Semper Ubi Sub Ubi

readme:

Whoa. Instant October, Batman! One minute it’s 94 degrees and the grass is burned brown, the next it’s leaden skies, the rustle of leaves in the driveway, and time for pumpkin pie. Whoo-hoo. Autumn is really the only season I enjoy, though it makes me a bit sad because it makes me homesick for New England.

Hey, I keep meaning to let youse in on my latest kitchen tip. Last month I mentioned that I’ve lost much of the grip strength in my left hand. That makes it very difficult to open jars of stuff, especially spaghetti sauce and salsa, both of which are vital to my diet. The kitchenware stores sell all sorts of gizmos to help get jars open, but they all seem cumbersome and the one I bought a few years ago didn’t really work. The traditional method — of running the jar under hot water and tapping the lid with a knife — at best doesn’t work, and, at worst, may leave you picking glass fragments out of your tongue later in the evening. Then it dawned on me. All you have to do is put on rubber gloves, the kind you wash dishes with. Or even just one glove, on your good hand. Bingo. Effortless. Maybe you all knew this trick, but I came up with it all on my own and I think it’s very cool. Then again, “Easily Amused” is my middle name.

Ladycat, a lady cat.

Onward. This is Ladycat. Ladycat is the feral cat we took in last winter who had nearly frozen to death in our yard and who, upon being thawed, nearly bit my finger off when I tried to pet her. Ladycat has calmed down considerably since then, and lives a quiet life napping in her little pink bed in a clear space I made for her on the bookshelves in my office upstairs.

Ladycat’s name, by the way, has no significance apart from illustrating our complete burnout on inventing names for these critters. Kathy says that “Ladycat” sounds like something Tina Fey would come up with. I think the creative naming well ran dry about the time we settled on Little Girl Cat for one of the arrivals a few years ago. We just call her LGC now.

Now, the truth about cats is that all cats throw up from time to time, differing only in their personal style of delivering the bad news. For instance, Marley (who also lives in my office) will give several warning yowls (mmmwrow mmmwrow mmmwrow wrowwrow) before he vomits, but this does me little good because he invariably then runs out into the hall, jumps up on the banister, and pukes down the stairwell onto the coats hanging on the rack in the front hall. I have reason to believe that Marley has actually won awards from the other cats for this behavior.

Ladycat, however, almost never vomits. I’d say “never,” but I did see her in action the other day, and it explains why I would have said “never” until then. Like Marley, she gave a few “I’m gonna be sick” signals that caught my attention. But what she did next was quite remarkable. As the moment drew near, she trotted over to the covered litter pan in the corner, put her paws up on the entrance, leaned her head into the opening, and upchucked, quite decorously, into the kitty litter pan. Then she climbed in and covered the mess, climbed out, jumped back up on her shelf, and went back to sleep. I swear this actually happened, and if someone has a cheap, practical way to clone cats, I think I may have stumbled onto a gold mine.

Meanwhile, cat food isn’t free, so please subscribe.

Bonus cats-in-love picture:

Little Girl Cat and Fuzzy-Wuzzy

Little Girl Cat is totally in love with Fuzzy and follows him everywhere. If he wanders upstairs in the evening, she’ll come up the stairs a few minutes later making a little bereft sound. Fuzzy used to just tolerate her, but now she’s the only cat he’ll curl up with.

And now, on with the show….

Let’s you and him fight.

Dear Word Detective: How, exactly, does one “play both ends against the middle”?  Whence?  Wherefore?  Is it a reference to the children’s game “Monkey in the Middle”?  Is there a more sinister explanation?  It seems to make better sense if it’s the middle playing both ends against each other, but maybe they decided that was too cumbersome.  What’s going on? — Hannah Upchurch.

“Monkey in the Middle”?  You’ll have to forgive me — I am not familiar with your Earth games.  Is that anything like “Transform Boltar into a Werkle”?  We used to play that all the time on, um, Connecticut.  Ah, here we go.  This “Wikipedia” must be the wisest person on your planet.  He says that “Monkey in the Middle” is what you people also call “Keep Away,” a larval sport the object of which is to throw an object back and forth while someone positioned between the players attempts to grab it.

OK, game time over.  To “play both ends against the middle” means to maneuver two opponents into a conflict against each other in order to benefit yourself, or to pretend to favor both opponents as a way of being sure of ending up on the winning side.  This behavior will seem very familiar to any student of politics, where a candidate’s pledge of fealty to opposing (and often mutually exclusive) sides of a debate is regarded as “realistic” and “post-partisan.”   It’s also the principle behind the not-uncommon practice of a party surreptitiously supporting an extremist candidate on the other side in order to draw votes away from a more mainstream opponent.

