Dr. Goodword’s Language Blog

William Hupy has been struggling with the English suffix -ery, which seems to have at least two different meanings, neither of which fit livery and grocery. I wrote this up quickly in hopes of clarifying the functions of this suffix and its various relationships. I thought some of you might be interested, too.

The English suffix -ery is an adaptation of the Latin -oria which came to French as the suffix -erie, usually meaning “place of”: bakery, eatery, brewery, nunnery. However, it sometimes converts a noun into the quality that identifies the noun: tomfoolery, knavery, savagery.

When English borrows such words directly from Latin, the suffix -ory is the result, e.g. laboratory, observatory, dormitory, depository, a suffix more frequently used to convert verbs into adjectives: congratulatory, conciliatory, exclamatory. (Don’t be surprised that a suffix in English has more than one function. Suffixes are dying out like flies in English and, as the number of suffixes dwindle, the remainder must pick up more and more funtions.)

Livery and grocery do not contain either suffix. Livery comes from a French word meaning “delivery”, originating in the Latin word liberare “to liberate, set free”. Grocery is simply the suffix -y added to grocer. The latter word has an interesting history. It comes from grossus “large, thick” with the suffix -arius, a personal suffix meaning “someone who (does something)”. The original word, grossarius, meant “wholesaler”, i.e. someone selling on a large scale, as opposed to a small-scale retailer, rather like someone selling by the gross rather than by the item.

The latest Beltway clichés are beginning to irritate me and I can no longer resist the inclination to complain about them. “Put some skin in (the game)” brings up memories of falling and scraping knees, elbows, heads, and the like. 

This cliché replaces “ante up”, which replaced “cough up”, whose demises please no one more than me. ”Put some skin in” is milder than “give a pound of flesh”, donated by Shakespeare but still it is pretty raw. “Ante up” comes from poker; it means literally to put more money in the game and hence is more fitting for the financial crisis than “putting in more skin” (unless, of course, you’ve been skinned by Bernie Madoff).

OK, the image is bad, so what is better? Let’s try “give/get a haircut”, as to give GM employees or AIG managers a haircut. Well, that isn’t a graphic image of an injury but then it doesn’t really imply a contribution to the cost of resurrecting our economic institutions. Hair cuts are something we all get on a regular basis and implies willingly giving up something we consider superfluous. It implies no kind of sacrifice at all which is the very point of these metaphors.

This is what comes of ignoring our poets and listening to the faces on radio and TV that talk faster than they think. Clichés, of course, are simply metaphors that catch on and are repeated ad nauseum by those who cannot come up with their own. I’m sure at least one poet in our midst has dreamed up a better metaphor than the ones that are morphing into clichés even as I click away now.

Joe Kozuh asked a question yesterday that puzzles many more than him: “What is the difference between -er and -or on nouns and is there a rule of thumb that governs their selectioin?”

Generally, -or is a Latin suffix and -er is the Germanic equivalent meaning, roughly, “one who Vs”, where V represents any verb. Words borrowed directly from Latin, then, tend to end on -or: governor, calculator, arbitrator, legislator, alternator. Words of Germanic origin (English is a Germanic language) generally take -er: runner, thinker, worker, joker. 

However, two factors muddy the water.  English borrowed many words from French in the Middle Ages and the French equivalent of -or and -er, is -eur.  English generally reduced that suffix to -er, keeping it only in a few words borrowed late: amateur, restauranteur, raconteur, coiffeur. English also borrowed many verbs from French and added the English suffix: employer, deceiver, certifier.

So, you need to know the etymologies of many of the verbs that -er and -or are added to, in order to know how to distribute them. You can be sure that verbs ending on -ize and -ify will take the suffix -er and that verb ending on the suffix -ate will be suffixed with -or.  Other than that, though, we have the etymological rule of a very small and barely helpful thumb.

No one knows for sure where the word willies originated, a state which has invited broad if not wild speculation.

