Don’t try this at home.

Dear Word Detective: I’m reading through (and performing soon) an adaptation of Henry James’ “Turn of the Screw.” There is a riddle in the play/novella, said by the young boy Miles: “One can possess me without seeing me. One can carry me without feeling me. One can give me without having me,” and the answer he gives to the riddle is “A cuckold’s horns.” From what I can find a “cuckold” refers to a husband who is aware of or allows his wife’s infidelity. I am still not sure the meaning of the term “cuckold’s horns” and how that is the answer to the riddle. I know that the term, in the story, shocks the governess to whom Miles is speaking the riddle. Any help? — Adie Williams.

Oh boy, a riddle. We love riddles (heads for the door). No, riddles are cool, being, as the Oxford English Dictionary explains, “A question or statement intentionally phrased to require ingenuity in ascertaining its answer or meaning.” Riddles have been around a long time; many ancient cultures revered riddles, and the word “riddle” itself can be traced back to an old Germanic root closely related to our word “read.” (The verb “to riddle,” meaning “to perforate with many holes,” comes from a different source, an Old English word meaning “sieve.”) The one riddle I can remember from my riddle-loving childhood is “What’s black and white and red all over,” which only works when posed aloud, since the answer is “the newspaper” and the whole thing depends on “red” and the participle of “to read” being homophones. It also depends on there being actual newspapers, so sic transit good riddle. Damn you, internet.

“Cuckold” is not a term that you run into very often, which is surprising since marital infidelity, if it doesn’t make the world go ’round (and we all hope it doesn’t), certainly keeps a flock of newspapers, several million websites and at least two “celebrity news” TV shows up and running. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “cuckold,” which first appeared in English in the 14th century, as “A derisive name for the husband of an unfaithful wife.” The feminine equivalent of “cuckold” is the seriously obscure “cuckquean,” which appeared in the 16th century. The “quean” there is related to our English word “queen,” which originally simply meant “woman,” especially the wife of an important man.

The root of “cuckold” (and, by extension, “cuckquean”) is the Middle English “cokeweld,”  based on the Old French “cucuault,” which was “cocu” with the derogatory suffix “ault.” That  “cocu” is the French word for “cuckoo,” a little bird famous for laying its eggs in other birds’ nests (where, goes the cuckoo’s plan, they will be fed by the duped Mommy Bird). The cuckoo is also said, in folklore, to frequently change its mate, but the egg-swapping behavior, which is observably true, is probably enough on its own to justify “cuckold” as a description of certain humans’ behavior.

“Cuckold’s horns” is a derisive gesture many centuries old and found in most European cultures. The two common versions are holding one’s hands alongside one’s head with the index fingers simulating horns, and the one-handed form, in which the index and little fingers are pointed skyward while the other fingers are held down. Both versions are used to mock and denigrate a man behind his back by implying he is a cuckold; the common “V” gesture pranksters make behind the heads of friends in group photos is almost certainly derived from such “cuckold’s horns.”

Why horns? There are more than a dozen theories. Horns have been a symbol of marriage in many cultures, possibly referring to a wild animal being tamed. It’s also been suggested that the “horns” originally referred to horns given as trophies to Roman soldiers who excelled in battle. Since Roman campaigns often took men away from home for years, infidelity on the home front was nearly a given. It’s also been noted that a horned animal cannot see its own horns, making horns a good symbol of a wronged husband’s ignorance. Or the horn gesture may refer to a stronger man besting the husband in a battle for his wife’s affections. Whatever the source, “cuckold’s horns” remain one of the most widely recognized gestures around the world.

Anything but Meemaw is fine with me.

Dear Word Detective: I was born in Europe and grew up calling my parents “Mama” and “Papa.” In Canada, where I have lived since I was a teen, all my classmates and most kids grow up calling their fathers “Dad,” and my now-adult-friends’ babies are taught to say “Dada” also. I never paid much attention before but recently I noticed that in some older English books (like by Jane Austen) children do call their fathers “Papa.” Do you know why and when English speakers decided to veer away from calling fathers “Papa”? Is this a Europe vs. North America thing? — Diana.

Huh. I was born in New Jersey and grew up calling my parents Vito and Estelle. Just kidding, except that I really was born in New Jersey, so I’m allowed to joke about it. But this is a fascinating question; so fascinating that I’m going to “answer” it even though I don’t really have a slam-dunk definitive answer to give you. In my case, I grew up calling my parents “Daddy” and “Mommy” until I became a teenager, when I switched to “Father” and “Mother,” at least when speaking of them in the third person. (What can I say? The New England Wasp Force was powerful in my neighborhood.) I’m pretty sure my older sisters stuck with “Daddy” and “Mommy,” but at least one of my older brothers used to refer to my father as “Pop” with an insouciance I envied. My mother loathed “Mom,” so no one used it. Our own grown son calls us “Dad” and “Mom,” which is just fine with me.

The first thing to note about “Mommy,” “Mama,” “Mom,” “Daddy,” “Dada,” “Dad,” “Papa,” “Pappy” and all the rest of such familiar forms is that none of them actually “mean” anything beyond “Mother” or “Father.” Yes, similar forms can be found in the ancient roots of language, but they didn’t mean anything back then, either. But wait, it gets weirder. Words similar to “Mama” and “Papa,” with minor variations, pop up in many widely different languages (though in some languages the terms are reversed or rearranged somewhat, e.g., “father” is “mama” in Georgian, while “mother” is “deda” and “papa” means “grandfather”).

Linguists believe that the explanation for the popularity of this small set of words serving as familiar terms for “mother” and “father” lies not in the past of the words themselves, but in how infant humans acquire language. The first vocal efforts of a baby almost always involve the sounds easiest to make: the “bilabials” p, b, and m, repeated, as babies often do. The parents, witnessing the child’s first forays into vocalization (beyond screaming and gurgling), modestly assume that the kid is addressing them by name. Lather, rinse, repeat a few billion times, and you’ve got an entire planet using variations on “Mama” and “Papa.” The Latin “mater” (mother) and “pater” (father), and, to go way back, the Indo-European roots that produced them, almost certainly spring from this same source. Of course, the interpretation by the parents of the child’s noises as a form of personal address is a classic case of “confirmation bias,” and the infant cannot possibly know that “Mama” means “Mother” (or whatever the local custom is). But he or she soon will.

The specific form “Papa” was introduced into English from French in the 17th century, and was used by adults primarily in the social elite as well as by their children. Use of the term in Britain has actually been falling since the mid-19th century, and the Oxford English Dictionary notes that “Papa” today is largely a North American usage (in which case, it must be nearly extinct among English-speakers). The “native” English form has always been “Dad/Daddy/Dada,” and I’d be willing to bet it outranks “Papa” in North America today by a country mile.

To the extent that Europeans speaking English are influenced by other languages, I think that the greater traditional popularity of “Papa” in French, Italian, etc., is the reason you may have heard it more over there. The relative lack of traction of “Papa” in North America may also be partly due to immigrants in the 20th century wishing to shed the “old ways” and get with the “Daddy and Mommy” pattern of the New World.