“Playing both ends against the middle” may resemble “Monkey in the middle” in its arrangement of players, but the idiom actually comes from the card game called “faro,” which was an extremely popular form of gambling in 19th century America.  (The name “faro” is a simplified form of “Pharaoh,” a king of ancient Egypt.  It’s thought that the decks of cards used in 17th century France, where the game first appeared, were decorated with a picture of a Pharaoh.)

Card games more sophisticated than “Fish” are beyond my ken, but according to the excellent explanation of “playing both sides against the middle” in Christine Ammer’s dictionary of idioms “Have a Nice Day — No Problem,” faro is, when fairly played, a very fair and honest game.  Unfortunately, faro games can be, and often were, rigged by shaving the edges of cards to make their location in the deck easily identifiable to crooked dealers and players.  Apparently the ends of cards were frequently shaved in a concave or convex fashion, and this technique was called “both ends against the middle,” which became “playing both ends against the middle.”

“Playing both ends against the middle” probably became popular as a phrase at least in part because the idiom “to play one person against another” had been in use since the 16th century (“They could play one Party of Protestants against another,” 1643).  But the popularity of faro in the US gave a boost to “play both ends against the middle,” and the phrase was being used in a non-card sense by the late 19th century (“He must in gamblers’ parlance, ‘play both ends against the middle’,” 1887).

Steady there, cowboy.

Dear Word Detective:  “Chicago, Chicago … that toddlin’ town.”  What does “toddlin’” mean?  Do people “toddle” because they:  (a) imbibe excessively, (b) are buffeted by so much wind?  (It’s amusing that “Windy City” refers to blustering politicians) or (c) are wearing so much clothing to protect them from the weather that they toddle about, much like the little brother encased in a snowsuit who cannot put his arms down in “The Christmas Story”? — EC Goller.

Hey, I had a snowsuit like that.  But it didn’t bother me as much as the little halter-and-leash combo my parents made me wear when we went somewhere where there were crowds.  In retrospect, I understand why they did it.  I was a small, vague child, and easily misplaced.  But I do think the muzzle was overkill.

Onward.  You mention “Windy City” as the nickname of Chicago, which requires me to explain that the term was not, as is often said, coined by New York Sun editor Charles A. Dana during the 1890s tussle between New York and Chicago for the right to hold the 1893 Columbian Exposition (the World’s Fair held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in America).  Etymologist Barry Popik (www.barrypopik.com) has found uses of “Windy City” in print as early as 1856, and it was frequently deployed in inter-city rivalry between Chicago and Cincinnati in the 1860s and 70s, in which “windy” had the dual meaning of “literally windy” and being “windy” with bombast and empty boasts.

The song “Chicago,” which begins “Chicago, Chicago, That toddling town, Chicago, Chicago, I’ll show you around,” was written in 1922 by Fred Fisher and has been recorded by numerous artists, the versions by Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett being especially popular.

I would suggest a trip to Chicago to ask the natives what “toddling” in the song means, but they seem to have spent the past ninety-plus years trying, with no success, to figure that out.  The verb “to toddle” dates back to around 1600 and initially, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, meant “to walk or run with short unsteady steps, as a child just beginning to walk [or] an aged or invalid person.”  That’s obviously the sense that gave us “toddler” meaning “a very young child.”  By the early 18th century, however, “toddle” was also being used to mean “to walk in a leisurely fashion, to stroll.”  The roots of “toddle,” incidentally, are unknown, but it may be related to “totter,” which would fit well with that first meaning.

As to whether “toddling” in the song refers to walking with difficulty (presumably because of inebriation, though wind might be a contributing factor), or to strolling along in a leisurely fashion, perhaps on the shore of Lake Michigan, both possibilities are arguable.  But I’m afraid that the most likely answer is “neither.”  “Toddling town” was probably picked simply because it’s nicely alliterative, always a good idea for the first line of nearly anything.  Having begun his song with “Chicago, Chicago” and wanting to follow up with “That T-something-something Town,” Fred Fisher’s choices were, after all, limited.  “Tootling”?  Too creepy. “Truculent”?  Bad for business.  “Terrific”?  Too needy, and it doesn’t scan properly.  “Tedious”?  Only if he longed for cement overshoes.  All things considered, “toddling” seems almost inevitable.

Food not for thought.

