Word Origins

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Mortgage

A reader wrote me asking about this word. It seems she was conversing with someone from Holland and upon telling him that her husband was a mortgage broker, the Dutchman assumed he was a mortician. She wanted to know where the word mortgage came from and if it was etymologically related to mortician and mortuary.

The two words are etymologically related. They both derive from the Latin mori meaning to die (via the Old French mort). In the case of mortician, the logical connection with death is obvious, but with mortgage it is not so apparent.

In the word mortgage, the mort- is from the Latin word for death and -gage is from the sense of that word meaning a pledge to forfeit something of value if a debt is not repaid. It appears in Old French as gage mort as early as 1267. The form mort gage appears in Old French by 1283 and mortgage made its way into Anglo-Norman. Use in English dates to1390, when it appears in John Gower's Confessio Amantis:

In mariage His trouthe plight lith in morgage.
So mortgage is literally a dead pledge. It was dead for two reasons, the property was forfeit or "dead" to the borrower if the loan were not repaid and the pledge itself was dead if the loan was repaid. In the words of the 17th century English jurist (and apparently etymologist) Edward Coke in his 1628 The First Part of the Institutes of the Lawes of England:

It seemeth that the cause why it is called mortgage is, for that it is doubtful whether the Feoffor will pay at the day limited such summe or not, & if he doth not pay, then the Land which is put in pledge vpon condition for the payment of the money, is taken from him for euer, and so dead to him vpon condition, &c. And if he doth pay the money, then the pledge is dead as to the Tenant, &c.

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Wop

Like wog, wop is often thought to be an acronym for With Out Passport, supposedly used on Ellis Island to designate immigrants without proper papers. This pejorative term for an Italian was probably first used in America, but its roots are in the Romance languages.

Like many other etymologies contained in these pages, this one is not certain, although most authorities agree on the likely origin. It probably derives from the Italian dialectical guappo, or thug. This in turn derives from the Spanish guapo, meaning a dashing braggart or bully, and which eventually derives from the Latin vappa, meaning flat wine or scoundrel.

The earliest usage in the OED2 dates to 1912 and is spelled wap, which supports the derivation from guappo. The next usage cite, from 1914, uses the more familiar spelling of wop.

The OED2 does, however, list an acronym for wop. It is more properly written W/Op, and is Second World War-era Royal Air Force slang for wireless operator. The 1937 reference for this usage clearly indicates that the unofficial spelling was derogatory, certainly in association with the more general usage.

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Muckety-Muck

The origin of this word for an important person is from the Chinook Jargon muckamuck, meaning food, or when used as a vert to eat. Chinook Jargon, not to be confused with the native American language Chinook, was a pidgin used by traders in the American Northwest with Chinook, Nootka, English, and French at its core. Muckamuck may originally come from the Nootka mahomaq, meaning whalemeat, but this last is uncertain.

English use of muckamuck, in the sense of to eat, dates to 1838 when it appears in a glossary, Samuel Parker's Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains:

Eat, mucamuc
Naturalized use dates to at least 1853 when Theodore Winthrop used it in a letter that was published in The Canoe and the Saddle ten years later:

We stopped once or twice for them to "muck-a-muck," which they are ready for forty times a day.
English use as a noun dates to 1847 when it appears in a glossary, Joel Palmer's Journal of Travels Over the Rocky Mountains:

Muck-a-muck, Provisions, eat.
The word appears completely naturalized by 1852, when it appears in the Oregonian of 25 December:

The aborigine . . . "put" for the settlement with a sort of legs-do-your-duty-for-the-body-is-in-danger resolution for his muckamuck.
The sense meaning an important person appears first as high muckamuck. This is from the Chinook Jargon hiu (plenty) + muckamuck (food). A visitor or guest who was important would rate a banquet, but in English the first element was reinterpreted to mean high, or important. This sense in English dates to 1856 when it appears in the Sacramento Democratic State Journal of 1 November:

The professors—the high "Muck-a-Mucks"—tried fusion, and produced confusion.

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Red Herring

This term for deliberate misdirection comes from hunting. Poachers would interpose themselves between the prey and the hunting party and drag a red herring across the trail to mislead the dogs. This would give them the opportunity to bag the prey themselves.

A red herring was chosen because dog trainers often used the pungent fish to create a trail when training their hounds. The dogs, upon encountering the herring scent, would follow that trail as it was the one they had been trained with.

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Spick and Span

No, the phrase spick and span is not related to the aforementioned epithet. It is an adjective meaning perfectly or brand new or a reference to refurbishing or cleaning that restores something to mint condition.

