Word Origins

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Frog March

Nowadays, to frog march someone is to pin their arms behind their back and hustle them along with a person at either side. The term is usually used in reference to prisoners in police custody. From J. Ferguson's 1931 Death Comes To Perigord:

Cæsar slewed him round, and forcing both arms behind his back, got ready to frog-march him to the door.
But why frogs? The answer is that the modern concept of frog-marching is not the original. Originally, frog-marching was carrying a person face downwards, with a man holding each limb. The metaphor comes from the idea that a frog crawls on its belly. From the Evening Standard, 18 April 1871:

They did not give the defendant the "Frog's March".
This citation from the Birmingham Weekly Post of 15 November 1884 makes the concept clearer:

Deceased was ‘frog's-marched’–that is, with face downwards–from Deal to Walmer.

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Charger Plate

For those of you that have not dined in a really fancy restaurant lately, a charger plate is a large dish that is on the table when you are seated and other plates and dishes are placed, or loaded, on top of it.

The word first appears as the Middle English chargeour in the c.1305 work Legends of the Holy Rood:

I was that cheef chargeour, I bar flesch for folkes feste.
The root in French is uncertain. It is either the Anglo-Norman chargeour meaning that which loads or the Old French chargeoir meaning a serving utensil.

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Church Key

Church key, an American slang term for a bottle opener, is first attested to in 1951, although it is undoubtedly older.

It's so called because the bottle openers resemble the heavy, ornate keys that unlock big, old doors like those found in churches. The origin may also be related to the irony of associating churches with drinking.

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Bizarre

Bizarre was borrowed into English from French in the middle of the 17th century. The current sense of odd or fantastic has been with us since the word was introduced into English. It had that meaning in French as well, although previously in French it had the meaning of brave or like a soldier.

Where the French picked up the word is somewhat unclear. In Spanish and Portugeuse, bizarro means handsome or brave and is clearly related to the French in some way, although the French word appears before the Spanish one, so it is unlikely that the French picked up the word from Spanish. Instead, it probably comes from Italian, where bizzarro means angry, and has a root, bizza, meaning fit of anger.

There is a commonly touted etymology for bizarre that claims the word is originally from the Basque bizzarra, meaning beard. This explanation is not supported by evidence.

Bizarre is unrelated to bazaar, which is from the Persian bazar, meaning marketplace.

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Milquetoast

This word for a mild-mannered and unassertive male is an eponym for a cartoon character created by Harold T. Webster. Caspar Milquetoast was featured in the comic strip The Timid Soul, which ran from 1924-53. Webster's character was named for the dish milk toast, toast soaked in milk and served to invalids.

The adjectival use of milquetoast, meaning timid or ineffectual, dates to at least 1933 when it appears in the Journal of Negro Education:

Irate shrews and "Milquetoast" husbands, with razors wielded at departing parts of the anatomy, are Akers' stock-in-trade.
The generic noun was in use by 1938, appearing in Margaret Fishback's Safe Conduct: When to Behave and Why:

Don't be a Milquetoast either, and be afraid to add it up.

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Dongle

The original sense of this computer term is a copy protection device that attaches to an I/O port of a computer. When a program is run, it checks for the presence of the dongle on the port. The software can be distributed freely, but people have to pay for the dongle to make it work. The concept, while clever, has largely been a market failure, although dongles have filled a small niche by enabling multiple, non-networked computers to share a single software license. The term dates to at least January 1982, when it appears in MicroComputer Printout:

The word "dongle" has been appearing in many articles with reference to security systems for computer software
The word is most likely a blend of dong and dangle, as it can resemble a penis that hangs off a computer.

A company called Rainbow Technologies, which manufactured dongles, claimed that the term was named for its alleged inventer, a certain Don Gall. This is not true and no such person existed, at least as far as I can tell; the story was simply a fabrication of the marketing department.

