How to make your horse hate you.

Dear Word Detective:  I’m supposed to be balancing my checkbook, but instead I was reading through frivolous news and blogs this evening.  Again, today, President Obama used the expression “ginned up” to describe the perhaps made-up hysteria of politicians, media, and the like about the latest topics of discussion proposed by his administration.  He has used this a few times over the past few months and each time, I have thought (and then forgot) to look it up.  I finally did — and confirmed my interpretation of what he means by it.  However, there are a few different theories as to the origin of this expression: 1) derived from “ginger up,” relating to spicing something up (including a horse’s tail!); or 2) derived from “engined up” as if powered up by something.  What is your take on this (re)addition to the political lexicon? — Jenny Nunemacher.

I know what you mean — I too routinely make a mental note to look something up online when I get get home and get the chance, but then promptly forget to do so, often forever.  I suppose I could get one of those cell phones that also has a web browser, but I hate telephones.  Yesterday I discovered that our ancient cell phone (which we keep in the car) somehow became set, at least three years ago, to not accept incoming calls.  Awesome.  I’m leaving it that way.

I had noticed President Obama’s use of “gin up” to mean “agitate or excite,” usually by means of a phony or exaggerated controversy, during the campaign last year, and he seems to have singlehandedly revived this fine old Americanism.  “Gin up” has never fallen entirely out of use since it first appeared in the 19th century.  But the phrase has definitely stepped back into the limelight of late, including in an odd sentence in the Wall Street Journal recently that embedded it in an especially garbled example of what grammarians call over-negation: “Can you really hope to gin up a red scare without almost no reds?”  Um, no?

In its original sense, “to gin up” meant simply “to excite, to make lively,” although today there is almost always an implication that the premise of the excitement is fabricated or “cooked up.”  There are, as you found, two main theories as to the origins of “gin up.”  Neither of them has any connection, by the way, to “gin” the liquor, which comes from the Dutch word for “juniper,” used to flavor the drink.

The first traces “gin up” to the noun “gin,” a short form of “engine,” which originally simply meant “intelligence or inventiveness” (from the Latin “ingenium,” which also gave us “ingenuity”).  “Engine” in the derivative sense of “machine,” a product of such inventiveness, dates back to the 14th century.  The shortened form “gin” has meant “skill or ingenuity” since the 13th century when “to gin” was also used to mean “to start up or begin.”  It is possible that “gin up” in the sense of “create excitement” comes from this “start” sense.  It is also possible that “gin up” was inspired by the “cotton gin” (short for “cotton engine”), a machine used to remove the seeds from cotton in the American South in the 19th century.  As of 1887, “to gin” meant “to work hard” or “make things hum” like a cotton gin in operation.

The other theory of “gin up” traces it to the application of ginger (the spice) to the posteriors of horses in order to make them appear livelier to a prospective purchaser or to run faster in a race.  Such “gingering” was apparently widespread at one time.  That sounds to me like a prescription for getting yourself kicked, but the Oxford English Dictionary likes this theory.  Personally, I lean more toward the “gin” in the “create or start up” sense as the root of “gin up.”

Fear TV.

Dear Word Detective: How about the word “kidnap”?  I’m guessing it has nothing to do with kids, or with naps! — Emmie.

That’s a good question.  Another good question is why it’s taken so long for someone to ask about “kidnap.”  You’d think, given that much of cable TV news in the US seems to be devoted to examining the latest kidnappings in exhaustive detail, hour after hour, that someone would have asked me about the term during a commercial or something.  Then again, since these networks have perfected the art of instilling mind-numbing fear into their audiences, perhaps the folks on the couch actually need to watch those ads for ShamWows and gold bullion as a form of zen relaxation.

Your guess about “kidnap” is half right.  The “kid” in “kidnap” did, when the word  appeared in English in the 17th century, refer to “kids,” meaning children or young people. “Kid” first appeared in English around 1200 meaning “the young of a goat,” derived from the Old Norse word (“kidh”) for the same.  “Kid” is also applied to the young of similar animals (such as antelope) and to the hide of young goats made into a very soft leather used for expensive boots and gloves.  To “handle with kid gloves,” meaning since the 19th century “to treat delicately,” refers to the softness of gloves made from kidskin.

“Kid” meaning “child” is an extended use of the “young goat” sense and first appeared in the 16th century, but only became really popular in the 19th century.  “Kid” as a verb meaning “to act playfully or to tease” appeared in the 19th century and probably comes from the sense “to treat as one would a child.”  The original sense of “to kid” was “to attempt to convince someone of something that is not true,” and it was first used by criminals to mean “deceiving or hoaxing a victim into giving up his valuables.”

The “nap” in kidnap has, as you suspected, nothing to do with “nap” meaning “a short period of sleep,” which comes from the Old English word “hnappian.”  The “kidnap” kind of “nap” is an obscure and now nearly obsolete English word meaning “to seize or steal,” possibly related to the verb “to nab” (as in “Police nab bank robbers napping in vault”).

Interestingly, when “kidnap” first appeared in England in the late 1600s, it not only meant “to steal and carry off children,” but very specifically to snatch children and other young people in order to ship them off to the colonies in North America or the Caribbean to serve as servants or laborers (“Mr. John Wilmore haveing kidnapped a boy of 13 years of age to Jamaica, a writt …  was delivered to the sheriffs of London against him,” 1683).  The word “kidnap” itself is thought to be a grisly souvenir of this practice, invented by the criminals who actually stole children from the slums of England to sell into servitude half a world away.