The adjective spick and span dates to the 17th century and first appears in Pepy's Diary. This, however, is a clipping of the somewhat older spick and span new, which dates to the late 16th century. And this 16th century term is an emphatic and alliterative extension of the 13th century span-new.

Span is from the Old Norse meaning chip, spannyr meant a new chip of wood. Spick is a variant on the word spike and is apparently taken in imitation of the Dutch version of the term spiksplinter nieuw (spike-splinter new).

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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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Lorem Ipsum

This strange Latin, or seemingly pseudo-Latin, phrase is used in the printing industry as a place holder for text. It is a meaningless passage used to demonstrate what a printed page will look like without the reader being distracted by the content.

The full passage, as it is often rendered, reads:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
But what, if anything, does it mean? It is a corrupted extract from Cicero's de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (The Extremes of Good and Evil) written in 45 B.C. Cicero's actual words and a translation follow. Note that among other errors, the typesetter's version begins not only in mid-sentence, but also in the middle of the word dolorem:

Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?
(Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?)
How long has this particular dummy text been around? There are claims that it can be found in 16th century printer's samples, but no one has been able to produce documents containing the text that are anywhere near that old. The closest anyone has come is in the 1960s when the Letraset company began using it in promotional material for their products. Shortly thereafter, electronic typesetting programs, such as Aldus Pagemaker, began using it and its usage exploded. It seems unlikely that Letraset initiated the practice of using this dummy passage. It probably has been used by printers for some time, even if it does not date to the 1500s.

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Fat Lady Sings

The opera ain't over until the fat lady sings. Many have wondered where this phrase comes from. Well, they have to keep on wondering because the origin is obscure.

The earliest recorded version of the phrase is somewhat different than the one familiar to most people. It appears in a 1976 pamphlet titled Southern Words and Sayings, by Fabia and Charles Smith:

Church ain't out 'till the fat lady sings – It ain't over yet.
Ralph Keyes, in his book Nice Guys Finish Seventh, cites numerous people who claim to have been familiar with the phrase, in one form or another, in the decades prior to the 1970s, but no one has found a recorded use prior to 1976.

This early appearance of the church version casts doubt on what the underlying metaphor of the phrase is. With the opera version, it is clearly a reference to a hefty Wagnerian soprano belting out an aria for a rousing finish to a show. With the church version, this is not so clear.

The opera version of the phrase first appears that same year in the 10 March 1976 edition of the Dallas Morning News:

Despite his obvious allegiance to the Red Raiders, Texas Tech sports information director Ralph Carpenter was the picture of professional objectivity when the Aggies rallied for a 72-72 tie late in the SWC tournament finals. "Hey, Ralph," said Bill Morgan, "this Morgan, the league information director, is going to be a tight one after all." "Right," said Ralph, "The opera ain't over until the fat lady sings."
The opera version of the phrase was also allegedly used in a San Antonio News-Express column by sportswriter Dan Cook that same year, although the exact citation cannot be found. Cook again used the phrase in an April 1978 radio broadcast during a basketball game between the San Antonio Spurs and the Washington Bullets. Bullets Coach Dick Motta learned of the phrase and used it as a caution against overconfidence when the Bullets pulled ahead in the playoff series. Motta's use of the phrase became a popular sensation. From the Washington Post of 13 May 1978 in an article headlined 'Fat Lady' Sings for Bullets, 101-99:

Last week when the Bullets led in the series, 3-1, Coach Dick Motta cautioned against undue optimism by saying, "The opera is not over until the fat lady sings." She sang loud and clear last night for Washington.
On 28 May 1978, the Post explained how Motta acquired the phrase:

Possibly, Bob Hope asked Mr. Carter the other night about the line Dick Motta borrowed from a man in San Antonio, who stole it from someone else, that has so much of Washington in a dither: "The opera ain't over 'till the fat lady sings."
[. . .]

Like most memorable lines, the one credited to Motta and badly botched on all those t-shirts now selling at Capital Centre–was not an instant hit. A broadcaster in San Antonio had used it after game one of the Spur-Bullet playoff, to illustrate that even though the Spurs had won, the series hardly was over.

"And I said the same thing after we got up three games to one," Motta said. "And I gave the guy credit. Only nobody paid much attention. Then I said it again after we go up 3-1 again over Philly–and all of a sudden the thing catches on.

The fact that no one has found a citation earlier than 1976 indicates that the phrase, in whatever form, is probably not much older than that. It is more likely a folksy-sounding invention, rather than a traditional Southern expression. Both variants are from the Southern US, although the Smiths don't indicate what part of the South the Church variant is from. And since they appear nearly simultaneously, we can't tell which version is the original.

