September 3rd, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
“Legwork” is a commonly used informal term for “routine work that is necessary to a job.” Less common is writing it correctly as one word rather than two.
“American Slang” cites its first appearance in 1891 in a “newspaper office.” Webster’s also refers to a journalistic heritage, giving as an example of legwork “that of a news reporter, involving, typically, walking or driving from place to place, away from the office.”
Interestingly, another word with “leg-” at the start actually involves working with the hands.
It’s “legerdemain” — OK, it’s not really a “leg,” because the “g” has the “j” sound. Nevertheless, “legerdemain” is a magician’s skill also known as “sleight of hand.” By extension, it’s “trickery of any sort; deceit.”
“Legerdemain” comes from the Middle French phrase meaning, literally, “light of hand.” And that came from three Latin words — “levis” (”light”), “de” (”of”) and “manus” (”hand”).
The first part of “sleight of hand” is often misspelled “slight,” which would mean “having small hands.” And while that might be true of the magician, it’s incorrect for the magic.
September 2nd, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
“Clowns” have been around for a long time, but where the word came from is uncertain. Webster’s suggests it may be Scandinavian in origin — for example, the Icelandic “klunni,” meaning “clumsy person.”
Another possibility, explored in “Webster’s New Explorer Dictionary of Word Origins,” is the Latin “colonus,” for “colonist, farmer.” Indeed, the original meaning of “clown” was “a peasant or farmer” or “a rustic.”
These days, in addition to the circus performer, a “clown” can be “a clumsy, boorish or incompetent person” or “a person who constantly plays the fool, makes jokes, etc.”
And since the 1940s, according to “American Slang,” we’ve had “clown around” for “to behave frivolously; persist in inappropriate levity.”
If you’re being amusing and entertaining, being called a clown is generally a good thing. If you aren’t, it’s not.
August 31st, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
A co-worker asked recently where the slang “bozo” comes from. Apparently, no one knows.
“American Slang” says it first appeared in 1910 as “a fellow; a man, especially a muscular type with a meager brain.” So to be called a bozo isn’t necessarily negative, but it probably is.
The book says the word may have sprung from the Spanish “bozal,” which it identifies as having been used in the slave trade for a person who spoke Spanish badly and was therefore considered stupid.
It also mentions “bozo filter,” a wishful-thinking term from the 1990s for “a device that would automatically exclude fools and louts from computer networks.” Again, this is not a compliment.
For beloved Bozos, we have to use a capital “C” and look to the world of clowns. That Bozo was created in 1946 as a character on read-along records produced by Capitol Records. (I remember listening to one of those in a grade-school classroom.)
A Bozo first appeared on a TV show about three years later in Los Angeles. The best-known Bozo in this area was on Chicago’s WGN, first on a half-hour show beginning in 1960. The iconic, full-hour, live children’s show “Bozo’s Circus” began its long run the next year.
The world needs more Bozos and fewer bozos.
August 30th, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
I left out at least one “-spire” word in my previous item — “transpire.” Why? Let’s just say that stuff happens. But don’t say stuff transpires.
The use of “transpire” to mean “happen,” “occur” or “take place” is an example of “a mere pomposity displacing an everyday word,” as Bryan A. Garner puts it in “Garner’s Modern American Usage.”
“The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories” calls it “a figurative use” from the idea of “leak out, become known, come to the surface.”
And “transpire” still has that meaning, but very few people use it that way. It’s another case of an unnecessary (and to many unwelcome) usage supplanting a perfectly good one.
“Transpire” also can refer to the passage of vapor, moisture, etc., through the skin or by breathing and so on. This “tranpiration” reflects its original sense in Latin, “to breathe through.”
And that’s probably the safest way to use it.
August 27th, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
The word “spirit” goes back to the Latin “spiritus,” which also could mean “courage,” “vigor,” “life,” “the soul” and “breathe.” As that last one indicates, it came from the verb “spirare” for “to blow, breathe.”
That concept is at the heart of an interesting group of English words:
“Respire” is the one that still means “to breathe.” We don’t use the verb all that much, but “respiration” and “respirator” get quite a workout.
Working out makes most people “perspire,” or sweat. The literal meaning of its Latin ancestor was “to breathe everywhere,” like from every pore.
“Aspire” comes from the Latin “to breathe upon” and later, “aspire to.” The breathing part remains in medical and other applications of “aspirate” and the like. More broadly, to aspire is “to be ambitious” to accomplish something or “to yearn or seek.”
