Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.
Thanks to everyone for playing! As always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.
If you’re like us, you’ve been closely following the trials and tribulations of the Granthams and those who serve them. Like last season, Ben Zimmer and Ben Schmidt have been busy catching the anachronisms. Zimmer recently noticed a doozy – steep learning curve – while Schmidt found such out-of-place terms as ritual humiliation and shenanigans.
We’ve also been collecting words and phrases from the show, some perfectly ordinary, others more unusual, and all with interesting stories about how they came to be.
Spoilers may follow.
UPDATE: Two terms from the season finale have been included. See cock-a-hoop and chippy gippy tummy. Thanks to everyone who let us know it was gippy and not chippy!
blimey
Sybil: “Mary, you know what I said about the baby being Catholic. I’ve just realized the christening will have to be here, at Downton.”
Mary: “Blimey.”
Episode 4, January 27, 2013
Blimey is a British expression many of us are familiar with. It’s used to express anger, surprise, excitement, etc., and originated around 1889 as a corruption of “(God) blind me,” says the Online Etymology Dictionary. Gorblimey is another variant.
Chu Chin Chow
Mrs. Hughes: “Then your dinners would be grand enough for Chu Chin Chow.”
Episode 6, February 3, 2013
Chu Chin Chow is a musical comedy based on Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves in which “the wealthy merchant Kasim Baba (brother of Ali Baba) [gives] a lavish banquet for a wealthy Chinese merchant, Chu Chin Chow, who is on his way from China.” The show premiered in London in 1916 and ran for five years.
cock-a-hoop
Hugh: “Nield is cock-a-hoop.”
Episode 8, February 17, 2013
Cock-a-hoop means “exultant; jubilant; triumphant; on the high horse,” as well as “tipsy; slightly intoxicated.” The term comes from the phrase “to set cock on hoop,” which literally means “to turn on the tap and let the liquor flow,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and figuratively, “to drink festively.”
Cock in this context refers to “a faucet or valve by which the flow of a liquid or gas can be regulated,” while a hoop is “a certain quantity of drink, up to the first hoop on a quart pot.”
Debrett’s
Cora: “Not everyone chooses their religion to satisfy Debrett’s.”
Episode 5, February 3, 2013
Debrett’s is a British publisher of etiquette guides and Debrett’s Peerage & Baronetage, a “genealogical guide to the British aristocracy,” or as Patsy Stone of the TV show Absolutely Fabulous calls it, the “Who’s Who in what’s left of the British aristocracy.”
gippy tummy
O’Brien: “Something different. I could fancy that.”
Wilkins: “Not me. All sweat and gippy tummy.”
Episode 8, February 17, 2013
A gippy tummy is, according to the OED, “diarrhœa suffered by visitors to hot countries,” where gippy is slang for Egyptian. Gippy tummy may also be an anachronism: the OED lists the earliest use of the term as 1943, 23 years after this episode takes place.
hobbledehoy
Carson: “Miss O’Brien, we are about to host a society wedding. I have no time for training young hobbledehoys.”
Episode 1, January 6, 2013
A hobbledehoy is “a raw, awkward youth.” The word is very old, originating in the 16th century. The first syllable hob probably refers to “a hobgoblin, sprite, or elf,” while –dehoy may come from the Middle French de haye, “worthless, untamed, wild.”
in someone’s bad books
Daisy [to Mosely about O’Brien]: “I wouldn’t be in her bad books for a gold clock.”
Episode 2, January 13, 2013
To be in someone’s bad books means to be in disgrace or out of favor. The phrase originated around 1861, says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
An earlier phrase (1771) is to be in someone’s black book. A black book was “a book kept for the purpose of registering the names of persons liable to censure or punishment, as in the English universities, or the English armies.” So to be in someone’s black book meant to be in bad favor with that person (or on their shitlist, as we Yanks say).
As you may have guessed, to be in someone’s good books means to be in favor. That phrase originated around 1839, says the OED, in Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby: “If you want to keep in the good books in that quarter, you had better not call her the old lady.”
in the soup
Daisy [to Mosely]: “You’re in the soup.”
Episode 2, January 13, 2013
To in the soup means to be in in a difficult, according to the OED. The phrase was originally American slang, originating around 1889.
Johnny Foreigner
Robert: “But there always seems to be something of Johnny Foreigner about the Catholics.”
