"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 18/12/17 (riding a croggy)

I had a nice e-mail from Christine Craigie, who said, "My cousines talk of riding croggy for fun when the two of them ride on a bike together. Where does this term come from?" It's a great example from English dialect which, contrary to everything we believe, is actually quite well and in quite robust health. Wonderful, wonderful words are falling out of use. They all seen to collect around certain themes, which is quite interesting as well - left-handedness being one of them. Believe it or not, children's games and particularly this idea of riding two on a bike is another one. Dozens of a local versions of them so there is riding backie, dinky, seaty, piggy and croggy, which I love. That's still use in Midlands, especially in Nottinghamshire and Teesside as well. The difference here is that riding croggy, you're riding on the crossbar. You're not riding behind the rider. It may have come north all the way from Cornwall where a croggan is a limpet shell. So the idea is that you've got two riders and one is clinging really tightly to the other, which I think is beautiful. It may simply be CRO from crossbar. That's a more prosaic version, but I like a limpet explanation but, as I say, it's just one of so many words for riding on a bike this day. A lot of fun. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 15/12/17 (nailing your colours to the mast)

Thanks to John Barringer, who e-mailed in to ask for the story behind "nailing your colours to the mast", which is to declare your intentions very openly and also the idea that you will hold on to those beliefs intil the end, and there is a lovely story behind it. A little bit grisly, perhaps, because it goes back to a very famous 17th-century naval battle, and in those days colours, or flags - it's another word for flags - were struck or lowered to show surrender in a battle, but it was also a custom in warfare for one ship to direct its cannon fire at the opponent's ship's mast, so to disable it completely. Sometimes if all of the ship's masts were broken, the captain then had no alternative. He was completely lost. But if there was a little bit left, sometimes they would hoist the colours onto the remnants of the ship's rigging - in other words, they would literally nail their colours to the mast, as I say, quite literally. But there is a specific event involved and that is exploits of the crew of the ship called the Venerable, which is at the Battle of Camperdown, and that was a naval engagement that took place in 1797. It was between English and Dutch ships during the French Revolutionary Wars. Camperdown, because it was near Kamperduin in Holland. And the Venerable was under the command of the captain Adam Duncan. He led the fleet, the entire fleet, and it didn't go very well, the battle, at the beginning, so the main mast was struck and the blue standard, the Admiral, the blue flag, was brought down in the process, which could mean, as they say, that everything was over, but that's when history became an adventure story. Step forward the intrepid sailor called Jack Crawford. He climbed what was left of the mast - ans there wasn't very much left, a very, very precarious job - and nailed it back to where it was visible to the rest of the fleet, to show thst they hadn't surrended. It provided crucial in the battle. Duncan's fleet was victorious in the end and many saw Camperdown to be the end of dominance of the Dutch and the beginning of Britannia ruling the waves. Crawford returned home to Sunderland. He was an absolute national hero and, for years after, the bravery of those English sailors bacame the yardstick against which anything else was measured, so a very literal a nailing colour to the mast, all thanks to the sailor Jack Crawford. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 14/12/17 (to have someone over the barrel, laughing stock, going commando)

Three auestions from three viewers, and I always love getting questions, so thank you to everyone who's sending them in. The first is from Alex Smith, who asked, where the phrase "to have someone over the barrel" comes from. It's American, and first appeared around sort of 1950s, 1960s. And it refers, we think, to the actual situation of somebody being leant over the barrel. Two situations, one is to empty the lungs of someone who'd been close to drowing. And we have lots of records saying that this actually took place, this method of clearing the lungs. Or it was a form of punishment, often aboard a ship. Similar to flogging, in other words. Either way, that position of helplessness transferred over into this idiom, and thtat's why we still talk of that today.  John Winter asks - similar theme of helplessness - why do we call somebody a laughing stock? That goes back to the use of stock, something solid that you can fix something to. So a stump, or it's related to stick, in fact. And the idea that you are the butt of a joke, really, you're at the end of a joke. And speaking of butts - this is probably the worst link I've ever made - Victoria Morsman asked about going commando and where that phrase comes from. The simple answer is not completely sure, but we do know that many commandos and people in the special forces do go without underpants. Do you know this phrase, to go commando? Two senses - it can mean to toughen up, if you go commando, and that was its first sense, actually, but it nowdays means not to wear any underwear. Thst's to go commando. And certanly, within the special forces, especially if, people in Vietnam, for example, if they were spending long periods in wet, jungle conditions, wearing underpants could be deeply uncomfortable. I won't go into it, but fungal infection and things, apparently, come to mind. And that may have been when it started to creep into English. But it really was propelled in the 1970s, when it became a part of college slang, and then a famous episode of Friends has Joey and Rachel going commando, and that's when it became really popular. Thanks for sending them in. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 13/12/17 (proverb, when in Rome)

