Semper Ubi Sub Ubi

readme:

Spring is here, spring is here, life is skittles and life is beer, I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring, I do, don’t you? Of course you do.

So sayeth the Bard (Tom Lehrer), but it’s been a whole lot like January around here lately, which is to say gray, cold and bleak. Of course, this is Ohio. I’m sure it’s nicer where you are. Unless you’re also in Ohio, in which case, can you fetch me some cat food from the store? That incessant yowling on top of the cold gray bleakness is getting to me.

You know what’s funny? It’s 27 degrees out there, has been for a week, we just got three inches of snow, and the grass is growing. Big green clumps of grass. Take a hike, suckers. This year I’m gonna spray the lawn with Agent Orange and tell everybody Global Pattern Baldness is to blame.

Onward. Gosharootie, lookie there! It’s March, which means that it’s National Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month. I have recently been informed that March was picked to be MS month because they both begin with “M.” Apparently I shoulda/woulda figured this out on my own were it not for my creeping enfeebleation, which [pausing for breath] I am told I may choose to blame on my very own MS but which is more likely actually due to my addiction to chocolate doughnuts and pizza. Whatever. Anyway, you should all donate to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society because they do real work and fund real research (as opposed to simply “raising awareness”). The official MS color, by the way, is orange, which is kinda yucky and reminiscent of traffic cones, but far enough from pink that they probably won’t get sued.

So, anyway, here’s the March issue. Have fun, send me some questions, dagnabbit, and if the mood strikes you, please consider subscribing. Every month around this time I nervously check my PayPal balance to see if our hosting charges will squeak through on the first of the month, and at the moment that is far from certain. Operators are standing by. Act now!

And now, on with the show…

And many people apparently think that “Yield” means “Floor It!”

Dear Word Detective:  I really need the answer to this question. In all of the information I see they refer to the COLREGS (Collision Regulations) as “The rules of the road” Well, last I checked, there are no roads on the water. I have been told the phrase goes back to ancient times about a strait in the Mediterranean sea. Can you help me? — Matt Komara.

Hey, cool. I looked up COLREGS (all caps, natch) and discovered it is the accepted abbreviation (sort of) for the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, adopted by the International Maritime Organization in 1972. This was apparently a good idea, because, according to Wikipedia, “Prior to the development of a single set of international rules and practices, there existed separate practices and various conventions and informal procedures in different parts of the world, as advanced by various maritime nations. As a result there were inconsistencies and even contradictions that gave rise to unintended collisions.” Yeah, right, “unintended.” Nice oil tanker ya got there. Be a shame if something unintentionally collided with it, know what I mean?

I remember reading many years ago about the L’Arbre du Ténéré (Tree of Tenere) in the Sahara. It was just a humble acacia tree, but for many, many years it was the only tree standing in several hundred square miles of vacant desert in North Africa. Unfortunately (and improbably), it was knocked down and killed by a drunken truck driver in 1973. So I guess even something as big and mostly vacant as the ocean really does need traffic rules.

I’m curious about the story you were told tracing the use of “rules of the road” in regard to maritime regulations to “a strait in the Mediterranean.” It’s true that confined waterways such as harbor entrances or the Straits of Gibraltar (to which they were probably referring) make proper navigation etiquette especially important. But the phrase “rules of the road” does not have a maritime origin, so that story, whatever it is, is irrelevant. “Rules of the road” originally referred to actual roads and highways on land.

Interestingly, “rules of the road” was originally singular: “the rule of the road.” The phrase first appeared in print in the late 18th century, and thus dealt with horse-drawn carriages, mounted riders, etc., not automobiles and trucks. The original “Rule of the Road” governed on which side two vehicles (or riders) traveling in opposite directions should pass each other, i.e., on which side of the road you should drive. It also dictated in which situations a vehicle had the right of way and when it should give way. These rules and many others were codified in the Highway Code in Britain in 1930, and today every country in the world has equivalent laws. Of course, opinions have varied from Day One as to the need for such rules (“There are seasons when the rule of the road ought to be almost incontrollable. I think in the dark the rule ought to be abided by, but when in the light, I think you have a right to judge [etc.],” 1798), and I happen to know people who maintain that stop signs, for instance, don’t mean you have to literally “stop.” More of a “serving suggestion,” I guess.