Episode 3, January 20, 2013
Johnny Foreigner is a derogatory term for “a person from a country other than those which make up the United Kingdom.” We couldn’t find an originating date or first use of the phrase. If anyone has information, let us know!
left-footer
Robert: “Did you hear Tom’s announcement at breakfast? He wants the child to be a left-footer.”
Episode 6, February 3, 2013
Anachronism alert! Left-footer, which is slang for a Roman Catholic, didn’t come about until 1944, according to the OED, 24 years after this episode takes place.
The term seems to come from the belief that “in the North of Ireland that Catholic farm workers use their left foot to push the spade when digging, and Protestants the right.” Kicks with the left foot is another slang term for Catholic, while kicking with the wrong foot “is used especially by Protestants of Catholics and vice versa.”
plain cook
Mrs. Bird: “She says there’s plenty of work for a plain cook these days.”
Episode 4, January 27, 2013
A plain cook, says the OED, is “a cook who specializes in, or most frequently prepares, plain dishes.” Plain dishes are “not rich or highly seasoned,” and have a few basic ingredients.
rich as Croesus
Mary: “He’s as rich as Croesus as it is.”
Episode 1, January 6, 2013
Croesus was, in ancient Greece, the last king of Lydia “whose kingdom, which had prospered during his reign, fell to the Persians under Cyrus.” Croesus came to refer to any rich man by the late 14th century.
squiffy
Robert: “I’m very much afraid to say he was a bit squiffy, weren’t you, Alfred?”
Episode 6, February 3, 2013
Squiffy means tipsy or drunk, and is of “fanciful formation,” according to the OED. Other ways to say drunk.
stick it up your jumper
Anna: “They’ll have to give Thomas his notice.”
Bates: “Mr. Barrow.”
Anna: “Mr. Stick It Up Your Jumper.”
Episode 6, February 10, 2013
The full phrase is oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumper!, and is “an expression of contempt, defiance, rejection or dismissal.” It may have originally been “a meaningless jingle chanted jocularly or derisively” from the 1920s. The phrase makes a famous appearance in the Beatles’ song, I Am the Walrus.
tuppence
Isabel: “She couldn’t give a tuppence about Ethel.”
Episode 6, February 10, 2013
Tuppence is an alternation of twopence, two pennies or a very small amount. One who doesn’t give a tuppence doesn’t care at all.
Can’t get enough Downton Abbey? Check out our favorite words from the first two seasons.
[Photo: Carnival Films via The Chicago Maroon]
Every week we watch tons of TV for weird and interesting words so you don’t have to. Check out our latest selections.
cooler
Jess: “Nick, I’m gonna admit it. I might be your cooler. . . .But to be fair, you are your own cooler 70% of the time.”
“Cooler,” New Girl, January 29, 2013
A cooler here is someone who ruins another’s luck in romance, perhaps playing off another meaning of cooler: in gambling, someone who is supposedly bad luck and makes other players lose. The Cooler was a 2003 film with William H. Macy in the titular role.
NOLA Roast Beef Po-Boy with debris and au jus.
debris
Anthony Bourdain: “Now we’ve been talking about debris and po’boys. I do not see the word po’boy or debris on this menu.”
“New Orleans,” The Layover, January 28, 2013
Debris here refers to beef shredded into tiny pieces, resembling the original meaning of debris, “the scattered remains of something broken or destroyed; rubble or wreckage.” (A debris-cone, in case you were wondering, is “a mound or cone built up by the accumulation of erupted, fragmental products about the vent of a volcano.”)
The po’boy is a kind of sandwich native to the U.S. Gulf Coast. A shortening of poor boy, the phrase either comes from the French pourboire, drink money, or was coined by New Orleans restaurant workers in 1929 who called the railroad strikers they gave free sandwiches to “poor boys.”
despertainment
Stephen Colbert: “This pioneering form of despertainment is sure to be such a hit that other networks are gonna have their own spin-offs, like Meal or No Meal, Americans, Idle, and Are You More Employable Than a 5th Grader?”
The Colbert Report, February 5, 2013
Despertainment, a blend of desperate and entertainment, refers here to the reality show, The Job, in which unemployed contestants compete for the chance to win “a dream job at their dream company.”
dwell time
Anthony Bourdain: “Dwell time, that’s the period after you get through security [at the airport] and before you board.”