Dear Word Detective:  For those of us who remember “All in the Family,”the white-bread family show of the 70s, one cannot forget Archie Bunker’s term of endearment for his son-in-law: “Meathead”! Is this term born out of pure invention, or does it have any noble origins?– apolo.

Wow. Memory Lane time. Do I need to explain what All in the Family was? Probably. It was a hugely popular sitcom on US TV from 1971-79 (and continued as Archie Bunker’s Place until 1983). Archie Bunker, his wife Edith, daughter Gloria, and her husband Michael Stivik all lived in the Bunkers’ home in Astoria, Queens (a borough in New York City). Archie (Carrol O’Connor) was a deeply reactionary working-class character who frequently clashed with son-in-law Mike (Rob Reiner), a stereotypical liberal college student. The show was known for tackling hot-button social issues of the time such as the Vietnam War, abortion and racism. There is, of course, an extensive page devoted to the show at Wikipedia, where I learned (assuming it’s true) that director Norman Lear had originally approached Mickey Rooney to play the role of Archie. That would have been quite weird.

To Gloria, Edith and the rest of the world, Rob Reiner’s character was “Michael” or “Mike,” but Archie always referred to him (and often addressed him) as “Meathead.” The insult  became such a fixture of the show that it quickly lost whatever shock value it originally had and Archie frequently employed it in the same tone that he might have said “your husband” or “him.”

I wouldn’t say that “meathead” has noble origins, but the show’s writers definitely didn’t invent the term. It first appeared in print in English (as far as we know so far) in the mid-19th century (“‘The man who made that order,’ said Judge B. in court, ‘was a meat-head,’” C.G. Leland, 1863), and it definitely wasn’t a term of endearment. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a “meathead” as “a stupid person; a person (especially a man) who has a large or muscular physique but who is unintelligent or uncouth.” Given that Reiner’s character was quite a bit taller than Archie, slightly pudgy for the time, and projected a somewhat hulking, often hangdog look, “meathead” would have been a natural choice of epithet for Archie.

“Meathead” is one of a large number of pejorative slang terms in English for persons perceived to be, either chronically or temporarily, a bit low on the wits scale. The human head being the home of the brain, a substantial number of these phrases end in “head,” the first part of the term delineating the supposed cause, extent or notable object of comparison of the subject’s stupitude. Thus we have “bonehead,” “clunkhead,” “fathead,” “lunkhead,” “jughead,” “chucklehead” and, my fave, “chowderhead.” The head and mind also figure in adjectives such as “osteocephalic” (a fancy Latinate form of “boneheaded”) and the blunt but elegant “brainless.”

In many of such terms, including “meathead,” the assertion is that the subject’s head is made of something, whether inert meat, solid bone, feathers, rocks or wood, clearly not likely to produce deep thoughts. Given the alternatives, Archie’s choice of “meathead” for his son-in-law was actually one of the gentler terms available, far less brutal than “fathead” or “pinhead.”

Three degrees of goodification.

Dear Word Detective:  It’s election time over here in dear old Blighty, so I thought I’d ease the boredom by asking a question. Lots of talk, most of it rubbish, about inflation and export of goods, import of goods and so on. It suddenly occurred to me I hadn’t the faintest idea why purchasable things were called “goods,” and neither does my dictionary by the looks of it. Why “goods”?  We don’t talk about “bads,” although perhaps we should. And, as a parting shot, how did the comparative and superlative of “good” ever get to be “better” and “best”?  Surely “gooder” and “goodest” would have been more obvious? — David, Ripon, England.

Ah yes, elections. Time for a change again. I’d go with Tweedledee if I were you. Oh, look, you folks have already voted. Whatever. I’m sure the goodest dude won.

Since I actually take absolutely everything very, very seriously, I know I’m going to be plagued by guilt if I don’t explain your reference to “Blighty,” British slang for England. It’s a souvenir of the British occupation of India, a modification of the Hindi word “bilati,” meaning “foreign.”

I’d definitely go for calling several of my recent purchases “bads,” from the answering machine that garbles every message to the waterproof boots with the creatively ventilated toes. But we’ve been calling property, possessions and other things that can be bought and sold “goods” for quite a long time, so I’m afraid we’re stuck with the term.

I actually covered the origin of “good” fairly recently in a column on the connections between “good” and “god” on one hand and “evil” and “devil” on the other. (There aren’t any, incidentally.)  But, to recap, our modern word “good” is rooted in the Germanic word “gath,” meaning “to bring together” (which also gave us “gather” and “together”). The evolution of the adjective “good” seems to have progressed from “united” to “suitable” to “pleasing, favorable” to “good” in all the positive senses we have today.