“Rules of the road” had been put to use in a nautical sense by the late 1800s (“A variety of useless discussions … one on the rule of the road at sea,” Punch, 1873), and as soon as airplanes began to proliferate, “rules of the road” for aviators were established as well. By this time, the appealing alliteration of the phrase had worked its magic on the public, and “rules of the road” came into wide metaphorical use meaning “a set of unspoken rules or practices” or “how things are done” in a given field or social group, whether codified in print or not (“If you want to maximize your savings with coupons, it’s important to know the rules of the road at the supermarkets and drugstores you frequent,” News & Observer, 2012).

A very special message from Bob Bummer.

Dear Word Detective:  I can easily guess the reason why the word “killjoy” was created to describe anyone who was spoiling the fun, but I am curious who actually started and popularized it. It sounds like a word that would have been made up directly by an English speaker, but does it come from another language as well? — Karyn.

Thanks for a fun question. Incidentally, did you know that much of the beef, pork and turkey sold in the US contains traces of an animal feed additive called “ractopamine” (aka “Paylean”) that is banned in 100 countries, including the European Union, Taiwan and China because of its potential effects on humans? Have another chili cheeseburger! Sorry, just thinking about the word “killjoy” brings out my Debbie Downer tendencies. But not to worry. That asteroid’s gonna get us long before the iffy pork chops do. The asteroid. The one on the news. Never mind. I have to go buy more gin now.

I’m sure that every language has a word or two synonymous with our “killjoy,” since the urge to ruin someone else’s fun seems to be a very primal human impulse. But “killjoy” itself is purely English, first appearing in print in the late 18th century. “Killjoy” is simply a combination of “kill,” meaning in this case to extinguish, plus “joy,” meaning pleasure, happiness or delight (from the Latin “gaudere,” to rejoice). We use “killjoy” primarily as a noun, to mean a person or thing that undermines happiness, inhibits enjoyment, or throws a pall of gloom over a situation (“Reserve, if apparent, is the real kill-joy of conversation,” 1896). But “killjoy” can also be an adjective applied to the bummer itself (“Halfway though the wedding reception, the cops showed up with a killjoy warrant for the groom’s arrest”).

“Killjoy” seems like a uniquely inspired creation, but it didn’t just pop into existence from a vacuum. English at the time sported a number of “kill” combinations, including “kill-courtesy,” a boorish or loutish person (“This lack-loue, this kil-curtesie,” Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1600) and “kill-pot” (1637) meaning a hard drinker (who “killed” the whole pot). There was also “kill-cow” (1590), a large, terrifyingly powerful bully (who could presumably kill a cow barehanded), his cousin “kill-buck” (1612), and the much more serious “kill-man,” a person who had actually murdered someone. On a brighter note, there was “kill-devil” (1593), defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “a recklessly daring fellow,” one who would fight the devil and win. “Kill-devil” was also used, not surprisingly, as a colloquial name for rum, which, in sufficient quantities, might well put you in a “kill-devil” mood. “Kill-devil” is rarely seen these days, but its descendant “dare-devil” or “daredevil” (1794), meaning one who is brave and reckless enough to metaphorically dare the devil, is still popular, especially in the adjectival form (“Daredevil skydiver seeking altitude record,” Google News, 3/16/12).

One word that is not related to this “kill” family is the name of the small bird, a member of the plover species, known as the “killdeer” (or “killdee”). In the summer we see many of these little critters in the open fields near our house, and they’ve always sounded like small seagulls to me, but evidently someone a few centuries ago decided that their calls sound like “Kill deer! Kill deer!”

Because people don’t pay to hear “Beats me.”

Dear Word Detective: What is the origin of the expression “off the cuff”? — Molly Woollett.

Ok, maybe you have to be me to find this funny, and few people are. Usually no more than two or three at a time. Anyway, here we have a question about speaking extemporaneously, with no preparation and no notes (supposedly), and I am about to go look it up. I actually could give a reasonably complete explanation of the logic of the phrase “off the cuff” off the cuff, without peeking at a single reference source, but that would be about as much fun as frozen pizza. It would be an answer, but not a real answer.

We think of “cuff” today usually as meaning the part of a garment sleeve that covers the wrist or, depending on fashion, a fold of fabric turned-up at the end of a trouser leg. But when “cuff” first appeared in English in the 14th century, it meant “a glove or mitten.” The “cuff” at the end of your sleeve wasn’t called that until the early 16th century. The exact origin of “cuff” is a mystery; all we know is that it existed in Middle English as “coffe” and “cuffe.” The verb “to cuff,” meaning “to strike or hit,” is apparently unrelated to this “cuff” and may be related to the Swedish “kuffa,” meaning “to thrust or push.”

