktie.