Nosegay

[Dr. Goodword]

• nosegay •

Pronunciation: noz-gay • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: A small, fragrant bouquet of flowers or herbs, used for decoration.

Notes: Nosegay is still alive and well, especially in the floral business but also wherever floral decorations might be used. This word is a lexical orphan.

In Play: Fewer flowers today have fragrance due to the breeding efforts of their producers: "The bridesmaids carried nosegays of violets surrounding a red rose." Most herbs have retained their fragrance: "The tables were decorated with herbal nosegays comprising rosemary, marjoram and sage." This word may be used creatively in its metaphorical senses: "The party was decorated with nosegays of lovely, fashionably dressed ladies chatting gaily among themselves."

Word History: Today's Good Word is obviously a compound of two common words nose + gay. Nosegays were originally things intended to make the nose gay, that is to say, for their fragrance. Nose comes down from PIE nas- "nose", which emerged in German as Nase, French as nez, Russian and most Slavic languages as nos. It turned up in Sanskrit as nasa and in Latin as nasus, which underlies the English borrowing nasal. Nostril goes back to Old English nos + thryl "hole". Gay was borrowed from Old French gai "happy; colorful", a word probably borrowed from Old High German gahi "rash, hasty". How this word came to be in German is unknown. (We owe our gratitude today to Debbie Moggio, who actually suggested tussie-mussie, an archaic synonym of today's Good Word.)

[Philip Hudson]

I welcome the Good Doctor's discussion on nosegay. It is to me like a delightful romp through a beautiful stream of words. It is a welcome diversion from the unprecedented weather here in the hinterlands of Texas. I have been this cold before in upstate New York, but never here in Texas.

[LukeJavan8]

Here in the land of flat water we can empathize.
We hit a -23F last Tuesday: a record. Not nice
and we had the rolling blackout of electricity to
conserve. My power was out for 1 and a half hours.
Tough everywhere.

[damoge]

Thank you, good Doctor, but could you perhaps suggest where I might try to find out the etymology of tussie-mussie? I can't begin to see where it came from or what it might be related to. I tried, but am limited in my ability to find things on the internet (or internot, as Slava said) and stymied by my inability to access the local library (thanks to CoViD).
Thank you in advance,
Debby M.

[bnjtokyo]

I put "tussie-mussie" into the Ngram viewer and got a first, quite small peak at about 1920, a second, much higher peak at about 1950 and a final, highest peak at 1993. The highest peak was about 1/3 higher than the second peak. No help on actual etymology though.

I then entered "tussie-mussie" in the dictionary lookup box on the alpha dictionary top page and found links to about 10 dictionaries, but no link to the etymonline dictionary.
Marriam-Webster says "tussie-mussie" is a variant of "tuzzy-muzzy" and that it is "archaic."
Oxford says "late Middle English of unknown origin"
American Heritage says "Middle English'tussemose,' perhaps reduplication of '*tusse'"
Wiktionary says "etymology missing or incomplete" and "(historical) in Victorian times, a nosegay given by one person to another . . . in the language of flowers"
Dictionary dot com says "First recorded in 1400-50; late Middle English 'tusmose, tussemose'; further origin uncertain."
Wikipedia says "from the reign of Queen Victoria . . . ."
The Free Dictionary says "Middle English 'tussemose,' perhaps reduplication of '*tusse.'"
The World of Words has an essay on the subject and says it may have, for a time, been a slang term for "vagina" The essay is here
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-tus1.htm
A Word A Day has "[Middle English tussemose, perhaps reduplication of *tusse.]"
and also includes the following quotation:
"A woman also had to be pretty precise about where she wore flowers. Say, for instance, a suitor had sent her a tussie-mussie (a k a nosegay). If she pinned it to the `cleavage of bosom,' that would be bad news for him, since that signified friendship. Ah, but if she pinned it over her heart,`That was an unambiguous declaration of love.'"
Meadow, James B., Rocky Mountain News, 26 Jan 1998

I hope these are helpful. Perhaps chasing down the suggested roots will be fruitful

[damoge]

Thank you for your help and bless you for your resourcefulness!
I'm no closer to understanding how it came about, as the suggestion that the Latin source might be tuss-- cough.
I suppose that a strong smell might lead to coughing, but that seems antithetical to the word's use.
While I'm grateful, I'm also disappointed.
May I occasionally impose on your expertise for other words I cannot decode?
Again, my thanks and admiration. Using the Good Doctor's word, you are an excellent gremlin.