There is, of course, another verb “to cuff,” meaning “to put handcuffs on,” “handcuff” being derived (1690) from the “sleeve” sort of “cuff.” What’s interesting about that “Cuff ‘em, Danno” verb is that it actually dates all the way back to the late 17th century (“He was cuff’d and shackled with irons, and committed to Newgate,” 1693). Along with being short for “handcuff,”   “cuff” has since come to mean any sort of band or strap that encircles a pole, post, shaft, tube or human arm, as in the “cuff” of the sphygmomanometer (great word) used to measure your blood pressure.

“Off the cuff” is a colloquial phrase, dating back to at least the late 1930s, which first appeared in the US. A speech (or similar locution) or performance in a play given ad lib, without formal preparation, is said to be “off the cuff” because it is as if the speaker had only had time to jot a few notes on their shirt cuff before ascending the podium or taking the stage. According to lexicographer Christine Ammer (in her wonderful book “Have A Nice Day — No Problem!,” a dictionary of cliches), the phrase comes from the “alleged” practice of after-dinner speakers making notes on their shirt cuffs. I don’t know about cuffs, but I have been known to jot tiny notes on the palm of my hand before interviews (mostly “Mention title of book!”), and former Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin caught a lot of media flak (mostly from people using teleprompters) in 2010 for doing the same thing. The trick, incidentally, is to write only on your left hand so you don’t smear ink on people when you shake hands later.

Although we use usually “off the cuff” to mean “completely extemporaneously, with no preparation,” the origin of phrase itself implies at least a little forethought. And even if a politician is suddenly and unexpectedly confronted by a TV news camera and asked to give a statement, you can rest assured that your public servant has been “prepped” with a list of talking points and has no need to ruin a perfectly nice shirt with crib notes.

Dude, my cousin’s sister knows a guy who was there.

Dear Word Detective: What do you call it when a word is given an etymological “explanation” that is false? I once heard a story that a medieval monk met the king’s hunting party and was accidentally knocked over by a restive horse. Since the monk was wearing only his robe (ONLY his robe) and since the robe flipped up, the monk was “em-bare-assed,” thus giving the modern word. I know this isn’t true, but what do you call the process? — Tredzwater.

Hey, I call it comedy gold, assuming you miss Art Linkletter. And besides, how do you know it isn’t “true,” whatever that means these days? Maybe it has a higher kind of truth, the This American Life kind. Incidentally, not to prolong our national angst attack over last year’s Mike Daisey/TAL dust-up, but I have a question. Would folks find the madcap memoiric stylings of TAL-fave David Sedaris (and his imitator Augusten Burroughs) so funny/freaky/fascinating if they knew going in that 90% of that stuff literally never happened? Just sayin’, as they (anachronistically) say on Downton Abbey.

The story you heard about “embarrass” is, of course, not true in any useful sense of the word “true.” Our English “embarrass,” which first appeared in the late 17th century, was adapted from the French “embarrasser,” literally meaning “to block or obstruct” (“en,” on, in, plus “barre,” bar). To “embarrass” in English originally meant to literally impede the movements or actions of someone or something (“The state of the rivers … will embarrass the enemy in a considerable degree,” 1803). But it was also used to mean “to put someone in a difficult or perplexing condition” and “to cause a person to feel awkward or ashamed,” which is the usual meaning today. The phrase “an embarrassment of riches,” by the way, does not mean that the Kardashians feel a bit sheepish about their excesses. Since the 18th century it has meant the state of literally having more money than you can spend (i.e., your spending is “blocked”).

The process that produces silly stories like the one you heard about “embarrass” is often called “folk etymology,” but it’s more accurately called simply “false etymology.” True “folk etymology” is a linguistic process whereby an unfamiliar word or phrase (e.g., “asparagus”) is transformed into a new word or phrase that may not make more sense, but at least sounds more familiar (in this case, the dialectical term “sparrowgrass”). Folk etymology often produces words that persist long after the “original” word is obsolete. “Cattycornered” (or “kittycornered”), for example, was originally “catercornered,” “cater” being an adverb meaning “diagonally” (so a building “catercornered” from another would sit diagonally across an intersection from it). But “cater” (from the French “quatre,” four) was sufficiently mysterious to enough people that they substituted “kitty,” perhaps imagining that cats like to sit at an angle to each other. The transformation stuck, and if today you were to use “catercornered” in directions to a tourist, they’d probably wander off and ask someone else.

The sort of ludicrous fable you encountered explaining “embarrass” is far from uncommon, and exhibits many of the characteristics of a classic “urban legend.” There’s the setting in a distant, ill-defined past (“medieval” is second only to “old sailing ships” in this regard),  the role of royalty or aristocracy (“a king,” “the “King,” any old king will do), sex, nakedness, or other “inappropriate” behavior, and sudden exposure (literal in this case). Urban legends of this sort are sometimes likened to extended jokes concocted for the amusement of listeners (in a bar, for instance), but I think they rightly belong to the venerable folk tradition of telling “tall tales” in the spirit of Paul Bunyan and Casey Jones. They’re fun to hear, but should not be passed off as serious history.

At Downton Abbey, they use it to store abandoned sub-plots.

Dear Word Detective:  In the National Park Service description of the homes at the Kennedy Compound in Massachusetts  (http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/presidents/site30.htm) is the line “The Joseph P. Kennedy home, [...] On the second floor are six bedrooms, a sewing room, packing room, and four servants’ bedrooms.” Can you define the term “packing room”? A room to store luggage with a work table? A room so filled with “treasures” that everything is packed in? — Gary.

“Treasures”? I suspect that somebody’s been watching that “Hoarders” shows on A&E, where the afflicted packrats invariably refer to their mountains of useless junk as “treasures.” I actually watched this show for a while, but I got bored. The problem is that the show’s producers want the hoarders to throw stuff away themselves, which leads to hours of tedious arguing and death threats. My approach would be to lock the loons in the back room, throw everything into a dumpster, and then let them keep whatever they can fish out in ten minutes while wearing oven gloves and a blindfold. Problem solved.

After doing quite a bit of digging, I think I can safely say that “packing room” means different things to different people, and that what you mean by “packing room” is, to a large extent, dependent on your personal rung on the social ladder.

“Packing” is, of course, a noun most commonly meaning “the action of packing,” although “packing” can also refer to the sort of things used in packing something. The verb “to pack” actually came from the noun “pack,” which wandered into English in the 13th century from Germanic roots carrying the general sense of “bundle.” Today we use “pack” the noun in dozens of senses in three general categories: “a bundle or package” (e.g., a “pack” of cigarettes), a group or set (a “pack” of wolves), or various uses conveying some sense of something having been shoved together (as in an arctic “ice pack”).

“Pack” as a verb has two main senses: “to form into a pack,” which would include everything from “packing” clothes in a suitcase to “packing” a jury with sympathetic jurors, and “to leave,” drawn from the act of departing with a suitcase “packed” with one’s clothes, etc. (“Out I say, pack out this moment,” Goldsmith, 1766). Today the latter sense is often seen in the form “to send packing,” meaning “to banish or eject” or “to pack it up” or “pack it in,” meaning to stop doing something and/or to leave.

“Packing room” seems to have two uses. The first, and by far the more common, is simply “a room, in a factory, shop, etc., where goods or products are packed and prepared for shipment or sale.” Thus a shoe factory in the 19th century would have a separate “packing room” where the shoes were inspected, put in boxes, etc.

The second use of “packing room” is the one you found in that article, that of a room in a very large house (or other large building, such as a museum or library) used primarily for storage of objects or incidental supplies not currently in use, such as extra furniture, seasonal decorations, art work, etc. A packing room may also be used as a receiving room for items coming into the house or building. The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia actually awards a “Packing Room Prize” every year to the portrait most favored by the packing room staff who receive, store  and mount the paintings in the gallery.

So while the factory sort of “packing” room would be analogous to “packing” something for shipment, the “packing room” of a large house such as that at the Kennedy Compound would employ “packing” more in a “shove stuff in together” or “pack things away” sense. But remember, it’s not hoarding if you have servants to dust it.

Ask Roman Castavet.

Dear Word Detective: Since “silent” (a Latin derivative) and “listen” (a Germanic derivative) have a related meaning, and they have all the same letters in a different order, are their origins related? Is it possible that the origin of either word was influenced by the other? — Gunnar.

Wow. I never noticed that. “Silent” and “listen” are anagrams, like in Rosemary’s Baby, which is definitely one of the best horror movies ever made. Really an amazingly good movie. Anyway, an anagram plays a pivotal role in the film. I’ve never been particularly sharp at recognizing anagrams, which I figure has something to do with how my brain is wired (which may also explain why I stink at Scrabble).

An anagram is, of course, a word constructed by rearranging the letters in another word, using all the letters in the first word, each exactly once. The word “anagram” first appeared in English in the 16th century, drawn from the French “anagramme,” which is based on the Greek “ana” (up, back) plus “gramma” (letter). Creating and “decoding” anagrams has been popular at least since Ancient Greece, and there are several free anagram generators and decoders available online (my name produces 618 possibilities, including “river moans,” “overarm sin” and “arm version”). “Anagram” itself produces only 16 anagrams, the most interesting of which is probably “agar man.”

The anagram generator at wordsmith.org suggests various practical uses for anagrams (safeguarding passwords, picking a career, etc.), but to my knowledge anagrams have never played a significant role in the evolution of a standard English word. And while “silent” and “listen” may be anagrams, they come from two entirely separate sources.

“Listen” first appeared in Old English as “hlysnan” or “lysna,” drawn from the Indo-European root “klu,” which denoted the general idea of “hearing.” (It’s also the root of our English “loud.”) “Listen” has stuck pretty closely to its original meaning of “to hear attentively; to pay attention to” ever since, though it has developed some specialized uses such as “listen in,” which can mean either to listen to a radio broadcast or to eavesdrop on someone’s conversation, and “listen up,” originally a military command to pay close attention to what follows. The “t” in “listen,” by the way, is there because of a popular association with the once common but now obsolete English verb “to list” meaning “to wish, like, desire.” That “list” has nothing to do with the “list” you take shopping (which comes from the French “liste,” meaning “strip, border, hem of cloth, band, etc.”), but it is related to “lust.”

“Silent” first appeared in English in the 16th century with the basic meaning, regarding  people, of “refraining from speech,” and of things, “noiseless.” The source of “silent” is the Latin “silentem,” the participle of the verb “silere,” to be silent. Unfortunately, that’s as far back as the trail goes, although some sources suggest the Germanic verb “anasilan,” which signified a wind dying down, as the source. “Silent” may also be related to the Latin verb “desinere,” meaning “to stop.” Another descendant of that Latin “silere,” the noun “silence,” actually appeared in English more than three centuries earlier than “silent.”

Given that “listen” and “silent” both have clearly-documented roots that have no connection to, and bear no resemblance to, each other, I think it’s safe to say that their anagrammatic nature is purely coincidental. But it’s still kinda cool.

I still subscribe to Modern Moat magazine.

Dear Word Detective: What is a “keep” in reference to a castle? — Helen.

That’s an interesting question. When I was a kid, I desperately wanted to live in a castle with a moat and a drawbridge. Given that almost every human culture has built castle-like structures at some time, I suspect that an impregnable home is a basic human desire, especially for folks who suspect that their neighbors might be less than neighborly. I don’t think I would ever have actually mounted the ramparts and poured boiling oil on that obnoxious kid down the street, but it would have been cool to be able to, say, drop water balloons on him and his stupid sister. But we didn’t have the money for a castle, so I had to settle for hiding behind the couch. I think it’s interesting, by the way, that historically the people who could afford castles tended to need them because of the way they got the money to buy the castle. Ironic, eh? With a really good tax lawyer, you could probably even deduct the boiling oil.

Onward. Today we know “keep” primarily as a verb with a wide range of meanings. To “keep” can mean “to preserve; maintain” (“keep safe”), “to fulfill” (“keep a promise”), “to restrain or detain” (“keep home from school”), “to continue” (“keep quiet”), or just plain “to hold on to” (“Bob kept the watch he found in Sam’s couch”). The origin of “keep” in English is a bit mysterious and more than a little strange. Our Modern English “keep” was “cepan” in Old English, but that’s as far back as anyone has been able to trace the word. The odd thing is that “cepan” popped up in written Old English quite suddenly, already carrying many of our modern senses of “keep.” Apparently “cepan” had been in use for a long, long time among the “common people,” but since it wasn’t generally used by the “literary” stratum of society, by the time it finally  appeared in writing it had matured into all those meanings. Of course, this sort of “under the radar” existence was not uncommon in slang and underworld vernacular as recently as the late 20th century, but few of those words have gone on to assume the sort of central role played by “keep.” The advent of the internet, of course, has, for better or worse, made detecting new words and phrases much easier.

“Keep” as a noun has always been a pale shadow of its verb sibling. It first appeared around 1300 meaning “care, attention, notice” (“take keep” was synonymous with “take care,” for instance). And that usage, now largely considered antiquated, has been pretty much it for “keep” as a noun. Except, of course, the castle “keep.”

The “keep” in a castle of the sort built in Medieval Europe was a sort of “safe room,” a fortified tower built into the castle. If the primary fortifications and defenses failed to repel an attacking force, the Important People would skedaddle to the keep, where they could wait for rescue and perhaps feel a twinge of regret at not having been nicer to the peasants. In some castles, the “keep” was simply the heavily-fortified residence of the castle’s owner. This “keep” first appears in print around 1586 (“He, who stood as watche upon the top of the keepe.”), and may have simply been a specialized application of the “care” or “preserving” sense of the noun. But some scholars maintain that this particular “keep” arose as a translation of the Italian term “tenazza,” meaning a fortified tower within a castle, “tenazza” meaning literally “to hold” or “to preserve.” Wikipedia actually has a very interesting article on “keeps” down through the ages  (and offers a different etymology of the term, which I take with a grain of salt).

“Keeps” of the castle sort are just tourist attractions today, but the growth of gated communities and the private security industry proves that some things never change, and royalty will always come with a twinge of foreboding about the peasants.

Kablooey.

Dear Word Detective:  My daughter asked me how the term “haywire” came to mean things going nuts or getting crazy. When she looked for it, her resource suggested that’s what happened when the baling wire holding the hay bales together broke and hay flew everywhere. She thought that was too simplistic and said, “Ask your friend, The Word Detective.” So, my friend, is there more to the story of “haywire”? (I could only find “haymaker” in your archives.) — Marsha Orson.

Ah yes, the “Flying Hay” theory, also the source of the expression of surprise “What the hay?” Your daughter has a healthy skepticism, which will, no doubt, come in handy later in life. The world does not, you may have noticed, seem to be getting any smarter, as the internet persists in proving. I often devote columns to debunking silly stories about the origins of words and phrases, and the columns end up on my website, where readers are free to comment. A small but depressing number of folks zip through my explanations and then, in the comments, post as the “true” origin the same silly story I just debunked. I don’t know whether to be more depressed at the probability that they didn’t read the whole column or the possibility that they did.

A column on “haywire” from 2001 is in my archives, although it seems to be weirdly hard to find. But it’s been more than ten years anyway, so I’ll recap.

In its literal sense, “haywire” is thin, springy wire used in baling hay, straw, and other materials. (I actually spent time years ago running a baling machine in a paper recycling plant, so I know about this stuff.) We use “haywire” today most commonly as an adjective to describe something that has ceased to function properly, usually in a dramatic fashion. But the earliest use of the adjective was in the late 19th century to mean “poorly equipped or inefficient,” specifically in reference to a business (often in the derisive term “haywire outfit”). This usage seems to have come from the use of haywire for makeshift repairs to machinery in, for instance, logging camps lacking the proper equipment. (The same sense of “emergency repair” is found in such phrases as  “held together with baling wire and a prayer.”) “Haywire” was also used in this “ad hoc, unreliable” sense to describe any business operation that was poorly-run or marginal (“A haywire, unpredictable, one-man business,” 1959).

The same springy flexibility that makes haywire suitable for emergency mechanical repairs, however, can produce some nasty surprises. When haywire is cut or snaps under pressure, it can instantly whip itself into a tangled mess. (I still have a scar on my arm from an encounter with a baling wire that suddenly snapped 30 years ago.) This propensity to tangle produced the use of “to go haywire” to mean “to suddenly go wrong or break,” especially in a wild or unpredictable fashion, in the early 20th century. A radio that suddenly emits only pops and crackles, a light that turns itself off and on, or a vacuum cleaner that produces clouds of choking dust could all rightly be said to have “gone haywire.”

In the 1930s, “haywire” in this “go wrong” sense was applied, first in the US, to people in a state of confusion or emotional meltdown (“A married man … and absolutely haywire on the subject of another woman,” John O’Hara, 1934). The “snap” of haywire turning from its useful function into a tangled and useless mess also made it a good metaphor for a seriously unbalanced mind (“Some nice homicidal maniac … going all haywire,” 1940). And any larger social  arrangement, from a corporate merger to a wedding to a culture itself (“Architecture has gone haywire. Music is without harmony,” 1962) can also “go haywire.”

 Things to do in Denver when you’re dead.

Dear Word Detective:  Why does the idiom persist as “if worst comes to worst” when the only logical form would be “if worse comes to worst” (or, alternately, “if bad comes to worse”)? — B. Walker.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when logic in language we would perceive. Silly wabbit, logic is for math and science, not English usage. If you start worrying about the underlying soundness of common English idioms, you’ll be pondering the imponderable, trying to explain the inexplicable, and unscrewing the inscrutable until the cows come home. And why are the cows coming home late, anyway? Some wild cud party?

In any case, you’ve managed to stub your mental toe on one of the sturdiest and most durable of controversies over English idioms. People have been arguing over “if worst comes to worst” pretty much since it first appeared in print in the 16th century.