The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins claims that it is a reduction of an old word, willie-boy “sissy”. This explanation hardly makes semantic sense: having the willies is far from being or even feeling like a sissy.

William Morris, the Word Detective, opines that willies might come from the name of a Slavic sprite called a vila (plural vili “sprites”) sometimes translated as wili. However, the spelling of vili as wili is German, where W is pronounced [v], not English where it is pronounced [w]. 

The best guess in my opinion was recently suggested by Jackie Strauss, who also suggested the word itself as a Good Word in our daily series. This word reminds Jackie of the woolies, which is to say scratchy wool long winter underwear. The willies are the same as the creeps, which suggests a skin sensation to me, too. So, I’m putting Jackie’s speculation at the top of my list of potential explanations of the origin of willies.

Now all we need is some evidence.

English has two expressions referring to turkeys that seem unrelated. To talk turkey means to get down to serious straighforward talking while cold turkey is a term usually applied to withdrawing directly from an addiction: to kick a drug habit cold turkey or give up smoking cold turkey.
 
We are not suffering from a lack of explanations. One goes back to colonial times when Indians often brought turkeys to the original settlers on the East Coast. Since the turkey was often the coin of trade, “talking turkey” could have meant getting down to serious negotiations. We have no evidence of that.

Michael Quinion picks upon the Oxford English Dictionary’s claim that the phrase at one time meant “to talk agreeably or affably, to say pleasant things”, suggesting that this sense arose around the Thanksgiving table, where turkey has been the central fare for some time in the US. (The phrase definitely came from the US.) The examples of this meaning that I can find are not convincing and Quinion doesn’t provide any.

I am going to suggest another possibility. The OED claims that one of the meanings of this phrase was at one time “to talk in high-flown language”. This makes sense since turkeys strut, their feathers puffed out and their tail feathers fanned like a peacock’s, when they gobble. The OED found at least one example suggesting this meaning from John Beedle’s Sleigh Ride, Courtship and Marriage, a novel by William McClintock published in 1841: “I was plaguy apt to talk turkey always when I got sociable, if it was only out of politeness.”

While high-flown language is looked on disparagingly in the US, it is usually reserved for serious situations rather than affable ones. “Seriously” seems to be the meaning of the phrase in this line from A Little Bit of Tid-Re-I, II, published in 1824: “So that, all things considered, I hope neither the Indian, whom the Yankey could not cheat in the division of their game (a turkey and a buzzard,)..will accuse me of not talking Turkey to them in this article.”

The 1903 issue of Dialect Notes II has an entry: “Talk turkey, v. phr., to talk plainly: ‘I’m going to talk turkey with him and see if I can’t get him to mend his ways.’” The American preference for straightforwardness in serious discussions could have pulled the meaning of this word in the direction of “plainness” but something else happened at about the same time that makes this even more likely.

Early in 20th century this talking turkey was sometimes extended to talking cold turkey. This expression clearly meant “talking plainly but very seriously”. Cold implies the status of people and machines before they are warmed up, right after starting, and fits the sense of plainly, i.e. without preparation, rehearsal or warming up. The January 4, 1928 issue of The Daily Express (11/5) contained the following sentence: “She talked cold turkey about sex.”

Now, even though the OED’s examples seem to reverse the chronology, I am suggesting talk cold turkey in the sense of “talk plainly and very seriously” became simply talk turkey, not vice versa. We should not depend too heavily on published sources here. Talk cold turkey may well have preceded talk turkey in the sense of “plainly and seriously” in speech but took more time finding its way into print.

The interesting aspect of the extended phrase, talk cold turkey in the sense of “plainness”, is that the other mysterious turkey phrase is cold turkey. Quinion says that this sense is unrelated to the first; but is it?