“Seattle,” The Layover, February 4, 2013
Dwell time is chiefly an engineering term that means “the period of time that a system or element of a system remains in a given state,” and seems to refer the amount of time a plane or train remains in station after arrival and before departure. The phrase also has the military sense of “the amount of time that service members spend in their home nation between deployments to war zones.”
The earliest citation we could find for dwell time meaning the amount of time a person waits at the airport after security and before boarding is from May 21, 2001: “From its airy and vaulted departure hall. . .to its four-block-long retail area that looks like any suburban mall. . .Terminal 4 seems intent on changing the airport phenomenon euphemistically called ‘dwell time’ into something more pleasant.”
fart patio
Waitress at vegan restaurant [to couple]: “We’ve been getting a lot of complaints. If you do need to flatulate, we have a designated area.”
[Cut to sign, FART PATIO, THIS WAY.]
Woman: “Ah! Now I’m all loosey-goosey!”
Episode 4, Season 3, Portlandia, January 18, 2013
A fart patio is, well, a patio where one goes to fart, and may be likened to a designated smoking area.
A common misconception is that a vomitorium was a designated area for ancient Greeks to vomit after feasting when it was actually “a passage located behind a tier of seats in an amphitheatre used as an exit for the crowds.” Vomit comes from the Latin vomere, “spew forth, discharge.”
Thanks to Nancy Friedman for showing us the fart patio.
gaffer
Appraiser: “Now, Martin Bach Sr. did not blow glass. He was a chemist. So he knew all the secret formulas and all of the different colors and chemicals used to create something that looked like this. But he didn’t have a gaffer.”
“Boston,” Antiques Roadshow, January 28, 2013
A gaffer is a glass blower in general, a master glass blower, or the head glassmaker. The word may be a contraction of grandfather, and also refers to an old man or the boss or foreman of a work crew, which may have given rise to gaffer meaning “an electrician in charge of lighting on a movie or television set.”
hogcock
Liz: “I just thought I’d check in on you because you’re the emotionally fragile one.”
Jack: “Hogcock, which is a combination of hogwash and poppycock.”
“Hogcock!/Last Lunch,” 30 Rock, January 31, 2013
Hogwash, slang for nonsense, first referred to “the refuse of a kitchen or brewery, etc., given to swine as food.” Poppycock, also slang for nonsense, probably comes from the Dutch pappekak, “soft dung,” where the last element, kak, comes from the Latin cacere, “to excrete” (which also gives us caca).
For even more slang words for nonsense, check out this list.
kotiate
Appraiser: “It’s a war club. . . .[f]rom the Maori.. . .called a kotiate. And a kotiate means ‘split liver’. . . . I think it probably comes from the shape of the item. It almost looks like the two lobes of the liver.”
“Boston,” Antiques Roadshow, January 28, 2013
The kotiate is a traditional hand weapon of the Maori of New Zealand. Other Maori weapons include the mere, the patu, and the taiaha.
lion rampant
Appraiser: “On the left we have ‘Arms of the lion rampant’ by the name ‘Phillips.’ And on the right side we have ‘Arms of the lion rampant’ by the name ‘Jackson.’”
“Boston,” Antiques Roadshow, February 4, 2013
Rawr
A lion rampant refers to, in heraldry, a lion “rearing on the left hind leg with the forelegs elevated, the right above the left, and usually with the head in profile.” A counter-rampant is “rampant in opposite directions: said of animals used as bearings.”
Plantagenet
Stephen Colbert: “He’s also an important historical figure because he was the last king of the Plantagenet line. For those not familiar, Plantagenet means he was descended from a plant.”
The Colbert Report, February 5, 2013
Plantagenet was the “family name of a line of English kings from Henry II to Richard III,” whose bones were recently found under a parking lot in Leicester, England.
[Photo: ” NOLA Roast Beef Po-Boy,” CC BY 2.0 by Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau]
[Photo: “Rawr,” CC BY 2.0 by Stuart Caie]
Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.
Thanks to everyone for playing! As always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.
30 Rock
Welcome to this week’s Language Blog Roundup, in which we bring you the highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news and culture.
For Super Bowl XLVII, OxfordWords Blog tackled some football language. In honor of the end of 30 Rock, Slate gave us their favorite catchphrases from the show while Visual Thesaurus reminded us of Mark Peters’ post on 30 Rock euphemisms.