“Good” as a noun was an outgrowth of its use as an adjective, and the earliest noun use of “good” was to mean very broadly “that which is good” or “goodness” itself (“They are reformed, full of good, … And fit for great employment,” Shakespeare, 1590). By around 1300, we were using “good” to mean “a desirable end or object,” and by the mid-15th century, we had narrowed that down to “commodities or merchandise.”

Life would be a bit simpler, especially for folks learning English, if the comparative and superlative forms of “good” conformed to the usual practice and appended “er” (“gooder”) and “est” (“goodest”) to the base word (as in “long,” “longer” and “longest”). But it’s too late now, because we’re stuck using the forms that went with the Germanic root “bat,” meaning “advantage or improvement.”  Its comparative form was “batizon,” and its superlative was “batistaz,” which entered English as “betera” and “betest.” These were later smoothed out to “better” and “best” and adopted as the companions to “good,” which lacked its own comparative and superlative.

So what happened to that Germanic root “bat”?  It doesn’t exist in English, but one of its descendants does, albeit a bit obscurely. The very old noun “boot,” meaning “advantage or benefit” is now nearly obsolete, but is still found in the expression “to boot,” meaning “in addition, added into the bargain” (“Bob got new glasses for just twenty bucks, and a free spare pair to boot”). Ideally, we probably should have been using “boot” instead of “good” for the past few centuries (giving us “boot,” “better” and “best”), but, as I said, it’s way too late now.

Le grande fromage.

Dear Word Detective:  As someone who has recently found himself designated “Editor-in-Chief” of a new-born enterprise, I am wondering why “in” vice “and” — which is also the case, of course, for “Commander-in-Chief.”  Is it as simple as a semi-literal translation of the French, “rédacteur en chef” (where “en” is usually rendered “in”)?  Or does the French imply a subtlety that has been lost in English?  Even accounting the etymology from Latin “caput” (head), translation as “and” seems more appropriate. — Drako Artemesius.

That’s a darn good question. Incidentally, before we begin, I should explain, for the benefit of folks who suddenly felt a bit dizzy midway through your first sentence, that “vice” as you used it is a preposition meaning “in the place of” or “instead of.”  It’s the ablative form of the Latin noun “vicis,” meaning “turn” or “place,” and has nothing to do with Miami Vice and all those awesome pastels.

I first became aware of the title “Editor-in-Chief” when I was about ten years old and discovered that my father was Editor-in-Chief of Grosset & Dunlap publishers (now part of Penguin). I’m sure that Grosset produced many fine books, but my interest began and ended with the fact that they also published the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Steve Canyon and Tom Swift Jr. books I loved. It was better than having a father who owned a doughnut shop.

The title “Editor-in-Chief” in book publishing, newspapers and similar fields means essentially “editor in charge,” the person who oversees the editorial and production processes leading up to publication. As a fixed phrase, “Editor-in-Chief” dates back only to the late 19th century (“Our highest ambition has been to be the editor-in-chief of a large New York daily…,” J. M. Bailey, Life in Danbury 1873). “Chief” itself is, of course, much older, dating back to the 14th century, and, as you noted, ultimately based on the Latin “caput,” meaning “head,” though that was filtered through the Old French form “chef” before Middle English borrowed it.

The simplest explanation for the form “in chief” is that it’s simply a short form of a phrase such as “in the position of chief.” But the use of “in Chief” in titles such as “Editor-in-Chief” and “Commander-in-Chief” may be rooted at least partially in Feudal Law, where a tenant, usually a member of the nobility, held land leased directly from the King or other ruler of the country (rather than from someone lower on the food chain), a state called tenancy “in chief” (in French, “en chief” or “en chef”). This arrangement gave the “tenant-in-chief” authority and a stable position from which to rent land to sub-tenants, etc.

While there’s no direct connection between “tenant-in-chief” and “editor-in-chief” and similar titles apart from the connotation of supreme power, the feudal use of the construction “in chief” probably contributed to its later use in a general sense to mean “in control and command.” This “in charge” meaning was established in English by the early 17th century (“Thinke it more honor, to direct in chiefe, then to be busie in all,” Francis Bacon, 1607). The even more general use of “in chief” to mean “mainly” or “principally” appeared at about the same time, first appearing (as far as we know) in Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure in 1603 (“Some speech of marriage … which was broke off … in chief for that her reputation was disvalued in levity”).

Yes, but this ball of twine belonged to Thomas Jefferson.