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denim/jeans


These two words for the same type of fabric derive from place names, but from the names of two entirely different places.

The word denim comes from the French phrase serge de Nîmes, or serge from Nîmes, a town in southern France. Gradually the latter part of the phrase became clipped into the modern denim. From Edward Hatton's The Merchant's Magazine of 1695:

Serge Denims that cost 6l. each.
Similarly, jeans also comes from a place name, this time from Italy, Genoa in particular. It comes from the French phrase jene fustian, meaning a type of twilled, cotton cloth from Genoa.

This name for Genoa comes from the Old French Jannes. The earliest English reference to Genoa as Jean is in the Naval Accounts and Inventories of the Reign of Henry VII from 1495:

Cables . . . of Jeane makyng.
The sense meaning the cloth appears somewhat later. From Henry Swayne's Churchwardens' accounts of S. Edmund and S. Thomas, Sarum, 1443–1702 from 1567:

ij yerdes of Jene fustyan.

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Old Army Game, The

What exactly is the old army game, and where does the term come from? There are several definitions, all stemming from the same source.

It is first recorded in the 1890s, but in reference to the US Civil War some thirty years earlier. As for meaning, first it can refer to any of a number of specific gambling games, chuck-a-luck (a dice game), poker, or a shell game—so long as the game is played ruthlessly or the game is rigged. From John Philip Quinn's 1890 Fools of Fortune:

Chuck-a-luck . . . is sometimes designated as "the old army game," for the reason that soldiers at the front were often wont to beguile the tedium of bivouac by seeking relief from monotony in its charms.
Second, it can mean any form of trickery or deception. This later sense (about 1910) grew out of the first—gamblers would cheat. From the New York Evening Journal of 23 April 1910:

Possums are too sly to be caught on this old army game.
Third, by 1930 the meaning had shifted to that of evading responsibility, to passing the buck. The gambling sense gave way in favor of another activity for which soldiers are known for, but retained the connotation of ruthlessness. From Theodore Fredenburgh's 1930 Soldiers March!:

It's the old army game: first, pass the buck; second: never give a sucker an even break.
All three senses, a ruthless game, trickery, or passing the buck, are still in use today.

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On The Fritz

On the fritz is rather mysterious in origin. Merriam-Webster gives a date of first use of 1902, but doesn't provide a citation. Roy McCardell's 1903 Conversations of a Chorus Girl also uses it:

They gave an open air [performance] that put our opera house show on the Fritz.
The phrase is often popularly associated with the world wars and the fact that the Germans were nicknamed Fritz by the Allies in both wars. It's commonly thought that the phrase has its origin in things German and bad, but as we can see this is not the case. The phrase appears well before the First World War.

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Face

The English word face is taken from the French and ultimately comes from the Latin facia, meaning originally appearance, visage, and a bit later the front part of the head. In English, this order is reversed with the later Latin meaning appearing first. From Saints' Lives, a manuscript from c.1290, found in Early South English Legendary (1887):

More blod thar nas in al is face.
The sense of outward appearance, look, or semblance appears in English a bit later, even though this is the original sense of the Latin root. From Chaucer's The Parlement of Foules, c.1881:

As Aleyn, in the Pleynt of Kynde, Devyseth Nature of aray and face.
The use of face to mean reputation and honor in the phrases to save face and to lose face are calques of Chinese brought into the language by 19th century English expatriates. Tiu lien in Chinese means literally to lose face and metaphorically to be humiliated or have one's reputation besmirched.

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Station Wagon

This term refers to a car big enough to haul people and luggage to and from a railway station. Originally, it referred to horse-drawn carriages (the term dates to 1894). The term was transferred to automobiles in 1904, and in 1929 the first modern station wagon was designed and marketed under that name.

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Orange

The color is named after the fruit. The English word comes from the Anglo-Norman and Middle French orenge, which in turn is from Italian, where it appears in several forms, including arancio, narancia, and naranza. The Italians acquired the word and the fruit from Arab traders. In Arabic, the word is naranj. The Sanskrit word is naranga and in Tamil it is naram, so it is likely the Arabs obtained the fruit from India. Oranges were probably originally cultivated in southeast Asia.