Today I have a proverb for you. And proverbs are often some of the oldest things in the language. In Europe many of them go back to the Bible, which not only coined quite a lot of them but also popularised them as it was distributed around the Europe. And proverb itself comes from pro, to put forth, and verbum, meaning the word. So you were literally spreading the word. And the word is usually a moral or a reflection of culture or experience of some kind. So they tell you an awful lot, a little snapshot, if you like, in a word or in a phrase. And the proverd I'm going to talk about today is "when in Rome". It's usually shortened to "when in Rome". Of course, it's "When in Rome, do as the Romans do". And this one of the oldest. It was an admonition to travellers, really, to observe the local custom whenever you go there. And it's believed to have originated in a letter written by St Ambrose. And he was a fourth-century Bishop of Milan. And translated from Latin, his advice reads, "When you are at Rome, live the Roman style. When you are elswhere, live as they live elsewhere". Those words were part of a letter written in LAtin in about AD387 to St Augustine. And St Augustine was in Rome and was really confused about the right day for fasting, because he knew that the Roman church had decreed that Saterdat was a day sat aside for fasting. But in Milan, where he resided, there was no such requirement at all, so he didn't quite to know which custom to follow. It obviously varied from city to city. So he consulted the wise St Ambrose, who replied with that advice - "When in Rome, do as the Romans do". And that's exactly what he did. Not only that. He gave us some words that became enshrined in our memory pretty much for ever. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 12/12/17 (ackronym, backronym, tip)

I'm going to talk about acromyms today. It comes from Greek akron, meaning summit, because you take the tip for each lettet for an acronym and make a word out of it. It is related to an acropolis, which is city built on a hill, acne, acrobit, actobat as well - performing high up. And there is such a thing as a backronym. Because acronyms essentially are taking the first letter ag a number of words, as I say, and making up a plausible word out of them, backronyms are when people take a word and think, "Oh, that must be an acronym" and they make up a story to fit that particular word. Many, many stories suggesting that "tip" is an acronym for "To Insure Promptness", and the idea is that in the 18th-century London, coffeehouses, when these coffeehouses were all the rage,  customers would drop coins into a box when they came in, and the box would be labelled "To Insure Promptness". Lovely story, but sadly no evidence at all exists for that. In fact, it all began with the criminal underworld, like so many words in English, in the 17th century - so rogues' cant as we called it - and tipping someone the wink, which we still use today. It means to give somebody a heads-up.  Tip is probably the root of giving a piece of advice, giving a tip to somebody. And tip then simply meant to allow or to give. And that sense of giving then translated over to tipping someone a shilling, giving someone a shilling as a result of good service, or to reward them in some way. And that is how we ended up with the modern meaning of giving someone a tip at the end, perhaps, of a good meal. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 11/12/17 (letting hair down, get in someone's hair, split hairs, hairy, hair of the dog)

I'm going to talk about hair and the numerous expressions in English involving hair. And I'm going to start with letting your hair down, which seems quite obvious, really, on the face of it. But actually, in the 19th century, it was letting down the back hair. And it involved not the hair on your back, but these very elaborate tresses of hair that, of course, women would wear in these days. And only in the informal, relaxed atmosphere of the home were they able tolet these tresses down. And when you get in someone's hair, you're being an annoyance. Not quite sure about this one, but we think it's due to the irritation of head lice, that was the original meaning. So not a particularly pleasant one there. People who split hairs quibble over insignificant details. And that image, between painstackingly dividing a single hair, which of course is almost impossible, and making small and slightly over-refined distinctions, has been around for centuries. In fact, Shakespeare used it. In King Henry IV he writes, "I'll cavil on a ninth part of a hair', meaning, "I'll argue over everything", a tiny portion. And then we have hairy. If we describe something as hairy, it's quite scary - you might have a hairy flight, for example. That sense of hairy is probably simply a version of hair-rising, makes your hair stand on end. Which is also, of course, behind horrible and horror. It goes back to a Latin word meaning stand on end, with the idea that your hair bristle at the sight of something truly terrifying. But possibly my favourite origin, one of my favourite origins in English, totally, actially, the hair of the dog. We talk about that when we have a tipple the morning after the night before, in order trying to try and cure a hangover.  It goes back to the full expression, the hair of the dog that  bit you, and that goes back quite a long way to people who were perhaps bitten by rabid dog, and the belief that if you could chase that dog down, pull out a bit of its hair, make a poultice out of the hair and put it over the wound, it would cure your rabies. And? of course, over time, that was metaphorically then applied to alcohol. But it begut with something very, very literal, and very real hairs of an actual dog. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 08/12/17 (prefix ortho-)