Dear Word Detective:  OK, first I did my own search, then I searched your online archives and then I did a search of your whole website. And I noticed (by coincidence) that just a couple of months ago you talked about enjoying the show Pawn Stars. But I don’t think you have ever talked about the history of “pawn.” The dictionary entries I found only intrigued me more. It talks about the chess piece “pawn” and how it traces back to “pown” and “peoun” (possibly related to foot soldiers and maybe “peon”) and even to “pes” and “pedo” in their relation to feet. Maybe my possessions have feet and are walking off to be pawned. But there is the interesting definition of something that is used to advance the interests of another, which no doubt is true in chess, and in the conversational sense of being a pawn in the grand scheme of things. But it also could be true of pawning things to advance my own or the pawn shop’s interest. There is also the transitive verb “to pawn” which is closer to what I am looking for, but I could find no etymology of the verb sense. I have come to the conclusion that “pawn” is a nautical term, and probably a nautical acronym (probably in use since the 1700s) at that. Sorry, I just had to say that. Anyway, could you please help? – Gary.

Whoa. For a moment I thought you were serious about the nautical acronym. I’m glad I was able to cancel the hit-man. It was actually a hit-dog, our Pokey, who was going to track you down and lick you. That probably doesn’t sound too bad, but you haven’t seen some of the other things Pokey licks. Furry little bio-hazard, she is.

You’ve done quite a bit of investigation on your own, which I encourage, in moderation. (If you folks start doing it to excess, I’ll have to find a real job.) And you’ve come up with some good leads to connect “pawn” in the chess sense to “pawn” in the “How much will you give me for this genuine Rilex watch?” sense. Unfortunately, such efforts are unlikely to bear useful fruit, because there is no connection between the two “pawns” — they are entirely separate words. English actually has five separate “pawn” nouns (one of which means “peacock”) plus one verb, but we’ll deal with just those two nouns.

“Pawn” in the chess piece sense is the older of the two words. Meaning “chess piece of smallest value and power,” this “pawn” does come from French and Latin roots meaning “foot soldier,” a good characterization of the pawn’s role on the chessboard, and first appeared in English in this literal sense around 1400. The figurative use of “pawn” to mean “servile agent” or “one who serves only another person’s interests” (“Stephen confesses … that in South America he became a pawn in the cocaine trade,” Guardian, 1995) dates to about 1450. Incidentally, the English word “pioneer” comes from the Old French word “paon,” also meaning “foot soldier” and based on the same roots.

The pawnshop sense of “pawn” came along a bit later, first appearing in English in the 15th century meaning “the state of being held as security for repayment of a loan,” usually in the form “at pawn” or “in pawn.” The source of this “pawn” was the Old French “pan,” meaning “pledge,” and the root of that was a Germanic word that may also have given us “penny.” That Old French “pan” (pledge) is, oddly, identical in form to the Old French “pan” meaning “cloth,” raising the possibility that the original sense may have been fabric used as a means of exchange.

In any case, “to pawn” as a verb showed up in the mid-16th century and “pawnbroker,” meaning a person who loans money on an item held as security, appeared in the mid-17th century. “Pawnshop” appeared in the mid-18th century, the earliest use in print found so far being in Henry Fielding’s 1749 comic novel Tom Jones (“My fine Clothes being often on my Back in the Evening, and at the Pawnshop the next Morning.”).

Well, there you go. Apparently he swallowed a bullet.

Dear Word Detective: I have always wondered about the word “autopsy,” which has a do-it-yourself air that makes no sense to me. Surely “mortopsy” would be more appropriate? — Tracey Martinsen.

Well, it is the age of DIY. I noticed recently that there is now a show, on one of the lesser cable channels, which follows couples renovating their own homes who, interestingly,  know absolutely nothing about construction. So these chuckleheads cheerfully knock down supporting walls (oops!), saw through live wires (zap!) and mess with active gas lines (yow!). They then scream bitter recriminations at each other until the deus ex machina pixies step in and fix everything, which I find terribly unfair. It’s also a real missed opportunity for the network. C’mon, gang. Let nature take its course and you’ve got a perfect lead-in for CSI Home Depot!

Speaking of the CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) franchise and similar TV shows focusing on high-tech crime investigation, prosecutors and defense attorneys in real-life criminal trials are apparently increasingly worried about what they call the “CSI effect” on juries. Jurors addicted to the shows either put too such trust in forensic evidence, investing it with almost magical powers, or they expect slam-dunk DNA “proof” in every case and discount more mundane evidence. I’ve never been tempted by a life of crime, but if I were, the prospect of trial by a jury of credulous couch potatoes would give me serious pause.