The word's English appearance is sometime before 1400 when it appears in J. Mirfield's Sinonoma Bartholomei:

Citrangulum pomum, orenge.
It's use to mean the color comes some 150 years later, when it appears in the Great Britain Statutes at Large of 1557:

Coloured cloth of any other colour or colours..hereafter mentioned, that is to say, scarlet, red, crimson, morrey, violet, pewke, brown, blue, black, green, yellow, blue, orange, [etc.].
The House of Orange (referring to the Dutch royal family or William and Mary of England) and the use of the term in Irish politics is of a different origin. This use derives from the town of Orange on the Rhone river in France and is etymologically unrelated to the color or the fruit. The House of Nassau, the Dutch royal family, acquired the principality of Orange in 1544. The province was returned to France in 1713, but the name was retained by the Dutch royalty. The Protestant William of Orange, or William III, co-ruled Britain with his wife Mary after her father, the Roman Catholic James II, was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The use of orange in Irish politics dates to this time when Irish Protestants used his name and coat of arms to denote loyalty to the crown.

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up to snuff

The original sense of the phrase up to snuff is knowing, sharp, not easily deceived. It dates to at least 1811 when it appears in John Poole’s Hamlet Travestie, a parody of the Shakespeare play:

He knows well enough The game we’re after: Zooks, he’s up to snuff.

By the early 20th century, the phrase had acquired the current meaning of meeting the expected standard. From a 4 November 1931 article in the magazine Punch:

Now Romney painted well enough, And Reynolds too, they say, And Gainsborough’s things are up to snuff, And Lawrence had his day.

The snuff is a reference to the form of tobacco. Presumably, someone who is up to snuff is adult and worldly. Literally, it is one who knows how dangerous snuff can be.

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upsydaisy

This is pretty much a nonsense word that exists in a wide variety of forms and spellings dating back to the mid-19th century. It’s usually used when jumping up or surmounting some obstacle. From C. Clough Robinson’s 1862 The Dialect of Leeds and Its Neighbourhood:

Upsa daesy! a common ejaculation when a child, in play, is assisted in a spring-leap from the ground.

This form stems from an older variant of the same meaning, up-a-daisy. This term dates at least 1711, appearing in Swift’s Journal to Stella of that year:

Come stand away, let me rise...Is there a good fire?—So—up a-dazy.

The up- element is obvious, it refers to the action of jumping or climbing. the -a-daisy element is s bit more mysterious. This second portion of the word is likely simply nonsense syllables, akin to the interjections lackadaisy and alack-a-day, which despite being very different in meaning are strikingly similar in form and in part of speech.

Upsydaisy is spelled in a number of different ways. Other variants include: upsidaisy, oops-a-daisy, and whoops-a-daisy.

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swan song

There is a legend that swans sing an exquisitely beautiful song just before dying. There’s no truth to it, but that’s the legend and the origin of the phrase. The phrase swan song dates to 1831, although English language literary allusions to the legend date back to Chaucer, c. 1374. (And the association of swans and singing is even older, stemming from Greek myth.)

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tail wagging the dog

The phrase the tail that wags the dog dates to the late 19th century. The meaning is quite obvious, the subsidiary part is controlling the major part. In current usage, it is often applied to idea the media creating a crisis instead of a crisis generating media interest. It came to recent prominence in the 1997 film Wag the Dog starring Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman.

The phrase appears in Kipling’s 1892 The Conundrum of the Workshops:

We know that the tail must wag the dog, for,
the horse is drawn by the cart.

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wake

This term for the gathering of family and friends upon the death of someone close is generally thought to come from the Old English *wacu, or watch. The word, however, does not actually appear in texts until the Middle English period. (The * is standard etymological notation meaning that the word has been reconstructed by modern linguists and is believed to have existed, although no actual appearances have been found in extant literature.) Family and friends would maintain a prayer watch, or vigil, over the corpse. The use of the word to mean such a funeral vigil dates to John Lydgate’s Chronicle of Troy from the early 15th century:

What shulde I now any lenger dwelle...for to telle...of þe pleies called palestral, Nor þe wrastelyng þat was at þe wake?

The use of the noun wake to mean a general prayer vigil, not specifically related to a funeral and often accompanied by fasting, is a few centuries older, first appearing in the Middle English prose dialogue Vices and Vertues, c.1200:

Mid fasten, oððer mid wake.

Yet again, the piece of email lore titled Life in the 1500s registers a specious explanation. It claims that lead drinking cups and alcohol would knock people out for several days. Therefore they were laid out for several days to determine if they were actually dead or if they would wake up.

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weird

Weird is an example of a word whose most common modern meaning is quite different from its original English meaning. The word, originally a noun, dates back to Old English, where it meant fate or destiny. By the Middle English period, it was being used to refer the three Fates of Greek and Roman myth, and in Scotland this sense evolved into that of a witch. This Scottish use was Shakespeare’s inspiration for the three weird sisters in Macbeth. The modern adjective, however, does not appear until the 19th century, undoubtedly modeled on Shakespeare’s use.