A more general use of the term come to my attention a number of years ago in a conversation with my boss where she asked to borrow my dongle, meaning an interface cable for a notebook computer. From a 8 June 2006 alt.pets.rodents.rats Usenet post:

The 6230i supports Bluetooth [. . .] so a bluetooth-usb dongle for your PC would give your [sic] a wireless means to transfer data. That's probably the slowest option, but this might not matter for the odd photo or two.

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Cabal

Cabal, which in our times is most often used to denote a conspiracy, particularly one which controls an organization or government. The word entered the English language from the French cabale and ultimately comes from the Hebrew qabbalah, the medieval body of arcane and mystical Jewish teachings. The earliest use of cabal cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1616, cited in John Bullokar's An English Expositor:

Cabal, the tradition of the Jewes doctrine of religion.
Within a few years, the word had generalized to mean any secret tradition or teaching, not just the particular Jewish tradition. David Person, in his Varieties of 1635, writes:

An insight in the Cabals and secrets of Nature.
By 1646, the modern sense of a conspiracy had arisen. From Clarendon's The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England:

The King . . . asked him, whether he were engaged in any Cabal concerning the army?
There is a very popular, but false, etymology that claims that cabal is an acronym for the names of five ministers of Charles II (Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale) who were at the bottom of various political intrigues in the early 1670s. According to history, these five, plus others, defaulted on the national debt by closing the exchequer in 1670, started a war with Holland in 1672, and entered into an alliance with the hated French in 1673.

As we have seen use of the word in the modern sense predates the nefarious schemes of these five by some twenty-five years and in other senses is much older.

There is, however, a kernel of truth to the story. Cabal was indeed used to refer specifically to this group, even if the names don't constitute the origin. Bishop Gilbert Burnet's History of His Own Time (1715) says:

This junta . . . being called the cabal, it was observed that cabal proved a technical word, every letter in it being the first letter of those five, Clifford, Ashley, Buckingham, Arlington and Lauderdale.
So, it is clear that these five schemers were immortalized by a play on words. Their names, arranged in the proper order, form a neat acrostic. The others involved in their plots are left out because their names did not begin with the proper letters, and besides, there was only room for five. A few quotes show that others were included in the governing cabal from time to time and that these five were not always political allies. From Pepys Diary of 1767:

The Cabal at present, being as he says the King, and the Duke of Buckingham, and Lord Keeper, the Duke of Albemarle and privy seale.
And from Andrew Marvell's Correspondence of 1670:

The governing cabal are Buckingham, Lauderdale, Ashly, Orery, and Trevor. Not but the other cabal [Arlington, Clifford, and their party] too have seemingly sometimes their turn.
It is a fun story with some historical truth behind it, but it's not the origin of the word.

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Chad

The Florida vote-counting debacle during the 2000 US presidential election brought this rather obscure and obsolescent word chad to the attention of the public. A chad is that bit of paper left behind when punch cards and paper tape are perforated. Since most of the computing world has abandoned punch cards and paper tape, the term has fallen out of use except in specialized applications such as voting.

The origin of the word is unknown. There are several possibilities and a couple of commonly touted explanations that are almost certainly false. While chads have been with us since the automated machinery was introduced into 18th century textile mills at the beginning of the industrial revolution, the word chad itself is relatively new and the name appears toward the end of the technology's life cycle.

The first known use of chad is in a 1939 patent application (US Patent # 2,273,909) by the Teletype Corporation:

The present innovation provides a perforating arrangement whereby the perforations are not completely cut out, but the chads are permitted to remain attached to the perforated material.
There is also the adjective chadless, referring to perforation that does not leave chads behind (important because the bits of paper can foul machinery). This appears in 1947.

So where does it come from? There are several, possibly all related, words that are similar from other industries. One such is the Scots word chad, which Warrack's Scots Dialect Dictionary defines as:

chad n 1 compacted gravel. 2 small stones forming a river bed. 3 a rough mixture of earth and stones, quarry refuse.
It is a small semantic leap from quarry refuse to paper refuse. There is also an English dialect word chat, meaning a wood chip. And there is, of course, chaff, the leavings from threshing grain. Any or all of these could have influenced chad, but we really don't know for sure.