If cold turkey meant “plainly and very seriously” at the turn of the century, could it not easily have migrated to the sense of kicking a drug habit plainly and very seriously, which is to say, without help, intervention, or preparation? It would have been strongly influenced by the phrase cold sweats, a state which often accompanies withdrawing from an addiction. I think this history makes eminent sense and is supported by evidence, however scant it may be in spots.

A side note: turkey also meant  “nothing, not a word, diddledy, squat”, toward the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century as we see in this sentence: ”You never said turkey to me about leaving.” This meaning no doubt derived directly from the phrase talk turkey. If you talk turkey, turkey is what you talk, i.e. words.

Susan Kappel raised an interesting question today: Why is the motto of the state of New York “wood-shavings”? The point is, the motto and only word in Latin on the Great Seal of New York is Excelsior. The packing material state?

Well, no; excelsior is actually the comparative degree of the Latin word excelsus “high”, hence it means “higher”. The superlative is excelsis, as in Gloria in excelsis Deo “Glory to God in the highest”. As Susan very aptly put it: “For packing material it’s a pretty grandiose name!”

The now common noun excelsior was not always a common noun. It originated as a proper noun, the name of the American Excelsior Company, which began manufacturing the curly wood shavings for packing frangible products in 1888. It is still the world’s largest manufacturer of this product but also produces a complete line of packaging materials in addition to being the eponym of excelsior.

Like Kleenex, escalator, and aspirin, American Excelsior’s product dominated the field to the point that referring to it simply as excelsior led to the commonization of the word. Unlike Kimberly-Clarke, who legally convinced publishers to switch to “tissue”, American Excelsior apparently has no complaints over integrating its name into ordinary English since it uses the word excelsior in lower case letters on its website.

Jackies Strauss raised an interesting question after reading our recent Good Word caducity:

“You didn’t mention it, but is there a connection between the word caducity, and caduceus, the symbol for healing or physician?”

I think the answers are “no” and “yes”. These two words are not related in that they do not have roots (cad-) that share the same source. Latin caduceus is a strange corruption of Greek dialectal karukeion “herald’s staff”, from karux “herald”. (Hermes was also a herald.) This leaves us with the question of how did such a major corruption come about? Latin C transliterated Greek K but D was not a usual transliteration of R.

Well, here caducus “falling, caducous” might have been influential. Since this word refers to falling in the sense of falling in battle and the falling of leaves, it might have influenced the transfiguration of karukeion in its journey to Latin. But the relationship would be influence, not shared origin.

An interesting sidenote if you don’t already know it: The caduceus was a staff carried by Hermes, who was the protector of liars and thieves, as well as a herald. It became the symbol of the medical profession in the US as the result of confusing it with the Rod of Asclepius, the son of Apollo who was a practitioner of medicine according to Greek mythology. Only one snake crept around Asclepius’s rod and it had no wings atop it.

My old friend Chris Stewart in South Africa wrote recently:

“I do however remember that I was pondering how certain words only survive in phrases (like Kith as in “Kith & Kin”, or Fell as in “Fell Swoop”—or, as the dyslexic community I belong to might say, a “Swell Foop”, which somehow seems to sound like it means something).“

Phrases like “kith and kin” and “to and fro”, in fact, don’t survive. We insist on having current words even in our unpredictable idioms. Most Americans now say “kissin’ kin” and “back and forth” instead of using their archaic counterparts. You meet the archaic phrases only in the written word.

“One fell swoop” is OK because all the words in that phrase are current English words, with or without their original meanings. The important issue seems to be that the components of English phrases, idiomatic or not, be current words in English, whether they make sense in the phrase or not.

The same applies to folk etymology, which I have just explained in the latest addition to Dr. Goodword’s Office and the alphaDictionary resources (click here). Folk etymology converts strange-sounding foreign words into user-friendly English words. The interesting fact is that folk etymology does not care if the words involved make sense so long as they are actual, current English words.

Old French, mousseron, for example, became English mushroom. Mushroom? Mushrooms are not rooms and they have nothing to do with mush? That doesn’t matter to folk etymology so long as mush and room are current English words.

