I Was Born on a Pirate Ship

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a pirate as “a person who plunders or robs from ships, especially at sea; a person who commits or practices piracy.” Proximately, the English word came from a French word designating a “thief of the sea.” Remotely, it came from the Greek πειραν -- to attempt, to attack, or to assault.

In the late 17th century, buccaneer was a term given to West-Indian pirates. Prior to that, it was applied to the French hunters of Santo Domingo, who cooked wild oxen and boars on a barbecue (boucan). Throw some shrimp on the barbie, Bluebeard.

Sanctioned pirates were known as privateers. A collection of private individuals, they manned armed vessels holding a government commission that authorized them to seize merchant ships belonging to an enemy nation.

Freebooter started life as the Dutch word for privateer, but in time it came to mean a pirate -- an unauthorized thief. Booter was related to booty, meaning collective plunder or spoils. In turn, plunder was a German or Dutch term referring to household goods seized and carried off.

A pirate was sometimes called a swashbuckler, a swaggering ruffian. To swash was to beat one’s sword against something, and a buckler was a small round shield.

A strange turnaround occurred with the word filibuster. In the 16th century, a filibuster was a freebooter, especially one who plied his trade by pillaging the Spanish colonies in the West Indies. By the late 1800s, a filibuster was someone who practiced obstruction in a legislative assembly, or the act itself.


SIDEBAR: The History Channel


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4th of July

Independence Day

Nonsense

There are many synonyms for the word nonsense, which indicates how prevalent it has been through the ages. It refers to statements that are unintelligible, obscure, foolish, or laughably trivial.

Some of the words were produced through onomatopoeia; they echo animal sounds or represent meaningless expulsions of air. Others refer to unpalatable drinks, dregs, or disgusting bodily fluids. Some of these words have obscure or contested origins, so this does not pretend to be definitive. The dates given indicate when an earlier meaning became a synonym for nonsense.

• balderdash [1852] One of the earliest senses was a jumbled mixture of liquors--milk and beer, beer and wine. Considered a stretch, but perhaps influenced by Norwegian baldra, to roar, thunder, clatter.

• baloney [1922] Alleged to have come from a sausage made in Bologna, but perhaps influenced by blarney.

• bilge [1908] From the foul liquid that pools in the bottom of a ship’s hull (the bulge).

• bunkum or bunk [1828] Congressman Felix Walker, representing Buncombe County, North Carolina, refused to stop his irrelevant speech when the question was called during a debate on the Missouri Compromise.

• claptrap [1727] A trick or device to catch (trap) applause; an expression designed to elicit applause.

• drivel [1325] Spittle flowing from the mouth or dribbling from the nose.

• gibberish [1554] Imitative of rapid and inarticulate speech. Often paired with jabber.

• gobbledygook [1944] Echoing a turkey-cock's gobble.

• hogwash [1773] The swill or slop of a brewery or kitchen given to hogs.

• piffle [1847] Imitative of air escaping from the lips, a meaningless puff.

• poppycock [1852] Apparently from the Dutch poppekak, soft dung.

• prattle [1555] Probably imitative of the clucking made by a laying hen.

• tommyrot [1884] -- From the name Thomas, probably through tommy-noddy, a foolish or stupid person. What comes out of his mouth is putrified garbage.

• twaddle [1782] Origin obscure, but possibly an imitation of the sound made by a goose.


SIDEBAR: The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science


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On a Shoestring

Doug from Traverse City asked about the origin of “on a shoestring.” It started, obviously, as something literal. A shoestring is long, stringlike material threaded through the eyelets of a boot or shoe in order to secure it to the foot. Through the ages, the material has ranged from bark strips to grass to hemp to leather to cotton to nylon and other synthetic materials. Often, a piece of metal or plastic is affixed to the tip to ease its passage through the eyelet without fraying. This tip is called an aglet.

Shoestrings as we know them are a relatively modern product. One of the first recorded instances in English occurs in 1616. It is found in Diary in Japan 1615–22 (Hakluyt Society 1883), by Richard Cocks: “A peare silk garters, with gould fring, and shewstring same.”

Royal footgear aside, shoestrings are generally not expensive. That means that they tend to break or to fray after prolonged use. The boot or shoe is still usable for years to come, but the shoestring needs to be replaced at that point, but with no great outlay of cash.