There are two proferred explanations that we can definitely discount though. Chad is sometimes said to have come from a certain Mr. Chadless, who invented a chadless keypunch. Chad, in this explanation, is a back formation from chadless. But no record of any such man has been found and what evidence we do have suggests that chadless followed chad, not the other way around.

The second false explanation is that it is an acronym for Card Hole Aggregate Debris. As with most proferred acronymic origins, this one is bogus on its face.

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Fortnight

Fortnight is a contraction of the Old English féowertyneniht, literally meaning fourteen nights. From the manuscript Laws of Ina, dated to sometime before 1000:

Oth thæt feowertyne niht ofer Eastron.
In addition to fortnight, there used to be the term sennight, from the Old English seofon nihta (seven nights). This remained in use through the 19th century, but eventually became obsolete, leaving us with just fortnight.

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Blackguard

The exact etymology of this term for a villain is uncertain. What is known is that it is literally from black guard; it is English in origin; and it dates to at least 1532. The earliest known use of the term is from that year and appears in an account book from St. Margaret's church in Westminster:

Item Receyvid for the lycens of iiij. torchis of the blake garde vjd.
It is not know what or who the black guard referenced in this quote was. They could have been black-uniformed guards or perhaps funerary torch bearers.

By 1535, blackguard was being used to refer to the lowest servants in a household and by 1560, it was being used to refer to attendents, dressed in black and often attending some villainous character.

The OED2 doesn't dismiss the possibility that there may literally have been a company of soldiers at Westminster called the Black Guard, but no direct evidence of this exists.

The sense of the vagabond or criminal class doesn't appear until the 1680s. And the modern sense of a scoundrel dates to the 1730s.

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Cloud Nine

The phrase on cloud nine describes a state of euphoria or elation and the reference is of unknown significance. It is an Americanism and is first recorded in 1957 in Elliot's Among the Dangs:

I waited awhile, but he was off on cloud nine.
Although the phrase with the number nine dates to 1957, there are variants using other numbers dating back to the 1930s. Albin Jay Pollock's The Underworld Speaks from 1935 has:

Cloud eight, befuddled on account of drinking too much liquor.
Cloud seven makes its appearance in an article in Time magazine from 8 November 1954:

He's way out on Cloud 7.
1956 sees thirty-nine in Ross's Hustlers:

That stuff is way up on Cloud Thirty-nine.
Various tales have been attached to the phrase trying to explain the significance of the number nine. Perhaps the most common is one that tries to explain it by asserting, incorrectly, that there are nine meteorological classifications of clouds. All of these explanations of nine are certainly false because of the other numbers commonly used in the phrase's early days. The choice of number probably has no significance and usage probably settled around nine because of that number's numerological significance and usage in other phrases like the whole nine yards and dressed to the nines.

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Cold Turkey

This phrase meaning suddenly, without preparation or to speak frankly is originally a reference to food. Cold turkey is something that can be prepared quickly and with little effort.

The earliest known usage is from 1910 in Robert Service's Trail of '98:

I'd lost five thousand dollars . . . "cold turkey."
The sense meaning to speak frankly dates to at least 1920 in a citation from T.A. Dorgan:

Now tell me on the square–can I get by with this for the wedding–don't string me–tell me cold turkey.
The sense meaning to quit an addictive substance suddenly is from at least 1921, when it appears in the Daily Colonist of Victoria, British Columbia on 13 October:

Perhaps the most pitiful figures who have appeared before Dr. Carleton Simon . . . are those who voluntarily surrender themselves. When they go before him, they are given what is called the "cold turkey" treatment.
There is an explanation that the pasty, goosebumped skin of an addict going through withdrawal resembles cold turkey skin and this gave rise to the term. But this is not borne out by the fact that the addiction sense is a later one.

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Curmudgeon

The origin of curmudgeon is not known, but that has not stopped a couple of explanations, neither with any real evidence supporting them, from circulating.