Autopsies play a large role in CSI and similar shows (which is one reason why I don’t watch them), and you’re right that “autopsy” is itself a strange little word. It first appeared in English in the mid-17th century, drawn from the Greek word “autopsia.” That “autopsia” was a combination of “auto,” meaning “self” and “opsis,” meaning “something seen,” giving the resulting meaning of “personal observation” or “something seen for oneself.” That Greek root “auto,” incidentally, is found in all sorts of English words, from “autonomy” (self-rule) to “automobile” (moves itself, no horse required) and others.

The initial meaning of “autopsy” in English was, as its roots suggest, “the act of seeing with one’s own eyes; personal inspection,” and it was applied to nearly any sort of inspection  (“Or by autopsie, when by our observation, wee get a certaine knowledge of things,” 1651). Within just about a quarter century (1678), however, “autopsy” was being used in its very specific modern sense of “postmortem examination of a cadaver by dissection, usually to determine the cause of death or other pathology.”

Once the “inspect a corpse” sense of “autopsy” gained currency, the more generic “take a good look at something” sense faded away, probably because it became impossible to use that  general sense without invoking unpleasant associations. By the early 19th century, however, “autopsy” had acquired a figurative use, safely distant from the forensic sense, meaning “detailed critical examination of a thing or event, usually after its first presentation or occurrence” (“This autopsy of a fine lady’s poem,” 1879). Interestingly, this use is not very common today in the mass media, and we tend to substitute the term “post-mortem” for “autopsy” in even clearly figurative uses (“Market Madness: A Post-Mortem,” headline, NY Times, 5/7/10).

The Dunderhead?

Dear Word Detective:  I found a reference in Wikipedia suggesting that the word “mooch” had its first appearance in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, related to the character of Wesley Mouch.  Webster’s says the word originated in 1851, but its explanation is “probably from French dialect ‘muchier,’ to hide, lurk”… and now I’m curious.  Do you have anything more certain than a “probably?” — Foxx.

Whoa, hold it right there.  Atlas Shrugged is a novel?  As in “made-up story”?  Holy cow.  This is serious.  Has anyone told Alan Greenspan?  Never mind; I guess it’s too late.  Incidentally, I haven’t read either of the recent biographies of Ayn Rand, but I have read the reviews, and while I knew that Alan Greenspan had been a big fan of Rand, I didn’t know that he had spent a protracted period actually sitting at her feet.  Seriously.  She apparently held little soirées in her apartment where she would read aloud from her works to her assembled acolytes.  I wonder if that works with cats.

I guess I should try harder to answer questions in the same decade you folks send them, because the suggested etymology of “mooch” that you mention seems to have disappeared from Wikipedia while your email was cooling its heels in my to-do file.  A quick Googling of “Wesley Mouch” and “mooch,” however, indicates that Wikipedia had it backwards.  Rand clearly intended the name of Wesley Mouch, a bumbling bureaucrat who cripples the US economy with a byzantine web of regulations, to remind readers of the word “mooch.”  That strikes me as a bit like naming your character Doofus McMeddler, but whatever.  I guess the free market didn’t mind.

I’m not sure why Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary told you that “mooch” first appeared in 1851.  That date is accurate for one of the modern meanings of “to mooch,” which is “to loaf or loiter around” or “to skulk or sneak.”  But the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) dates “mooch” in its original meaning of “to be miserly; to be a hoarder” all the way back to around 1400.  Around 1600, “mooch” apparently acquired the additional meaning of “to play truant from school,” especially, in a bit of oddly specific weirdness, “to play truant in order to pick blackberries.”   In 19th century western England, in fact, “mooch” was a popular dialect term for a blackberry.

By the mid-19th century, “mooch” had reached its primary modern meaning as a verb, “to scrounge or cadge money, food, etc., from someone; to beg or sponge from another person.”  The noun “mooch” appeared at roughly the same time, meaning a person who “mooches,” the act of “mooching,” or a person who is easily taken in or swindled (perhaps by a “moocher”).

It is true that the most likely origin of “mooch” (sorry, we’re fresh out of certainty on this one) is the Anglo-Norman word “muscher,” which harks back to the Old French “mucier” or “muchier,” meaning “to hide or conceal.”  There are, however, other theories.  One ties “moocher” to the Old High German “muharri,” meaning “robber.”  Another traces it to the Middle English “mucchen,” meaning “to be stingy,” derived from “mucche,” nightcap, and possibly originally meaning “to hide coins in one’s nightcap.”  Funny how that doesn’t seem as crazy today as it would have a few years ago, isn’t it?