I have a prefix, which sounds on the face of it very boring. And lexicographers love prefixes and knowing your prefixes allows you to open a whole new world of words and to realise where they came from, especially if you know your classics. This prefix is ortho-. And ortho- heads up a whole host, a family of modern English words. It means straight or perpendicular. It's Greek-based. Metaphorical, too, it can imply integrity, correctness or standard, in some way. And there are many, many medical, zoological, botanical terms, that have this at the beginning. So, Orthoptera is a family of insects including grasshoppers and locusts and various other insects that have stright wings. So, that ortho- means straight in there already. That one's a bit obscure, maybe. But there are so many other words including ortho-, which once you understand that straightness, they make absolute sense. So, orthodondist is somebody who will straighten your teeth, the -dontist part obviously meaning teeth. So, they are a tooth straighteher. An orthopaedist, on the other hand,  if you talk about orthopaedics, the person who deals with abnormalities in bones anf joints, especially in children, and the -paedist comes from the Greek for child but etymologically, they are really concerned with the straight development of children's bones, so, again, that idea of straightness. And orthodox, somebody who has an orthodox opinion conforms to the standard, if you like. They are perhaps more conventional in their beliefs and subscribe to a particularly standard  type of doctrine related to whatever it is, whether it's religion or a custom. So, orthodoxy, appearing in English in the 1500s, means literally a straight or correct opinion. So that ortho-, simply meaning straight, will give you a way into so many words that on the face of it look actually very difficult but they're not!

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 07/12/17 (covfefe)

This year, on the long list of Oxford's Word of the Year was one word that is a very rare example of a new coinage that achieved huge currency everywhere without anyone have a clue what it meant. And it goes back to 30th May when late at night on social media President Trump made one of the most famous typos of all time. He did what he often does at odd hours - he sent a tweet. This one was a bit pizzling. It said, "Despite the constant negative press covfefe" And everyone thought, "Ok, five minutes later he'ii delete it, he'll realise". But he didn't. And it stayed there for a very long time. Ensue complete chaos as people were desperately trying to wonder what it meant, but to have a bit of fun with it as well, of course. Some people made political statements, so one cola company said, "We have no plans to add covfefe to our cola.If you want the taste of incopetence, there are other sodas available". And then there was also a train company that said, "Due to covfefe on the line, our trains will be running a bit late today". And so it went on, everyone having a bit of fun with it. Nobody knows what it means. His Chief of Staff said that it actually did mean something and the President knew exactly what it was. But who knows? And other people say that it played to the greatest strenght of the internet, which was given meaning to be meaningless. But whatever covfefe means, if it gets in the dictionary, I will be fascinated to know what its definition is. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 06/12/17 (cold feet)

I have cold feet for you today. Cold feet is when you have loss of nerve or a loss of confidence, which certanly you can't afford to have in the circus. No-one is quite sure what inspired the idiom but ther's lots and lots of theories, as always with quite tricky word origins. We do know it's been in use since the 19th century, so it's been around for a while, and there is probably, we think, a military history to it because combat soldiers whose feet were frozen or even numbed with fear, or eho got a trench foot due to horrible, horible conditions in the threnchesans unsutable footwear, were exempted from battle. And sometimes they were exempted from battle because, as it would say on the medical statement, they had cold feet. It's quite possible that over time that saying became associated with a loos of nerve and eventually cowardice. But there is another account that might explain why it became so popular, and that a novel in the 19th century by the German writer Fritz Reuter. And, loosing his money and his nerve in a high-stakes game of cards, one of the novel's characters apparently say he has cold feet, and he uses thet as an excuse to withdraw from the game. But all the other players are highly suspicious of this and think it has absolutely nothing to do with his retreat, he was simply fearful of losing the game, losing more money. And so, hence, he lost his nerve by saying he had cold feet. If you want a really prosaic theory it's simply that if you are absolutely paralysed with fear, the physical response is blood rushing from the extremities leaving you feet cold. So that's the third, a little bit technical, expldndtion. But I think the military one is probably the best. As I say, it goes back pre-20th, it was recorded qiuite a long time before that, but carried on through as an excuse for cowardice. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 05/12/17 (ghost words in dictionary)