The Republican presidential campaign seems to be attempting to raise fears of an Obama presidency by references to his names. His middle name, Hussein, is an easy key to associate with Sadam Hussein, so long as no one remembers King Hussein of Jordan, long one of our strongest supporters.

Senator Obama’s first name, however, is far more interesting if wholly and totally unrelated to his character and presidential campaign. My friend Paul Ogden did a little basic research on this name. The results were so fascinating that I couldn’t resist doing a bit on my own and reporting the results here.

The basic Semitic (Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew) meaning of barak is “blessing”. It is a word that appears in the Old Testament more than 300 times. But did you know about the ancient Semitic tradition of sealing a successful business deal or other negotiation with an exchange of gifts, called al-baraka “the blessing” in Arabic.

The Spaniards adopted the practice during the Moorish Period of their history, referring to the gift with the Arabic word, which became albaroque in Spanish. This word then appeared in Ango-Norman (French spoken in England) as abrocour and brocour which, by folk etymology, eventually became broker, something we would hope any US president would be good at. Diamond brokers around the world today seal their deals with a handshake and proclaiming mazel and brocha “luck and a blessing”, brocha being a variant of barak(a).

One of the best brokers in US history was Bernard Baruch, who later became one of the most trusted advisors of President Franklin Roosevelt, the last president called upon to save the US from a financial crisis. Baruch means “blessed” and is the past passive participle of baraka “to bless”. (Baruch is famous for saying, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”)

The Semitic root of baraka is brk. (In the Semitic languages, the various forms of word are created by changing the vowels in the root.) We find the same the word in the last name of Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak. Many linguists think that brk descended from krb. If so, Barak is also related to the source of the English word cherub, about as far away from a terrorist as we can get. 

My definition of the verb to swiftboat as “To powerfully blindside and undermine someone with false or misleading attacks on their character or background” resulted in an unusually heavy load of complaints. Some accused me of political bias, others simply pointed out that the basis of the swift boat ads against Senator Kerry in 2004 were either true or were not proven false. Since it is always interesting to watch new words find their way into our vocabulary, I thought I would share my response with everyone.

After reviewing my research, I couldn’t find anything gravely at fault in the definition (though I have ameneded it slightly). Many apparently thought I was defining the swift boat incident of the 2004 election itself. I wasn’t. I was defining the verb (not even the noun) to swiftboat and even chose to close the gap between the two words to make that clear. Nothing in my defintion bears on the truthfulness of the swift boat ads of the 2004 presidential campaign. I only wrote about the meaning of the verb to swiftboat today, 2008.

Since only the very unreliable Wiktionary and Urban Dictionary had even ventured a definition for this word, I did most of my research on the uses of the word on the Web. I searched the word swiftboated to make sure I had only verbs in my sample. I tried to determine what the writers of sentences like these had in mind using the verb:

• How McCain will be Swiftboated.
• They swiftboated the Gold Star mom on the news by questioning her credibility when she refused to back off with her antiwar protest….
• Stéphane Dion gets swiftboated by an oily Peter Puck.
• Fox suggests swiftboat author being swiftboated himself.
• Science swiftboated in ‘Expelled’.

I could not find room to believe these and hundreds of other authors meant “had the truth told about them” in using this term.

In all the related articles the word was being used negatively—whether truthfully or not. The authors of all these web texts intended that something bad was done to whomever was swiftboated. Regardless of whether the statements are true or not, the intent of the writer is to denote that truth was subverted, not exposed. I don’t see any other interpretation.

The meanings of words begin changing as soon as they are used. Disease is no longer semantically related to ease, business no longer has any business with busy, atonement is unrelated today to one. I think the meaning of the verb to swiftboat may still be in a state of flux but I only did this word because it seems to be stabilizing and gaining great popularity. For sure its meaning now is independent of the meaning of its origin.