Never mind, I’ll go check the sundial.

Dear Word Detective:  I have been having an ongoing debate with a close friend about the meaning of the idiom “like clockwork,” as in “She arrives everyday at noon, like clockwork.” Somewhere, a while back, I remember reading that the original intention of this expression is more closely related to “like rocket science.”  This had to do with the incredible complexity and machinery skill that it took to build a clock long ago. I have been looking around online and I only see the modern usage of “with regularity, or on schedule.” Of course, this annoys me since it seems as if this definition is copied and pasted around with almost universal agreement (a site search here also uses the saying to mean “regularity” versus “an admiration of complexity”). Does this saying have its roots where I believe it is, or has the modern usage always been the same as the original usage? — Termite.

That’s a fascinating question. Say, given that you’re clock-aware, perhaps you could clear up a question of current fashion for me. I have been told, by persons in the know, that it is now considered very uncool to wear a wristwatch. Apparently I’m supposed to rely on my cell phone to tell me the time. This poses a problem for me, as I do not own, and have no desire to buy, a cell phone. I have an old-fashioned hard-wired telephone I never, ever answer, but I assume it works because it rings all day long. Anyway, what number do I call for the time?

Onward. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “clockwork” first appeared in English in the mid-17th century meaning simply “the mechanism or works of a clock.”  Interestingly, the initial meaning of “clock”(which had developed from Celtic roots) in Old English was “bell.” In the 14th century it came to mean “clock with bells,” and eventually the need for bells was waived in the definition, and “clock” meant simply a timepiece.

“Clockwork” went on to acquire the meaning of “a mechanism similar to a clock,” and, by the late 17th century, became a metaphor for something that worked with unvarying regularity (“Their Religion was a kind of clock-work … moving in a certain order, but without life or sense,” 1679). This “My nephew shows up on payday like clockwork” sense is the most common current usage.

I think the usage of “clockwork” meaning “complex product of remarkable skill” you’re seeking is actually an extension of the “mechanism similar to a clock” sense, especially when applied to an article where such skill and complexity might not be expected. If I say, for instance, that an antique mechanical toy dog, upon examination, proved to be powered by a tiny spring mechanism of “clockwork” complexity, it would be a tribute to the builder’s remarkable skill. A search of Google for the phrase “clockwork complexity” produces more than 1,600 examples of the phrase (“Suddenly, as if cooling down after vigorous exercise, they flawlessly execute a circular court dance of arcane, clockwork complexity,” Dance Magazine), albeit not always used as a compliment (“This music — whose clockwork complexity I hope will not hopelessly bore an unaccustomed ear….”).

Incidentally, this “complex and clever mechanism” sense is also found in the title of Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange. The novel’s protagonist, Alex, undergoes intense aversion therapy to eliminate his appetite for extreme violence, and emerges devoid of free will and the ability to make moral choices, as useless and strange as an orange that has had its innards replaced with a clockwork mechanism.

No problem. Have a nice day.

Dear Word Detective:  What does “same difference” mean? Where did that come from? How can “same” be “different”? I know that two mathematical equations can be different but have the same answer, but what about other subjects? — Diane Lecik.

That’s what’s always bothered me about math. Two plus two equals four, right? But three plus one equals four, too. And two times two equals four. Twenty divided by five equals, guess what, four. Heck, one million divided by 250,000 equals, you got it, four again. Seems to me that we’re putting a heck of a lot of eggs in one very small basket labeled “four.” If something were to happen to that weird little number, we’d be in deep oatmeal. People should quit freaking out over the Large Hadron Collider and start worrying about the number four. This wouldn’t be happening if we’d stuck to the gold standard, y’know.

“Same difference” is a colloquial idiomatic expression meaning “no difference” or “the same, equivalent” (“You say he was fired? But he says he left to spend more time with his Airedale.” “Same difference.”). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest use of the phrase in print found so far is from 1945, in a book titled “I Am Gazing Into My 8-Ball” by the legendary New York gossip columnist Earl Wilson. It’s likely, of course, that the phrase was widely used for years before it made it into print.

The problem with “same difference” for many people is simply that the phrase, as it is commonly used, makes no sense. If something is the “same” as something else, there is no difference. You can say “the same” or “no difference,” but “same difference” gives a lot of people headaches. One poster I came across on the internet called it “the most moronic oxymoron in the English language,” and conservative arbiters of traditional English usage traditionally go berserk when encountering “same difference.”