Finally, we have the inspirational “inspire” (Latin “to breathe in”) and the mostly negative “conspire” (Latin “to breathe together, agree, unite”). The principal definition of the latter is “to plan and act together secretly, especially in order to commit a crime.”
We also have two types of “spires,” one that’s “a spiral or coil,” and one that applies to things that taper — a plant stalk, a blade of grass, a mountain peak, a tower or steeple, for example.
Both are unrelated to the other “-spire” words, although some of the second kind could certainly offer breath-taking views.
August 25th, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
Talking is surely older than writing, and many words were created as attempts to imitate sounds.
One of the first noises associated with human beings would have to be “breaking wind,” and this expression of gas has inspired numerous other expressions.
One of them is “feisty” — which people often misspell “fiesty.” This informal or dialectical adjective means “full of spirit; specifically, quarrelsome, aggressive, belligerent, etc.” or “lively, energetic, spunky, etc.”
It comes from the dialectical “feist” for “a small, snappish dog.” Its origin is probably in the Indo-European base for “to blow,” which also is at the root of “spirit.”
Originally, says Webster’s, “feist” was, literally, a breaking of wind. The person who first applied it to a dog probably didn’t mean it as a compliment.
August 24th, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
An “outlier” is defined as “any person or thing that lies, dwells, exists, etc. away from the main body or expected place.” It can be a literal separation or a figurative one, as in someone who shuns or is shunned by a group. In the latter case, “outsider” is a more common term.
Also more common is “outlying,” meaning “relatively far out from a certain point or center; remote.”
I would recommend hyphenating “out-lying” to convey the sense of being better at stretching the truth. There are “outliers” and there are “out-and-out liars.”
And that’s the truth.
August 23rd, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
We had a city editor here years ago who banned the word “comprise” because too many people were unable to use it properly. At the time, I thought that was overreacting. Now, I’m not so sure.
It’s a perfectly good word that means “contain” or “include,” as in “The United States comprises 50 states.”
However, most people don’t use it in conversation. If they do, it likely will be turned around into “The United States is comprised of 50 states.” This is incorrect. It would be the same as saying, “The United States is contained of 50 states.”
The whole comprises the parts, as the usage experts say. It doesn’t work the other way around. The phrase “is comprised of” is always incorrect.
However, this distinction is probably doomed. For its third definition of “comprise,” Webster’s says: “to make up; form; constitute: in this sense still regarded by a few as loose usage.”
Those “few” include every reference book I checked, but maybe they’re all old school.
So now I’m leaning toward putting “comprise” out to pasture. It’s simple enough to write “The United States is made up of (or “has”) 50 states.”
If we aren’t going to treat “comprise” properly, then let’s label it “archaic” and let it retire with some dignity intact.
But don’t try to make me accept “The United States is comprised of 50 states.” I’m warning you — I’ll secede.
August 20th, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
As I wrote about previously, the Latin verb “arcere,” meaning “to enclose,” is at the heart of “ark”-ness (sorry, Joseph Conrad fans).
When you add the prefix “ex-” (for “out”), you eventually end up with “exercise.”
In Latin, “ex-” plus “arcere” produced the verb “exercere,” a very practical word that meant “to drive out” — in particular, to move farm animals out of their enclosures to where they could be put to work. The word then became a more general reference to “drill, exercise.”
Have you ever been in a group exercise or some other form of drill and felt that the instructors were treating you like cattle? Maybe this will help you feel better about it.
OK, probably not.
August 19th, 2010 07:00am
Barry Wood
Now that I’ve covered arcs and arches, what about arks?
There are two extremely important arks in the Old Testament. One is the boat that Noah builds to save his family and the planet’s land creatures from the impending Flood (if any flood deserves a capital F, it’s that one).
The other is the Ark of the Covenant, “the chest containing the two stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, kept in the holiest part of the ancient Jewish Tabernacle.”
Each starred in a memorable piece of popular culture: the boat, in comedian Bill Cosby’s classic routine about Noah on his first album, and the chest, in the movie that introduced us to Indiana Jones.
An “ark” also can be “a place or thing furnishing protection; refuge.”
The word traces back to the Latin “arca,” “a box,” which came from the verb “arcere” — “to shut up, enclose.”
True to its nature, that same verb is at the root of the adjective “arcane,” meaning “hidden or secret” or “understood by only a few; esoteric,” and the noun “arcanum,” “a secret; mystery” or “a secret remedy; elixir.”
And now, back to Bill Cosby. Now that I know what an ark is, “You want to get it out of my driveway? I’ve got to get to work.”
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