I mentioned yesterday I was going to look at what lexicographers get up to. Not in their spare time but the mistakes sometines that happen or deliberate coinages, that sort of thing. Today I thought I would talk about mistakes because one question that we're often asked is, " Do you ever slip up and does the wrong word get into dictionary?" The answer is definitely yes. There are some quite famous examples to prove it. They're called ghost words, these kind of words, and either arrive through accident, so it can be a printer's error or it can be dictionary compiler's error. Or sometime they're deliberate. I'll give you a few examples of the errors. Sometimes the definition is just wonderful. If you look at Samuel Johnson's dictionary, he had "foupe" with the great definition "to drive with a sudden impetuosity". Which is just brilliant. Unfortunately he had misread a long S for an F and it was "soupe". But foupe went in the dictionary for quite a long time until we realised that he'd made a mistake. But possibly most famous lexicoghaphical error of the 20th century, and that was the appearance of the word "dord", which appeared in Webster's New International Dictionary. This is looking back to the 1930s. It was listed as a noun with pronunciation meaning density.In those days, dictionaries were comppiled not on computers but through index cards that would be filed in quite elaborate filing systems. This index card has got misplaced from the abbreviation section to the word section and it was supposed to read "D or d"as an abbreviation for density. But people read it all as one word, it became dord and again that survived in the dictionary for a very, very long time until someone spotted it. So the simple answer is we do mistakes. I/m not sure about any in here but I'm sure I'll come across one at some point. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 04/12/17 (phubbing)

I thought I'd talk over the next couple of days about the troubles that lexicographers sometimes get themselves in. One of the most common questions that you get asked if you work in dictionaries is, "How do I get my new word into the dictionary? You know, can I get it in? Here it is. It's brilliant." And the answer is always no. Of cource, if a word is used often enoughover a certain period of time, then it stands a good chance of going into the dictionary, but not until then, so we don't listen to petitions. But it turns out, if it's an inside job, you might get a word in. In 2013, a movement sprang up in Australia that carried the slogan, "Stop phubbing". Phabbing was a blend of phone snubbing, in other words, you are snubbing someone by just looking at your screen. The word just took off, literally. And it was only probably a couple of months later, after the advertising agency had really propelled this into the language, that Macquarie Dictionaries owned up and said it was all part of a dictionary campaign to update your dictionary and it was a completely made-up word by a group of linguists in an office somewhere and they had done what we always say is impossible. But eventually we all had to eat our words because if you look in the Oxford Dictionary here online, you will find that phubbing is in and it's one of the very, very few examples of a word that has been artificially created and has succesfully gone into the dictionary. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 01/12/17 (words from root "anthropos")

Today I/m going to unpick a set of words that all come from a common root and it's a beutiful root, it's Greek, anthropos, which mean humankind so man, woman, a human being and it turns out it's the mother of a very large family of words in Ehglish. The most obvious one probably is anthropology which is, of course, the science of human beings, so it's a study of its customs, their beliefs and their physical characteristics, but that's not the only one, by any means. For example, if we assign human emotions and human attributes to animals or to inanimate objects, we're anthropomorphising them. Cartoons like Finding Nemo, Jungle Book, etc, do this all the time aut also in English and language when we talk about the hands of the time or the eye of the storm, that's what we're doing. We're anthropomorphising. There's also a great term, resistentialism, which is a much newer coinage and that's the belief that inanimate objects really have it in you so that if you toast lands butter down, which it always does, that is resistentialism, or if you bump into a sofa, it's the sofa fault, etc. Anyway, that's nothing to do with mankind, I just like that word. Anthropocentric means centring on human beings so that's the belief that human and humanity stands at the centre of everything, and everything revolves around us. But finaly we come to misanthrope, and a misanthrope again has that anthropos within it, the mankind, and it also has the Greek word for hate, miseo, so, a misanthrope, really, is a cynical, unfortunate, absolute hater of humankind. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 30/11/17 (Dutch words: boss, snoop, booze, brandy, gin, cruise, yacht, cookie, bumpkin)