Both “worst” and its milder cousin “worse” come to us, via Old English, from a Germanic root (“wers”) which meant “to confuse” or “to entangle, mix up.” “Worst” as an adjective is the superlative in the chain of negativity that begins with “bad” (or “evil,” etc.) and progresses through the comparative form “worse” to “worst” at the end of the line. The flip side of this rating scale is “good” (or “fine,” etc.), the comparative “better,” and the superlative “best.” Most English adjectives follow a similar ascension of degree, e.g., “big, bigger, biggest” or “hot, hotter, hottest.”

“Worst” as an adjective in modern English has kept the same basic meanings it had in Old English with a few elaborations over time. The basic sense is “the most [bad attribute or thing]” (the worst pain, the worst evil, the worst flu, etc.) or, conversely, “the least [good attribute or thing]” (the worst time in a race, the worst battery life, the worst first date in history, etc.). As a noun, “worst” means the most evil, unfortunate, undesirable thing in a certain context or range of possibilities (“I knew the worst now, and was composed to it,” Dickens, 1853). This is the “worst” in “if worst comes to worst.”

The earliest form of the saying to appear in print, back in the late 1500s, was actually “If the worst come to the worst,” in which “come to” basically means “results in” or “produces” (as in “come to nothing” and similar phrases). The first “worst” in the phrase means “the worst thing that might  happen,” so the phrase essentially simply means “if the worst thing that can happen does, in fact, happen.” (“Why, if the worst come to the worst, he leaves you an honest woman,” Dryden, 1668).

“If the worst come to the worst” is a nicely literary phrase, but in the minds of a lot of people it apparently triggers that familiar declension of “bad, worse, worst.” The temptation to convert the first “worst” into “worse” has proven seductive since at least 1719, when Daniel Defoe, in his Robinson Crusoe, wrote “If the worse came to the worst, I could but die.” A bit later on, the widespread simplification of the phrase (by dropping the definite articles) from “If the worst come to the worst” to “If worst comes to worst” made the change of the first “worst” to “worse” seem even more logical by making “worst” seem like an adjective, not a noun. And if it’s an adjective, “worse” and “worst” seems like a logical progression.

So logical did the new, improved “if worse comes to worst” seem, in fact, that some usage authorities in the 20th century erroneously decreed it to be the original and proper form and haughtily denounced “if worst comes to worst” as a “meaningless” solecism. While the “worst/worse” debate is hardly a white-hot usage battleground on a par with “hopefully” as a sentence adverb or “they/their” as a singular pronoun, I’m sure you could find partisans of each side duking it out online if you went looking. For the rest of us, I’d advise just using whatever form you prefer.

No cannoli, but you can have his onion rings.

Dear Word Detective: Where does the word “don” come from? Although in strictly culture-specific contexts (or so I imagine), the word has three very distinct meanings: first, the British university professor; second, the Spanish or Latin American gentleman (although this is an appellate, I suppose, rather than a bona fide English word); and, third, the Indian gangster kingpin. (Apart, that is, from the fourth, and more humdrum, sense of putting on clothes.) So what, if any, is the connection between these three senses? And are these three meanings or senses of the word indeed as strictly restricted to those respective geographies as I think they are? — Partha Sen Sharma.

You left out Don Corleone, from The Godfather, not to mention the real-life “Dapper Don,” the late John Gotti, once head of New York City’s Gambino crime family. Gotti ascended to leadership of the Gambino family by orchestrating the murder of the reigning boss, Paul Castellano, as he left a steakhouse in midtown Manhattan one evening in 1985, shortly before I happened to wander by. No kidding. New York, New York, never a dull moment. Gotti was also known as the “Teflon Don” because of the inability of the cops and courts to make charges “stick” (until they finally did; he died in prison in 2002).

Leaving aside for the moment “don” as a verb meaning “to put on” clothing of some sort, all the other uses of “don” you mention come, ultimately, from the same source. The oldest of the “dons” is “Don” (capitalized) historically used in Spain as a title preceding a man’s given (“first”)  name. This “Don” was originally only applied to the royalty, nobility and high church officials, but in modern times has often been applied to a man (especially an elderly man) who has distinguished himself in some notable way. The feminine form (in Spanish) is “Dona.” “Don” is also used in this way in many former Spanish colonial possessions (Central and Latin America, the Philippines, etc.) as well as in Portugal and Brazil (in the form “Dom,” feminine “Dona”) and Italy (where the feminine is “Donna”). “Dom” and “Don” are also used as titles in the Roman Catholic church, especially in monastic orders (Dom Perignon, a Benedictine monk, supposedly invented champagne, and his name is now a glitzy trademark).