The literal meaning transferred to a figurative meaning. When something requires a very small amount of money, or when a project is sustained using very little capital, it is said to be done on a shoestring:
• “When I worked my way through college, I lived on a shoestring.”
• “She started her lawn maintenance business on a shoestring.”
• “I’m running this hot dog stand on a shoestring, so I can’t afford to hire a helper.”

The Oxford English Dictionary cites this as the first colloquial use: “[He] could draw to a shoe-string, as the saying went, and obtain a tan-yard!” [Century Magazine, April 1882, 884/2]



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TCB

Esther from Platte Lake, Michigan, asked about Pidgin English. I covered this a little over two years ago, so a rerun may be useful.

A common misspelling today is Pigeon English, which would imply that its speakers, instead of relying on hand gestures, bob their heads vigorously. (To be fair, in the early days of its use, pidgin and pigeon were interchangeable.)

The word pidgin seems to have had its origin in the inability of 19th century Chinese to articulate the word business. It came out as bigeon or bidgin, and since it is a short step from B to P, it finally flattened out as pidgin.

A pidgin language develops when two groups who speak different languages try to communicate by adapting elements of each other’s language. Generally, the result is simple, almost childlike, with an emphasis on readily understandable vocabulary instead of sophisticated grammatical elements. A pidgin is a second language for all parties involved. Ironically, it developed most naturally when two groups engaged in trade. In other words, they were taking care of bidgness.

We come across Pidgin English in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. For example, at one point Crusoe asks Friday why, if his tribe was justifiably famous for its warriors, Friday had been captured. Friday explains, “They more many than my nation, in the place where me was; they take one, two, three, and me: my nation over-beat them in the yonder place, where me no was; there my nation take one, two, great thousand.”

And in 1782, in Information to Those Who Would Remove to America, our own Benjamin Franklin recorded this snippet of a more advanced Pidgin English: “Boccarorra [a form of buckra, ‘white man’] make de Black Man workee, make de horse workee, make de Ox workee, make ebery thing workee; only de Hog. He, de Hog, no workee; he eat, he drink, he walk about, he go to sleep when he please, he libb like a gentleman.” J. L. Dillard, Black English, (Vintage Books 1973), p.89.

Finally, if a Pidgin language perdures and becomes a permanent fixture, it can evolve into Creole. At that point, after several generations of use, it becomes the primary language of a community.

SIDEBAR: Robinson Crusoe
http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DefCru1.html

SIDEBAR: Pidgin & Creole
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Linguistics/explainpidgin.html


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Knock Me Over With a Feather

While playing golf the other day, my foursome came across an explosion of feathers scattered on the ground near a tee box. Two turkeys had not made it through the night, thanks to a hungry fox or other vigilant predator. What impressed me most was that only feathers were left – not a scrap of flesh or sinew remained.

On a whim, let’s reverse the find and pursue feathers that are hidden, not out in plain sight. This will represent a sample only. Many words are based on the Latin pinna and pluma or the Greek πτερον (pteron).

• apterium: Each of the featherless spaces on the skin of a bird intervening between the feathered tracts or pterylæ

• bi-pinnate: two-winged

• filoplume: thread-feathers that have an extremely slender, almost invisible, stem and usually no vane

• impennous: wingless

• pennaceous: relating to, of the nature of, or resembling a feather or feathers

• penniferous: bearing or producing feathers or feather-like structures; feathered

• pennigerous: bearing feathers; feathered

• pinnate: resembling a feather; having lateral parts or branches on each side of a common axis, like the vanes of a feather

• plumeous: resembling down or fine feathers, feathery

• pterotic: winged

• ptilosis: The appearance or characteristics of the feathers (esp. the down feathers) of a bird


SIDEBAR: The Feathers Site


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Ditto

Ditto marks in our day look like double commas. They are placed on the line below something already written when you wish to repeat it unchanged. In earlier centuries, it was sometimes indicated by using dots, dashes, or the abbreviation do.

When first used in English in 1625, its use was confined to repeated dates. In time, it expanded to various commercial and bookkeeping uses, and finally worked its way into colloquial expressions. It came to mean an exact copy of anything, and in the early 20th century, it was the proprietary name of an electrically operated duplicating machine manufactured in Chicago.

The word came directly from an Italian participle that meant aforementioned; in turn, that came from a Latin participle meaning [already] said.


SIDEBAR: Beth Ditto/GOSSIP


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