I talked quite recently about enmity between the English and the Dutch, which has resulted in all sorts of rather unflattering idioms to do with the Dutch, including Dutch courage. But, in fact, we do owe an awful lot to the Dutch in a good way, because they gave us so many words that have come into our language and which have lost their Dutch ancestry, mostly because of the way we pronounce them. So, just to give you a bit of  an example, if I asked you, "Is your boss a bit gruff?" Maybe he is a bit prone to snooping. Or you might to go for a booze cruise on his yacht. That contain at least half a dozen words that came over from the Netherlands. The boss of all Dutch words probably is the boss, it's from their word baas, meaning master. It travelled into the USA at the beginning of the 19th century, and it was very much restricted to workmen's slang, so it wasn't used at all in the current, modern context until quite recently. But if he's addicted to snooping, he's not actually spying, as we might thing today. The original meaning of snoop, from the Dutch snoepen, was to eat on the sly by sneaking bits of food out and eating them when no-one was looking. Something kids like to do all the time. I mentioned booze - very, very much a Dutch word, where it meant to drink to excess. It was spelt rather differently, as you might imagine. And you booze of chioce might be brandy, that was originally brandewine from the Dutch brandewijn, which was burnt wine. Burning, because when you burn the alcohol off, and condences back as brandy, basically. Some strong alcohol. Gin is flavoured with juniper berries, and it was traditionally made in the Netherlands. So we have them to thank for our gin and tonics as well. In the early 18th century, it was spelt genever. To do eith juniper. But because people associated this eith the Swiss city, it was colled Holland's genever instead. So, for a long time, if you wnted a gin and tonic, you eould ask for Holland's and tonic. Many, many words to do with the sea and sailing - perhaps because all the Dutch wars that went on on the sea - travelled across the North Sea to Britain. I mentioned cruise, that comes from their word to cross. And a jaghtschip as a fast pirate ship, originally, and we get yacht from there. And finally, worda for items of food. You might think that a cookie is quintessencially American, but, in fact, it started off as a Dutch koekje, which was a little cake. And that's how it travelled into English originally, before it became biscuit that we know today.  Cabbage salad, coleslaw of course, and gherkin also. But probably my favourite is a bumpkin, because in Dutch, a boomken is a little tree or a little barrel, and either way, it began as an insult for a short, stout, rather dumpy man. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 29/11/17 (libel, pamphlet)

Two book-related words today. I'm going to start with something you really don't want in your life, that's libel in any kind. That is a written defamatory statement about you or information about you, as opposed to slander, which is always spoken. Libel goes back to the Latin "libellus", which meant a little book. "Liber" was a book, it gave us library, too. That just what it was originally. It was a very short essey or a treatise on some praticular subject, but it move onto encompass a leaflet or a pamphlet that was a circulated to lots and lots of people. Because of political pressures of the day, very often they would contain quite vehement and agressive attacks on the government and they were often defamatory. So defamatory in fact, that that's where we got, from libellus, that little book, the idea of libel. I mentioned a pamphlet that was distributed around, and I love the story of pamphlet, because it's so far removed from the meaning it has today. Not all of us will appreciate the pamphlets popping through our letterebox most days, but it originated in the late 1300s, it's very, very old. It meant again a small treatise or another work, consisting of pages without covers. But its origin is quite wonderful. It comes from Pamphilet, which was a French title of a completely anonymus but extremely popular 12th-century comic love poem. It was written in Latin - Pamphilus, seu de Amore, or Pamphilus on love. Pamphilus was the name of the hero, who got his name from Pamphilus, maning "beloved by all" in Greek. Don't quite know the subject of the poem, but I do know it was insredibly popular. Pamphilus then produced Pamphilet, a little edition of Pamphilus, if you like. As I say, it was so popular, it was widely copied and passed around from person to person in a form of a very thin leaflet. So from that hero of an extremely popular love poem, we get a very prosaic word pamphlet today.