What we do know is that appears as early as 1577 in Richard Stanyhurst's A Treatise Contayning a Playne and Perfect Description of Irelande:

Such a clownish Curmudgen.
One of the unsupported contentions is that it is a variation on cornmudgin. The Middle English muchin means to pilfer or steal. So a cornmudgin is someone who steals grain. The problem with this explanation is the only known use of cornmudgin is from Philemon Holland's Livy's Romane Historie of 1600:

The fines that certeine cornmudgins [frumentarios] paid, for hourding up . . . their graine.
Unfortunately, for this explanation is that curmudgeon is older than cornmudgin. It is more likely that cornmudgin is pun, playing on curmudgeon.

The second is from Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary, in which Johnson wrote:

curmudgeon n.s. [It is a vitious manner of pronouncing coeur mechant, Fr. an unknown correspondent.]
Coeur mechant means bitter or evil heart in French. Johnson's Dictionary is a historically important work, but he got a lot wrong and his etymologies are often particularly suspect. This one from the unknown correspondent is one such case. It is a reasonable guess, but it's not supported by evidence.

Johnson's etymology has also given rise to one of the worst lexicographic howlers in history when in 1775 lexicographer John Ash gave the etymology as "from the French coeur, unknown, and mechant, correspondent." To be fair to Ash, Johnson's wording is ambiguous, but he should have checked the translation.

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Dark And Stormy Night

The phrase "It was a dark and stormy night . . ." has become synonymous with bad and melodramatic writing. Cartoonist Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame had Snoopy habitually starting novels with this line. It is so clichéd that the most famous annual "bad writing" contest is named after its author, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. The line is the opening of his 1830 novel Paul Clifford. The full quote is:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

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Colonel

One of the more common questions posed by readers of this site is where does the word colonel come from and why is the pronunciation so at odds with the spelling?

Colonel is originally Italian, a colonello being the commander of a military column, or in Italian colonna. The French adopted the military rank, and in so doing switched the L for R (L/R switches are a common pronunciation shift), producing the French word coronel.

English adopted the French word, with an R spelling coronell in the mid-16th century. From a letter written by a T. Ellis in 1548:

Certen of the worthiest Almaynes at the desire of their coronell . . . reentred the same.
Starting in the late-16th century, translations of Italian military treatises started using the etymologically correct L spelling, and by the mid-17th century, colonel was the accepted English spelling. But the R pronunciation was firmly established and did not change. From Robert Barret's The Theorike and Practike of Moderne Warres (1598):

In the time of . . . Henrie the eight . . . those were intituled Colonels, or as some will, Coronels, which the Spaniardes do call Maesters de Campo.

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Commando

The modern sense of the word commando, meaning an elite soldier, appeared during the Second World War with the raids on occupied France by elite British forces of that name. Winston Churchill wrote to General Ismay on 2 July 1940:

If it be true that a few hundred German troops have been landed on Jersey or Guernsey by troop-carriers, plans should be studied to land secretly by night on the islands and kill or capture the invaders. This is exactly one of the exploits for which the Commandos would be suited.
But the word is much older and is South African, not British, in origin. It is a borrowing from Portuguese meaning a military command and used specifically to denote a party of men conducting a military raid or expedition, especially one by European colonists in southern Africa against native Africans. From G. Carter's 1791 Loss of Grosvenor:

"A colonist, says he, "who lives . . . up the country . . . intreats a commando, which is a permission to go, with the help of his neighbours, to retake his property."
Afrikaans also borrowed the word from the Portuguese using it in the phrase on commando, referring to militia service. From William J. Burchell's 1824 Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa:

The master himself was at this time absent on the Commando, or militia-service, against the Caffres in the Zuureveld.
The word again rose to prominence in the 1899-1902 Boer War, when it was used to refer to Boer militia units fighting the British. From the Westminster Gazette, 11 November 1899:

The President . . . has the right of declaring war and calling up one or more commandos.

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Upset

One of the legendary origins of sports terminology is that the term upset, meaning an unexpected defeat of one favored to win, is from a classic 1919 horse race that pitted Man o'War, probably the greatest race horse of all time, against an unlikely opponent named Upset.