The root of all these “Dons” and “Doms” is, as I said, ultimately the same: the Latin noun “dominus,” meaning “lord” or “master.” The earliest use of “Don” in print found so far comes from the early 16th century; for “Dom” in Portugal and Brazil, the early 18th century.

The use of “Don” as an honorific form of address for a Mafia boss is apparently much more recent, dating in print only to the early 1950s, though because the Mafia has always had a strict code of secrecy (“omerta”), the term was almost certainly in use long before then.

Don” in the La Cosa Nostra (“This Thing of Ours,” a Mafia euphemism) sense comes from the southern Italian form of “Don.” For some reason, I was unaware that India has a highly organized gangster presence, but, judging from the newspapers, it has, and the media there use all the Mafia terminology to describe it.

The use of “don” to mean a university professor, usually in Britain (“The reverend dons in Oxford are already alarm’d,” 1726) is a throwback to the days when “Don” was simply a title of respect for a distinguished man.

That leaves “don” as a verb meaning “to put on” something, usually clothing, which dates back to 1567 in modern English (“She donned the garment of a nun,” 1879). The explanation for this “don” is both very simple and a bit strange. In Middle English, one of the many meanings of the verb “to do” was “to put or place,” specifically to put on clothing. So “to do on” a coat was to put it on. “Do on” eventually spawned the contracted form “don,” and the reverse, “do off,” gave us “doff” (“Upon a rising Bank I sat adown, Then doff’d my Shoe,” 1714).

Back when men were men and dinner was lard.

Dear Word Detective:  I really enjoy reading your columns. Every once in a while I think of something to send in, but then fail to follow through. I came across one that is not in your archives. Can you tell us about “bringing home the bacon”? — Craig Scheir.

Hey, I have the same problem, although from the other direction. I’ll think of something to write about while I’m wandering through the supermarket, but then promptly forget about it. I used to try to carry a tiny notebook in my coat pocket in which to jot down such things, but I forgot to bring it along so often that I finally gave up. Elsewhere in the land of fog, I could have sworn that I have answered this question before, but apparently I haven’t.

To “bring home the bacon” actually has two senses. The more common today is “to provide for” or “to supply necessities” in the sense that a family’s “breadwinner” earns enough money to support the household (“Pete is now a father who has relocated to the suburbs … and takes the long train ride into the city every morning to bring home the bacon” Mad Men review, 3/12). The other meaning, which seems to have been the original sense, is “to win; to succeed, to take home the prize.”

My sense that I might have dealt with “bring home the bacon” before is probably due to the fact that it’s one of a dozen common phrases supposedly explained by a chain email that appeared around 1999 entitled “Life in the 1500s,” apparently inspired by the movie “Shakespeare in Love.” I say that the email “supposedly” explained these phrases because, as I noted at the time, “even the parts of the essay that are not overtly insane are still utterly wrong.” In the case of “bring home the bacon,” this silly email claimed that pork was such a rarity in most households in the 1500s that prosperous families had a special rack in the dining room on which it was displayed to envious visitors, who would marvel at the husband’s ability to “bring home the bacon” while they were given small bits and encouraged to “chew the fat.” Givest me a break.

As a symbol of modest prosperity, meat has a long history (most recently perhaps in Herbert Hoover’s 1928 campaign ads featuring “a chicken in every pot and a car in every backyard”), and a side of bacon would indeed have been a boon to many working families in any age. But “bring home the bacon” is actually a much more recent phrase that you might imagine (and, in fact, apparently about four centuries newer than that email fable would have you believe).

The earliest citation for “bring home the bacon” in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1924 (“It may be that my bit will turn out to be just the trifle that brings home the bacon,” P.G. Wodehouse). But Michael Quinion, of the World Wide Words website (worldwidewords.org), has located a use dating back to 1906, in newspaper articles reporting on a crucial fight in the career of Joe Gans, a famous African-American boxer of that time. Apparently, just before the fight, his mother sent him a telegram urging him to win and “bring back the bacon.” He did win, and telegraphed his mother back in Baltimore that he was indeed “bringing home the bacon.” As Michael Quinion notes, Mrs. Gans was probably using the phrase “bring home the bacon” because she had previously heard it elsewhere, but the newspaper article reporting the fight remains the earliest use of the phrase in print found so far. And Mrs. Gans’ use of the phrase boosted its popularity, first in sports reporting, then in politics, and finally in general usage.