The New York Times delved into the origin of big data, and Vanity Fair recounted an oral history of YOLO, “the word that lived too long.” Ben Zimmer explored the history of bounding asterisks and when life imitates movies, from gaslighting to catfishing, while The Week told us even more about what gaslighting is.
Johnson examined foreign language films at the Oscars, Indian retroflexes, and immigration and learning English. At Lingua Franca, Ben Yagoda discussed dog-whistle politics, Geoff Pullum wrote about being a preposition, and Allan Metcalf told us about a publication of the American Dialect Society, American Speech.
At Macmillan Dictionary blog, Michael Rundell picked on adverbs and Stan Carey praised serendipity. On his own blog, Stan traced the diffusion and variety of folk tales. John McIntyre considered the relationship between writer and editor and the persistence of grammar ignorance.
In the week in words, Erin McKean noted funambulist, a tightrope walker; tongqi, Chinese for a straight woman married to a gay man; mot-diese, France’s substitution for the banned hashtag; and windowing, charging a fee to viewers who want to get early access to videos. Erin also gave us the Week in Words’ also-rans for January, words that “while interesting, were not Week-worthy.”
Fritinancy’s weekly word choices were tannoy, “a loudspeaker or public-address system,” and Godwin’s Law which says, “As an online discussion becomes longer, the probability of a comparison invoking Hitler or Nazis approaches one.”
Word Spy spotted hedge rage, “extreme anger or aggression exhibited by a homeowner in response to a neighbor’s massive or overgrown hedge”; social swearing, “casual swearing that helps to define and bind a social group”; and cinemagraph, “a still image where an element or small area of the image has been animated.”
Sesquiotica compared if and when, and in his Word Taster’s Companion series, offered the consonant line and the fricative. The Virtual Linguist examined stalking horse; chaturanga and the number four; and the origins of hunch and hunch-backed. The Dialect Blog explored different kinds of ahs as well as the impact of military service on one’s dialect.
In dictionary news, Kory Stamper examined morality and dictionaries, Merriam-Webster gave us a preview of their electronic unabridged dictionary, and DARE, the Dictionary of American Regional English, was awarded RUSA’s Dartmouth Medal for excellence. Meanwhile, we enjoyed this dictionary of Victorian slang.
This week we learned that grammar badness makes cracking passwords more difficult; most of what we think about grammar is wrong; and some early theories about the origin of language. We also found out about 11 words we’re mispronouncing; 20 words we owe to Shakespeare; and from Ben Yagoda, nine writing mistakes we might be making.
We sang along with these ABCs from eight different languages and practiced our letters via superheroes. We couldn’t help but laugh at Scott Brown’s Twitter troubles (“Bqhatevwr”). We love these hotels inspired by literature, these bizarre fairy tale adaptations, and the idea of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake in Chinese (or it gives us a headache, we’re not sure).
That’s it for this week! Until next time, bqhatevwr!
[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by nathaniel.scribbleton]
Charles Dickens
Two hundred and one years ago today, English writer Charles Dickens was born. The prolific author’s inventive character names have given rise to many words now common in the English language, and he has been credited with the coining of dozens of words.
While some of these words have been antedated – for example, an earlier citation of boredom, long credited to Dickens, has been found – there’s no denying the author’s role popularizing words that may have disappeared into obscurity. Today we round up 11 of our favorites.
abuzz
“The court was all astir and a-buzz, when the black sheep—whom many fell away from in dread—pressed him into an obscure corner among the crowd.”
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859
Dickens was one of the first authors to use abuzz, “characterized by excessive gossip or activity.” Another “early adopter” of the word was George Eliot, who used it in her 1859 novel, Adam Bede: “I hate the sound of women’s voices; they’re always either a-buzz or a-squeak.”
creeps, the
“She was constantly complaining of the cold, and of its occasioning a visitation in her back which she called ‘the creeps‘.”
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850
You may be surprised to know the modern-sound phrase, the creeps, “a feeling of fear and revulsion,” was coined by Dickens. He may have been influenced by the sense creepy, “chilled and crawling, as with horror or fear,” which originated around 1831.
devil-may-care
“Not that this would have worried him much, anyway—he was a mighty free and easy, roving, devil-may-care sort of person, was my uncle, gentlemen.”