There is, incidentally, a use of “same difference” that does make sense: the mathematical equivalence you mentioned and its metaphorical cousins. If I’m selling a gizmo for ten dollars and you bid seven, whereupon I lower my price to eight and you boldly offer five, that two-dollar gap is the “same difference” remaining between our bids.  Similarly, if I am a slob and my house is a mess, while you are a neatnik and your home gleams, there is the “same difference”  between our two personalities and our two abodes. I am not a slob, by the way. Not much, anyway.

So where did the use of “same difference” to mean “the same” come from? The most likely answer is simply that people combined “the same” and “no difference,” perhaps first as a mistake, and the phrase then “grew legs” because it embodies a certain cheeky humor, which brings us to an important point. “Same difference” is an idiom, a fixed phrase used in casual conversation. It doesn’t have to make sense, because idioms often don’t make literal sense. We say, for instance,  that things “fall between the cracks,” meaning that they get lost or overlooked. But “between the cracks” on a floor made of floorboards (the original metaphorical reference) would be a solid surface, not a void. If things are gonna fall, you should want them to fall “between the cracks.”

“Same difference” is, despite the howls of the Language Police, not a threat to the logic of the English language (to the extent that there is such a thing), because using “same difference” as a fixed phrase does not degrade the meaning of either “same” or “difference.” There hasn’t been an epidemic of people using “same” to mean “different” (“I hate this purple. Do you have this dress in a same color?”), and there won’t be anytime soon.

A long story.

Dear Word Detective:  Could you please tell me the source of the term “history-sheeter”? — A. Ray.

It shows to go ya. When I first read this question, I suspected that it was what we here at Word Detective World Headquarters call a “huh-next.” We get a fair number of queries that are either flat-out incoherent, perhaps spawned in a room full of monkeys and typewriters, or obviously based on garbled text that someone has encountered on the internet (e.g., “The Senator is not said office his denied any relationly…”). Typically I just mutter “huh” and go on to the next question. Something about the term “history-sheeter” piqued my interest, however, and I did a bit of searching. I’m glad I did.

Incidentally, if I might digress for a moment (good luck stopping me), has anyone else noticed the missing words on the internet? You’ll be reading a perfectly coherent sentence on an established site such as the New York Times, Slate or the Atlantic, and suddenly you’ll realize that a “the” or “has” or “or,” some little word that obviously should be there, simply isn’t. Have all the copy editors been laid off? Silly question. I guess that’s why the new guy at our local Starbucks keeps correcting customers’ grammar.

Meanwhile, back at your question, “history-sheeter” has nothing to do with Thomas Jefferson pillowcases. It’s an Anglo-Indian colloquial term, widely used in the news media in India, meaning “a career criminal” (“Policemen checked on the addresses of all wanted criminals and history-sheeters,” Indian Express, 2005). A “history sheet” in this context is a criminal record, a list of charges, convictions and other information kept by law enforcement authorities, the equivalent of what we in the US know as a “rap sheet.” The “sheet” in both phrases originally referred to an actual sheet of paper (or multiple sheets, for “hard cases”) on which such records were kept, but with the rise of the thinking machines, such “sheets” now exist largely in digital form.

So a “history-sheeter” in India is a miscreant with a prodigious “history sheet,” what we in the US would call “a rap sheet a mile long.” According to the Double-Tongued Dictionary, Grant Barrett’s excellent online exploration of slang terms, odd words and new words (www.doubletongued.org), the term “rowdy-sheeter” is synonymous with “history-sheeter,” and is also commonly used in India. (“Rowdy” is a more negative term in India than in the US, where it means little more than “boisterous.”) Incidentally, “history-sheeter” in the “criminal” sense dates back only to the late 1980s, but “history sheet” has been used, primarily in the British Commonwealth, since the 19th century to mean any written record kept pertaining to a person (criminal, medical, employment, driving, etc.).

And now, because I’m psychic, I know you’re about to ask where the “rap” in “rap sheet” came from. This is the same “rap,” drawn from Scandinavian roots, that we use to mean “a quick, light blow” (as in “a rap on the knuckles”). “Rap” has been used since the 18th century to mean “blame or rebuke” and since the early 20th to mean “criminal charge or prison sentence” (as in “bum rap,” meaning an undeserved charge or sentence). “Rap” as a style of speech or music is an outgrowth of the same word, based on the sense of “patter” and rapid, rhythmic speech.