During his career, Man o'War lost only one race, the 13 August 1919 Stanford Memorial at Saratoga. Man o'War was heavily favored to win, but lost to a horse named Upset. This, the legend goes, is where the sports term upset comes from. Man o'War would face Upset in five other races, winning every one, but this one loss early in his career would be the one to make lexicographic history.

Most lexicographers and etymologists thought the story too good to be true, but no one could disprove it. Sporting usages of upset prior to 1919 just could not be found. Then in late 2002, researcher George Thompson, using the newly available tools of full-text online searching of the New York Times databases, turned up a string of sporting usages of upset dating back to the mid-19th century. Thompson traced the verb to upset to 1865 and the noun to 1877. There are numerous uses of the term in 19th century sportswriting, proving beyond a doubt that it was well-established by the time Man o'War lost his only race. Upset did not father a term, he was just well named.

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Full Monty

This British phrase, meaning the whole thing, dates to the mid-1980s. It is of unknown origin. From K. Howarth's 1985 Sounds Gradely:

Full-monty, everything included..a thorough display–no messing about.
The sense meaning total nudity stems from the 1997 film of that title. Prior to this, the full monty did not especially connote nudity. From Simon Beaufoy's script:

Horse: No one said owt about going the full monty to me... Gaz: We've got to give 'em something your average ten-bob stripper don't.
While we have no idea where the phrase actually comes from, that hasn't stopped people from proferring explanations. Here are a few. None of these have any reliable evidence to support them:

It refers to Field Marshal Montgomery's habit of meticulously planning his assaults, including intensive and detailed artillery preparations;
It refers to Montgomery in full-dress uniform with all his medals;
It refers to Montgomery's habit of eating a large breakfast each morning;
Breakfast, but not Montgomery's, instead it's the one served by Mrs. Montague at The Lennox Cafe in Bognor Regis, West Sussex;
It refers to expensive formal clothing purchased at the tailor shop of Montague Burton;
It is gambler's slang derived from the game of three-card Monte;
It is a corruption of the full amount;
It derives from a television commercial for fruit juice in which an actor asks for the full Del Monte;
Finally, it could come from Australian and New Zealand slang, a monty being a bet (especially on a horse) that is a sure thing.

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Morphology

You may note in these pages and in other etymological works, that famous people seemed to have coined a lot of words. Often, the famous people were not actually the first to use a particular word or phrase, but rather their usage is the oldest surviving example and they get credit by default. Naturally, we tend to preserve the works of famous people and great writers, and the letters, diaries, and other writings of ordinary folk are lost to the ages.

Morphology, however, is not one of these cases. It was actually coined by a famous person. More interesting, however, are the circumstances under which it was coined.

The famous person in question is none other than Johann Wolfgang Goethe, arguably the greatest of German poets. That such a man of letters should coin a phrase is unremarkable, except that it was coined in a work on biology. Goethe, in addition to his literary talents, was a rather good naturalist. In 1817, he published Zur Naturwissenschaft uberhaupt, besonders zur Morphologic. In that work, he combined two Greek roots, morph meaning shape, and ology meaning science, to create a word for the study of shape and structure of living organisms.

Within a few years the word was being used in English works on biology, introduced via translations of French works that used the term. From Robert Knox's 1828 translation of J.H. Cloquet's System of Human Anatomy:

Descriptive Anatomy . . . is itself capable of being divided into the Particular Anatomy of Organs, or Morphology, and the Anatomy of Regions, or Topographical Anatomy, if we may use the expression.

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Keeping Up With The Joneses

The expression keeping up with the Joneses got its start in 1913 as the title of a comic strip by Arthur R. "Pop" Momand. The strip detailed the lives of the McGinis family, who were envious of their neighbors, the Joneses. By the mid-1920s, the phrase was in common use. From American Speech, February 1926:

Today most of us live in automobilia, where the automocracy is everlastingly trying to "keep up with the Joneses."