LOGY

[Dr. Goodword]

• logy •

Pronunciation: lo-gee • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Sluggish, lethargic.

Notes: The spelling of this word has vacillated between logy and loggy for 150 years but seems to have settled on logy. We are free to convert it into an adverb or noun if we remember to change the Y to an I: logily, loginess.

In Play: You don't have to be a logger to feel logy: "Fosdick couldn't understand why he felt so logy after winning the hotdog-eating contest." He probably felt a bit crapulent, too. Loginess can be induced by pharmaceuticals: "The Mickey Finn that Horace slipped into Leticia's drink to stop her constant chattering made her a little logy but only slowed the tempo of her prattle."

Word History: Etymologists hesitantly suggest that today's word was borrowed from Dutch log "heavy, cumbersome"; however, there may be an origin for this word closer to home. The spelling logy and loggy with the same meaning appeared at about the same time: mid 19th century. A log is considered something heavy and ponderous, as we see in the simile "sleep like a log". It is also related to lug, also implying heaviness. Now, loggy can also mean "abounding in logs". Adjectives with this meaning like dusty, filmy, and sandy often have a second meaning of "like X". So logy could be a misspelling of loggy, meaning "ponderous like a log", which people began pronouncing the way it is spelled. (We are happy that Halcyon Kramer was not too logy to contact us when this interesting word turned up.)

[bnjtokyo]

It would appear that there is another related word: "waterlogged," the verbal morphology of which suggests there must be a verb "to log" as well.

[engineer27]

It would appear that there is another related word: "waterlogged," the verbal morphology of which suggests there must be a verb "to log" as well.

Yes, there are at least two verbs "to log". One, of course, has to do with removing trees from a forest. The other, however, is probably more relevant. "To log," as in "to record in a logbook," relates to speed, since the ship's log originally was simply a recording of the rate of travel, eventually encompassing other shipboard occurences.

So, how far is the semantic drift from "measure your speed" to "weigh down and make sluggish" (the sense of 'to log' proposed by bnjtokyo)?

The wooden stake in this theory, however, is that logging of the ship's speed was called such because wooden floats ("logs") on strings were used as measuring devices.

[engineer27]

Also see the verb "to lug", originally from a Norse word meaning "drag by the hair".

"To lug" had a sailing-specific meaning which meant having a lot more sails on board than required for the prevailing conditions. In other words, weighed down.