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1837
Devil-may-care, meaning “reckless; careless,” or “jovial and rakish in manner,” seems to come from the saying, “The devil may care but I don’t.”
flummox
“And my ‘pinion is, Sammy, that if your governor don’t prove a alleybi, he’ll be what the Italians call reg’larly flummoxed, and that’s all about it.”
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1837
To flummox means “to confuse; perplex.” The origin is probably an English dialectal word which Dickens brought back into popularity. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the formation of the word “seems to be onomatopoeic, expressive of the notion of throwing down roughly and untidily; compare flump, hummock, dialect slommock sloven.”
gonoph
“He’s as obstinate a young gonoph as I know.”
Charles Dickens, Bleak House, 1853
Gonoph is slang for a pickpocket or thief. The word comes from gannabh, the Hebrew word for “thief.” Dickens’s seems to be the earliest recorded usage of the word in English.
gorm
“It appeared, in answer to my inquiries, that nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this terrible verb passive to be gormed; but that they all regarded it as constituting a most solemn imprecation.”
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850
Gorm is “a vulgar substitute for (God) damn,” according to the OED. In the television show, Firefly, gorram is a common expletive, presumably a corruption of goddamn. Whether or not the show’s creators were influenced by Dickens is unknown.
lummy
“To think of Jack Dawkins—lummy Jack—the Dodger—the Artful Dodger—going abroad for a common twopenny-halfpenny sneeze-box!”
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, 1839
Lummy is slang for “knowing; cute,” or “first-rate,” and probably comes from lumme, a corruption of “(Lord) love me,” according to the OED. Lummy is another Dickens-coined word that has fallen into obscurity, though we would like to see it make a comeback.
on the rampage
“When I got home at night, and delivered this message for Joe, my sister ‘went on the Rampage,’ in a more alarming degree than at any previous period.”
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1860
The phrase on the rampage comes from the earlier verb form of rampage, “to act or move in a ramping manner; spring or rush violently; rage or storm about.” The word rampage may come from ramp, “to rise for a leap or in leaping, as a wild beast; rear or spring up; prepare for or make a spring; jump violently.”
red tapeworm
“If in any convenient part of the United Kingdom, (we suggest the capital as the centre of resort,) a similar museum could be established, for the destruction and exhibition of the Red-Tape-Worms with which the British Public are so sorely afflicted, there can be no doubt that it would be, at once, a vast national benefit, and a curious national spectacle.”
Charles Dickens, Household Words, 1851
A red tapeworm is, according to the OED, “a person who adheres excessively to official rules and formalities.” The phrase plays off red tape and tapeworm, and was coined by Dickens in Household Words, a weekly magazine he edited.
Red tape, slang for “the collection or sequence of forms and procedures required to gain bureaucratic approval for something, especially when oppressively complex and time-consuming,” comes from the English practice of using red or pink tape to tie official documents. The figurative sense arose around 1736, says the OED. A tapeworm is a ribbonlike parasite.
Some call a phrase like red tapeworm a sweet tooth fairy, “three words where the first and second form a known expression and the second and third form a known expression and all three together make a credible expression.”
sawbones
“‘What! Don’t you know what a sawbones is, sir?’ inquired Mr. Weller. ‘I thought everybody know’d as a sawbones was a surgeon.’”
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1837
Sawbones is slang for a surgeon or doctor. Before the advent of anesthesia in 1846, speed was of the essence for surgeons. With a saw like the one pictured in this article, Victorian physicians could amputate a leg in half a minute.
whiz-bang
“‘Present! think I was; fired a musket—fired with an idea—rushed into wine shop—wrote it down—back again—whiz, bang—another idea—wine shop again—pen and ink—back again—cut and slash—noble time, Sir. Sportsman, sir?’ abruptly turning to Mr. Winkle.”
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1836
Whiz-bang in this example means something “very rapid and eventful; rushed,” and is imitative of something that moves quickly, or whizzes, and perhaps lands with a bang.
During World War I, whiz-bang came to refer to “the shell of a small-calibre high-velocity German gun, so called from the noise it made,” according to the OED. By 1916, the term referred to “a resounding success,” and in 1960, a type of firecracker.
[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by USM MS photos]
Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.
Thanks to everyone for playing! As always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.